Description
Book SynopsisThis book addresses the interrelations between aesthetics, ethics, and politics in the framework of pragmatist aesthetics, offering a comprehensive panorama of the ways and fields in which pragmatist aesthetics ties in with vital social and ethical problems of modernity. Most of the contributors refer to the model propounded by Richard Shusterman. Following in Dewey’s footsteps, Shusterman has elaborated and expanded his concept, adding new dimensions to it. The most important supplement is the idea of aesthetic experience being constituted by our bodiliness. In somaesthetics, pragmatism has acquired a new dimension – a fully developed, comprehensive aesthetic theory. Pragmatist aesthetics with its essential notion of the body engages in critical dialogue with many key concepts of modernity which locate the body in social and cultural frameworks. The articles collected in this volume illustrate the complex range of pragmatist aesthetics and its impact on the understanding of crucial issues in social and moral philosophy.
Table of Contents“Beauty and Action”, Leszek Koczanowicz and Katarzyna Liszka Part One: Politics, Community, and the City “Somaesthetics and Politics: Incorporating Pragmatist Aesthetics for Social Action”, Richard Shusterman “Embodied Communities”, Leszek Koczanowicz “Ostentation and Agoraphobia in the City”, Adam Chmielewski Part Two: Aesthetic Experience “‘Anything Goes’ vs. ‘Who Touches this Book Touches a Man’: William James and Paul Feyerabend on Metaphysical, Ethical, and Aesthetic ‘Abundance’”, Sami Pihlström “Aesthetics as Duty or Aesthetics as Faith: Notes on Richard Shusterman’s Pragmatist Aesthetics, with Reference to Adorno and Castoriadis”, David Schauffler Part Three: Ethics, Humanism, and Social Hope “The Linguistic World: Rorty’s Aesthetic Meliorism”, Rosa M. Calcaterra “The Concept of Man in the Shadow of the Shoah: Geras, Rorty and Shusterman in Dialogue”, Katarzyna Liszka “Experience and Judgment: Political and Aesthetic”, John Ryder “Somaesthetic Encounter with Oneself and the Other”, Robert Dobrowolski Part Four: Art of Living and Life Politics “Making the Pragmatist Art of Living Explicit”, Emil Višnovský “The Aesthetic Cosmopolitan from a Neo-Pragmatist Perspective: Themes and Challenges in Shusterman”, Michael Rings “Philosophical Anthropology in Life Politics of Today”, Hans-Peter Krüger About the Contributors Index
