Richard Shusterman (born 1949) is an American pragmatist philosopher. Known for his contributions to philosophical aesthetics and the emerging field of somaesthetics, currently he is the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Florida Atlantic University. He directs the FAU (Florida Atlantic University) Center for Body, Mind, and Culture.
Biography and career
Richard Shusterman was born on December 3, 1949, to a Jewish family living in Philadelphia. At the age 16 he left his home and went to Israel, where he continued his education, studying English and philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. There he received a B.A. degree in English and Philosophy, and later an M.A. degree in philosophy (both degrees awarded magna cum laude). Shusterman did his doctoral studies in philosophy at St. John’s College, Oxford University. His doctoral supervisor was J. O. Urmson, and his examiners were Stuart Hampshire and Patrick Gardiner.
After teaching at different Israeli academic institutions, and receiving tenure at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev with an episode as a visiting fellow at St. John's College, Oxford University during academic year 1984/85, Shusterman became an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA in 1986. He was granted tenure in 1988 and promoted to full professor in 1991. He then served as chair of the philosophy department between the years of 1998–2004. In 2004 Richard Shusterman left Temple University to become the Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, where he also holds the rank of Professor in the departments of Philosophy and English.
During his years at the University of Jerusalem, Shusterman focused on analytic philosophy. The interest carried over with his doctoral dissertation at Oxford University; The Object of Literary Criticism which he wrote at St. John's College under the supervision of J. O. Urmson and defended in 1979. It was published under the original title in 1984.
1988 saw the publication of Shusterman's second book, T. S. Eliot and the Philosophy of Criticism, and with it came a turn in his philosophical focus as well. Influenced by the work that produced the book and personal experiences, Shusterman's attention moved from analytic philosophy to pragmatism. He also began work to develop his own theory of pragmatist aesthetics; based on John Dewey's aesthetics but augmented by the argumentative methods and tools of analytic philosophy.
His third book published, Pragmatist Aesthetics in 1992, brought a big breakthrough in Shusterman's academic career. The book's original approach to the problems of definition of art, organic wholes, interpretation, popular art, and the ethics of taste brought him international fame as the book was translated into 14 languages (French, German, Finnish, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Slovakian, Hungarian, Romanian, Italian, and Russian) and several editions were published. Shusterman's position was further strengthened by three subsequent publications: Practicing Philosophy in 1997, Performing Live in 2000, and Surface and Depth in 2002; in which he continued the pragmatist tradition, raising significant interest, provoking numerous critiques and stimulating debates not only among professional philosophers, but in the areas of literary and cultural studies as well.
In Practicing Philosophy, Shusterman introduces his concept of , which he elaborates in greater detail in Performing Live. Somaesthetics is the focus of Shusterman's two subsequent books, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics and Thinking through the Body: Essays in Somaesthetics. The first of these books, translated into seven languages, (French, Polish, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese, and Italian) helped establish somaesthetics as an international, interdisciplinary project involving scholars from fields beyond philosophy, while the second book consolidated this movement toward the interdisciplinary approach by applying somaesthetics to various arts, and cultural practices.
In 2007, as a part of his project of developing somaesthetics, Shusterman established the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture at FAU. He is a member of many editorial boards and has been allocated important grants and fellowships for his research; from the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Fulbright Commission, and the Humboldt Foundation.
One of the important factors influencing Shusterman's philosophy has been his international career. For instance, his work in France with Pierre Bourdieu, the Sorbonne, and the College International de Philosophie has allowed his pragmatism to engage and deploy the contemporary French philosophical tradition. His Fulbright Professorship in Berlin enabled his pragmatism to intersect more closely with contemporary German philosophy. Similarly, his years as a visiting research professor in Hiroshima, Japan and in Beijing and Shandong in China facilitated his study of Asian philosophy and Zen practice.
Shusterman philosophy stretches beyond the confines of professional academic life. In 1995, he was a delegate member of the UNESCO project Philosophy and Democracy in the World, and for several years he directed the UNESCO project MUSIC: Music, Urbanism, Social Integration and Culture. In 2012 he prepared a project commissioned by UNESCO that aims to use the internet to stimulate international youth to immerse in dialogue about peace and violence, through the medium of art. Recalling the classical Greek concept of education, the project is named PAIDEIA, an acronym that stands for Peace through Art and Internet Dialog for Education and Intercultural Association. On a more local level, during the years 1998–2004, he organized and hosted a public discussion forum, titled "Dialogues on the Square", at Philadelphia's main Barnes & Noble bookstore, at Rittenhouse Square. In 2002, he received his professional certification as a Feldenkrais practitioner, and he has worked since as a professor, researcher, lecturer, director of the Center for Body, Mind, and Culture, somatic educator, and therapist.
Philosophical work
Shusterman's place in contemporary pragmatism Contemporary pragmatism can be divided into two sub-fields; the neo-classical and the neo-analytical.See, e.g., T. Rockmore, "On Classical and Neo-Analytic Forms of Pragmatism", Metaphilosophy vol. 36, no. 3, April, 2005. The latter has been well described by Richard Rorty, as an amalgam of the elements of classical pragmatism and analytic philosophy, which is sometimes supplemented, especially in Rorty's case, by the ideas of continental thinkers like Martin Heidegger.See, e.g., R. Rorty, "Truth without Correspondence to Reality", in Philosophy and Social Hope (London: Penguin 1999), p. 24-27. The former, represented, among others, by Susan Haack, is more conservative in its development of the classical tradition and adopts a critical stance toward Rorty's interpretation thereof.Cf. S. Haack, "Pragmatism, Old and New", Contemporary Pragmatism, vol. 1, no. 1, June, 2004.
Assuming this description is correct, Shusterman's pragmatism lies somewhere in the middle between the above-mentioned positions. Although his analytic background and acceptance of some of Rorty's ideas (he even subsumes his and Rorty's thought under a common category of "reconstructivist genealogical-poetic pragmatism"R. Shusterman, "Pragmatism and Culture: Margolis and Rorty", in Surface and Depth. Dialectics of Criticism and Culture, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).) seemingly make him a neo-analytic pragmatist, the stress he puts on the importance of the notion of experience, which Rorty would like to substitute with the notion of language, chimes perfectly with the neo-classical stance.
Besides classical pragmatism and analytic philosophy, Shusterman's interests touch varied traditions and disciplines: continental sociology (Pierre Bourdieu)See, e.g., R. Shusterman, "Cultural Analysis and the Limits of Philosophy: The Case of Bourdieu" in Surface and Depth. and philosophy (Michel Foucault, Michel de Montaigne, Friedrich Nietzsche,)R. Shusterman, "Somaesthetics and Care of the Self: The Case of Foucault", Monist, 83, 2000; R. Shusterman "Entertainment: A Question for Aesthetics", British Journal of Aesthetics, 43, 2003. Western body therapy (Moshe Feldenkrais, F. Matthias Alexander)R. Shusterman, "The Somatic Turn" in Performing Live (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000). as well as East-Asian thought (Confucius).R. Shusterman, "Pragmatism and East-Asian Thought", Metaphilosophy, 35, 2004; R. Shusterman, "Pragmatist Aesthetics and East-Asian Philosophy", Naked Punch (online edition), May, 2006; http://www.nakedpunch.com/shustermanchina.htm .
This diversity of interests and inspirations finds its reflection in the scope of Shusterman's philosophical work which embraces not only aesthetics, but also metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, political theory as well as metaphilosophy; in which he advocates the idea of philosophy as the art of living.
Experience
Experience serves as a basic category in Shusterman's pragmatism, both in terms of methodology (the pragmatist should always work from experience) See R. Shusterman, Performing Live, p. 96. as well as ontology or epistemology (experience "is a transactional nexus of interacting energies connecting the embodied self and its environing world"R. Shusterman, "Intellectualism and the Field of Aesthetics", Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 220, 2002).) but contrary to John Dewey, Shusterman does not engage in constructing a general metaphysical conception. He has, however, made significant comments on Dewey's insights R. Shusterman, "Pragmatism Between Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Education", Studies in Philosophy and Education, 22, 2003. and defends Dewey's idea of immediate, nondiscursive experience against the criticism put forward by Richard Rorty.See R. Shusterman, "Somatic Experience. Foundation or Reconstruction?", in Practicing Philosophy: Pragmatism and the Philosophical Life (New York: Routledge,1997).
While Rorty shares Dewey's commitment to debunk epistemological foundationalism, he (Rorty) believes that the notion of language is better suited to achieve this goal, than the notion of immediate, non-discursive experience preferred by Dewey. Rorty further says that Dewey's theory itself collapses into a version of foundationalism, where immediate, non-discursive experience serves as evidence for particular knowledge claims.
To this, Shusterman replies that: (a) The anti-foundationalist thrust of the notion of language is not as clear as Rorty sees it (in fact language has been frequently used as a foundationalist category) (b) Dewey never really intended his theory of experience to be a kind of epistemological foundationalism, but rather wanted to celebrate the richness and value of immediate experience, including "the immediate dimension of somatic experience" and to emphasize the positive role such experience can play in improving the quality of human life. (The inspiration of body theorist-therapist F. M. Alexander is important here). Although he argues that Dewey's theory was ultimately spoiled by a kind of foundationalism (not the one Rorty accuses Dewey of but rather one asserting that the specific quality of immediate experience is the glue that makes coherent thought possible), Shusterman believes that the philosophical value of experience can and should be reaffirmed in an anti-foundationalist form.