Alexander Nehamas's Blog, page 11

Nehamas, Alexander : Nietzsche e "Hitler"

_Cadernos Nietzsche_ 37 (1):242-268. 2016 (direct link)

Nehamas, Alexander : 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

Nehamas, Alexander : Gregory Vlastos

_Philosophical Inquiry_ 40 (1):2-7. 2016 (direct link)

Nehamas, Alexander : 4. Nietzsche And “Hitler”

In Robert S. Wistrich & Jacob Golomb (eds.), _ Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism?: On the Uses and Abuses of a Philosophy _. Princeton University Press 90-106. 2009

Nehamas, Alexander : The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections From Plato to Foucault

For much of its history, philosophy was not merely a theoretical discipline but a way of life, an "art of living." This practical aspect of philosophy has been much less dominant in modernity than it was in ancient Greece and Rome, when philosophers of all stripes kept returning to Socrates as a model for living. The idea of philosophy as an art of living has survived in the works of such major modern authors as Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Each of these writers has used philosophical discussion as a means of establishing what a person is and how a worthwhile life is to be lived. In this wide-ranging, brilliantly written account, Alexander Nehamas provides an incisive reevaluation of Socrates' place in the Western philosophical tradition and shows the importance of Socrates for Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Why does each of these philosophers—each fundamentally concerned with his own originality—return to Socrates as a model? The answer lies in the irony that characterizes the Socrates we know from the Platonic dialogues. Socratic irony creates a mask that prevents a view of what lies behind. How Socrates led the life he did, what enabled or inspired him, is never made evident. No tenets are proposed. Socrates remains a silent and ambiguous character, forcing readers to come to their own conclusions about the art of life. This, Nehamas shows, is what allowed Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault to return to Socrates as a model without thereby compelling them to imitate him. This highly readable, erudite study argues for the importance of the tradition within Western philosophy that is best described as "the art of living" and casts Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault as the three major modern representatives of this tradition. Full of original ideas and challenging associations, this work will offer new ways of thinking about the philosophers Nehamas discusses and about the discipline of philosophy itself

Nehamas, Alexander : Is Living an Art that Can be Taught?

_Journal of Philosophical Research_ 40 (9999):81-91. 2015 (direct link)

Nehamas, Alexander : Did Nietzsche hold a “Falsification Thesis”?

_Philosophical Inquiry_ 39 (1):222-236. 2015 (direct link)

Nehamas, Alexander : Virtues of Authenticity, Essays on Plato and Socrates

_Philosophical Inquiry_ 32 (1-2):127-130. 2010 (direct link)

Nehamas, Alexander : Una introducción al simposio de platón

_Ideas Y Valores_ 59 (143):189-205. 2010 (direct link)

Nehamas, Alexander : 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)