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More copies of this ISBN:
Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art
by Alexander Nehamas
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About This Book
ISBN13: 9780691095219 |
Synopses & Reviews
Review:
[Nehamas] writes with philosophical depth and great clarity and grace. His thoughts are lively and provocative, and he argues that the question of beauty (what is beautiful to me might not be beautiful to you) and the value of art are not rarefied topics, but part of the fabric of our everyday lives.
Review:
Alexander Nehamas's brave ambition is to bridge the gap between philosophy and art criticism. Writing as a philosopher with a great interest in art history, he uses a wide range of examples, from high art and mass art, from the visual arts and literature. Most philosophers in the analytic tradition write in a detached way. Nehamas, by contrast, presents an account of great feeling. This is a great, bravely provocative analysis. There is nothing else like this in the literature.
Review:
Nehamas' language itself is fascinating, often giving rise to thoughts that in themselves are worth contemplating.
Review:
Nehamas . . . thinks that beauty has been too narrowly defined and that both the pro-beauty camp and the anti-beauty camp have painted us into a tight corner. is his attempt to free us from the enclosure. . . . Nehamas feels that beauty deserves a second chance because he thinks that the war on beauty has restricted what we can hope to expect from both art and life. . . . [A] sane and provocative book.
Review:
If we are to take beauty seriously, Nehamas argues, we have to admit that it is impossible to really understand it without also understanding love.... Nehamas has done us the service of returning the question of beauty to the center of humanistic attention. raises important questions about the relationship between knowing and loving.
Review:
Because our most meaningful encounters with beauty unfold over time, we can only ever say in retrospect that a beautiful object has not made our lives--or our culture--better. . . . Beauty is only ever that promise: There is no a priori judgment that might reveal what will prove evanescent and what sustaining. . . . In Mr. Nehamas's vision, the possibility of beauty is well worth the price of uncertainty.
Review:
"Nehamas has done us the service of returning the question of beauty to the center of humanistic attention." Joseph Phelan, The Weekly Standard
Review:
Mr. Nehamas sets about reclaiming something of beauty's lost meaning by showing how it is connected to our happiness. . . . That . . . a work could infuriate one age and become an icon to the next fascinates Mr. Nehamas, who is drawn to works where our aesthetic and moral obligations come into conflict. . . . Mr. Nehamas displays an admirable clarity of thought and language. . . . [W]e can enjoy this book as we might the conversation of a spirited and quirky friend whose most irritating pronouncements are the ones we find ourselves mulling over, with some surprise, a week or two later.
Review:
Every practicing art critic could benefit from reading Nehamas's feeling account. But this shouldn't keep anyone whose curiosity is aroused by the title from picking up this engaging book. Nehamas . . . writes with philosophical depth and great clarity and grace. His thoughts are lively and provocative, and he argues that the question of beauty (what is beautiful to me might not be beautiful to you) and the value of art are not rarefied topics, but part of the fabric of our everyday lives.
Review:
[A] marvelous book...Nehamas sets out to retrieve beauty on behalf of all those who still use the word 'beautiful' with everyday pleasure: of a child, a landscape, a vase of flowers, an automobile. He does so in a tone of easy familiarity and enviable gracefulness; this is the philosopher not as blunt pragmatist, like the great Richard Rorty, nor as dour sceptic like W. V. Quine, but as winning and witty guide, and genial companion.
About the Author
Alexander Nehamas is Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University. He is the author of "Nietzsche: Life as Literature, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault," and "Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates" (Princeton).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xiii
CHAPTER I: Plato or Schopenhauer? 1
A Feature of Appearance? 13
Modernist Voices 22
Modernist Appropriations 30
CHAPTER II: Criticism and Value 36
Th e Role of Reviewing 44
Beauty, Love, Friendship 53
Beauty, Attractiveness, Evolution 63
CHAPTER III: Art, Beauty, Desire 72
Beauty, Community, Universality 78
Uniformity, Style, Distinction 84
Aesthetics, Directness, Individuality 91
CHAPTER IV: Love and Death in Venice 102
Manet's Olympia 105
CHAPTER Interpretation, Depth, Breadth 120
CHAPTER Interpretation, Beauty, Goodness 126
Beauty, Uncertainty, Happiness 131
Notes 139
Permissions 169
Index 179
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Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780691095219
- Subtitle:
- The Place of Beauty in a World of Art
- Author:
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- Location:
- Princeton
- Subject:
- Philosophy
- Subject:
- Criticism
- Subject:
- Aesthetics
- Subject:
- Art and architecture
- Subject:
- Comparative Literature
- Copyright:
- 2007
- Publication Date:
- March 2007
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Grade Level:
- College/higher education:
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 186
- Dimensions:
- 10 x 8 in
