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Sather Classical Lectures
The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Sather Classical Lectures)
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.
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.
298 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
About the author
Alexander Nehamas
30 books77 followersAlexander Nehamas (Greek: 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, Foucault, and literary theory.
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.
His early work was on 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.
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.
His early work was on 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.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 24, 2011
All in all, a good introductory book on philosophy, centered around a theme most of us have considered at one time or another; that is, how to fashion a worthwhile individual mode of life. Heavy, I know. At the core of this analysis is Socrates, and the Socratic reflections of Nietzsche, Montaigne, Foucault, Mann, and others. What links each of these philosophers, starting with Socrates, is their concern with how they lived their own individual lives, and how that aligned with their particular beliefs, or lack thereof. Nehamas explores the role of self-deception, self-creation, courage, truthfulness, moderation, politics, etc to in creating an art of living, while stressing that the materials can come from anywhere. I especially enjoyed the first few chapters and its discussion of irony.
Some excerpts...
"Sometimes we pretend in order to eventually become what we pretend to be. Sometimes we pretend in order to find out whether we already are something or not. To call someone a pretender, a simulator, shows neither that we know their mind nor even that they know it themselves." (p.54)
"If we take irony as saying the contrary of what you mean, the meaning of an ironic statement is perfectly clear. If we take it, more generally, as saying something other than what you mean, the meaning of an ironic statement is much less determinate. It can remain hidden even from those who know full well that you are being ironic. And it always suggests that you are holding something back, something you do not consider your audience worth knowing. It constitutes a refusal to put yourself on the same level as your audience. And even though it may intimate that you may be uncertain about your own intention, it still presents you as superior: for that is an uncertainty you do not openly reveal." (p. 63)
"Nature is not simply the origin where individuals or society begin. More important, it is the final state in which our various inclinations work for a common purpose, refusing to trespass on one another's ground, and enable each individual to accomplish the best - the different best - of which each is capable... Unlike Montaigne, Socrates did not learn his lesson from an actual civil war. Instead, he fought his own inner war from which he emerged victorious, self-controlled, and self-sufficient, aware of what he could and could not accomplish, reconciled to his various powers - in a word, natural. Just as nature is not an origin but an end, so the self, too, is the product of fashioning. And since everyone's features and circumstances are different, there is no general method for composing nature, for constructing the self. For the same reason, no exemplar can ever be followed directly, since that results in imitation - not in creation." (p.124)
"Like everyone else, artists have to work within the limitations of their traditions. Creation demands rearranging the given; innovation requires manipulating the dated. Lives, seen aesthetically, are no different; the artistic creation of the self, as both Montaigne and Nietzsche testify, must necessarily use the materials with which one is always and already faced." (p.178)
Some excerpts...
"Sometimes we pretend in order to eventually become what we pretend to be. Sometimes we pretend in order to find out whether we already are something or not. To call someone a pretender, a simulator, shows neither that we know their mind nor even that they know it themselves." (p.54)
"If we take irony as saying the contrary of what you mean, the meaning of an ironic statement is perfectly clear. If we take it, more generally, as saying something other than what you mean, the meaning of an ironic statement is much less determinate. It can remain hidden even from those who know full well that you are being ironic. And it always suggests that you are holding something back, something you do not consider your audience worth knowing. It constitutes a refusal to put yourself on the same level as your audience. And even though it may intimate that you may be uncertain about your own intention, it still presents you as superior: for that is an uncertainty you do not openly reveal." (p. 63)
"Nature is not simply the origin where individuals or society begin. More important, it is the final state in which our various inclinations work for a common purpose, refusing to trespass on one another's ground, and enable each individual to accomplish the best - the different best - of which each is capable... Unlike Montaigne, Socrates did not learn his lesson from an actual civil war. Instead, he fought his own inner war from which he emerged victorious, self-controlled, and self-sufficient, aware of what he could and could not accomplish, reconciled to his various powers - in a word, natural. Just as nature is not an origin but an end, so the self, too, is the product of fashioning. And since everyone's features and circumstances are different, there is no general method for composing nature, for constructing the self. For the same reason, no exemplar can ever be followed directly, since that results in imitation - not in creation." (p.124)
"Like everyone else, artists have to work within the limitations of their traditions. Creation demands rearranging the given; innovation requires manipulating the dated. Lives, seen aesthetically, are no different; the artistic creation of the self, as both Montaigne and Nietzsche testify, must necessarily use the materials with which one is always and already faced." (p.178)
May 7, 2008
The first half of the book, treating of irony in Mann, Plato and Montaigne, is very good. It explores what happens when we, as readers, assume the perspective of a protagonist and, through a prejudice of exceptionalism, become blind to the presence in ourselves of those features of the other characters that antagonize the protagonist, just as Hans Castorp is unaware of the ways in which he is just as diseased as his fellows at the sanatorium. We are all, always 'just visiting'.
Then Nehamas intimates, but never explicitly spells out, how remarkably useful this insight might be for the study of Plato, what it perhaps entails as to Plato's intentional design with his portrayal of Socrates - what makes him such a radical and unparalleled literary and philosophical instrument. Instead, the book examines the response to Socrates in the writings of two modern thinkers who vehemently suspected, even outright denounced the supposed progress of historical Enlightenment.
First he picks up Nietzsche and forcefully and dogmatically rushes through a piecemeal interpretation of the cantankerous German's own imaginary relationship with Plato's character. By inviting us to assume Nietzsche's violently ambivalent perspective, we the readers experience the blinding exceptionalism from the first chapters in amplified terms. Nietzsche, as Nehamas sees it, is obsessed with a peculiar aspect of individualism that finds its best expression for him with Socrates. Wishing not to follow, not to imitate the life of another, Nietzsche must break with the man he feels he most resembles. Having persuaded himself of his triumph, he becomes fearful of being imitated himself. Identifying the universalist moralism of Plato's Socrates with the apostolic moralism of his minister father's Christianity, Nietzsche is trapped by the caricature of Socrates in Aristophanes, whose elenctic lessons do little more than teach sons how to reject their fathers.
The book finishes with Foucault, whose final project was not unlike Nietzsche's, though Foucault was capable of far more subtlety and poise. Employing techniques from the same negative theology that Nietzsche so dispised, he was able to say 'no' as well as anyone. But then, having denied the given, Foucault succeeded in doing where Nietzsche could only talk himself blue - he discovered the way to 'yes', the affirmation of one's life in the spirit, if not the letter, of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence of the same. Where Nietzsche saw in Socrates' attitude towards life at the instant of his death the disclosure of a secret pessimism, an identification of life with disease, Foucault saw something infinitely more life-affirming. He saw evidence of a last reminder from the exemplar of deliberate, artful living, that life, if it is to be worth living, depends above all else on the Care of the Self. Precisely what this care entails is quite another thing. But to understand it, Nehamas is as good a place to start as any.
Then Nehamas intimates, but never explicitly spells out, how remarkably useful this insight might be for the study of Plato, what it perhaps entails as to Plato's intentional design with his portrayal of Socrates - what makes him such a radical and unparalleled literary and philosophical instrument. Instead, the book examines the response to Socrates in the writings of two modern thinkers who vehemently suspected, even outright denounced the supposed progress of historical Enlightenment.
First he picks up Nietzsche and forcefully and dogmatically rushes through a piecemeal interpretation of the cantankerous German's own imaginary relationship with Plato's character. By inviting us to assume Nietzsche's violently ambivalent perspective, we the readers experience the blinding exceptionalism from the first chapters in amplified terms. Nietzsche, as Nehamas sees it, is obsessed with a peculiar aspect of individualism that finds its best expression for him with Socrates. Wishing not to follow, not to imitate the life of another, Nietzsche must break with the man he feels he most resembles. Having persuaded himself of his triumph, he becomes fearful of being imitated himself. Identifying the universalist moralism of Plato's Socrates with the apostolic moralism of his minister father's Christianity, Nietzsche is trapped by the caricature of Socrates in Aristophanes, whose elenctic lessons do little more than teach sons how to reject their fathers.
The book finishes with Foucault, whose final project was not unlike Nietzsche's, though Foucault was capable of far more subtlety and poise. Employing techniques from the same negative theology that Nietzsche so dispised, he was able to say 'no' as well as anyone. But then, having denied the given, Foucault succeeded in doing where Nietzsche could only talk himself blue - he discovered the way to 'yes', the affirmation of one's life in the spirit, if not the letter, of Nietzsche's eternal recurrence of the same. Where Nietzsche saw in Socrates' attitude towards life at the instant of his death the disclosure of a secret pessimism, an identification of life with disease, Foucault saw something infinitely more life-affirming. He saw evidence of a last reminder from the exemplar of deliberate, artful living, that life, if it is to be worth living, depends above all else on the Care of the Self. Precisely what this care entails is quite another thing. But to understand it, Nehamas is as good a place to start as any.
February 24, 2018
Chapters on Foucault and Nietzsche are great, however the last two on Socrates are just regular. The first one regarding the platonic irony on Thomas Mann Magic Moutain and socratic dialogues is fantastic, but then the two following chapters on socratic irony are not quite appealing as the first one. The introduction is interesting too.
December 21, 2020
Me parece que el análisis de Nehamas empobrece una tradición muy increíble e importante, con una enorme variedad, que es la filosofia que se pregunta por la vida. La lectura que hace Nehamas de Focuault o de los Griegos me parece mala y poco interesante: individualista, cuando menos, y haciendo énfasis en la coherencia y la univocidad cuando buena parte de la filosofía griega parte justamente de la aporía y la dificultad de todo. No lo recomiendo, me parecio además un libro sonzo y aburrido. Si a alguien le interesa le mando la crítica que haré con estos puntos sobre el análisis de Nehamas de la filosofía como forma de vida en mi tesis.
August 29, 2008
I read this book 10 years ago while unemployed after graduating from college. It's still pretty good and has many interesting points about philosophy, aesthetics, and ethics as seen through the life of Socrates and the manifold ways in which descendant philosophers such as Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault attempt to speak for Socrates (or silence him) in an effort to fashion their own voices. As such, this is a good introductory book regarding philosophy that also delves into issues of originality and influence. If you are interested in a more detailed study of Nietzsche (and who isn't?) as well as a more in-depth accounting of how a person can create a work of art that is really one's life (or the life one writes out in literature), I would recommend Nehamas' book "Nietzsche: Life as Literature." It is even better than "The Art of Living," though I would only recommend it if you really want to spend a lot of time reading through Nehamas' interpretation of Nietzsche. That one's probably a 4-star book, while this one gets the 3-star rating.
October 31, 2020
I enjoyed this a lot as it is completely individualistic, without any universal prescriptions, but despite the title it is quite academic. Nehamas argues that there is a philosophic tradition called art of living with the thinkers that follow it trying to forge their lives by thinking and writing about philosophical concepts. The goal is actually uniqueness; to create a life using your own characteristics and idiosyncrasies, arranging those pieces in a way that makes justice to them in order to create a coherent whole, even if some of those pieces are to be assessed as “undesirable”, if examined outside of this whole. He identifies Socrates as the hero of this tradition, as he was the first to try to live differently, but also because of his malleability, since we know so little about him. He shows how Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Foucault and ultimately himself, created their own image of Socrates that corresponds (or antagonizes, in Nietzsche’s case) their own selves, in order to showcase who they are.
December 8, 2012
While the reviews on here concerning this work are varied, I enjoyed Nehamas' book immensely. Though it is entirely different in substance and style, I think this is the best philosophy book I've read since Susan Neiman's _Moral Clarity_. The only caveat I offer to potential readers is that it may be too taxing a read for those who are not well-versed with the philosophers being discussed. Nehamas clearly assumes that his audience has the requisite schema to engage in his ideas in a meaningful way, which might be problematic for those who are lacking said knowledge. For those who are interested in creating their own magnum opus out of their lives, however, this book delves deeply into what it means--and to some degree how--to pursue such an endeavor.
May 23, 2010
Nehamas shows the influence of texts portraying the life of Socrates on the lives of Montaigne, Nietzsche, etc. portrayed in their texts to suggest style must lie beyond truth because truth always lies in style.
September 16, 2018
I feel affection for Nehamas. He only writes about a few themes, but he renders those ideas so clearly, with zero cant or cliche. He takes seriously the business of living by design, but he never preaches. His books are utterly free of agendas and dogma. We need more writers like him.
August 3, 2021
This was an interesting and thought-provoking read, and a curiously rigorous mixture of philosophy and literary theory. Nehamas' main thesis is that Socrates is a kind of Rorschach test, an inkblot pattern whose incomprehensibility in the pursuit of an examined life made him an easy individual to project onto, which is what Plato, Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault did, each in his own way. Because he stressed the importance of living a good life despite telling us nothing of his own, Socrates inspired these philosophers to embark on their own journeys of self-creation. This "imitation" affords them, paradoxically—or perhaps not—a great deal of freedom since they can do it on their own terms.
Nehamas' explanations of each of the philosophers were actually quite helpful, especially when illuminated against their respective engagements with Socrates. The only reason I don't rate it higher is because of how effective/convincing one of Nehamas' main arguments is: The art of living is formal and relative—it is up to us to determine who we will be, and that means there are no rules or regulations; we must find it out for ourselves. Therefore, the book is truly provocative: The whole point of reading this book is to act on—or rather from—it, rather than to merely "reflect," of which I hope I'm capable.
Nehamas' explanations of each of the philosophers were actually quite helpful, especially when illuminated against their respective engagements with Socrates. The only reason I don't rate it higher is because of how effective/convincing one of Nehamas' main arguments is: The art of living is formal and relative—it is up to us to determine who we will be, and that means there are no rules or regulations; we must find it out for ourselves. Therefore, the book is truly provocative: The whole point of reading this book is to act on—or rather from—it, rather than to merely "reflect," of which I hope I'm capable.
August 31, 2026
Loved writing my thesis on this!!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews