Eva Schuermann 
Seeing as Practice 
Philosophical Investigations into the Relation Between Sight and Insight

This study provides an overview of philosophical questions relating to sight and vision. It discusses the intertwinement of seeing and ways of seeing against the background of an entirely different theoretical framework.






Seeing is both a proven means of acquiring information and a personality-specific way of disclosing the apparent, perceptible world, conditioned by individual and cultural variations. In a peculiar way, the eye holds a middle position between inside and outside of the self and its relations towards itself and others. This book provides a way out of false alternatives by offering a third way with reference to concrete cases of aesthetical and ethical experiences. It will be of particular interest to scholars of the phenomenology and philosophy of perception and it will be valuable to students of philosophy, cultural studies and art.

Table of Content

1. Introduction: why seeing is a practice.- 2. The practice of seeing.- 3. The performativity of practice.- 4. In seeing, beyond seeing.- 5. The constructions of imagination.-6. Aesthetic and ethical world disclosure.- 7. Seeing each other.- 8. Seeing art.

About the author

Eva Schuermann is Professor of Cultural Philosophy at the University of Magdeburg, Germany. She was awarded a prize for notable contributions in art, culture and the humanities by the Aby-Warburg-Foundation, and is co-editor of the
Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie. Her publications include
Vorstellen und Darstellen (2018) and  ‘Law as the Art of Picturing a Case’ in
Law and the Arts (2017).