Richard Shusterman

Somaesthetics and Education: Exploring the Terrain

In the pragmatist tradition of William James and John Dewey, I regard experience as a central concept of philosophy and affirm the body as an organizing core of experience. So in developing a pragmatist aesthetics and a theory of philosophy as an art of living, I proposed a more constructive and systematic philosophical approach to the body which I call “somaesthetics” and which I conceive as a discipline of theory and practice . Somaesthetics is deeply concerned with important educational aims and may offer some interesting new perspectives and techniques with respect to learning. But it also presents some particular problems with respect to its teaching in the standard university curriculum. In this paper, after briefly outlining the aims and structure of somaesthetics, I examine its educational potential and problems, considering both historical sources and the contemporary situation.

The Silent, Limping Body of Philosophy

In the field of Western philosophy, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is something like the patron saint of the body. Although La Mettrie, Diderot, Nietzsche, and Foucault have also passionately championed the bodily dimension of human life, none can match the bulk of rigorous, systematic, and persistent argument that Merleau-Ponty provides to prove the bodys primacy in human experience and meaning. With tireless eloquence that almost seems to conquer by its massive unrelenting flow, he insists that the body is not only the crucial source of all perception and action, but also the core of our expressive capability and thus the ground of all language and meaning. Paradoxically, while celebrating the bodys role in expression, Merleau-Ponty typically characterizes it in terms of silence. The body, he writes in Phenomenology of Perception, constitutes “the tacit cogito, ” “the silent cogito, ” the “unspoken cogito .” As our “primary subjectivity,” it is “the consciousness which conditions language,” but itself remains a “silent consciousness” with an “inarticulate grasp of the world” ( PP 461-3/402-4/468-70). Forming “the background of silence” ( S 58/46) that is necessary for language to emerge, the body, as gesture, is also already “a tacit language” ( S 59/47) and the ground of all expression: “every human use of the body is already primordial expression ” ( S 84/67).

Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics and the Reconstruction of Art: Of the scandal of taste: social privilege as nature in the aesthetic theories of Hume and Kant

The classic aesthetic theories of Hume and Kant which have largely structured modern aesthetics cannot be properly understood without understanding a central dimension and dilemma of which they themselves were not properly aware and which their theories instinctively tried to avoid or minimalize, if not suppress. This dimension is the social and class-hierarchical foundation of aesthetic judgment; and its apparently inevitable introduction of difference, distinction, and conventional prejudice sharply contrasts with and threatens the idea of a natural uniformity of feeling or response on which the Humean and Kantian aesthetic theories are essentially based. This dimension, I shall argue, lurks pervasively in the subtext of these theories beneath their more explicit arguments and constitutes the unacknowledged structural core of their problematic. It is not that the social dimension of taste is entirely ignored in the Humean and Kantian account of aesthetic judgment. For both Humes “Of the Standard of Taste” and Kants more substantial and sophisticated Critique of Judgement make, as we shall see, clear references to society and culture and to their role in promoting the proper exercise of taste. However, the full force of the social dimension of taste and the contradictions it presents for their attempts to justify a standard of taste and vindicate the normative necessity and universality of aesthetic judgment is never openly and adequately confronted. It is, rather, evasively swept under the carpet with the aid of some vague nostrum of foundational universality, of natural human uniformity, essentially free from social determination and distinction.

Rap Remix: Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and Other Issues in the House

Rap is an art whose cultural and aesthetic importance is at once demonstrated and concealed by the smoke of media hype and political controversy that surrounds it. The smoke suggests there must be some core of artistic fire that rocketed the genre to its amazing, enduring international popularity-despite its initial lack of material means, organization, and cultural legitimacy that to some extent continues to plague it. But raps clouds of controversy-not only its alleged links to gangsterism, rape, and race riots but even its proud self-identification as ghetto music in an age of contestatory identity politics-have distracted cultural critics from coming to grips with its artistic significance. Long before the L.A. riots, rap and its sympathetic theorists were plagued by these problems. When the 1989 Central Park rape case suddenly made rap a major media target, my aesthetic interest in the genre was roundly condemned by colleagues from both right and left: not only for endorsing black hooliganism by supporting such music, but also for disenfranchising ghetto youth by expropriating their music for my own bourgeois entertainment and theoretical pursuits. As a white, Oxfordtrained, philosophy professor (and not simply a Jew but an Israeli), I was so often told that I had no business dealing with rap, that before I dared submit my research to any journal, I sought the moral advice

Eliot as philosopher

T. S. Eliot began his career by training as a professional philosopher rather than as poet or critic. He ambitiously pursued this academic study at such major philosophical centers as Harvard, the Sorbonne, Marburg, and Oxford, between 1908 and 1915; completed a Harvard doctoral thesis on the philosophy of F. H. Bradley in 1916; and even published between 1916 and 1918 a number of professional articles and reviews of philosophy. Most studies of Eliot recognize that his early absorption in philosophy was very important for his development as poet and critic, though opinions sometimes differ as to which ways and through which thinkers the philosophical influence was most powerfully and beneficially expressed. Bergsons notions of duree , memory, and intuition have been recognized in the flow of consciousness of Eliots early poems; and Royce, Bradley, and Russell have been cogently invoked to explain such Eliotic notions as tradition, poetic impersonality, the objective correlative, analytic precision, and critical objectivity. Typically, however, these studies of Eliot as philosopher confine themselves to Eliot as “young philosopher,” the aspiring, well-trained novice who soon abandoned philosophy to pursue a literary career. Philosophy in these studies remains a past, residual influence of youth rather than a continuously active interest and vital concern of Eliots entire career. This essay will instead insist on showing how Eliot pursued philosophical questions throughout his career, though he ceased to do so through professional philosophical channels. Instead, Eliot insightfully attacked these questions in his criticism, social theory, and poetry. In doing so, he helped by both argument and example to highlight and challenge the narrowness of professional, academic philosophy, so that philosophy could become closer to what is today in the academy often called “theory,” a genre where non-professional philosophers like Walter Benjamin can be studied for their philosophical import and where Eliot himself deserves a better place.

Dewey's Art as Experience: The Psychological Background

The year 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of John Dewey’s birth and also the 75th anniversary of the publication of his aesthetic masterpiece Art as Experience—a book that has been extremely influential within the field of aesthetics, not only in philosophical aesthetics and aesthetic education but also in the arts themselves.1 I am honored to commemorate this double Deweyan anniversary with an essay that reexamines Art as Experience by briefly tracing some of its major themes and clarifying its generative context of production and philosophical roots, while also suggesting, in passing, how some of these themes and roots contribute to its continuing philosophical relevance. Before going further, I should offer two preliminary cautions. First, Dewey’s aesthetic magnum opus is obviously too rich and masterful in ideas and influence for any brief commemorative essay to hope to do it sufficient justice. Second, as Dewey defined philosophy as “a criticism of criticisms,” so my remarks will include a critical dimension.2 This in no way denies my immense admiration for Dewey’s achievement in Art as Experience, just as my noting of some formative influences on this work is in no way meant to diminish the impressive originality of his contribution. Dewey’s Art as Experience first established pragmatist aesthetics on the philosophical map, yet his text makes no mention of pragmatism. There are good reasons for Dewey’s reluctance to highlight the term. The pragmatic is closely linked to the practical, precisely the idea against which the aesthetic has, since Kant, been traditionally contrasted and often oppositionally defined as purposeless and disinterested. To describe his new aesthetic

Soma and Psyche

In the ancient legend of Cupid and Psyche, Venus was jealous of Psyche’s beauty and plotted to punish her by binding her through love to a hideous creature that would appear once Cupid scratched Psyche with his arrow of desire while she slept, so that she would fall in love with the next thing she saw upon awakening. But when Cupid saw her beauty, he was so overwhelmed that he accidentally wounded himself with his own arrow and thus fell deeply in love with her. The tale then describes how Venus unsuccessfully tried to keep Cupid and Psyche apart, which makes a nice allegory for the diffi culty of separating the soul from desire. Though this mission may seem as undesirable as it is unlikely to achieve, we should recall that philosophers have frequently embraced it, seeking a therapy from desire. But this tale of desire and soul evokes an equally diffi cult mission that has been even more central to our philosophical tradition: the separation of Soma from Psyche, of body from soul. Because so many thinkers see the body as the irrepressible source of problematic desires (including erotic ones), we could identify soma with Cupid in this legend. But in another

Pragmatism and Criticism: A Response to Three Critics of Pragmatist Aesthetics

When John Dewey defined philosophy as “a criticism of criticisms,” his point was philosophy’s essential connection with values. He was not trying to promote the ideal of the philosopher as a carping, derivative fault-finder, preoccupied with recursively rechewing the critical cud of previous criticisms. Instead, Dewey’s vision of philosophy insisted on imaginative reconstruction, with fresh ideas; and one reason he praised art was for its creative potency in suggesting fruitful new ideas beyond the current conventions of science and morality. Criticism remains a central moment in philosophy as it is also in the creation of art, but it should not be pursued for its own sake nor even, primarily, for the sake of policing the proper interpretation of past authors, for getting them right for the sake of historical accuracy. Unfortunately, “criticism of criticisms” in the sense of polemical fault-finding constitutes the dominant image of philosophy today, promoted by the institutional structures of academic philosophy. We are essentially trained in the discourse of critical counterassertion, of polemically taking to pieces any philosophical position. When I was a young analytic philosopher more than a decade ago, I remember a sensitive dance student who, baffled by my critical style, compared my analytic way of doing aesthetics to the image of being presented with a beautiful bouquet of flowers, and then ripping each blossom to pieces, petal by petal, with maddening precision and relentless rigor. The philosophical culture of polemical critique is reinforced by the structural logic of our professional institutions, such as the authormeets-critics structure that engendered this exchange in which I respond J S P

Pragmatist Aesthetics and Confucianism

I am grateful to Scott Stroud for organizing this symposium and inviting me to discuss pragmatist aesthetics and Confucianism. Neither field formed part of my university education, so my interest in them is essentially a product of fascination, devoid of professorial or professional pressure, though it was surely shaped by other contingencies and needs. Trained as an analytic philosopher in Jerusalem and Oxford, I first came to appreciate the power of pragmatism only in the mid-1980s when I moved to America. My awakening to the philosophical richness of Confucianism is much more recent. It began with my desire to get acquainted enough with classical Chinese philosophy in order to write prefaces for the Chinese translations (published in 2002) of Pragmatist Aesthetics and Practicing Philosophy. I very quickly became deeply impressed with the significant resonances between Chinese philosophy and the pragmatist themes that most appealed to me, so I continued my study of Chinese thought. There remains so much to learn.1 Chinese philosophy is vast and diverse, but the pragmatist tradition, while far more limited, is also far from monolithic and resists essentialist, homogenous definition. Its roots include elements of older British and German philosophies that were creatively brewed in the crucible of the New World, where they could be more fruitfully mixed with greater freedom because they could function free from the constraints imposed by their old national cultural fields. The multiple roots of pragmatism also extend to Asian thought. Emerson, widely recognized as a prophet of pragmatism before the movements official beginning with C. S. Peirce, was deeply inspired by the

The Body as Background: Pragmatism and Somaesthetics

The notion of the background has progressively moved into the foreground of philosophical discussion. Over the past century, philosophers have increasingly recognized that the mental life of which we are conscious and through which we act to realize our intention cannot adequately function without relying on a background of which we are not properly conscious but which guides and structures our conscious thought and action. The body has also been largely neglected, misinterpreted, and negatively valued by the dominantly idealistic tradition of Western philosophy, but it too has also increasingly moved to the foreground of philosophical theory, and has indeed constituted my principal axis of research for the last decade. But because the term ‘body’ is too often contrasted with mind and used to designate insentient, lifeless things, while the term ‘flesh’ (used by Maurice Merleau-Ponty) has such negative associations in Christian culture and moreover focuses merely on the fleshly part of the body, I have chosen the term soma to designate the living, sensing, dynamic, perceptive body that lies at the heart of my research project of somaesthetics.1