Somaesthetics and C. S. Peirce

I

From its outset, the project of somaesthetics—briefly defined as the critical, ameliorative study of the experience and use of the body as a locus of sensory-aesthetic appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-fashioning—has been largely inspired and shaped by the perspectives of classical pragmatist philosophy. Among the classical pragmatists, John Dewey has clearly been the preeminent influence on somaesthetics. The project was first introduced through a study of Dewey’s views on immediate experience and embodiment and his work with somatic therapist F. M. Alexander.¹ Moreover, reclaiming the still vibrant utility of the notion of experience that is central to Dewey and the classical pragmatist tradition, somaesthetics sought to balance our culture’s unhappy obsession with oppressive norms of attractive external body appearance (the realm of representational somaesthetics) by instead proposing a compensating focus on appreciating the inner experience of aesthetic feelings of one’s own body (experiential somaesthetics). As this project developed, it was articulated in terms of three branches—analytic somaesthetics (a descriptive inquiry into the functioning of our bodily perceptions and somatic practices and their various cognitive, social, and cultural uses), pragmatic somaesthetics (a more normative inquiry into methods of somatic improvement and their comparative critique), and practical somaesthetics (the fully embodied concrete practice of somatic disciplines). Dewey emerged as the paradigmatic prophet of this field, for he was exemplary in vigorously and astutely pursuing all three of these branches, by making disciplined somatic self-cultivation a matter of personal practice and not just a topic for theoretical and methodological discourse.²

When Shannon Sullivan advanced the somaesthetic project by emphasizing the transactional nature of somatic experience while underlining its applications to feminist and race issues, she too chose Dewey (and his concept of transactional selves) as the classical pragmatist inspiration for her work.³ In Martin Jay’s “Somaesthetics and Democracy: Dewey and Contemporary Body Art,” which explores somaesthetics as a resource for progressive projects of democracy and critique of established sociopolitical norms, Dewey once again is the featured (and only) classical pragmatist discussed.⁴ The contributions of Eric Mullis to somaesthetics, which focus on theater and performance art, likewise return to Dewey as the classical pragmatist model for his arguments.⁵ Others who discuss somaesthetics seem similarly focused on Dewey as the lone classical pragmatist prophet of this field.⁶

Our admiration of Dewey’s enormous value in this field should not, however, obscure the rich resources of other classical pragmatists for somaesthetics. In recent writings I have increasingly emphasized William James’s important and wide-ranging contributions to somaesthetic inquiry.⁷ Like Dewey, James worked tirelessly, imaginatively, and even courageously in all three dimensions of somaesthetics. His theoretical investigations into the bodily basis of mental activity (not only in our emotions but in our more distinctively cognitive and practical thought) helped make his Principles of Psychology a path-making book and indeed the book that inspired Dewey toward naturalism in the philosophy of mind. James’s theoretical inquiries into the body–mind nexus were also combined with intense study of various somatic disciplines to improve body-mind functioning and harmony and to expand consciousness. Moreover, James’s pragmatism in somatic studies not only involved analyzing methodologies of practice but also took the form of experimenting with these disciplines in the most concrete and practical way by testing them on his own flesh and consciousness.

Among the classical pragmatists, James seems even more accomplished than Dewey in articulating the finer points of somaesthetic introspection, in explaining its logical principles, and in giving vividly precise words to the feelings discovered in such somaesthetic self-examination. But unlike Dewey, he did not advocate the use of somaesthetic reflection for practical life. I should further note that James played an encouraging role in the launching of the term somaesthetics, whose apparent neologism was explained and justified in the words James chose to explain pragmatism, as “a new name for some old ways of thinking.”⁸

James, of course, did not coin the term pragmatism but, rather, took it from his friend C. S. Peirce, the first and founding figure of classical pragmatism. Since Peirce...