Aesthetic Experience and Somaesthetics

Richard Shusterman is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Director of the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture at Florida Atlantic University. His major books include Pragmatist Aesthetics, Practicing Philosophy, Performing Live, Body Consciousness, and Thinking through the Body.

"somaesthetics has become the low-threshold platform for discussing the philosophy of the body. It has likewise become the most multicultural philosophical discourse on the soma when one thinks about its roots, where no philosophical traditions are absent. [...] All in all, Aesthetics and Somaesthetics is an engaging, well-written and well-edited book. [...] I can recommend the book to anyone interested in the philosophy of the body, not just somaesthetics. Here, somaesthetics has anyway showed its potential for being the philosophical discourse of the body for a long time to come." - Max Ryynänen, The Journal of Somaesthetics, vol. 4, issue 2, 2019.“The reviewed book is a remarkable example of the significance of somaesthetics for contemporary thought. ... I am sure that [this] book is a significant argument for the fruitfulness of somaesthetics.” - Leszek Koczanowicz, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, in Pragmatism Today, vol. 9, issue 2, 2018."[The contributions in Aesthetic Experience and Somaesthetics give] testimony that somaesthetics not only allow[] 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." - Krystyna Wilkoszewska, The Journal of Aesthetic Education, vol. 54, no. 3, 2020.

• AcknowledgmentsList of IllustrationsNotes on ContributorsIntroduction: Aesthetic Experience and SomaestheticsRichard ShustermanPart 1: Embodiment in Philosophy and Aesthetic Experience1 Nietzsche on Embodiment: A Proto-somaesthetics?Catherine F. Botha2 Experience and AestheticsBéla Bacsó3 Art as Experience: Gadamer and Pragmatist AestheticsAlexander KremerPart 2: Somaesthetic Approaches to the Fine Arts4 Olafur Eliasson, Art as Embodied and Interdisciplinary Experience: In Dialogue with Else Marie BukdahlElse Marie Bukdahl5 Winckelmann’s Haptic Gaze: A Somaesthetic InterpretationYanping Gao6 Rethinking Aesthetics through Architecture?Bálint Veres7 “The Co-Presence of Something Regular”: Wordsworth’s Aesthetics of ProsodyJohn Golden8 Singing, Listening, Proprioceiving: Some Reflections on Vocal SomaestheticsAnne TarvainenPart 3: Somaesthetics in the Photographic Arts and the Art of Living9 Spectral Absence and Bodily Presence: Performative Writings on PhotographyÉva Antal10 Cosmetic Practices: The Intersection with Aesthetics and MedicineElisabetta Di Stefano11 Santayana on Embodiment, the Art of Living, and Sexual AestheticsNóra Horváth12 Thinking through the Body of Maya: Somaesthetic Frames from Mira Nair’s KamasutraVinod Balakrishnan and Swathi Elizabeth Kurian