Irony and Embodiment Toward a Rortian Philosophy of the Body

Date of Award

2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Edidin, Aron

Keywords

Rorty, Richard, Pragmatism, Embodiment, Body, Shusterman, Richard

Area of Concentration

Philosophy

Abstract

Richard Rorty writes that the aim of a good life should be aesthetically satisfying self-creation, in which a person achieves a beautiful life by inventing new words to describe himself or herself. Richard Shusterman has criticized this position, saying that it neglects the human body as a locus of self-creative activity and thus cannot accommodate the idea that a beautiful life can be achieved through work on one's body. After looking closely at the written exchange between Rorty and Shusterman, I argue that Rorty does indeed neglect the body, though--contra Shusterman--his views are able to accommodate bodily self-creation. I demonstrate how by developing a Rortian philosophy of the body which centers on the idea that the body has no essence or inherent nature which our descriptions must capture. Hence, we can allow our bodily activities to causally influence our inventive redescriptions of the body, so that they themselves might function as tools to improve our somatic lives.

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