Abstract

Both Nishida Kitarō and Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote extensively about artistic expression in their early works, yet in the last period of their careers that consideration is put mostly aside as they engage more directly with abstract ontological concerns. As this happens, a curiously overlooked concept becomes prominent in their writings, namely “faith.” While Merleau-Ponty’s is a “perceptual faith”, and Nishida’s is, broadly speaking, a religious faith, neither is strictly secular nor spiritual, yet both entail a remarkably similar ontology of the motor-perceptual body. Unfortunately, their lives ended before they could fully develop these philosophically problematic concepts....