“A Careful Disorderliness”: Some Remarks on Somaesthetics and the Role of Methods in Philosophy

In the context of the present issue of The Journal of Somaesthetics, specifically dedicated to the topic of methodologies, my article aims to contribute to an open dialogue with some other esteemed colleagues on the question concerning the significance but also the limitations of methods in philosophy. In my article I take somaesthetics as my point of departure and mainly focus on this philosophical discipline in the first two sections, with particular attention to Richard Shusterman’s work, from his groundbreaking book Pragmatist Aesthetics to his more recent Adventures of the Man in Gold. At the same time, coherently with my philosophical background, mostly based on hermeneutics and critical theory, in the following sections of my article I try to broaden the picture and provide some remarks on the role of methodologies in philosophy in general (and not only in somaesthetics), supporting the conception of a philosophy that, following Adorno, proceeds “methodically unmethodically.”