This much acclaimed book has emerged as neo-pragmatism's most significant contribution to contemporary aesthetics. By articulating a deeply embodied notion of aesthetic experience and the art of living, and by providing a compellingly rigorous defense of popular art—crowned by a pioneer study of hip hop—Richard Shusterman reorients aesthetics towards a fresher, more relevant, and socially progressive agenda. The second edition contains an introduction where Shusterman responds to his critics, and it concludes with an added chapter that formulates his novel notion (...) of somaesthetics. (shrink)

This paper originated as the keynote address at the conference “Aesthetics Today” organized by the Finnish Society of Aesthetics to mark its 40th anniversary and was delivered at the University of Helsinki on March 1, 2012. Written for that particular occasion the sense of an oral presentation has been maintained. Shusterman’s point of departure is the thesis that contemporary aesthetics can be characterized by a number of leading themes that mark a return to older aesthetic perspectives, after these perspectives have (...) been neglected in modern philosophical discussions. The paper briefly outlines and explores three of these themes whose increasing importance in current aesthetics can appeal to historical antecedents, namely: a focus on perception, the expansion of the aesthetic field beyond the philosophy of fine art, and the close connection of the aesthetic and the practical. After that, Shusterman formulates a fourth theme in aesthetics today which incorporates the first three and whose value for contemporary aesthetics he seeks to highlight, namely: the somatic, as exemplified by somaesthetics. (shrink)

This paper examines the ten-year history of somaesthetics – describing the field's origins and genealogical roots, explaining its terminology, analyzing its structure, tracing its reception, exploring its most interesting applications, and responding to the most important criticisms that have been directed at it. Somaesthetics, as the paper shows, emerges from the framework of my work in pragmatist aesthetics which sought to revive aesthetics by bringing art closer to life and bridging the presumed divide between the aesthetic and (...) the practical while also advocating an idea of ethics as an art of living. One way to bring more life to aesthetics is to emphasize the role of the living body in art and aesthetic experience. Another strategy of revival is to expand the field of aesthetics to make it more relevant to more people by including practices of somatic stylization and enhanced somatic perception (aisthesis). Somaesthetics, a discipline of both theory and practice, deploys these means of revival, and seems to have had some positive influence. It has been applied by diverse authors in many different fields – from performance art and computer design, to sports, feminist issues of identity, and the use of technological body enhancements in the art of living. The three main branches of somaesthetics are introduced, and the complex structure of the field is used in refuting some of the typical criticisms made against it. Somaesthetics is not a blanket apology for the dangerous excesses of our body culture, but rather a site for the ideological critique of the dominant somatic ideals. Its interest in the body is not a celebration of irrationality or the abandoning of critical reflection. (shrink)

In responding to five symposium articles that discuss my book Thinking through the Body and my theories of somaesthetics and pragmatism, this essay elaborates two central methodological orientations that guide my philosophical research. The first is transactional experiential inquiry in which inquiry can develop new directions, aims, methods, and standards through the dynamic experiences acquired in the course of the inquiry’s pursuit and in which its transactional experiences involve research that transcends familiar disciplinary limits and conventions. The second principle (...) involves mitigating problematic dualisms by a strategy of inclusive disjunction. I deploy these principles in replying to the five commentaries. Besides clarifying issues in somaesthetics, my reply focuses on such topics as everyday aesthetics, eroticism, architecture, dance, Chinese philosophy, meliorism, and pragmatism. (shrink)

Thinking through the body: educating for the humanities -- The body as background -- Self-knowledge and its discontents: from Socrates to somaesthetics -- Muscle memory and the somaesthetic pathologies of everyday life -- Somaesthetics in the philosophy classroom: a practical approach -- Somaesthetics and the limits of aesthetics -- Somaesthetics and Burke's sublime -- Pragmatism and cultural politics: from textualism to somaesthetics -- Body consciousness and performance -- Somaesthetics and architecture: a critical option -- (...) Photography as performative process -- Asian ars erotica and the question of sexual aesthetics -- Philosophy as awakened life : everyday aesthetics of embodiment in American transcendentalism and Japanese Zen practice -- Somatic style. (shrink)

After showing how pragmatist aesthetics and Marcuse's critical theory affirm aesthetic education as key to transforming society toward greater freedom, equality, pleasure, and fulfillment, I compare the ways these two approaches differently perceive the scope and role of aesthetics in such transformation. Whereas Marcuse identifies the aesthetic dimension with the realm of high art, pragmatism understands this dimension far more broadly to include the popular arts and somaesthetic arts of living. Because Marcuse identifies art's critical function through its oppositional (...) transcendence and autonomy from ordinary reality and practical life, he insists that aesthetics cannot directly contribute to transformative praxis in the real world but can operate only indirectly by transforming our sensibilities. Pragmatist aesthetics, particularly though somaesthetics, resolves the dilemma in Marcuse's aesthetics of liberation by bridging the alleged gap between aesthetics and praxis by reeducating our sensibilities in a more direct, practical, embodied way. The article further exemplifies the overlaps and differences between Marcuse's critical theory and pragmatist somaesthetics by focusing on erotic experience, which is essential to Marcuse's liberational program and increasingly present in somaesthetics’ concern with aesthetic reeducation of our senses and sensibilities. (shrink)

Current philosophies of art remain sadly dominated by visions of its end and lamentations of decline. Defining the very notions of art and the aesthetic as special products of Western modernity, they suggest that postmodern challenges to traditional high culture pose a devastating danger to Art's future. Richard Shusterman's new book cuts through the seductive confusions of these views by tracing the earthy roots of aesthetic experience and showing how the recent flourishing of aesthetic forms outside modernity's sacralized realm of (...) fine art evince the persistent presence of an artistic impulse far deeper and more durable than the modernist moment. Performing Live defends the abiding power of aesthetic experience by exploring its diverse roles, methods, and meanings, especially in fields marginal to traditional aesthetics but now most vibrantly alive in today's culture and new media. Ranging from rap, techno, and country music to cinema, cyberspace and urban design, Shusterman develops his radical theory of "somaesthetics," charting the complex network of bodily arts so prominent in contemporary life and self-styling. By blending concrete aesthetic analysis with insightful social critique, Shusterman, a well-known pragmatist philosopher, provides a rich menu and critical guide for today's pursuit of the art of living. (shrink)

: This paper explains the discipline of somaesthetics, which emerges from pragmatism's concern with enhancing embodied experience and reconstructing the aesthetic in ways that make it more central to key philosophical concerns of knowledge, ethics, and politics. I then examine Beauvoir's complex treatment of the body in The Second Sex, assessing both her arguments that could support the pragmatic approach of somaesthetics but also those that challenge its bodily focus as a danger for feminism.

This book is the first essay collection on Richard Shusterman, the foremost representative of contemporary pragmatist aesthetics, a philosopher whose books have been translated into more than fifteen languages. The 12 essays, which cover the wide-ranging scope of Shusterman’s pragmatist thought, divide into three sections: Literary Theory and Philosophy of Art; Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics; and Somaesthetics. Written by an international group of authors from different philosophical perspectives, the book’s essays not only provide a good introduction (...) to Shusterman’s innovative pragmatist theories, but show their useful applications to important and controversial topics in philosophy, politics, religious and gender studies, the arts, and somaesthetics. The book also includes two new texts by Shusterman: an introductory essay in which he explains the trajectory of his intellectual development and a detailed response to the other contributors, which closes the book. (shrink)

After noting some conditions of historical and contemporary context that favor a dialogue between pragmatism and East‐Asian thought, which could help generate a new international philosophical perspective, this essay focuses on several themes that pragmatism shares with classical Chinese philosophy. Among the interrelated themes explored are the primacy of practice, the emphasis on pluralism, context, and flux, a recognition of fallibilism, an appreciation of the powers of art for individual, social, and political reconstruction, the pursuit of perfectionist self‐cultivation in the (...) art of living, and the crucial role of embodiment in this melioristic pursuit. The last section defends this somaesthetic emphasis against some likely criticisms and closes with an example of how occidental and East‐Asian somatic thinking can be productively integrated. (shrink)

This is the first collection in English devoted exclusively to pragmatist aesthetics. Its main aim is to employ the resources of that rich and exciting tradition in studying artistic phenomena such as film, sculpture, bio-art, poetry, the novel, cuisine, and various body arts. But it also attempts to provide a wider background for such studies by sketching the history of pragmatist reflection on the aesthetic and by discussing some of the main positions that this history has produced: the (...) aesthetic conceptions of C.S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Joseph Margolis, Richard Shusterman (somaesthetics in particular), and others. (shrink)

In this article I will explore three contributions that Shusterman’s somaesthetics can make to meta-aesthetics: Shusterman’s interpretation of the analytic-continental aesthetic debate; the redefinition of the aesthetic through the notion of experience, resulting in the aesthetics of popular art and somaesthetics, and finally, the opening of aesthetics to extra-philosophical practices, such as body exercises and performances.

John Dewey puts aesthetic experience at the center of his reflection on art and beauty, reconsidering it dynamically. Nowadays, this view opened the path to somaesthetics, a term coined by Richard Shusterman, and aesthetic anthropology. Here, it is argued that the contribution of pragmatist aesthetics could be further developed by exploring its analogies with techno-aesthetics, a paradigm proposed by French philosopher Gilbert Simondon in the early 1980s. Art occupies accordingly a special place within the different forms of aesthetic (...) experience, being considered as a way of experimenting the impact of new technologies in the human experience. It is a process by which technologies create ‘devices’ for experimenting perception and reflection: namely, ways of reconstructing the nature of the human mind in-between body and technology, and by means of their interaction. Cinema reconsidered after Dewey’s fellow George H. Mead, offers an exemplary case as both artistic and technological devices. (shrink)

_Shusterman’s Somaesthetics_ is a wide-ranging collection of penetrating essays by twelve scholars examining in rich detail the many dimensions of philosopher Richard Shusterman’s pragmatism and somaesthetics, complemented by his own chapter of responses to these scholars.

In the past few years, commentary literature on the work of Richard Shusterman, the foremost contemporary representative of pragmatist aesthetics, has steadily grown. Symposia on Shusterman’s theory have been published in various journals, and about three years ago the first monograph-length study examining Shusterman’s views on aesthetics was released. Now alongside these pieces a collection of articles edited by Dorota Koczanowicz and the author of the book on Shusterman’s pragmatist aesthetics Wojcieh Malecki has appeared. The anthology consists of (...) twelve essays devoted to different parts of Shusterman’s pragmatism, as well as two articles by Shusterman himself, an intellectual biography that begins the article.. (shrink)

Although the first ‘pragmatist aesthetics’ was devised by John Dewey in his Art as Experience, Richard Shusterman has been the only scholar to use the notion of “pragmatist aesthetics” in his Pragmatist Aesthetics. In this paper, I show that Dewey already refuses the gap between the practices of the ‘artworld’ and that of everyday life. In Art as Experience, he criticizes the ‘museum conception’ of art to argue that some aesthetic experiences in our daily life have the (...) same essential structure as the experience of art. While Rorty has revised Dewey’s basic premises, Shusterman has rather restated them. Since the end of the 1980s, he has started developing his own philosophical project, named ‘somaesthetics’. Shusterman’s somaesthetics does not simply incorporate many Deweyan views, but also develops them further. Accepting a Deweyan framework, Shusterman rejects the sharp dualism of the so-called “lower and higher levels of art”. What is more, he considers philosophy as an art of the living, embracing in somaesthetics the ancient Greek and Asian traditions. (shrink)

Ethics and aesthetics tend to be sharply distinguished and frequently opposed as rival realms of value. The apparent conflict between them is discomforting for artists and theorists who seek to combine aesthetic values and ethical aims in their work. My article strives to ease this theoretical tension in two ways. First, through a genealogical analysis of the complexity of our concepts of ethics and aesthetics, I argue that, in some of their historical conceptions, they display considerable convergence. Here I appeal (...) both to classical Western and Asian theories of ethics and aesthetics. Second, I show how these notions converge in the pragmatist, somaesthetic notion of an embodied art of living. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.4 (2006) 104-117 MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Performative Somaesthetics: Principles and ScopeEric C. MullisJohn Dewey's aesthetic has been invoked in recent discussions because many have realized that it resists the pull toward conceptualism that characterizes a great deal of aesthetic theory. Further, Art as Experience—Dewey's chief work on the philosophy of art—is rich with ideas that call for development. Richard Shusterman's work does (...) just this as it suggests that Dewey's approach is a practical alternative to those that hinder a comprehensive understanding of art and/or ignore art's capacity to enrich the quality of lived experience. More specifically, Shusterman develops key Deweyan ideas by considering the aesthetic merits of popular music and by exploring Dewey's "somatic naturalism," that is, a naturalism that strives to understand the role played by the human body in aesthetic experience. Somaesthetics is the pragmatic discipline that explores somatic practices and ultimately demonstrates how they can lead to the attainment of fulfilling experiences. Shusterman argues that various disciplines can be taken up in order to improve the clarity of somatic functioning, perception, and thought as they "help us reconstruct our attitudes or habits of feeling to give us greater flexibility and tolerance to different kinds of feeling and bodily behavior." 1 Ultimately, Dewey's emphasis on the everyday origins of aesthetic experience is combined with his rejection of mind-body dualism in order to demonstrate how aesthetic experiences can be cultivated through such practices. One is not limited to going to museums and reading art criticism in order to have meaningful aesthetic experiences because somaesthetics shows how one's body can be transformed into a locus of aesthetic value.This said, we also find that similar techniques are used in the training of actors, dancers, and other performance artists. Performative somaesthetics explores the body disciplines that are instrumental to the performer's craft—that allow him or her to master the body and to enhance its expressive powers. In this article I would like to explore a few elements of this [End Page 104] craft in order to flesh out what the performance arts can reveal about the aesthetic body. In order to do so I will need to first say something about Shusterman's pragmatist aesthetic and the Deweyan foundation of that approach. After this is done I will discuss what I take to be a few core principles of performative somaesthetics and, with them in mind, will go on to discuss the relationship between practical and performative somaesthetics.Aesthetic MeliorismIn Art as Experience Dewey describes the process of "doing and undergoing," in which the energies and forces of the environment mix with those of the organisms that inhabit it. 2 For human beings life is lived to its fullest when difficult situations arise and are efficiently dealt with, that is, when the energies of particular situations are ordered and brought into accord with those of the individuals within them. This, in turn, renders experience meaningful as it simultaneously produces a sense of agency and solves particular problems. Ultimately, Dewey notes that the process of doing and undergoing is the foundation of aesthetic experience because it marks those intense organic moments that stand out from the broader context of humdrum or chaotic experiences: "Art... unites the very same relation of doing and undergoing, outgoing and incoming energy, that makes an experience to be an experience." 3 Aesthetic experience, like any instance of doing and undergoing, involves the organization of energies, which solves a characteristically aesthetic problem. For artists this may be the problem of adequately expressing emotion and for observers it may be interpreting or judging the quality of a work. Regardless, for Dewey the aesthetic must not be conceptually or institutionally divorced from its broader context, for doing so not only ignores its natural origins but also limits its ability to imbue the world with meaning. Hence, Shusterman writes that for Dewey, "if anything is to have human value, it must in some way serve... (shrink)

This short paper is an attempt to intersect my reading of Alexander Kremer’s key ideas in his article Pragmatists on the Everyday Aesthetic Experience with my previous thoughts on banality as an aesthetic quality experienced by the modern subject in her everyday life. My contribution tries to interconnect key theoretical and artistic conceptions of banality with Shusterman’s somaesthetics and subsequently to reveal another possibility of rethinking the relationship between aesthetics and ethics.

How does Richard Shusterman’s Thinking Through the Body apply to the issues of everyday aesthetics? As it turns out, many chapters contribute significantly to everyday aesthetics, in particular the work on architecture, self-styling, the body as background, lovemaking, and the process of making a photographic portrait. Shusterman’s concentration on the art of living has special importance to everyday aesthetics. Current debates within the field of everyday aesthetics also raise problems for somaesthetics. I also question the limits of somaesthetics (...) and Shusterman’s rejection of defamiliarization in making the ordinary extraordinary. (shrink)

Reimagining Eroticism through Embodied Aesthetics: A Feminist Reading 1. The Epistemological and Ethical Aspects of the Arts of Love In the debate of contemporary thought and its intersections with philosophy, aesthetics, and the politics of the self, Richard Shusterman’s Ars Erotica (AE) makes a significant and inspiring contribution. The book delves into the intricate relationship between aesthetics and eroticism, offering a unique perspective on the relation between the ancient notion of d...

This essay presents somaesthetics of discomfort as an extension of the field of somaesthetics as developed by Shusterman. Using the work of Peirce and Dewey as a foundation upon which Shusterman and Johnson have considered the body as the basis of aesthetics, I propose that somaesthetics of discomfort provides a means of enhancing bodily awareness and reflection useful for domains of inquiry, such as healthcare and design. Taking Peirce’s notion of the irritation of doubt in a literal (...) sense, I explore bodily discomfort as the inception of inquiry. I consider work done by phenomenologists concerning experiences of comfort and discomfort, which includes definitions of each. My argument follows the perspective put forth by Peirce, Dewey, and contemporary pragmatists that experience is qualitative and that feeling is at the root of reflection. I explain how discomfort may be considered a type of aesthetic experience and provide examples of bodily discomfort as somaesthetic. In closing, I consider somaesthetic focus on discomfort as fostering moral imagination and empathy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Somaesthetics and Racism:Toward an Embodied Pedagogy of DifferenceDavid A. Granger (bio)IntroductionThe philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked that "The human body is the best picture of the human soul."1 There is a basic truth in this assertion that we recognize (I want to say) intuitively: the notion that human beings are parts both mental and physical, that these facets are ultimately interdependent, and that they are in some measure (...) correlated was a commonplace in the intellectual culture of ancient Athens, especially among Socratic thinkers. It can also be found as a central part of the basic ontology and ideals of self-cultivation espoused in much East Asian philosophy. In the West, however, this deep appreciation for the relationship between mind and body appears somewhat sporadically after the Socratics, only to be fervently reasserted as a main plank in the lived philosophy of the early American pragmatists, as when Henry David Thoreau proclaimed that "We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins to refine a mean's features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them."2I use the word "sporadically" above because it is likewise a basic truism that canonical Western philosophy has a long and storied history of rejecting, ignoring, or degrading the human body—that most formative part of our being and connection to the world and to others. The position of the later, more metaphysical Plato is iconic in this regard, and it effectively set the tone for much Christian theology and the Cartesian philosophy of consciousness. For Plato and his adherents, the longing to escape our embodiedness, conceived as a necessary means to human (or perhaps superhuman) perfection [End Page 69] by achieving a godlike existence, requires effectively divorcing ourselves from the irrational brutes of terra firma. The body is conceived as a static constraint to human flourishing rather than a dynamic enabler. It is more or less an adversary, something that we must endeavor to be freed from or subdue.3 Its base senses and unruly passions deceive us epistemologically, while its inexorable power to situate us in space and time limits our objectivity. In its inevitable pains and infirmities, the body is also a constant reminder of the aging process and of our ultimate mortality. Deeming the body as at best a mere servant of the mind, philosophers typically have portrayed it as a veritable prison of deception, temptation, and suffering. Moreover, it is well-established that such thinking has been particularly pernicious in light of the historical identification of women and other marginalized groups with their variously enfeebled, depraved, or uncivilized bodies.4Against this disquieting backdrop, it is only relatively recently that the human body, and the significance of our existence as embodied beings, has received sustained positive attention by leading lights in Western philosophy and criticism. These luminaries include, among others, "feminist" thinkers like Simone de Beauvoir, Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray and, of late, Susan Bordo and Judith Butler (with a nod to Michel Foucault, Pierre Bordeau, and others); pragmatists William James and John Dewey (with a nod to Emerson and Thoreau); phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (with a nod to Jean-Paul Sartre); analytic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (with a nod to James); and postmodernist Michel Foucault (with a nod to Friedrich Nietzsche, George Bataille, and the ancient Asian ars erotica tradition5). While these thinkers do not universally praise the body and its active, conscious cultivation for human flourishing (about which more later), they nonetheless acknowledge its necessity for all perception, action, and even thought.6 In short, they all seek to recognize and elucidate the significance—cognitive and affective, discursive and nondiscursive—of our full embodied intelligence.Looking specifically at the architectonics of the body espoused by the trio of Dewey, Foucault, and Wittgenstein, this article uses what philosopher Richard Shusterman terms "analytic somaesthetics" to examine some of the primary embodied dimensions of feeling, perception, action, and thought, particularly through the functioning of habit.7 In doing so, it seeks to expose the way various ideologies of domination (for example, racism, sexism, classism, ableism, heterosexism, ageism, etc.) are covertly (and at times overtly) materialized... (shrink)

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love, 436 pages./ Richard Shusterman’s work is remarkable, among other things, for extending the range and power of the discipline of aesthetics, conceived by him as fundamental to many dimensions of human experience. Indeed, he has driven aesthetics into entirely new ranges of phenomena and strategies for research, and also perhaps returned to an ancient sense of the centrality of aesthetic concepts such as beauty to (...) virtually every human endeavor. In many ways, I think, Shusterman is fulfilling John Dewey’s vision as expressed in Art as Experience, as well as spelling out in detail the implications of his own early book Pragmatist Aesthetics, exploring the aesthetic dimensions of all sorts of human activities. Schusterman’s somaesthetics, however, takes what we might call the aesthetics, or ordinary experience, and centers it on the body in a way that Dewey could not have foreseen. The book might have been titled The Aesthetics of Sex, and as soon as he broaches the topic it strikes one that this subject has been remarkably neglected within philosophical aesthetics, or even in Western philosophy as a whole. Considered as dimensions or arenas of human experience, the aesthetic and the erotic, as Shusterman shows in replete multi-cultural detail, are bound up entirely and from the origins in many or even all cultures. (shrink)

Drawing from the philosophies of pragmatism and somaesthetics, as developed by Richard Shusterman, this inquiry argues that performance holds a unique ontological status, one that emphasizes participation, shared meaning making, and the aesthetic qualities of ordinary, lived experience. As a philosopher trained as a dancer, I share some insights from my own experience as a performer offering a first-person aesthetic experience as a tool for conceptual inquiry. This experience allows the inquiry to explore the distinction between “scene” and “spectacle”, (...) positioning the scene as a space of co-creation, in contrast to the distant, objectifying gaze encouraged by spectacle. By examining participatory projects and firsthand artistic experiences, I try to illustrate how performance can dissolve the boundaries between art and life, proposing a model of art that is shared, embodied, deeply connected to the rhythms of the everyday and gives foundation to a political transformation. (shrink)

One aspect of Richard Shusterman’s work is indicative of a broad movement to develop a robust philosophy of embodiment. Thinkers from diverse fields—such as feminism, pragmatism, and continental philosophy—have criticized Western philosophy’s suppression of embodiment and have gone on to suggest how the philosophy of the body can enrich our understanding of issues that arise within traditional fields such as ethics and aesthetics. Further, work in this area can provide novel insights into personal identity, gender, linguistics, and philosophy of mind. (...) Shusterman’s contribution to the field is somaesthetics, the critical and meliorative study of embodied experience that views the human body as a locus of .. (shrink)

Although William James wrote no philosophical treatise on aesthetics, he can be seen as an important source for pragmatist aesthetics. This paper reconstructs James's aesthetic views from his diverse writings that demonstrate a keen regard for the arts and for the central, pervasive importance of the aesthetic dimension of experience, a dimension he saw as closely linked to the rational and practical. Special attention is given to his path-blazing The Principles of Psychology which precedes James's explicit pragmatist stage (...) but contains all the most essential themes of pragmatist aesthetics that Dewey would later formulate with much greater detail and argumentation in Art as Experience . This paper elucidates James's treatment of these themes, argues for his influence on Dewey's aesthetics, and suggests how the Jamesian approach exemplifies a promising convergence of aesthetics with philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Roberta Dreon - Richard Shusterman is one of the leading figures in the current field of pragmatist aesthetics and he has undoubtedly played a pivotal role in recovering a pragmatist approach to aesthetics. His book Pragmatist Aesthetics was simultaneously published in France under the title L’Art à l’état vif. La pensée pragmatiste et l’esthétique populaire in 1992, paving the way for a long awaited French translation of Dewey’s Art as Experience (Dewey 1989) in 2010 (Dewey 2005/2010), beaut...

Grateful to the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy for organizing this symposium to mark the twentieth anniversary of Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art (Oxford, Blackwell, 1992), I should begin by explaining why the European context for discussing this book seems especially pertinent. Although known as an American philosopher, I was not academically trained in America; my philosophical education was more European in style – first at the Hebrew University...

This article is motivated by a reading of J.J. Abrams’ proceedings Shusterman’s Somaesthetics: From Hip Hop Philosophy to Politics and Performance Art. Of the diverse range of essays in the proceedings, I concentrate my attention primarily on those aspects of the texts that highlight Richard Shusterman’s practical somaesthetics, and in which their authors focus on the more personal aspects of Shusterman’s philosophical-artistic experimentation, as captured in The Adventures of the Man in Gold: Paths Between Art and Life, A (...) Philosophical Tale. Through references to Foucault’s notion of care of the self and the aesthetics of existence, the article demonstrates that the individual level of Shusterman’s practical somaesthetics is not separable from the social-ethical level. This is matched by the conclusion of the text, which points out that Shusterman’s practical somaesthetics overcomes the dichotomy of private and public in Richard Rorty’s pragmatism. (shrink)

The first thought that comes to mind when reading Richard Shusterman’s The Adventures of the Man in Gold is how refreshingly unorthodox its author is. Shusterman is a respected aesthetician, responsible for books such as Surface and Depth: Dialectics of Criticism and Culture, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics, and Pragmatist Aesthetic: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art —all disciplined, carefully argued contributions to the philosophy of art and/or the body. The new book steps off path. It presents (...) a different kind of philosophical intervention, one that encourages reconsidering philosophical methodology and its less-explored possibilities. You will be reading a work... (shrink)

This essay collection explores the crucial connections between aesthetic experience and the interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics. After examining philosophical accounts of embodiment and aesthetic experience, the essays apply somaesthetic theory to the diverse fine arts and the art of living.

Abstract: This article explains the pragmatist project of somaesthetics in five different ways. First, it clarifies the notion of soma as encompassing both subjective intentionality and material objectivity in the world. Second, it highlights the social dimensions of somaesthetics, building on the basic insight that the soma is always shaped by the social and physical environments in which it is nested. Third, it examines the similarities and differences between somaesthetics and the Merleau-Ponty tradition of somatic phenomenology, (...) while answering some of the critical questions phenomenologists raise about the pragmatic value of reflective body consciousness. Fourth, in exploring the uses of reflective body consciousness, the article examines the continuity of learning over different levels and the different forms of evidence that can be used for empirical testing of the value of somatic reflection. It concludes with an overview of some of the main directions of future somaesthetic research. (shrink)

Contemporary culture increasingly suffers from problems of attention, over-stimulation, and stress, and a variety of personal and social discontents generated by deceptive body images. This book argues that improved body consciousness can relieve these problems and enhance one's knowledge, performance, and pleasure. The body is our basic medium of perception and action, but focused attention to its feelings and movements has long been criticised as a damaging distraction that also ethically corrupts through self-absorption. In Body Consciousness, Richard Shusterman refutes such (...) charges by engaging the most influential twentieth-century somatic philosophers and incorporating insights from both Western and Asian disciplines of body-mind awareness. Rather than rehashing intractable ontological debates on the mind-body relation, Shusterman reorients study of this crucial nexus towards a more fruitful, pragmatic direction that reinforces important but neglected connections between philosophy of mind, ethics, politics, and the pervasive aesthetic dimensions of everyday life. (shrink)

The term ars erotica refers to the styles and techniques of lovemaking with the honorific title of art. But in what sense are these practices artistic and how do they contribute to the aesthetics and ethics of self-cultivation in the art of living? In this book, Richard Shusterman offers a critical, comparative analysis of the erotic theories proposed by the most influential premodern cultural traditions that shaped our contemporary world. Beginning with ancient Greece, whose god of desiring love gave eroticism (...) its name, Shusterman examines the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition and the classical erotic theories of Chinese, Indian, Islamic, and Japanese cultures, before concluding with medieval and Renaissance Europe. His exploration of their errors and insights shows how we could improve the quality of life and love today. By using the engine of eros to cultivate qualities of sensitivity, grace, skill, and self-mastery, we can reimagine a richer, more positive vision of sex education. (shrink)

Among the many features that made Michel Foucault a remarkable philosopher was a doubly bold initiative: to renew the ancient idea of philosophy as a special way of life, and to insist on its distinctly somatic and aesthetic expression. This paper examines Foucault as an exemplary but problematic pioneer in a field I call somaesthetics, a discipline that puts the body’s experience and artful refashioning back into the heart of philosophy as an art of living. A long dominant Platonist (...) tradition, intensified by recent centuries of Cartesianism and idealism, has blinded us to a crucial fact that was evident to much ancient and non-Western thought: since we live, think, and act through our bodies, their study, care, and improvement should be at the core of philosophy, especially when philosophy is conceived as a special way of life, a critical, disciplined care of the self. (shrink)

Burke is an important exception to Nietzsche's claim that philosophical aesthetics ignores physiology and the role of practical interest. Grounded on the powerful interest of survival, Burke's theory of the sublime also offers a physiological explanation of our feelings of sublimity that explicitly defines certain conditions of our nerves as the ‘efficient cause’ of such feelings. While his general account of sublimity is widely appreciated, its somatic dimension has been dismissed as hopelessly misguided. In examining Burke's views in relation to (...) contemporary somaesthetics, cognitive psychology, and physiology, this paper shows that though Burke's somatic arguments can be criticized as overly simplistic and mechanistic, his recognition of the crucial bodily dimensions of aesthetic experience should be taken more seriously. In refining Burke's insight that bodily factors can help explain our aesthetic reactions, somaesthetics further urges that improved somatic understanding and performance can provide valuable means for enhancing our aesthetic response. (shrink)

ABSTRACT: This essay examines Foucault’s legacy in terms of its contribution to the field of som-aesthetics. It demonstrates how Foucault’s work on embodiment, care of the self, pleasure, sexuality, and aesthetics of existence were inspirational to the founding of somaesthetics and can serve as exemplars of somaesthetic philosophy. However, the essay also explores the ways that current somaesthetic research departs from Foucault’s theories by critiquing their limitations with respect to several important issues. These issues include the varieties of pleasure, (...) the multicultural scope and diversity of ars erotica, the range of aesthetics and art, and the demand for truth and heroism in the art of living a beautiful life. (shrink)

This paper begins by distinguishing three different but related foci of gastronomical aesthetic theory: food preparation and presentation; the gustatory qualities and social meanings of the food we eat; and finally the various actions involved in the ingestion of food. This third, largely ignored dimension of gastronomical theory, constitutes the topic of this paper, which seeks to define the distinctive character of this art, elucidate its diverse values, and analyze its key elements. Particular attention is given to the much overlooked (...) proprioceptive qualities and postural aspects of the art of eating. (shrink)

In this contribution we first sketch an outline of the concept of lifeworld (_Lebenswelt_), to introduce the readers to the guest-edited collection of essays _Varieties of the Lifeworld: Phenomenology and Aesthetic Experience_, special issue of the “Continental Philosophy Review.” We trace back the origin of the concept of lifeworld to Husserl’s late phenomenology, although also explaining (on the basis of the careful historical-conceptual reconstructions offered by some distinguished scholars of Husserl and the phenomenological movement) that the development of Husserl’s phenomenology (...) of the _Lebenswelt_ was gradual and was connected, among other things, to the question of the natural world of experience. Then, quickly referring to Gadamer, Landgrebe, Fink and other authors belonging to the phenomenological tradition, we explain that different interpretations of the topic “Lifeworld” in Husserl’s thinking have been provided: In our view, this contributes to the fact that still nowadays this topic is a fascinating and philosophically stimulating one. Finally, making reference to more recent works by such authors as Figal, Gallagher, Zahavi and Shusterman (a pragmatist philosopher, whose somaesthetics is nonetheless very rich in insights that can be connected to phenomenological views of the body and its place in the world), we emphasize how the question concerning the lifeworld is still capable today to open a great variety of perspectives and plurality of paths for thinking, as testified by the essays collected in this guest-edited special issue of the “Continental Philosophy Review.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Thinking Through the Body, Educating for the Humanities:A Plea for SomaestheticsRichard Shusterman (bio)IWhat are the humanities, and how should they be cultivated? With respect to this crucial question, opinions differ as to how widely the humanities should be construed and pursued. Initially connoting the study of Greek and Roman classics, the concept now more generally covers arts and letters, history, and philosophy.1 But does it also include the social (...) sciences, which are often distinguished from the humanities and grouped as a separate academic division with greater pretensions to scientific status? And should our pursuit of humanistic study be concentrated on the traditional methods and topics of high culture that give the humanities an authoritative aura of established nobility, or should it extend to new and funkier forms of interdisciplinary research such as popular culture or race and gender studies?Despite such questions and controversy, it is clear (even from etymology) that the meaning of the humanities essentially relates to our human condition and our efforts to perfect our humanity and its expression. But what, then, does it mean to be human? I cannot pretend here to adequately answer such a complex and difficult question. I will, however, argue that because the body is an essential and valuable dimension of our humanity, it should be recognized as a crucial topic of humanistic study and experiential learning. Though the truth of this thesis should be obvious, it goes sharply against the grain of our traditional understanding of the humanities. One striking example of such antisomatic bias is the very term that German speakers use to designate the humanities, "Geisteswissenschaften," whose literal English translation would be "spiritual (or mental) sciences," as contrasted to the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) that treat physical life, [End Page 1] with which, of course, the body is clearly linked. Hence, given the pervasive physical/spiritual opposition, the body is essentially omitted or marginalized in our conception of humanistic studies.2We humanist intellectuals generally take the body for granted because we are so passionately interested in the life of the mind and the creative arts that express our human spirit. But the body is not only an essential dimension of our humanity, it is also the basic instrument of all human performance, our tool of tools, a necessity for all our perception, action, and even thought. Just as skilled builders need expert knowledge of their tools, so we need better somatic knowledge to improve our understanding and performance in the arts and human sciences and to advance our mastery in the highest art of all—that of perfecting our humanity and living better lives. We need to think more carefully through the body in order to cultivate ourselves and edify our students because true humanity is not a mere genetic given but an educational achievement in which body, mind, and culture must be thoroughly integrated. To pursue this project of somatic inquiry, I have been working on an interdisciplinary field called somaesthetics, whose disciplinary connections extend also beyond the humanities to the biological, cognitive, and health sciences, which I see as valuable allies for humanistic research.3Somaesthetics, roughly defined, concerns the body as a locus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation (aisthesis) and creative self-fashioning. As an ameliorative discipline of both theory and practice, it aims to enrich not only our abstract, discursive knowledge of the body but also our lived somatic experience and performance; it seeks to enhance the meaning, understanding, efficacy, and beauty of our movements and of the environments to which our movements contribute and from which they also draw their energies and significance. Somaesthetics, therefore, involves a wide range of knowledge forms and disciplines that structure such somatic care or can improve it. Recognizing that body, mind, and culture are deeply codependent, somaesthetics comprises an interdisciplinary research program to integrate their study. Mental life relies on somatic experience and cannot be wholly separated from bodily processes, even if it cannot be wholly reduced to them. We think and feel with our bodies, especially with the body parts that constitute the brain and nervous system. Our bodies are likewise affected by mental life, as when certain thoughts bring a blush to... (shrink)