Performing Somaesthetics in Philosophy, Art, and Life

Abstract

Abstract In my essay review “Performing Somaesthetics in Philosophy, Art and Life,” the problems presented in the book Aesthetic Experience and Somaesthetics, edited by Richard Shusterman and published as the first volume of the Brill series “Studies in Somaesthetics” (2018) are considered. The essays collected in the book represent a broad range of problems connected, first of all, with philosophy and art, centered on the concept of aesthetic experience and described from the point of view of somaesthetics. There are the following problems: the relationship between somaesthetics and pragmatist thought; the conceptions of experience and embodiment found in the European philosophical tradition of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, and others; the presence of somaesthetics in the fine arts; and the relation of somaesthetics and theory of art. The authors of essays come from various countries and represent different specializations: the group consists of aestheticians, philosophers of art—of literature, music, dance, architecture, and photography, as well as interpreters of works of art and artists. Their contribution gives testimony that somaesthetics not only allows for a better understanding of new phenomena present in the contemporary world but that it also enables us to read anew texts created in the past.