Somaesthetics: a Disciplinary Proposal
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Somaesthetics: A Disciplinary Proposal Richard Shusterman The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 57, No. 3. (Summer, 1999), pp. 299-313. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8529%28199922%2957%3A3%3C299%3ASADP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism is currently published by The American Society for Aesthetics. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/tasfa.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. http://www.jstor.org Mon Feb 18 13:51:19 2008 RICHARD SHUSTERMAN Somaesthetics:A Disciplinary Proposal "Beauty is a great recommendation," wrote tentative, my proposal remained very vague. Montaigne, "and there is no man so barbarous Suggesting somaesthetics as a possibility worth and sturdy as not to be somewhat struck by its exploring, I dared not presume to define it by charm. The body has a great part in our being, it proposing a systematic account of what topics, holds a high rank in it; so its structure and com- concepts, aims, and practices it would comprise. position are well worth consideration."' The After almost three millennia of philosophy, to focus of Montaigne's somatic interest here is ob- propose a new philosophical discipline might viously not the body's physiological compo- seem a reckless act of arrogance; to suggest one nents but its aesthetic functioning, its potential centered on the body could only add absurdity to for beauty. hubris. At the risk of further ridicule,5 I now This aesthetic potential, I have elsewhere ar- wish to outline the basic aims and elements of gued, is at least twofold: As an object grasped by somaesthetics and to explain how it could pro- our external senses, the body (of another or even mote some of philosophy's most crucial con- one's own) can provide beautiful sensory per- cerns. The purpose is to show its potential utility, ceptions or (in Kant's famous terminology) "rep- not its radical novelty. If somaesthetics is radi- resentations." But there is also the beautiful ex- cal, it is only in the sense of returning to some of perience of one's own body from within-the the deepest roots of aesthetics and philosophy. endorphin-enhanced glow of high-level cardio- To show how somaesthetics is firmly vascular functioning, the slow savoring aware- grounded in aesthetic tradition, I begin by exam- ness of improved, deeper breathing, the tingling ining the philosophical text that founded modem thrill of feeling into new parts of one's spine.2 If aesthetics, Alexander Baumgarten's Aesthetica this appeal to the proprioceptive beauty of per- (175011758). Baumgarten's original aesthetic sonal somatic experience seems strangely idio- project will be seen to have far greater scope and syncratic or weirdly "New Age," consider the practical import than what we recognize as aes- 1884 remark of Jean-Marie Guyau, the once re- thetics today, implying an entire program of nowned author of Les problemes de l'esthe'tique philosophical self-perfection in the art of living. contemporaine: "To breathe deeply, sensing how I then outline the discipline of somaesthetics, one's blood is purified through its contact with showing how it shares the same enlarged scope, the air and how one's whole circulatory system multiple dimensions, and practical element that takes on new activity and strength, this is truly Baumgarten urged, while also promoting pre- an almost intoxicating delight whose aesthetic cisely those aims that philosophy traditionally value can hardly be denied."' defines as central to its own project: aims such as Rather than denying it, my aim in this paper is knowledge, virtue, and the good life. But in pur- to affirm Montaigne's and Guyau's aesthetic at- suing Baumgarten's broad vision of aesthetics tention to the body but also to render it more sys- and its practical, perfectionist ideal, somaesthet- tematic. In exploring the body's crucial and ics goes even further by also embracing a crucial complex role in aesthetic experience, I previ- feature that Baumgarten unfortunately omitted ously proposed the idea of a body-centered dis- from his aesthetic program-cultivation of the cipline that I called soma esthetic^."^ Timidly body. Modem philosophy too often displays the The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57:3 Summer 1999 The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism same sad somatic neglect. I conclude, however, the art of beautiful thinking, and art of analogi- by considering two contemporary philosophers, cal thought) is the science of sensory cognition" John Dewey and Michel Foucault, who differ- (91). This vaster scope of all sensory perception ently exemplify my idea of somaesthetics, though allows Baumgarten to distinguish aesthetics from without properly thematizing or articulating this the already established scientific disciplines of field as such. The paper closes by raising an im- poetics and rhetoric. Like these disciplines (and portant theoretical issue that somaesthetics must like its austere "sister," logic), aesthetics is not face: the possibility of assessing individual body merely a theoretical enterprise, but also a nor- tastes and practices in terms of more general so- mative practice-a discipline that implies prac- matic values or norms. tical exercise or training that is aimed at achiev- ing useful ends. "The end of aesthetics," writes ~aum~arten,"is the perfection of sensory cogni- tion as such, this implying beauty," while the When Alexander Baumgarten coined the term contrasting "imperfection" (identified as "defor- "aesthetics" to ground a formal philosophical mity") is to be avoided ($14). discipline, his aims for that discipline went far Aesthetics as a systematic discipline of per- beyond the focus of what now defines philo- fecting sensory cognition ("artificialis aesthet- sophical aesthetics: the theory of fine art and ices") is both distinguished from and built upon natural bea~ty.~Deriving its name from the what Baumgarten calls "natural aesthetics" Greek "aisthesis" (sensory perception), Baum- ("aesthetica naturalis"), which he defines as the garten intended his new philosophical science to innate workings of our sensory cognitive facul- comprise a general theory of sensory knowl- ties and their natural development through non- edge. Such an aesthetics was meant to comple- systematic learning and exercise. The aesthetic ment logic, the two together designed to provide goal of systematically perfecting our sensory a comprehensive theory of knowledge he termed perception requires, of course, the crucial nat- "Gnoseology." ural gifts of our lower (i.e., sense-related) cogni- Though following his Leibnizian teacher tive faculties. Baumgarten insists especially on Christian Wolff in calling such sensory percep- "keenness of sensation," "imaginative capacity," tion a "lower faculty," Baumgarten's aim was "penetrating insight," "good memory," "poetic not to denounce its inferiority. Instead Aesthet- disposition," "good taste," "foresight," and "ex- ica argues for the cognitive value of sensory per- pressive talent." But all of these, he argues, must ception, celebrating its rich potential not only for be governed by "the higher faculties of under- better thinking but for better living. In the book's standing and reason" ('yacultates cognoscitivae "~role~omena,"Baumgarten asserts that aes- superiores ... intellectus et ratio," $530-38). thetic study will promote greater knowledge in The perfectionist project of aesthetics must, several different ways: by supplying better sen- however, go beyond all these (high and low) nat- sory perception as "good material for science" to urally developed faculties. It further requires a work with; by presenting its own special sort of systematic program of instruction that includes sensory perception as a "suitable" object of sci- two branches. The first (askesis or exercitatio ence; by therefore "advancing science beyond aesthetica) is a program of practical exercise or the limits of treating only clear [i.e., logical] per- training. Here, through repetitive drill of certain ception"; and by providing "good foundations kinds of actions, one learns to instill harmony of for all contemplative activity and the liberal mind with respect to a given theme or thought arts." Finally, the improvement of sensory per- ($47). Contrasting such aesthetic drill to the me- ception through aesthetic study will "give an in- chanical drill of soldiers, Baumgarten defines it dividual, ceteris