Body consciousness : a philosophy of mindfulness and somaesthetics / Richard Shusterman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shusterman, Richard.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human body (Philosophy).

Aesthetics--Physiological aspects.

Aesthetics.

Physical Description:

xv, 239 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Summary:

Contemporary culture increasingly suffers from problems of attention, overstimulation, and stress. We are plagued by a growing variety of personal and social discontents generated by deceptive body images. This book argues that improved body consciousness can relieve these problems and enhance ones knowledge per formance, and pleasure. The body is our basic medium of perception and action, but focused attention to its feelings and movements has long been criticized as a damaging distraction that also ethically corrupts through self-absorption. In Body Consciousness Richard Shusterman eloquently 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 toward 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.

Contents:

1 Somaesthetics and Care of the Self: The Case of Foucault 15

2 The Silent, Limping Body of Philosophy: Somatic Attention Deficit in Merleau-Ponty 49

3 Somatic Subjectivities and Somatic Subjugation: Simone de Beauvoir on Gender and Aging 77

4 Wittgenstein's Somaesthetics: Explanation and Melioration in Philosophy of Mind, Art, and Politics 112

5 Deeper into the Storm Center: The Somatic Philosophy of William James 135

6 Redeeming Somatic Reflection: John Dewey's Philosophy of Body-Mind 180.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-225) and index.

ISBN:

9780521858908

0521858909

9780521675871

0521675871

OCLC:

167505033

Online:

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