Wszystkie przyjemności: duże i małe
All Pleasures Great and Small

Summary/Abstract: According to the American philosopher, Richard Shusterman, it is high time to revalue pleasure. In order to do so it is necessary to abandon German intellectual aesthetics (represented by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger and Gadamer) which rejected sensuous delusion in favour of rational truth and return to ancient Greek philosophy according to which there is nothing wrong with sensuous pre-interpretative experience. It is enough to observe the multitude of states which are related to pleasure, e.g. delight, satisfaction, contentment, euphoria and ecstasy as well as joy, having fun and feeling comfortable, to become aware of the fact that it is worth our time and effort to clear both art as well as philosophy of unnecessary gravity. Instead we should enhance them with the an element of hedonistic enjoyment, which for a long time has been undervalued, and thus bring them closer to the everlasting objective of happiness. Richard Shusterman proposes his own philosophical discipline called somaesthetics in which the key role is given to experience related to the body: perceiving reality and developing ourselves with our bodies. According to Monika Bakke, in art such a somaesthetic vision of life is advocated in the works of Urs Lüthi with the aim of life being happiness. The best example of this is a photo which presents the artist running on a treadmill with a smile on his face (Run for Your Life installation) which can be understood as the endless enjoyment of life without stopping to worry and give up one’s pleasures. In Lüthi’s works the borderline between art and life is fuzzy, and vast number of them have been inspired by his own life, e.g. The Complete Life and Work, Seen through the Pink Glasses of Desire and the Placebos and Surrogates cycles. Another important reason for this is the fact that his works promote a certain model of life. In a similar way to the ancient Greeks Lüthi asks questions such as how we should live and what we should do with our lives.

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