Abstract
Starting with the axiom that embodied knowledge is the only mode of knowledge we possess, this essay argues that courage is a key virtue for artistic and philosophical research. It is rare for our cultural institutions to recognize or reward this virtue. The exploration of our somatic relations to ideas has largely been side-lined as a ‘merely subjective’ pursuit. The most obviously embodied arts such as dance and song are generally presumed to have (at best) a trivial relationship to knowledge. I argue that these arts provide a vast network of under-explored roads to knowledge due to their proximity to the pre-conditions for being alive at all. Breathing, vocalizing and moving are essential to thought and knowledge. The emergent field of performance philosophy explores how rigorous and repeatable experiments in somatic thinking are possible and desirable.