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Body and the Arts: The Need for Somaesthetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Richard Shusterman
Richard Shusterman*
Affiliation:
Florida Atlantic University, FL, USA
*
Richard Shusterman, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431, USA. Email: richard.shusterman@gmail.com
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Abstract

This essay examines how somaesthetics is related to the field of fine arts, though the scope of somaesthetics is indeed wider, extending into all practices of life in which we can enhance our perception and performance through improved somatic self-use and self-knowledge. I first explain the project of somaesthetics and why it is needed to counterbalance the strong tendencies in mod-ern aesthetics, beginning with its founder Alexander Baumgarten, to neglect or reject the body’s role in aesthetic experience. Because Hegel is a crucial figure in this anti-somatic tradition, I then critically examine his ranking of the arts in terms of their relation to material embodiment. Using his classificatory scheme heuristically to highlight the body’s wide-ranging role in the different arts, the essay demonstrates how somaesthetics can improve our understanding and performance of that role and thereby improve the arts and our aesthetic experience.

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Articles
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Diogenes , Volume 59 , Issue 1-2: Why New Aesthetics? , May 2012 , pp. 7 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2013

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