In his Vermischte Bemerkungen, in the course of a political discussion concerning nationalism, antisemitism, power, and property, Ludwig Wittgenstein speaks of one's having an “aesthetic feeling for one's body [aesthetische Gefühl für seinen Körper].” This phrase naturally attracted my attention because of my interest in somaesthetics as a discipline concerned with the aesthetics of bodily feelings. But Wittgenstein's phrase particularly intrigued me because his philosophy is famous for refuting the centrality of bodily feelings in explaining the key concepts of philosophy for which those feelings are often invoked: concepts of action, emotion, will, and aesthetic judgment. He thinks that philosophers invent them as primitive explanations for the complexities of mental life. “When we do philosophy, we should like to hypostatize feelings where there are none. They serve to explain our thoughts to us. ‘Here explanation of our thinking demands a feeling!’ It is as if our conviction were simply consequent upon this requirement” (PI, 598).

In contrast to traditional theories that have used feelings or sensations (whether corporeal or allegedly more purely mental) to explain the causes and meanings of our psychological and aesthetic concepts, Wittgenstein argues that such complex concepts are better understood in terms of their use. They are grounded and expressed in the sedimented social practices or consensual forms of life of a community of language-users. “Practice gives the words their sense,” (CV, 85) and such practice involves “agreement … in form of life” (PI, 241).