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Flowing with Perullo’s Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects
Kathleen Higgins
Abstract
Nicola Perullo’s Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects: Relational Thinking for Global Challenges aims at a revolution in the way we perceive. He calls for a shift from interpreting the world as being composed of objects for subjects to attending to relations as processes unfold. His writing style models this approach by weaving together and pursuing congenial ideas from others while also inviting further elaboration on the part of readers. Drawing attention to the way that our language often reinforces subject/object dualism, he proposes alternative images and terms that are free of such dualistic implications. Of particular importance is his notion of ‘agencing,’ a mode of participation in the dynamic of reality that is neither assertive nor passive but in between, responsive to perceived processes as they unfold. Although Perullo takes a broad view of aesthetics as both a philosophical stance and an approach to living, he sees a role for aesthetic scholarship in helping to cultivate the capacity to feel-with the world in its ongoing dynamic, sensing our connection with it and with others. By countering the idea that the world is made up of objects that subjects can own and control, scholars and educators can nurture a cultural orientation that is conducive to addressing some of our most pressing global problems.
Key Words
aesthetic education; agencing; artisanship; consciousness; Daoism; dualism; dynamism; language; Mahayana Buddhism; perception
1. What’s left?
I recommended Nicola Perullo’s Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects: Relational Thinking for Global Challenges to a group of my colleagues, and one of them responded, “What’s left?” Although obviously intended as levity, the comment reflects the ease with which we tend to see subjects and objects as the two sides of reality, with nothing left over. Perullo’s book demonstrates how much more reality includes than is dreamt of through this model. Subject/object dualism itself, not the world in its absence, leaves us with surprisingly little. Perullo contends that aesthetics can help us rediscover our world in its abundance, and that in doing so it offers a way of responding to contemporary global challenges.
According to Perullo, subject/object dualism fetishes duality and difference, representing the world as being filled with separate, distinctly bounded entities. Reality, however, is the continuous flow of unfolding relations. Perullo urges us to change our focus in perception by attending to relations in their processual development. Doing so would engage us in discovering resonant correspondences among different levels of reality and various takes on what is happening. Aesthetics can help us in the transformation of perception. And this transformation is needed if we are to gain fuller attunement with reality and confront contemporary global challenges that subject/object dualism has fostered.
This summary indicates some of the ideas that Perullo advances, but summarizing his project in a handful of claims makes it too easy to miss how radical his approach is. My colleague’s question more aptly reflects that. Subjects and objects are the basic elements in many philosophical analyses. If we adopt dualistic assumptions when philosophizing, Perullo’s proposal of aesthetics without objects and subjects is not a minor tweak to our method. It takes away our building blocks. “What’s left?” becomes the pertinent question.
Perullo may give two possible answers to this question, each in keeping with Mahayana Buddhism, one of the traditions that he draws upon in his discussion. Nothing is left or everything is left. According to the Mahayana tradition, all things are “empty,” lacking independent or permanent existence, and as a consequence, there are no “things,” understood as substantive entities. Perullo seems to hold such a view, claiming that “aesthetics does not connect anything because there is nothing to connect.”[1] But because there were no substantive things to begin with, nothing is eliminated if we give up on objects and subjects, so everything is left. Perullo seems amenable to this view, too. He argues that without subjects and objects, we have everything we had before and more. He observes that the mode of perceiving he is proposing “means not accessing anything precisely because there is nothing to access. But since access and inaccessibility are given together, there is nothing inaccessible.”[2]
Nothing is left or everything is left. Are these two answers or a single one? “Both” seems the right answer. Perullo’s book, abandoning objects, does not help us to enumerate anything. Often a part of the discussion left me wondering, “is this a different point, or was it touched on earlier, differently described?” Again, both characterizations seem accurate. Everything is floating, in this Mahayanist view. Enlightenment enables us to see this, and enlightenment is what Perullo’s book aims to provoke.
2. Relational reading and writing
Building a case for the potential value of conceiving of aesthetics without the dualism of subjects and objects is secondary to a more basic goal for the book: to prompt readers to perceive the world freshly, with the full panoply of senses. To perceive in this way, we need to remove the obstacles presented by dualistic mental habits and our bias toward thinking of reality in terms of visual features and solid entities. To overcome thinking of the world as solid and as the container of numerous objects, Perullo urges a “haptic” mode of perception, which recognizes the world as “radically relational.”[3] To counteract our visual bias, he proposes that we follow the lead of our sense of touch. Doing so would result in awareness of our being in contact with the world as we perceive it, and our perception would be indistinguishable from “a process in-between action and reception, doing and undergoing.”[4] Such an approach is a matter of “participatory becoming” along with everything that is perceived.
Perullo writes in a way that models “participatory becoming.” He sets out to weave a fabric from “positions and contents that are partly known and extensively elaborated by others . . . in order to make a fabric that is retraced and walked through as if for the first time.”[5] Thus, he brings in ideas from many sources, relating them to his own and assembling new textures in the process. This approach serves as a demonstration of the relational thinking he takes aesthetics without objects and subjects (AWOS) to involve.
Perullo’s writing is well-crafted to engage the reader in an analogous weaving activity. He several times mentions that he sees aesthetics as a theoretical conversation, and I found it natural to connect what was said to passages and perspectives from some of my own favorite authors (figures whom Perullo also cites). For example, very soon after beginning the book, I was reminded of what had thrilled me when I first encountered Daoism, with its conception of reality as the dynamic flow that encompasses everything, and its view of “things” as relatively stable configurations of energy within this flow. I recognized that reading the ancient Daoist thinker Zhuangzi had already given me some impression of what I take Perullo to mean by “aesthetics without objects and subjects,” particularly in Zhuangzi’s various accounts of artisans who see their work as guided by attunement with reality as a whole.
I was also brought back to a scene in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra, who has been ill, claims that words create the illusory impression that the experiences of different subjectivities can be bridged. Zarathustra’s animals (an eagle and a snake), who represent the voice of health, dismiss his suggestion, responding, “To those who think as we do, all things themselves are dancing.”[6] Entities within the world as Perullo conceives it are also entangled, operating in relation to each other, and this vision has a joyous cast. The world as he envisions it is a dancing world, and his book offers an invitation to others to join the dance.
That Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects invites something other than agreement or efforts to refute is evident from its experimental style. Perullo describes it as “an eclectic essay” and as “the most artisanal book I have written.”[7] The opening chapter is like an overture, exposing us to the various themes that will be explored over the course of the book. The chapters that follow take them up not as a necessary sequence in which one idea builds on another but as various ways into the conception of aesthetics Perullo offers. The form is appropriate for the message—when reading, one goes with the flow, attuning as best one can, relating the ideas to what one knows and to one’s own mode of perceiving.
Adjusting to the absence of objects and subjects in perceiving may take some time, and reading the book requires some adjustment. I recommend not just reading it but living with it. As it happened, I started reading it during a period in which I had several short trips in rapid succession, interspersed with weeks of teaching. As a consequence, the book was my traveling companion on several flights. Though I would not have planned to read it so sporadically, my gradual reading seemed fitting. The book repays slow reading and taking time to become familiar with the way it moves—with its own flow. Noticing this, I was again led to think of a passage from Nietzsche, one in which he describes his effort “no longer to write anything which does not reduce to despair every sort of man who is ‘in a hurry.’”[8] Perullo’s proposed perspective on aesthetics, similarly, is not one to be grasped in a hurry, even though the change in perception he encourages, if accomplished, would be instantaneous. The various topics that get woven into Perullo’s text reveals how multi-faceted his conception of aesthetics is, and the implications of this notion take some time to assimilate.
3. The challenges of language
One of the reasons Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects takes some time to digest is that the way we talk often encourages us to accept subject/object dualism without thinking about it. Aware of the difficulties we face in abandoning dualism, Perullo draws attention to the extent to which it is implicit in the English language (and presumably many other languages as well). One of his recurrent moves is to draw our attention to many terms we may consider neutral that actually reinforce dualism. Formulations such as ‘perspectives,’ ‘bridges,’ ‘gaps,’ ‘boundaries,’ ‘properties,’ ‘otherness,’ ‘matter,’ ‘immersive experience,’ ‘internal,’ and ‘external’ each encourage us to keep thinking of the world as made up of individual things from which we ourselves are distinct. Even the language of “embodied cognition,” often used to suggest ideas that resonate with Perullo’s own, can subtly suggest that body and mind are separate enough to require bridging operations. Perullo’s asides about the danger of being taken in by the language of dualism can interrupt our acquiescence in its presuppositions, though they can also interrupt our easy assimilation of what is being said. The nonlinear character of the flow of discussion is deliberate and is well-suited to breaking up habitual ways of thinking.
Perullo pursues the project of disrupting presuppositions in several other ways, too, some of which are more challenging than simply noting dualistic implications. For example, he uses gerunds such as ‘co-perceiving, and ‘humanifying’ to reflect the flow of reality and to resist tendencies to see objects as settled solids.[9] He uses images that we can consider in various lights such as a condominium, stones, spoons, and fossils. At times he resorts to slogans, which are memorable and sometimes startling, among them “Away with ontology” and “Beyond the aesthetics of representation.”[10] The strategy of bringing multiple sources into conversation makes the sense of the words themselves seem palimpsestic, for we encounter them being used to different purposes by various authors. Perhaps most provocatively, he uses a saying associated with the city he lives in, claiming that it “expresses like a koan everything I wish to convey: ‘credici, ma non ti ci fissa’. ‘Believe it, but don’t fixate on it.’”[11]
Perullo denies that he is aiming to construct a new vocabulary, asserting, “I believe that what one can attempt to do, rather than invent new words, is dislodge the usual ones from their defining solidity—their encrusted quidditas—in order to put them back into the fluid, animated, and animating circle of their correspondences and resonances.”[12] However, some of his concepts, or at least his names for them, are unfamiliar and thus somewhat challenging to grasp. I found two terms hard to interpret at first, and I will pause to consider them here because I think they represent ideas that are especially important. These terms are ‘agencing’ and ‘the call of consciousness.’
‘Agencing,’ which borders on a neologism, initially seems to be the gerund of ‘agency,’ but that is not quite right. ‘Agency’ implies an attitude of assertiveness that is absent from ‘agencing.’ As Perullo explains it, “agencing is a correspondence between undergoing and doing, where the former leads the latter.”[13] I have difficulty keeping this middle zone between doing and undergoing clearly in view, but when I do, I realize that this is a concept I have been looking for.
I have increasingly noticed the lack of attention within aesthetics to aesthetic engagement that falls between the poles of relatively passive undergoing and assertion of aesthetic agency. I have been thinking a lot about aesthetics in contexts of disruptive life experiences. The value of aesthetic practices in these contexts does not depend on assertive aesthetic agency, but when they are beneficial, this is not a result of their being passively absorbed. Aesthetic practices can help someone whose life has been upended by involving the person in something in between decisive action and open acceptance. A ritual, for example, can help someone mourn, and although it enlists some measure of doing, it provides support for adopting a receptive, often meditative, stance.
Recent discussions of aesthetic agency counterbalance an earlier theoretical tendency to focus on the relatively passive stance of the subject who contemplates an aesthetic object. But analyzing in terms of agency ignores the relational cooperation between aesthetic participants and aesthetic practices. In the context of disruptive experiences, I have proposed ‘aesthetic patience’ as a term for the stance of openness to being affected, a receptivity that I think is needed for aesthetic practices to work their healing magic. But I think Perullo’s characterization, “a correspondence between undergoing and doing, where the former leads the latter,” gets deeper into the heart of the matter.
The Daoist concept of wu-wei is a kindred concept, and the difficulty of translating it into English is revealing. This term can be translated as “non-assertive action” or “non-action,” but neither captures the Daoist idea, which is thoroughly “in-between,” to use one of Perullo’s preferred expressions.[14] Even non-assertive action suggests the posture of an agent, while non-action suggests sheer passivity. But wu-wei is moving with the flow, as when two people dance together. One dancer is not active while the other is passive, and if one partner is assertive, the flow of the dance is at least briefly disturbed. One could say the dance has a life of its own, but this is not to say that both parties are being pulled by something external. Each dancer is flowing with the music and the other person. Relational movement is manifest, and both parties are fully responsive.
The instability of the gerund ‘agencing’—insufficiently characterized as active or passive but partaking in something of both—is perhaps why I initially found the term unwieldy. And perhaps the difficulty I had in focusing on the process in between activity and passivity is a barometer of the grip that subject/object dualism has on my thinking. It might be fair to say that ‘agencing’ and ‘perceiving’ are terms that bring different aspects of human engagement with reality into view, but that they are not separable processes. To the extent that we perceive, we are responsive. Responsiveness is alive to the extent that it is active, but at the same time following the lead of what one has undergone. This is how I interpret Perullo’s suggestion, “My project insists precisely on a kind of perceiving that seeks to follow the flow of continuity in/through time, placing itself in this flow as ‘agencing’ life.”[15]
The other term that I find a bit confusing is ‘the call of consciousness.’ I am guessing that this term is offered as an alternative, or perhaps a complement, to Heidegger’s “call of conscience,” which is an internal summons to being an authentic individual self. Like Perullo, Heidegger rejects subject/object dualism, and yet the call of conscience involves an individuating principle that provides an impetus to operate as a distinct being within the world in which one finds oneself. The “call” that Perullo indicates is the enlivening aspect of perception itself, which summons one to continual adjustment in response to developments within the whole texture of what is perceived. If the call of conscience brings individuation to the fore, the call of consciousness inspires agencing, an intimate mode of engagement with the perceptual context. Receptivity is intrinsic to consciousness, and the perceptions that arise activate responses. Once again, we confront the idea that perceiving, as Perullo conceives of it, is agencing.
The prominent terms in Perullo’s discussion are often interconnected. The most notable terms in the book—‘relational aesthetics,’ ‘haptic perception,’ ‘artisanal intelligence,’ ‘agencing,’ and ‘call of consciousness’—all point to more or less the same thing, the mode of relational perception that Perullo has in mind. I think this is why they are often characterized in relation to each other. This tendency may strike some readers as problematic, but the circularity of these characterizations is not vicious. The terms all bring the kind of perception Perullo is advocating into view, but they start from different directions. If I understand rightly, agencing is responding to the call of consciousness, a term that suggests the receptive and yet responsive aspect of perceiving relationally. This kind of perceiving is “haptic” and “artisanal,” both of which suggest dispositions adopted in relational engagement. One of them emphasizes the intimate awareness that results from coordinating with the movement of what is perceived, while the other emphasizes the creative processes enabled by consciously relating in this manner. All of this comes down to aesthetic engagement as Perullo freshly characterizes it.
4. The scholar’s role
Those involved in aesthetics as an academic area of study may wonder what Perullo’s vision implies for their work. Clearly, he does not define aesthetics as a subfield of philosophy. For him, aesthetics is “a whole way of doing philosophy, a philosophical posture” and philosophy itself is a matter of perception, not taken simply as a topic, but as integral to its basic practice.[16] Philosophy, conducted in the mode of AWOS, is both alive to the developing relational flow and consciously responsive.
So understood, philosophy is a way of life, and one that is available to human beings across social roles. Thus, Perullo dissociates philosophy conducted in the aesthetic mode from professionalism and expertise. Indeed, he encourages an approach characterized by undisciplined dabbling, dilettantism, and amateurism. Philosophy so understood would be a form of artisanal thinking aimed at contributing to the collective project of living well amidst continual changes. Living a philosophical life is a matter of attunement to reality’s ongoing transformations, and this approach to living is available and relevant to everyone.
While aesthetics as Perullo sees it is much broader than an academic pursuit, his account nevertheless suggests various ways aesthetic scholarship might develop if aesthetics without objects and subjects is embraced. First, scholars might continue his project of identifying and challenging theoretical habits of thought that make relational aesthetics hard to conceive. Among the habits Perullo addresses are the philosophical predilection for ontological accounts, commitment to realism, and belief in theoretical progress.
Perullo contends that ontology, which he takes to be an effort to determine the objects that comprise reality, is implicated in the dualistic perceptual mode that he urges us to abandon. “Realism” restricts itself to interpreting as real only what is recent or present. But if reality is processual and relational, restricting one’s view to the present or recent is to miss much of what is going on. Theoretical progress would involve establishing some premises as settled and building upon them, while a relational and processual view of reality holds that nothing is settled or absolutely stable. Scholars of aesthetics might follow Perullo’s example by indicating other ideas that interfere with a relational approach to what we experience.
Second, scholars should reframe basic aesthetic ideas in light of a relational mode of perceiving. This, according to Perullo, would be to recognize aesthetic relations as events that occur within larger processes and can be brought into relation with larger textures of theoretical ideas and other events. Aesthetics helps to track the way that various levels of reality and thought about it are entangled with each other. Aesthetic judgments would be “narratives of lines of inheritance and growth, more or less sedimented weaves,” and aesthetic value would be a wandering notion, shifting in accordance with the developmental dynamics of whatever is perceived and related.[17] In effect, aesthetic value would be as dynamic as what it attempts to monitor.
One consequence of this way of thinking of aesthetic phenomena would be a fresh take on the relationship between the singular and the universal. As Perullo puts it, “The aesthetic event is simultaneously singular—occurring here and now—and universal—entangled everywhere and always.”[18] Recognizing this would enable us to see aesthetic events as occasions of connecting with reality, in which we make singular contributions but to something much larger than an individual’s personal achievement. “Aesthetic relation occurs whenever perceiving consciously recalls its nature as a singular manifestation of consciousness. And the awareness at play here does not coincide with a will or an individual intention: perceiving is everywhere.”[19] Agencing is evident once again. We follow the lead of what we perceive.
Third, scholars of aesthetics should take writing and teaching as forms of engaging in a theoretical conversation in which one offers narratives in theoretical terms. Instead of attempting to tell the definitive story of some phenomenon, we should contribute by offering stories that draw on the history and sequences of our own perceptions. With this book, Perullo provides an example of such a narrative, a series of connecting thoughts and musings. He proposes many ideas, links them to ideas of others, suggests ways that he agrees and disagrees with these ideas, and responds with other thoughts, none of which is a final conclusion.
Fourth, scholars should present themselves in teaching not as experts but as mentors, with their own practices of craft that they use as experiential bases for assisting students in refining their skills. “Aesthetic education is not about the acquisition of the supposed ‘good taste,’” Perullo tells us, “but is about the attunement to the life processes.”[20] Theories would be taught and advanced as temporary guides that can help us navigate our world. “A theory is not an explanatory and defining system that states the truth of reality, but rather a temporary guide to navigating its mysterious density.”[21] The aim of teaching would be to facilitate the development of relational thinking on the part of students, sometimes by modeling. Crucial to this effort are “communication, compassion, and exploratory openness.”[22]
Scholarly teachers of aesthetics without objects and subjects lack authority, but they play the traditional role of educators, who broadly nurture their students’ perceptive and relational capacities, enhancing their own in the process. Compassion is essential, for relational, haptic perceiving is a feeling-with, which implies both a sense of commonality with other people and with the reality in which we participate together. Aesthetic education, in so far as it cultivates relational perception, nurtures a sense of concern for living well within reality, the “condominium” in which we all live and have an interest. As Perullo summarizes, “Aesthetic education, then, does not so much teach conviviality and condominium life as moral and political obligations to be realized; rather, it suggests them primarily as a shared consciousness of a life.”[23]
The image of the compassionate teacher who draws attention to the life we share returns us to the theme of agencing. The effective teacher follows cues from the students in determining how best to guide their attention, doing so with the aim of facilitating students’ ability to form their own relational responses. Compassionate teachers enable learning to happen by paying attention, and they insert themselves sparingly in order to facilitate processes that take shape more organically as students perceive and respond.
5. Perception and our global challenges
The global challenges mentioned in the book’s subtitle are not the focus of extended discussion, yet they are in view throughout the book. Perullo makes the case that subject/object dualism, which may seem as innocuous and obvious as sentence structure in one’s native language, is linked to our major contemporary problems, for it encourages a view of reality in which relationships are ignored or disvalued. He sees dualism as implicated in “land consumption, resource exploitation, and atmospheric pollution, but also with perceptual consumption, emotional exploitation, consumerism, individualism, and image pollution. . . ,” for all of these practices and attitudes place a premium on the subject’s benefit with little concern for the object.[24] This outlook is basic to some of the crises we face because it splits the world into objects that can be utilized and subjects who vie for control of them.
Because it does not perceive the world in terms of objects and subjects, the relational aesthetics that Perullo proposes disrupts the perceptual roots of the global problems we face. Relational perceiving interrupts the tendency to think of what we encounter as separate objects that we might use and control but are not really connected with us. If we perceive reality as an entangled flux that includes us, we will recognize that we are a part of the “condominium” life, as Perullo describes it. We live with the rest of our world, and its welfare is inseparable from our own. Learning to perceive ourselves as sharing the condominium of the world in this way would orient us toward responsiveness that aims at keeping this common life in good repair.
Just as cooking is an artisanal practice, so is aesthetics, understood both as a way of doing philosophy and a way of living. Aesthetics involves artisanal improvisation, responsive to whatever has developed, participating but following the lead of the process as it unfolds. These are also the methods of addressing the challenges we face collectively. Recognizing the way things have developed and continue, we can contribute in reparative ways, effective to the extent that we are guided by compassionate attention to the process. That is, in fact, haptic perception. And it is the course of wisdom.
Does Perullo propose a revolution? Yes, if a radical perceptual reorientation amounts to revolution. No, if revolution involves wiping the slate clean and starting with something new. Nothing is eliminated. Even the remains of dualism are given new life. “Relation does not serve as a substitution: it does not replace subject and object but repairs them, realigning them to the flow of life.”[25] Repair is the heart of Perullo’s project. “Wisdom does not seek to replace anything, it has a reparative timbre. It is about repair, always offering a second chance, in continuity with the process of life.”[26] Nothing is unsalvageable if we develop artisanal virtuosity in perceiving relationally and thus compassionately. What is important is perceiving life in its flow.
Perullo concludes by throwing us back into the flow. The final line of the book does not conclude. Instead, it reminds us of what we should bear in mind whatever we happen to confront: “Believe it, but don’t fixate on it.”[27] Take it on board, but continue the flow.
Kathleen Higgins
kmhiggins@austin.utexas.edu
Kathleen Higgins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and a former president of the American Society for Aesthetics. Her most recent book is Aesthetics in Grief and Mourning: Philosophical Reflections on Coping with Loss (The University of Chicago Press, 2024).
Published on March 12, 2026.
Cite this article: Kathleen Higgins, “Flowing with Perullo’s Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 24 (2026), accessed date.
Endnotes
[1] Nicola Perullo, Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects: Relational Thinking for Global Challenges (Bloomsbury, 2025), 72.
[2] Ibid., 127.
[3] Ibid., 12.
[4] Ibid., 17.
[5] Ibid., 1-2.
[6] Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Penguin, 1966), III:13, 217.
[7] Perullo, Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects, 25.
[8] Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1982), Preface 5, 5.
[9] Perullo, Aesthetics without Objects and Subjects, 114 and 5.
[10] Ibid., 14 and 84.
[11] Ibid., 25.
[12] Ibid., 27.
[13] Ibid., 50.
[14] See ibid., 12.
[15] Ibid., 4.
[16] Ibid., 11.
[17] Ibid., 90.
[18] Ibid., 70.
[19] Ibid., 17.
[20] Ibid., 159.
[21] Ibid., 129.
[22] Ibid., 97.
[23] Ibid., 161.
[24] Ibid., 11.
[25] Ibid., 140.
[26] Ibid., 162.
[27] Ibid., 164.