Pragmatist Aesthetics and Confucianism

by Richard Shusterman

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I am grateful to Scott Stroud for organizing this symposium and inviting me to discuss pragmatist aesthetics and Confucianism. Neither field formed part of my university education, so my interest in them is essentially a product of fascination, devoid of professorial or professional pressure, though it was surely shaped by other contingencies and needs. Trained as an analytic philosopher in Jerusalem and Oxford, I first came to appreciate the power of pragmatism only in the mid-1980s when I moved to America. My awakening to the philosophical richness of Confucianism is much more recent. It began with my desire to get acquainted enough with classical Chinese philosophy in order to write prefaces for the Chinese translations (published in 2002) of Pragmatist Aesthetics and Practicing Philosophy. I very quickly became deeply impressed with the significant resonances between Chinese philosophy and the pragmatist themes that most appealed to me, so I continued my study of Chinese thought. There remains so much to learn.