The Thinking Eye’s founder Dr Janneke van Leeuwen is part of the international and interfaith research project ‘Art, Empathy, and Justice: an exploration of cognitive aesthetics’ that will take place between 06/2022 - 11/2023. The project is co-led American philosopher Dr Kelly James Clark, the Arts+Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA, and Istanbul’s Moral Intuitions Laboratory, Turkey.
Project summary:
The bulk of research related to empathy, justice, and aesthetic experiences has been conducted in WEIRD nations (western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic), with a corresponding loss of relevance and depth. Relatedly, studies of empathy and justice are often dominated by the Christian tradition, latent Christian values, or Christian scholars, with Jewish and Muslim voices considerably less well heard and integrated. In addition, empirical investigations of empathy and justice have been insufficiently informed by theological and philosophical reflection, perpetuating a lack of context and nuance that could inform and affect constructions and perceptions of these phenomena. Finally, research regarding art’s effects on cognition, particularly across sociocultural difference, is in its infancy; however, a surging multidisciplinary interest in art’s effects on cognition, mental health, and social connection indicates a window of opportunity for highly interdisciplinary research aimed at collective impact.
This 18-month, interdisciplinary, multi-faith, multi-culture and multi-country project will examine the cognitive influence of the arts on empathy and justice, with a focus on how these concepts can be understood and applied across social, cultural, political, and religious difference.
With institutional homes in Johns Hopkins International Arts+Mind Lab and Istanbul’s Moral Intuitions Laboratory, the project will bring together philosophers, theologians, psychologists, artists, and neuroscientists to listen to and learn from one another, in order to co-develop conceptually richer empirical studies of the cognitive influences of the arts on empathy and justice. The project will aim to conduct preliminary trial studies in the USA, Turkey, and Israel. We also aim to set a course for future research on effects of the arts on empathy and justice—developing white papers that reflect on the role of philosophy and theology in such projects, and completing a refined follow-up proposal for continued interdisciplinary study of aesthetics and understanding.
Importance:
While the study of art, empathy, and justice is valuable in its own right, recent turns toward tribalism, nationalism, parochialism, and isolationism lend an existential urgency. There is a need to find the most effective and scientifically informed ways to build bridges of empathy and justice, within and between traditions and beliefs.