Philosophical Essay on Bioaesthetics in Aikidō: Reflections on a Life Along the Martial Way

Aikidō is a martial path founded by Morihei Ueshiba around 1940. The Nippon Budokan Foundation, an institution of considerable influence in Japan, defines Aikidō as a form of budō. Budō constitutes a physical culture that embodies Japanese tradition and spirituality, expressed through martial arts. In this thesis, martial arts are understood as bodily practices and techniques aimed at the formation of the subject, with budō serving as a guiding principle that shapes the subject’s mode of being in relation to practice. As a philosophical essay, this work draws upon the notion of the aesthetics of existence present in Foucauldian reflections. Foucault’s conception of the aesthetics of existence refers to a set of spiritual practices in which care of the self is imperative, with the objective of such practices being asceticism, enlightenment, and the formation of the moral subject. Aikidō, conceived as a technique of the self, governed by the imperative of budō, situates life as a work of art and the subject as the one who produces its own subjectivity—its very self.