Alexander Nehamas's Blog, page 4

Plato, ; Nehamas, Alexander & Woodruff, Paul: Phaedrus

"A superb translation that captures the rhetorical brilliance of the Greek.... The translation is faithful in the very best sense: it reflects both the meaning and the beauty of the Greek text.... The footnotes are always helpful, never obtrusive. A one-page outline is useful since there are no editorial additions to mark major divisions in the dialogue. An appendix containing fragments of early Greek love poetry helps the reader appreciate the rich, and perhaps elusive, meaning of eros.... The entire Introduction is crisply written, and the authors' erudition shines throughout, without a trace of pedantry.... this is an excellent book that deservedly should find wide circulation for many years to come". --Tim Mahoney, University of Texas at Arlington.

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: Virtues of authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates

Nehamas, Alexander: Plato on the imperfection of the sensible world

In Gail Fine (ed.), _Plato: metaphysics and epistemology_. Oxford University Press. 1999

Alexander, Nehamas: Immanent and Transcendent Perspectivism in Nietzsche

In Mazzino Montinari, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Heinz Wenzel, Günter Abel & Werner Stegmaier (eds.), _Nietzsche-Studien (1983)_. De Gruyter. pp. 473-490. 1982

Nehamas, Alexander: Reviews

_Noûs_ 12 (4):475. 1978(direct link)

Nehamas, Alexander: Perspectivism and Falsification: A Reply to Maudemarie Clark

_Journal of Nietzsche Studies_ 49 (2):214-220. 2018In this reply, I defend my views on Nietzsche's “falsification thesis” and his perspectivism against Maudemarie Clark's recent criticisms, which appeared in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49.1. I begin by amplifying my interpretation of Gay Science 110 and 111, which, I argue, show that the falsification thesis is absent from The Gay Science. I then turn to perspectivism and argue that, contrary to Clark's claims, perspectivism never involves the falsification of the views to which it applies. It is therefore unnecessary to apply perspectivism, as Clark does, only to value-imbued viewpoints and not to empirical knowledge or the natural sciences. Perspectivism, as Nietzsche, I believe, makes clear, applies to every aspect of human knowledge.(direct link)

Nehamas, Alexander: The Eternal Recurrence

In John Richardson & Brian Leiter (eds.), _Nietzsche_. Oxford University Press. 2001

Nehamas, Alexander: How One Becomes What One Is

In John Richardson & Brian Leiter (eds.), _Nietzsche_. Oxford University Press. 2001

Nehamas, Alexander: Plato on the Imperfection of the Sensible World

In Gail Fine (ed.), _Plato 1: Metaphysics and Epistemology_. Oxford University Press. 1999