Alexander Nehamas's Blog, page 109

Alexander Nehamas : What Did Socrates Teach and to Whom Did He Teach It?

The Review of Metaphysics 46 (2):279 - 306. 1992 (direct link)

Alexander Nehamas : Participation and Predication in Plato's Later Thought

The Review of Metaphysics 36 (2):343 - 374. 1982 (direct link)

Alexander Nehamas : Confusing Universals and Particulars in Plato's Early Dialogues

The Review of Metaphysics 29 (2):287 - 306. 1975 (direct link)

Alexander Nehamas : Predication and Forms of Opposites in the "Phaedo"

The Review of Metaphysics 26 (3):461 - 491. 1973 (direct link)

Alexander Nehamas : Plato and the Mass Media

The Monist 71 (2). 1988

Alexander Nehamas : The Good of Friendship

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (3pt3):267-294. 2010 Problems with representing friendship in painting and the novel and its more successful displays in drama reflect the fact that friends seldom act as inspiringly as traditional images of the relationship suggest: friends' activities are often trivial, commonplace and boring, sometimes even criminal. Despite all that, the philosophical tradition has generally considered friendship a moral good. I argue that it is not a moral good, but a good nonetheless. It provides opportunities to try different ways of being, and is crucial to the processes through which we establish our individuality.(direct link)

Alexander Nehamas : Socratic wisdom: The model of knowledge in Plato's early dialogues. Hugh H. Benson

Mind 110 (439):717-721. 2001 (direct link)

Alexander Nehamas : 'Only in the contemplation of beauty is human life worth living' Plato, symposium 211d

European Journal of Philosophy 15 (1):1–18. 2007 (direct link)

Alexander Nehamas : Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art

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.

Alexander Nehamas : On the philosophical life

In S. Phineas Upham & Joshua Harlan (eds.), Philosophers in Conversation: Interviews From the Harvard Review of Philosophy . Routledge. 2002