Fine Art as the “Art of Living”: Johann Gottfried Herder’s Calligone Reconsidered from a Somaesthetic Point of View

Inspired by Shusterman’s concept of philosophy as an “embodied art of living,” this paper revisits Johann Gottfried Herder’s late Calligone (1800) from a somaesthetic point of view, arguing firstly that Herder’s theory of the agreeable and the beautiful is based on his conception of aesthetics as a theory of the senses; and secondly that Herder’s theory of art focuses on the relationship between art and life. Calligone should accordingly be re-evaluated, this paper maintains, in light of a recent development in aesthetics: from the philosophy of art to what is known as somaesthetics, aisthetics, or everyday aesthetics.