





































Review

The driving force behind the corporeal turn in 
recent philosophy is to overcome what many see as 
a stultifying reliance on the eye in the Western canon 
of  aesthetics for both knowing and appreciating 
the world. Developments in neuroscience would 
bear-out this effort. Knowing is closely tied to the 
emotions and the emotions are closely tied to the 
more immersive senses of  touch, taste, hearing 
and smell. By paying closer attention to non-visual 
ways of  perceiving, designers stand to make their 
work more responsive to desires for a more fully 
experienced world. Contributing to this endeavor, 
Ritu Bhatt has convened some of  the most well-
known names in the philosophy of  embodied 
aesthetics and in the role of  the body in design 
to bring together the under-theorized disciplines 
of  architecture and aesthetics, and to explore how 
dissolving certain disciplinary boundaries could 
help reconsideration of  the body in design. While 
the results of  this cross-disciplinary work give 
encouraging signs of  the vitality of  this line of  
inquiry, any such work inevitably leads to questions 
of  the state of  the sub-discipline and the identity of  
the audience. The mostly engaging and well-written 
essays fall short of  providing clear answers to these 
questions. 

The book is divided into two sections; the “Role 

Rethinking Aesthetics: The Role of Body in Design, 
Edited by Ritu Bhatt

New York: Routledge Press, 2013.

ISBN 978-0-415-53474 (hbk)/978-0-415-53475-8 (pbk)

Price $170.00 (hbk)/$49.95 (pbk)

Reviewed by Tom Spector



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of  Aesthetic Response in Everyday Life,” and “Modes of  Aesthetic Response: 
Tacit Perception and Somatic Consciousness.” It begins with well-established 
pragmatist philosopher Richard Shusterman’s “Everyday Aesthetics of  
Embodiment.” Since his book Pragmatist Aesthetics, in which he lays out the 
concept of  “somaesthetics,” Shusterman has been a prominent exponent of  
the embodied nature of  aesthetic response. So it makes sense that he would 
lead-off  the essays. But the piece is also a wonderfully clear-headed account 
of  his efforts to sensitize himself  to an embodied consciousness—especially 

of  the associated increased sensory participation (perhaps we should call it 
a renewed aesthetic living) possible to achieve, in his case, by immersion in 
a Zen Buddhist school in Japan. 

This essay is followed by Mark Johnson’s “Dewey’s Big Idea for 
Aesthetics” In which Johnson gives a concise explanation of  Deweyan 
aesthetics: 

Art reveals, through immediate presentation of  qualitative unities, the meaning 
and significance of  some aspect of  our world, either as it was, is, or might be….
Dewey’s central question here is how art realizes meaning. His answer is that art 
achieves meaning by enacting in us a heightened awareness of  the “pervasive unifying 
quality” of  a given situation.” Johnson then argues for a set of  implications that 
follow from a Deweyan interpretation of  art and aesthetics. Most importantly, 
“Pervasive qualitative unity” is what makes an experience aesthetic. Furthermore, 
this unity is the main point of  works of  art. These two ideas imply the third point 
that “any aesthetic theory or critical analysis that attends only to selected features of  
an artwork will necessarily fail to capture what is most important (pg. 42).

Johnson’s reappraisal of  Dewey’s relevance provides both a sensitive and 
well-reasoned set of  implications for embodied aesthetics.

Three more essays round-out Part One. Sonit Bafna provides a 
worthwhile close reading of  an iconic building in downtown Atlanta, Marcel 
Breuer’s Atlanta Public Library, completed in 1980. While it is delightful to 
revisit a building that asserted high modernism on a mostly unappreciative 
town, it is curious that the essay is primarily concerned with the visual in a 
book emphasizing embodiment. 

Following Bafna, Remei Capdevila-Werning’s essay on symbolism in 
buildings rides a mini-wave of  a resurgence of  interest in Nelson Goodman. 
The author reminds us of  the Nelsonian ways in which buildings convey 
meaning through the “main modes” of  “denotation and exemplification” and 
the lesser modes of  expression and indirection (pg. 89). But the meanings of  
these terms get stretched a bit. Does the Villa Rotunda “symbolize harmonic 
proportions” as the author asserts (pg. 88), or does it enact them and realize 
them? The further assertion that “there are no true or false interpretations, 



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but rather, right or wrong, adequate or inadequate 
to the work’s symbolic functioning” is perplexing 
(pg. 94). How could an interpretation be right or 
wrong if  it is completely uncoupled from its being 
true or false? Capdevila-Werning would have it that 
fitness or aptness would suffice, but how could these 
concepts be stable without some correspondence 
theory of  truth under them? 

Chris Abel’s nearly forty-page essay “The 
Extended Self ” tells the story of  twentieth century 
architects’ naïve attempts to capture embodiment, 
the more sophisticated explanations provided 
by Polanyi, and confirmation by more recent 
developments in neuroscience. The purpose is to 
provide a convincing argument for the existence 
in all humans of  extensive body maps. These well-
developed maps, the author hopes, could be used 
to provide a more psychologically sound basis 
for teaching design than do current methods that 
more resemble indoctrination. Though they do 
not directly engage architecture theory, these ideas 
could surely be the basis for substantial further 
work.

Part Two opens with Galen Cranz’s “Somatics 
and Aesthetics” which both condenses and builds 
on her exploration of  the near environment 
provided by her well-regarded book The Chair. 
The essay provides a concise look into somatics – 
the conceptual fusing of  sensation, emotion and 
knowledge – with examples of  its implications 
for design thinking based especially in the author’s 
knowledge of  the Alexander Technique. 

Following Cranz, Yuriko Saito’s “The Moral 
Dimension of  Japanese Aesthetics” is one of  the 
standout essays in the volume. Her main point, 
similar to the one Kant attempted to establish in 
the Critique of  the Power of  Judgment, is that aesthetic 
sensitivity enhances one’s ability to act ethically. Her 
examples drawn from Japanese arts provide vivid 
examples of  the relationship between aesthetic and 

Saito’s main 
point is that 

aesthetic 
sensitivity 

enhances one’s 
ability to act 

ethically

“

”



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moral concepts. These examples also seem capable of  extension into other 
cultures. 

Editor Ritu Bhatt’s own contribution discusses the relevance of  both 
Feng shui and Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language as illustrative of  
“unconscious relationships with space, day-to-day cognition, and normative 
frameworks of  knowledge” (pg. 183). Bhatt wishes, not to promote either 
concept, but rather to use their persistence as traditional agent-empowering 
practices to help overcome the seemingly intractable opposition between 

high modernist presumptions to get at architecture’s essence on the one 
hand, and post-critical assertions that such theoretical projects are best left 
alone on the other. While bringing some rapprochement to these conflicting 
outlooks would be welcome, it is a lot to ask of  these two examples. While 
both Feng shui and A Pattern Language are intimately connected with 
embodiment in space, it is hard to say what is new that either brings to the 
discussion. 

The last two essays, David Seamon’s short “Environmental 
Embodiment, Merlau-Ponty, and Hillier’s Theory of  Space Syntax” and 

Juhani Pallasmaa’s “Mental and Existential Ecology” should be seen more 
as survey pieces suggestive of  future areas of  inquiry than as presenting a 
sustained argument. Seamon’s straightforward aim is to introduce Merlau-
Ponty to sociologies of  space, place and body. Pallasmaa introduces a 
basketful of  concepts: “loss of  silence,” mediation between “world and 
self,” the neurobiological insights of  artists, “existential space,” the primacy 
of  touch, the loss of  hapticity and how architecture structures not only 
experiences but our inner world. The essay’s speculative nature makes the 
reader wonder if  it would have been better placed as an introductory piece. 
Perhaps its inclusion at the end of  the volume was meant to leave readers 
with a sense of  large vistas yet to come, but those of  us who want to know if  
this new cross-disciplinary effort has direction will not come away with any 
strong compass points. 


