Abstract
According to Terry Eagleton, culturalism in postmodern thought emphasizes culture's conquest of nature, which refrains from criticizing culture itself, but veils the finiteness of body with the infiniteness of will. Eagleton argues that the foundation of human reason is the dependent and limited human body, and that reason must reflect on whether culture would result in overestimation of the power of will and desire. Eagleton's view on body-aesthetics is a blend of ideas from Aristotle, British empiricists, Kant and Karl Marx. For Eagleton, both artworks and body have internal value and telos, and thus do not yield to any external purpose. Eagleton's body-aesthetics aims to find the teleological consistency of body and artworks. A clear understanding of his view on body-aesthetics in the new millennia must rest on perception of "virtue" and "praxis" in Aristotle's ethics.
First Page
211
Last Page
218
Recommended Citation
Yin, Zhike. 2020. "Body-ethics or Body-aesthetics?: An Investigation into Terry Eagleton's Recent View on Body." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 40, (1): pp.211-218. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol40/iss1/3
