Richard Marc Shusterman

L'esthétique pragmatiste se distingue de la tradition philosophique en ce qu'elle ne cherche pas à séparer l'art de ce qui n'en est pas. Elle conçoit nos expériences esthétiques dans la continuité de celles qu'occasionnent nos diverses pratiques de vie, publiques comme privées. Comment penser cette continuité? C'est l'enjeu principal de ce livre, qui examine la question sous deux aspects. Les premiers chapitres retissent les liens qui nous permettent de comprendre comment nos concepts esthétiques les plus spécifiques, ceux que nous utilisons pour juger et apprécier l'art le plus consacré (aura, authenticité), sont solidaires d'expériences que peuvent nous faire vivre aussi, à leur manière, les arts dits populaires (techno, comédies musicales country, hip-hop), généralement négligés par la philosophie. La seconde partie explique comment nos capacités esthétiques, éthiques et critiques sont profondément déterminées par notre expérience corporelle - autofaçonnement quotidien, pratiques sportives, coutumes, et tout ce que l'on peut verser du côté d'un "souci de soi" ou style somatique : c'est ce que Richard Shusterman, cherchant à développer une nouvelle voie pragmatiste, nomme somaesthétique.

Pragmatism is experiencing a powerful revival. But the new pragmatism has not yet expressed itself in a new aesthetic, and not since Dewey's Art as Experience has there been a comprehensive pragmatist treatment of this field. Shusterman's bold and lively book fills the gap by proposing a pragmatist aesthetics for our current postmodern condition. Pragmatist Aesthetics treats the traditionally central topics of aesthetics: the definition of art, aesthetic experience and value, form and unity, interpretation, and the cognitive and moral worth of art. But it also directs philosophical aesthetics towards a much wider and more socially pertinent agenda by considering such contemporary issues as the institutionalization and cultural oppression of art, the aesthetic legitimacy of popular culture, and the ethical art of living beauty through the stylization of conduct and the aesthetic construction of the self. Gracefully but vigorously argued, Pragmatist Aesthetics is an important book which breaks new ground and liberates new areas and directions for philosophical inquiry. Its wide-ranging breadth and accessible style will appeal to all readers with an interest in contemporary philosophy, aesthetics and cultural studies.

This Critical Reader provides a new perspective on the work of France's foremost social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, by examining its philosophical import and promoting a fruitful dialogue between Bourdieu and philosophers in the English-speaking world. The contributors include leading philosophers who critically assess Bourdieu's philosophical theories and their significance from diverse philosophical perspectives to reveal which dimensions of his thought are the most useful for philosophy today. These discussions also raise important questions about the current institutional limits of philosophy and how those limits may be overcome through a more robust alliance with the social sciences and the practical social world. The contributions cover Bourdieu's use of central figures in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition; his relationship to analytical philosophy and pragmatism through his concept of habitus; his position in twentieth-century continental philosophy; the political dimension of his work; the function and limits of his notion of "the field"; and the relation of his explanatory models to new directions in the philosophy of science. The book also discusses some of his most recent writing not yet translated into English, and it concludes with a chapter by Bourdieu in which he analyses the diverse structural problems and the transformations involved in importing intellectual ideas from one national field to another. The volume also offers a specially prepared comprehensive bibliography of Bourdieu's publications in French and English from 1958 to 1998

Kohelet, that ancient postmodern who already remarked that all is vanity and there is nothing new under the sun, also insisted that there is a time for everything: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. There is no mention of a time for interpretation, but surely there is one; and just as surely that time is now. Our age is even more hermeneutic than it is postmodern, and the only meaningful question to be raised at this stage is whether there is ever a time when we refrain from interpreting. To answer affirmatively by citing dreamless sleep is to dodge the real issue, which is whether we can ever refrain from interpreting without thereby refraining from intelligent activity altogether. There is a host of holist hermeneuts who answer this firmly in the negative, maintaining that simply to perceive, read, understand or behave intelligently at all is already, and must always be, to interpret. They hold that whenever we experience anything with meaning, such meaningful experience always must be a case and product of interpretation.

Contemporary culture increasingly suffers from problems of attention, over-stimulation, and stress, and a variety of personal and social discontents generated by deceptive body images. This book argues that improved body consciousness can relieve these problems and enhance one's knowledge, performance, and pleasure. The body is our basic medium of perception and action, but focused attention to its feelings and movements has long been criticised as a damaging distraction that also ethically corrupts through self-absorption. In Body Consciousness, Richard Shusterman refutes such charges by engaging the most influential twentieth-century somatic philosophers and incorporating insights from both Western and Asian disciplines of body-mind awareness. Rather than rehashing intractable ontological debates on the mind-body relation, Shusterman reorients study of this crucial nexus towards a more fruitful, pragmatic direction that reinforces important but neglected connections between philosophy of mind, ethics, politics, and the pervasive aesthetic dimensions of everyday life.

This Critical Reader provides a new perspective on the work of France's foremost social theorist Pierre Bourdieu, by examining its philosophical import and promoting a fruitful dialogue between Bourdieu and philosophers in the English-speaking world. The contributors include leading philosophers who critically assess Bourdieu's philosophical theories and their significance from diverse philosophical perspectives to reveal which dimensions of his thought are the most useful for philosophy today. These discussions also raise important questions about the current institutional limits of philosophy and how those limits may be overcome through a more robust alliance with the social sciences and the practical social world. The contributions cover Bourdieu's use of central figures in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition; his relationship to analytical philosophy and pragmatism through his concept of habitus; his position in twentieth-century continental philosophy; the political dimension of his work; the function and limits of his notion of "the field"; and the relation of his explanatory models to new directions in the philosophy of science. The book also discusses some of his most recent writing not yet translated into English, and it concludes with a chapter by Bourdieu in which he analyses the diverse structural problems and the transformations involved in importing intellectual ideas from one national field to another. The volume also offers a specially prepared comprehensive bibliography of Bourdieu's publications in French and English from 1958 to 1998.