Only A Promise of Happiness
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| + | '' [[Only A Promise of Happiness|Only A Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art]]'' (2008) is a book by [[Alexander Nehamas]]. The title is a reference to [[Stendhal]]'s [[promise of happiness]]. | ||
| - | '''Alexander Nehamas''' ({{lang-el|Αλέξανδρος Νεχαμάς}}; born 1946) is Professor of [[Philosophy]] and [[Edmund N. Carpenter, II]] Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities at [[Princeton University]] and a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts & Sciences]]. He works on [[Greek philosophy]], [[aesthetics]], [[Nietzsche]], [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]], and [[literary theory]]. | + | In this book, Nehamas disagrees with the [[disinterestedness]] of Kant and cites Plato: |
| - | He was born in [[Athens]], [[Greece]] in 1946. In 1964, he enrolled to [[Swarthmore College]]. He graduated in 1967 and completed his doctorate on Predication in [[Plato]]'s ''[[Phaedo]]'' under the direction of [[Gregory Vlastos]] at Princeton in 1971. He taught at the [[University of Pittsburgh]] and the [[University of Pennsylvania]] before joining the Princeton faculty in 1990. | + | :"Nothing could be farther from Plato's celebration of desire in the ''[[Symposium (Plato)|Symposium]]'' than Schopenhauer's hymn to its cessation. For Plato, the only reaction appropriate to beauty is erós—love, the desire to possess it." |
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| + | :"The most abstract and intellectual beauty provokes the urge to possess it no less than the most sensual inspires the passion to come to know it better’ (p. 7). | ||
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| + | Manet’s Olympia is designed "to jolt the audience, especially the men, into acknowledging that what they were enjoying was not a painted canvas or an idealized figure with an edifying message but a naked woman of their own place and time" (p. 27) | ||
| + | ==Blurb== | ||
| + | :Neither art nor philosophy was kind to beauty during the twentieth century. Much modern art disdains beauty, and many philosophers deeply suspect that beauty merely paints over or distracts us from horrors. Intellectuals consigned the passions of beauty to the margins, replacing them with the anemic and rarefied alternative, "aesthetic pleasure." ''In Only a Promise of Happiness'', Alexander Nehamas reclaims beauty from its critics. He seeks to restore its place in art, to reestablish the connections among art, beauty, and desire, and to show that the values of art, independently of their moral worth, are equally crucial to the rest of life. | ||
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| + | :Nehamas makes his case with characteristic grace, sensitivity, and philosophical depth, supporting his arguments with searching studies of art and literature, high and low, from Thomas Mann's ''Death in Venice'' and Manet's ''Olympia'' to television. Throughout, the discussion of artworks is generously illustrated. | ||
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| + | :Beauty, Nehamas concludes, may depend on appearance, but this does not make it superficial. The perception of beauty manifests a hope that life would be better if the object of beauty were part of it. This hope can shape and direct our lives for better or worse. We may discover misery in pursuit of beauty, or find that beauty offers no more than a tantalizing promise of happiness. But if beauty is always dangerous, it is also a pressing human concern that we must seek to understand, and not suppress. | ||
| + | ==See also== | ||
| + | *[[Somaesthetics]] | ||
| - | His early work was on [[Platonism|Platonic]] [[metaphysics]] and [[aesthetics]] as well as the philosophy of [[Socrates]], but he gained a wider audience with his 1985 book ''Nietzsche: Life as Literature'', which argued that Nietzsche thought of life and the world on the model of a literary text. Nehamas has said, "The virtues of life are comparable to the virtues of good writing—style, connectedness, grace, elegance—and also, we must not forget, sometimes getting it right." More recently, he has become well known for his view that philosophy should provide a form of life, as well as for his endorsement of the artistic value of [[television]]. In 2008, he delivered the [[Gifford Lectures]] at the University of Edinburgh. | ||
| - | ==Selected works== | ||
| - | * ''[[Nietzsche]]: Life as Literature'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1985) | ||
| - | * ''[[Symposium (Plato)|Symposium]]'' (translation, with [[Paul Woodruff]]) (1989) | ||
| - | * ''The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from [[Plato]] to [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]]'' (1998) | ||
| - | * ''[[Virtues]] of [[Authenticity (philosophy)|Authenticity]]: Essays on [[Plato]] and [[Socrates]]'' (1999) | ||
| - | * ''The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault: University of California Press'' (2000) | ||
| - | * '' [[Only A Promise of Happiness|Only A Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art]]'' (2008) | ||
| - | **“the only reaction appropriate to beauty is ''eros''—love, the desire to possess it” | ||
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Only A Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art (2008) is a book by Alexander Nehamas. The title is a reference to Stendhal's promise of happiness.
In this book, Nehamas disagrees with the disinterestedness of Kant and cites Plato:
- "Nothing could be farther from Plato's celebration of desire in the Symposium than Schopenhauer's hymn to its cessation. For Plato, the only reaction appropriate to beauty is erós—love, the desire to possess it."
- "The most abstract and intellectual beauty provokes the urge to possess it no less than the most sensual inspires the passion to come to know it better’ (p. 7).
Manet’s Olympia is designed "to jolt the audience, especially the men, into acknowledging that what they were enjoying was not a painted canvas or an idealized figure with an edifying message but a naked woman of their own place and time" (p. 27)
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Blurb
- Neither art nor philosophy was kind to beauty during the twentieth century. Much modern art disdains beauty, and many philosophers deeply suspect that beauty merely paints over or distracts us from horrors. Intellectuals consigned the passions of beauty to the margins, replacing them with the anemic and rarefied alternative, "aesthetic pleasure." In Only a Promise of Happiness, Alexander Nehamas reclaims beauty from its critics. He seeks to restore its place in art, to reestablish the connections among art, beauty, and desire, and to show that the values of art, independently of their moral worth, are equally crucial to the rest of life.
- Nehamas makes his case with characteristic grace, sensitivity, and philosophical depth, supporting his arguments with searching studies of art and literature, high and low, from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Manet's Olympia to television. Throughout, the discussion of artworks is generously illustrated.
- Beauty, Nehamas concludes, may depend on appearance, but this does not make it superficial. The perception of beauty manifests a hope that life would be better if the object of beauty were part of it. This hope can shape and direct our lives for better or worse. We may discover misery in pursuit of beauty, or find that beauty offers no more than a tantalizing promise of happiness. But if beauty is always dangerous, it is also a pressing human concern that we must seek to understand, and not suppress.
[edit]
See also
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