The Journal of Aesthetic Education

One aspect of Richard Shusterman’s work is indicative of a broad movement to develop a robust philosophy of embodiment. Thinkers from diverse fields—such as feminism, pragmatism, and continental philosophy—have criticized Western philosophy’s suppression of embodiment and have gone on to suggest how the philosophy of the body can enrich our understanding of issues that arise within traditional fields such as ethics and aesthetics. Further, work in this area can provide novel insights into personal identity, gender, linguistics, and philosophy of mind.

Shusterman’s contribution to the field is somaesthetics, the critical and meliorative study of embodied experience that views the human body as a locus of aesthetic appreciation and creative self-fashioning (19). This field is essential for philosophy since the acquisition of knowledge is largely contingent on sensory perception, which is in turn contingent upon the body. Somaesthetics can consequently play an important role in acquiring knowledge since its practices allow individuals to improve somatic functioning and, consequently, to improve perceptual accuracy. More generally, one of the aims of philosophy is self-knowledge, and since the self is necessarily embodied, it is clear that philosophy must concern itself with embodiment. Somaesthetic practices such as the Feldenkrais Method, Alexander Technique, and Bioenergetics can increase body consciousness and can consequently give practitioners insight into the manner in which the body shapes the self.

Shusterman made these points in earlier works (such as Pragmatist Aesthetics and Performing Live); however, whereas those earlier texts include essays on topics ranging from somaesthetics, to popular music, multiculturalism, and postmodernism, Body Consciousness focuses primarily on the philosophy of embodiment. More specifically, the book’s main argument is that improving body consciousness by practicing certain methodologies can enhance one’s understanding of the body and consequently allows practitioners to pursue a more meaningful mode of embodiment. It is certainly an important argument to consider as contemporary culture often prescribes modes of embodiment and attitudes toward the body that warrant scrutiny and, in some instances, remedy. Shusterman persuasively argues that steps must be taken to critique existing practices and to study alternative practices that offer fulfilling somatic experience.

More specifically, the book advances its argument by devoting chapters to the philosophical understandings of embodiment (or “analytic somaesthetics”) advanced by seminal body thinkers: Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, [End Page 123] Ludwig Wittgenstein, William James, and John Dewey. Shusterman discusses the descriptive and theoretical accounts of embodiment given by these thinkers to the extent that the book would be a valuable resource for a Philosophy of the Body course. He expertly discusses the early and later Foucault, the phenomenology and ontology of Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir on gender and aging, Wittgenstein on the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, James’s early psychology and later radical empiricism, and Dewey’s naturalism and concept of body-mind. Further, drawing on biographical sources, Shusterman considers the manner in which each figure lived out their embodiment. The reader learns of Foucault’s homosexual sadomasochism, de Beauvoir’s athleticism, Wittgenstein’s tendency toward seclusion, James’s tendency to moralize embodiment (for example, his “puritanism”), and Dewey’s practice of the Alexander Technique (Merleau-Ponty is something of an exception as his emphasis on his personal privacy precludes us from gaining insight into the manner in which he lived his body).

Shusterman demonstrates that the analysis of both analytic and practical somaesthetics discloses a relationship between theoretical accounts of embodiment and the manner in which one inhabits the body. Foucault’s homosexual sadomasochism was intertwined with his work on sexuality and social power, de Beauvoir’s athleticism was intertwined with her understanding of the cultural suppression of the female body, Dewey’s advocacy and practice of the Alexander Technique was part and parcel of his notion of body-mind, and so on. Whether ontological, ethical, aesthetic, or political in nature, Shusterman reveals that one’s understanding of embodiment influences the manner in which one inhabits the body. Indeed, this reinforces the claim that steps...