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…
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”…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
Preview: /Review: Agata Bielik-Robson, Another Finitude: Messianic Vitalism and Philosophy (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019), 312 pages./ Since Nietzsche announced (or prophesied) the death of God, thinkers who took his words seriously have been dealing with one crucial question: how to live a life stripped of any references to transcendent divinity? Are we to mourn…
Preview: /Review: Eli Kramer, Intercultural Modes of Philosophy, Volume One: Principles to Guide Philosophical Community (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2021), 382 pages./ Eli Kramer has provided us with the first volume of an ambitious trilogy entitled Intercultural Modes of Philosophy. His first volume, Principles to Guide Philosophical Community (hereafter PGPC), sets us on a rich, detailed,…
Preview: /Review: Michał Herer, In Praise of Friendship (Alresford, UK: Zero Books, 2021), 112 pages./ In this article I will try to discuss some thoughts presented by Michał Herer in his book In Praise of Friendship. I read it a couple of times and it certainly deserves both the Barbara Skarga prize and interest among young scholars and students…
Preview: /Review: Michael Webb, The Whole at Once: A Conversation on Meaning (Austin,TX: Fire Hill Press, 2020), 244 pages./ This is a book about a phenomenological challenge: to reach the depths of meaning. It relies principally on becoming aware of the self and of the core essence of wholes, be they collections of objects or sentences or ideas. But meaning…