Context and Cultural Understanding

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Somaesthetics at the Limits

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The end of aesthetic experience

Elektronische Version der gedr. Ausg. 199

Back to the Future: Aesthetics Today

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

La Soma-esthétique de Merleau-Ponty

Œuvres de Maurice Merleau-Ponty est une anthologie d’une réelle utilité pour les lecteurs s’intéressant à la pensée du philosophe, et peut-être davantage encore pour ceux s’intéressant à sa contribution à l’esthétique et à la philosophie de l’art. Cet ouvrage volumineux (presque 1850 pages) réunit la version intégrale de ses œuvres majeures telles que Humanisme et terreur : essai sur le problème communiste, Les Aventures de la dialectique, Phénoménologie de la perception, La Prose du monde, L..

The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter: A Pragmatist Perspective

The paper offers a philosophical commentary on the widely discussed 1981 meeting of Derrida and Gadamer at Paris’ Goethe Institute. These two figures “virtually personify, in hermeneutics and deconstruction, the two major and rival ‘schools’ of contemporary continental philosophy associated with the primacy of interpretation.” Adopting a pragmatist perspective, the author discusses their approaches to the issue of interpretation – different and often seen as mutually exclusive. He claims that Derrida and Gadamer in fact have a great deal in common and tries to show that American pragmatism offers a mode of mediation, which allows us to grasp their mutual relations. The author concentrates on the three central issues that emerge from Derrida’s Three Questions to Hans-Georg Gadamer, namely the context of interpretation, consensual continuity versus rupture as the basis or precondition of interpretation, and the nature or possibility of perfect dialogical understanding.The paper offers a philosophical commentary on the widely discussed 1981 meeting of Derrida and Gadamer at Paris’ Goethe Institute. These two figures “virtually personify, in hermeneutics and deconstruction, the two major and rival ‘schools’ of contemporary continental philosophy associated with the primacy of interpretation.” Adopting a pragmatist perspective, the author discusses their approaches to the issue of interpretation – different and often seen as mutually exclusive. He claims that Derrida and Gadamer in fact have a great deal in common and tries to show that American pragmatism offers a mode of mediation, which allows us to grasp their mutual relations. The author concentrates on the three central issues that emerge from Derrida’s Three Questions to Hans-Georg Gadamer, namely the context of interpretation, consensual continuity versus rupture as the basis or precondition of interpretation, and the nature or possibility of perfect dialogical understanding

Etica ed estetica: somaestetica e l'arte di vivere

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