Abstract
The aim of the study is to compare the use of the principle of innovation in the philosophy of language of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and in the aesthetics of the Czech structuralist Jan Mukařovský. Although the starting points of the two thinkers are very different, it turns out that they both view innovation as a phenomenon of decisive importance.
They both hold that innovation enables both individuals and the society as a whole to evolve, renew established conventions, and thereby to achieve a deeper understanding of themselves. Similarities between the two thinkers are most apparent in their relation to the structuralism of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.
Merleau-Ponty and Mukařovský both endorse his principle of difference and both use it to explain innovative phenomena. They also identify some limitations of structuralism and conclude that all reality cannot be reduced to language structure.
Some aspects of reality resist structuration. Merleau-Ponty is driven to this conclusion by his phenomenological motivations, a belief that one needs to take into account the world with its sensible, physical aspects, which flow into language in the form of lacunae or silence.
Mukařovský explores the limits of structuralism driven by his awareness of complexity of works of art, which he views as the most important innovative phenomena. Works of art, he claims, address perceivers not only by an unusual arrangement of meanings but also by an "image of deep rupture", which draws perceivers' attention to unstructured reality.