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

Self-Transformation as Trans-formation: Rilke on Gender in the Art of Living

Central to the projects of somaesthetics and philosophy as an art of living is the idea of self-transformation by transcending the limits of one’s given identity or current self. Among the very different ways of pursuing self-transformation, this essay explores the idea of gender transformation that seeks to transcend the conventional male/female gender binary, a transformational transcendence to something trans. We explore this idea through a close reading of Rilke’s famous poem “Archaic Torso of Apollo” and his Letters to a Young Poet in which Rilke seems to gesture toward such transformation

Context and Cultural Understanding

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Somaesthetics at the Limits

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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

Context and Cultural Understanding

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