Body and the Arts: The Need for Somaesthetics

This essay shall consider how somaesthetics is related to the field of fine arts, though the scope of somaesthetics is indeed wider, extending into all practices of life in which we can enhance our perception and performance through improved somatic self-use and self-knowledge. It begins by clarifying the idea of somaesthetics and how it is needed to counterbalance the strong tendencies in modern aesthetics, beginning with its founder Alexander Baumgarten, to neglect or reject the body's role in aesthetic experience. Hegel, a crucial figure in this tradition, will be critically examined, specially as to his ranking of the arts in terms of their relation to material embodiment. Using his classificatory scheme heuristically to highlight the body's wide-ranging role in the different arts, it is argued that somaesthetics can improve our understanding and performance of that role.