L’expérience esthétique et les enjeux du corps comme exercices spirituels contemporains, le cas Richard Shusterman

The body, often marginalized in Western philosophy as a distraction from truth, is reclaimed by pragmatist thinkers such as Richard Shusterman as central to identity, perception, and action. Shusterman's somaesthetics proposes that the body is not merely an instrument but the fundamental medium for engaging with the world, making it the material for a new kind of spiritual exercise. This article examines how somaesthetics can be understood as a spiritual exercise, addressing both its theoretical and practical dimensions, and explores how it designs a philosophical way of life through the cultivation of an aesthetic life.

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Abstract

Is the somaesthetics proposed by Richard Shusterman a spiritual exercise ? In ancient philosophy the body had a significant role as an understanding of the world and as a mean for spiritual exercises, but it was not without a certain number of ambiguities. Plato is carrying a certain responsibility. In the Phaedo, the body distracts us from reality and our quest for truth, but in The Republic, the importance of the body is emphasized in the formation of the self. Therefore, it is contemporary philosophers who fully take the body into account—in particular the pragmatist philosophers who recall that the body constitutes an essential dimension of individual’s identity. The body is not just an object, it functions “like an individual’s embodied consciousness”, Richard Shusterman underlines. If the body has been, in the history of philosophy, relegated to the simple status of an instrument, pragmatism shows that on the contrary it is a question of bringing an attentive conscience to it, because it is the most fundamental medium in the world. It seems key in our interaction with the environment, and therefore our daily perceptions, actions and thoughts.The challenge of this article is to determine how somaesthetics can be understood as a spiritual exercise. We will tackle the theoretical aspect as well as the practical aspect in order to understand how the body, proposed by Richard Shusterman, seems to be the material of a new type of spiritual exercise. Furthermore, to what extent does soma-aesthetics design a philosophical way of life through the development of an aesthetic life.