Pragmatist Aesthetics, Ethics of Taste, and Feminism

Richard Shusterman’s Pragmatist Aesthetics, which celebrated its 30th anniversary of publication in 2022, is a book characterized by a great richness of sources and a great variety of topics. In fact, the questions addressed in Pragmatist Aesthetics include not only strictly aesthetic themes, but also a range of issues that have tended to be ignored by mainstream modern aesthetics (for example, popular art) and subjects frequently associated with other areas of philosophizing, such as ethics and politics. In my chapter, I first discuss and explain the meaning of chapter nine of Pragmatist Aesthetics (titled “Postmodern Ethics and the Art of Living”), which deals with the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Then, I focus my attention on the intriguing concept of an “ethics of taste,” whereby I move beyond Pragmatist Aesthetics to address Shusterman’s recent works: Ars Erotica, which he penned in 2021, and Bodies in the Streets, which he edited in 2019. In my view, these important books bring out some promising and highly relevant connections between somaesthetics and certain aspects of contemporary feminism in ethics and politics.