Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics (review)

In a world that had largely adopted a Deweyan sense of itself, Body Consciousness would not have to be written. In such a world, it would be taken for granted that philosophy should account for sensory experience as much as for cognitive experience, that there are no minds apart from the bodies that support them, and that conscious reflection on the health and well-being of those bodies is a necessary element of any journey to enlightenment or happiness. However, we do not yet live in such a world, at least not we philosophers, who continue to write as if thinking can be thought about in isolation from the physical environment, that intelligence is a purely mental quality, and that focusing on the body is both narcissistic and unrelated to moral growth. Contemporary culture reflects this lack of understanding in its fixation on idealized images of the external body, its increasing reliance on pain-killers and other symptom-alleviating drugs (both legal and illegal), and its failure to adequately overcome social and racial inequalities and stereotypes often associated with bodies that are different from a norm. For a Deweyan philosopher, the underlying presumptions of these cultural failings are preposterous, given Dewey's lifelong attempt to describe experience as situated and transactional, body-mind as a continuous whole, and freedom as the result of a willingness to incorporate the physical environment into intelligent action.

Richard Shusterman is most definitely a Deweyan, having developed his own flavor of Deweyan pragmatism in previous essays and books—most clearly in his 1997 Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life—and this book reflects that orientation throughout, leading to a wholeheartedly Deweyan consummation in a chapter entitled "Redeeming Somatic Reflection: John Dewey's Philosophy of Body-Mind." This consummation comes, however, only after a thorough examination of ideas about the role of the body in the works of Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, Simone de Beauvoir, Wittgenstein, and William James, in each case showing how those ideas—while an improvement on the classical mind-body dualisms of Plato, Descartes, and Kant—are still limited in terms of either philosophical theory, ideas about everyday living, or the practical means of incorporating "body consciousness" into healthy living. For this book seeks not only to overcome traditional dualisms about mind and body, questioning philosophy's longstanding reluctance to take full account of the role of the body in lived experience, but also to overcome the tendency of philosophy to distance itself from embodied practices, such as meditation, yoga, and the Alexander/Feldenkrais methods of somatic education, as well as from the "merely" empirical sciences and such seemingly nonphilosophical everyday activities as sex, eating, and exercise. What Shusterman seeks, and what he eventually suggests that Dewey has come closest to providing, is a comprehensive understanding of experience, incorporating thought, word, deed, and even spirit.

I found myself both engrossed with and intrigued by this book throughout. It is lucidly written for a general educated audience, assuming little specific knowledge of the philosophers it treats, but moves quickly beyond reiteration, not distracted by irrelevant details, as it continually builds toward its Deweyan conclusions. It includes numerous helpful footnotes that provide guidance to those who wish to explore Shusterman's more controversial claims in further detail. I especially liked the way that Shusterman weaves contemporary issues such as commercialism, the proper role of technology, policies towards people with disabilities, and attitudes towards difference into his narrative. Perhaps the only meaningful criticism I can make of the book is that, for a reader with a solid understanding of Dewey's work (that is, well beyond his explicitly educational writings), the book sometimes tantalizingly withholds the obvious Deweyan implications of a particular dialectical line of thinking until the last chapter or hints at them in a footnote referencing Dewey. Such readers will see through some of Shusterman's more obvious rhetorical ploys—not so often as to frustrate, but certainly enough to...