Robert Arp 
Tattoos – Philosophy for Everyone [PDF ebook] 
I Ink, Therefore I Am

I Ink, Therefore I Foreword x
Rocky Rakovic
I Am, Therefore I Ink: An Introduction to Tattoos –
Philosophy for Everyone: I Ink, Therefore I Am xiv
Robert Arp
Acknowledgments xxvii
SHEET I THE HISTORY AND NATURE OF TATTOOS 1
1 Tattoos and the Tattooing Arts in Perspective: An Overview
and Some Preliminary Observations 3
Charles Taliaferro and Mark Odden
2 How to Read a Tattoo, and Other Perilous Quests 14
Juniper Ellis
SHEET II TATTOOS AND ART 27
3 Are Tattoos Art? 29
Nicolas Michaud
4 Fleshy Canvas: The Aesthetics of Tattoos from Feminist and
Hermeneutical Perspectives 38
Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray and Tanya Rodriguez
SHEET III THE TATTOOED WOMAN 51
5 Female Tattoos and Graffiti 53
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein
6 Painted Fetters: Tattooing as Feminist Liberation
65
Nancy Kang
SHEET IV PERSONAL IDENTITY 81
7 Tattoo You: Personal Identity in Ink 83
Kyle Fruh and Emily Thomas
8 Illusions of Permanence: Tattoos and the Temporary Self
96
Rachel C. Falkenstern
9 My Tattoo May Be Permanent, But My Memory of It Isn’t
109
Clancy Smith
SHEET V EXPRESSIONS OF FREEDOM 121
10 Tattoos are Forever: Bodily Freedom and the
(Im)possibility of Change 123
Felipe Carvalho
11 Bearing the Marks: How Tattoos Reveal Our Embodied
Freedom 135
Jonathan Heaps
SHEET VI EXPERIENCES AND STORIES SURROUNDING TATTOOS
149
12 Never Merely ‘There’: Tattooing as a Practice of Writing
and a Telling of Stories 151
Wendy Lynne Lee
13 Something Terribly Flawed: Philosophy and ‘The
Illustrated Man’ 165
Kevin S. Decker
SHEET VII ETHICAL CONCERNS 179
14 The Vice of the Tough Tattoo 181
Jennifer Baker
15 To Ink, or Not To Ink: Tattoos and Bioethics 193
Daniel Miori
16 Writing on the Body: The Modern Morality of the Tattoo
206
Simon Woods
SHEET VIII EASTERN AND RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES 219
17 Is a Tattoo a Sign of Impiety? 221
Adam Barkman
18 Confessions of a Tattooed Buddhist Philosopher 230
Joseph J. Lynch
19 An Atheist and a Theist Discuss a Cross Tattoo and God’s
Existence 242
Robert Arp
Notes on Contributors 261

Robert Arp is a philosopher and ontologist who has taught
at numerous colleges and universities. He is the author of
Scenario Visualization: An Evolutionary Account of Creative
Problem Solving (2008) and a co-author of Critical Thinking:
An Introduction to Reasoning Well (2011), What’s Good
on TV: Understanding Ethics through Television
(Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), and Philosophy De MYSTi Fie D (2011);
in addition, he is editor of South Park and Philosophy: You
Know, I Learned Something Today (Wiley-Blackwell, 2006).
Series Editor
Fritz Allhoff is an associate professor in the philosophy
department at Western Michigan University, as well as a senior
research fellow at the Australian National University’s
Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. In addition
to editing the Philosophy for Everyone series, he is also
the volume editor or co-editor for several titles, including
Wine and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), Whiskey and
Philosophy (with Marcus P. Adams, Wiley, 2009), and Food and
Philosophy (with Dave Monroe, Wiley-Blackwell,
2007). His academic research interests engage various
facets of applied ethics, ethical theory, and the history and
philosophy of science.