Literature Between Medicine and Religion: Herder’s Aesthetics of Touch and the Emerging Field of Medical Humanities

This article uses a reading of Herder’s early essay Sculpture to locate Herder’s place within the complex genealogies of thought regarding the mind–body problem. It analyses how Herder discusses sculpture and touch by combining an idealist with a materialist position. Herder theorizes sculpture in order to close the gap between mind and body as well as that between art and life. According to Danto, this non-dualist approach shapes much of the contemporary art scene.