Engaging with Philosophy’s “Limit-Defying Provocateur”: A Review of Shusterman’s Pragmatism: Between Literature and Somaesthetics

Abstract

This article reviews volume edited by Dorota Koczanowicz and Wojciech Malecki titled Shusterman 's Pragmatism: Between Literature and Somaesthetics.As first edited collection to engage with broad scope of Richard Shusterman's philosophical preoccupations, this book1 seeks to shed light on why Shusterman is so widely read not only different cultural contexts ... but also within different disciplines (1). The editors pursue this aim by partitioning its twelve chapters into three sections, by providing an introductory overview of what they christen in nature of Shusterman's body of work, by opening collection proper with an essay from Shusterman, and by closing it with his detailed responses to preceding essays. As hope to make clear body of this review, this is an exceptionally well organized and coherent collection, one which thereby provides insight into the work of this interesting philosopher (1).In their Introduction, Koczanowicz and Malecki take pains to demonstrate connections between Shusterman's tum to Dewey and his development of somaesthetics, defined by Shusterman as the critical, ameliorative study of one's and use of one's body as locus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-fashioning (quoted, 4). In particular, they emphasize how Dewey's exhortation to address the problems of men (rather than professional puzzles of analytic epistemology or continental hermeneutics) directly informs Shusterman's recent efforts to apply to issues of gender and racial justice, efforts that, turn, require ever greater interdisciplinarity.These connections are deeply explored, of course, opening essay by Shusterman himself, entitled A Pragmatist Path Through Play of Limits: From Literature to Somaesthetics. Indeed, he introduces his reflections by stating that I decided that this essay could usefully trace how came to pragmatist philosophy and how was led from my initial focus on literary theory to much broader philosophical project that eventually generated interdisciplinary field of somaesthetics (11). He takes this approach because of his suspicion that his own philosophical trajectory reflects a deeper current history of (14). This is need to overcome (or transgress) limits, whether this need has its roots his own impatience with merely descriptive aims of much contemporary theorizing about art or larger historical failure of philosophers to provide definition of art that is invulnerable to counterexample.2 This is thus why he turns to pragmatism and emphasizes its melioristic mission: If art and aesthetic are crucial forms of human flourishing, then philosophy betrays its role if it merely looks on with neutrality without joining struggle to extend their breadth and power (22). More specifically, this is why he insists both that value of conceptual analysis resides its ability to make concept more meaningful and useful improving our aesthetic understanding of experience (22) and that we need to recover the ancient ideal of philosophy as way of life (24). Given these convictions, his efforts to establish and promote field of can therefore be seen as culmination of his philosophical development: Somaesthetics was thus conceived to complement basic project of pragmatist aesthetics by elaborating ways that disciplined, ramified, and interdisciplinary attention to bodily experiences, methods, discourses, and performances could enrich our aesthetic and practice, not only fine arts but diverse arts of living (23).Just as themes introduced editors' Introduction receive elaboration opening essay, essays included first section of this collection, Literary Theory and Philosophy of Art, further advance and illustrate points that have just summarized. …