After Perceptual Indiscernibility: Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of the Body as a Challenge to the Foundations of Danto’s Aesthetics

Abstract

Arthur C. Danto’s philosophy of art rests on a foundational move drawn from the method of indiscernibles: two perceptually indistinguishable objects—Warhol’s Brillo Box and a supermarket Brillo carton—differ in artistic status; therefore, the essence of art cannot reside in perceptual properties. This paper argues that Danto’s reasoning depends on an unexamined operation: the operational equation of “perception” with the visual identification of an object’s manifest properties. This equation is not a neutral description but a specific philosophical choice, one never articulated or defended as an independent premise within his argument. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body, the paper reconstructs an alternative model: perception as the flesh’s intertwined encounter with the world, characterized by temporal unfolding, bodily involvement, and atmospheric permeation. It then shows that Danto’s characteristic defensive maneuver—reclassifying any experience exceeding manifest scanning as a cognitive operation—depends on a demarcation criterion (perception equals sensory-neural mechanism) that itself has never received independent justification. The paper does not claim to refute Danto; within his own framework, his reasoning remains consistent. Rather, it demonstrates that the foundational concept on which his argument depends had already been assigned a specific, and not uniquely possible, meaning before the argument began. Once this default equation is recognized as a contestable premise rather than a neutral starting point, the exclusion of sensible experience from art’s ontology is revealed as a conclusion obtained under the silent permission of an undefended presupposition—not a judgment compelled by the facts.