2021-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Ennobling Love and Erotic Elevation: A Response to Six Readings of Ars Erotica

Preview: In various guises and cultures, the theme of elevating, ennobling love is a recurrent topos in the premodern erotic theory my book traces. Freed from Plato’s problematic dualistic denigration of the body as prison of the soul and from the modern aesthetic prejudice of disinterestedness, Ars Erotica recaptures the valuable core of ennobling desire…

2021-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
The Erotic and the Political: The Somaesthetics of Sex in Social Context

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 436 pages./ Richard Shusterman’s work is remarkable, among other things, for extending the range and power of the discipline of aesthetics, conceived by him as fundamental to many dimensions of human experience. Indeed, he has…

2021-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
East and West on the Tension Between Ars Erotica and Ars Vivendi

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 436 pages./ Richard Shusterman’s Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love is a masterpiece in a number of respects. With its focus on erotic love and the aesthetics of lovemaking, the book…

2021-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
“Bringin’ Sexy Back” (and With it, Women): Shusterman Beyond Foucault on the Greeks

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 436 pages./ Like other contributors, I would like to begin by expressing my respect and admiration for the scale and scope of Richard Shusterman’s achievement in Ars Erotica. The Preface acknowledges “the vast amount of material”…

2021-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
The Somaesthetic Dimension of the Chinese Qi Erotics

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 436 pages./ Richard Shusterman is the not the first scholar in the West who introduces sex and sexuality in the Chinese tradition. Other scholars engaged in this theme include Robert van Gulik, Michel Foucault,…

2021-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Updating Artes Vulgares

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 436 pages./ I think “it is official” now. Ars Erotica will become some sort of classic. There are several reasons why. Some (even adult philosophers, as I have seen when Richard Shusterman has spoken…

2021-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
Somaesthetics and the Cross-Cultural Dressing of Desire

Preview: /Commentary: Richard Shusterman, Ars Erotica: Sex and Somaesthetics in the Classical Arts of Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 436 pages./ Somaesthetics, the field cultivated by Richard Shusterman since 1997, bore another juicy fruit for our enjoyment. This time, his interdisciplinary research – integrating the theoretical, empirical, and practical disciplines related…

2021-04Discussion Papers, Comments, Book Reviews
From Platonism and the Farnese Hercules to Steve Reeves and the Peplum Hercules via a Radical Ohio Hegelian and his Socialist German Acrobats

Preview: In Jane Campion’s recent film version of Thomas Savage’s Power of the Dog, young Peter comes across his, and his mother’s tormentor, Phil’s secret hiding place. There he discovers in a lean-to the cowboy homophobic Phil’s copies of Physical Culture. As he leafs through the magazines, he sees the famous pictures of Eugen Sandow and his…

2021-04Thematic Section
The Horizontal-Ontological Nature of The Physical Culture of Cancers

Abstract: Whereas classical Darwinian evolution is based on the model of vertical development, per species, and related sexual selection and natural mutations, along with environmental selective pressures, epi-genetics presents a supplemental view of horizontal development as DNA is both selectively transcribed and translated by mRNA and influenced by a process of horizontal gene transfer, including genetic…

2021-04Forum
Peirce on the Symbolical Foundation of Personhood

Abstract: This paper discusses the semiotic and metaphysical framework within which Peirce elaborated a symbolical and dynamical conception of personhood. It exhibits the centrality of Peirce’s early conception of the “unity of consistency” along with its decentering advantages. It describes how this gave rise to a metaphysics of personhood that questions the singularity…