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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.
186 pages, Hardcover
First published February 5, 2007
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About the author
Alexander Nehamas
29 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 - 10 of 10 reviews
August 7, 2016
One of the things that the author has noticed is that philosophers hardly think about values other than morality. Since morality is be a type of value that is by nature impartial and extends universally to all other people. So he emphasized on other types of values such as the value of friendship and artworks that don't seem to be subsumable under the category of morality yet make an important contribution to a well-lived human life. Not only does he separate them from morality but he also makes the admission that immorality can be a positive contribution to a human life. In this book, the author develops an extensive comparison between the way we become friends with someone and the way we find an artwork beautiful. Highly recommended.
September 14, 2007
Easily the best contemporary philosophical essay that I have encountered in a long while. A lucid and iconoclastic defense of the much maligned concepts of love and beauty.
October 21, 2010
Extraordinary book. One of the deepest things I've read, on love and friendship and beauty, in a long time.
June 17, 2009
Beautifully written meditation on the nature of beauty; likens our relationship to a beautiful (art) object to that of a friendship with someone we love: "'Beauty' is the name we give to attractiveness when what we already know about an individual ... seems too complex for us to be able to describe what it is and valuable enough to promise that what we haven't learned is worth even more, perhaps worth changing ourselves in order to come to see and appreciate it" (70).
July 21, 2025
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February 15, 2023I've been thinking about a couple of recent essays in analytic aesthetics that both favorably cite a remark from this book, a remark that I find very weird. Here's the remark, plus some context:
Nehamas is critical of the Kantian idea that when you make an aesthetic judgment, you make it with a "demand" that everyone agree with it, even if there's no way to convince people to agree with it in the way that you could with a straightforward empirical claim. That Kantian claim is probably too strong, but Nehamas's reaction to it swings too far in the opposite direction, where he says that the very idea of universal agreement is not only highly unlikely, or even impossible, but a NIGHTMARE:
But that dream [of universal aesthetic agreement] is a nightmare, already described by Aldous Huxley, a brave new world where everyone is happy ‘nowadays’ except for the Savage, who claims for himself the right to his own taste and, with it, the right to unhappiness. Imagine, if you can, a world where everyone likes, or loves, the same things, where every disagreement about beauty can be resolved. That would be a desolate, desperate world. Such a world, even if Shakespeare, Titian, and Bach were to be part of it—impossible with artists too complex an ambiguous to provoke a uniform reaction—would be no better (but also no worse) than a world where everyone tuned in to Baywatch or turned on Wayne Newton at the same time [really?]. What is truly frightful is not what everyone likes but simply the fact that everyone likes it. Even the idea that everyone might share one of my judgments sends shivers down my spine, although it is no less repulsive than the possibility that one other person might accept all of them. (p. 84)
The "nightmarishness" of this possibility seems overblown. And surely the claim "what is truly frightful is not what everyone likes but simply the fact that everyone likes it" is just false—we can find aesthetic judgments that everyone who considers them agrees to, maybe like some of Hume's proposed comparisons, like Milton being better than Ogilby, or (my own candidate) the sun rising over Mount Tam as viewed from Bolinas Lagoon is more beautiful than the sun rising over the scorched Sierra hills after a wildfire. Why would agreement about those judgments be frightful? Disagreement can itself be pleasurable, and lead to aesthetic enlightenment, but it should hardly turn into an end in itself.
Cavell, I think, offers a way to keep the proper place for agreement in aesthetic judgment that doesn't need the Kantian "demand" for agreement, and that doesn't recoil into Nehamas's fear of agreement in aesthetic judgments. Cavell talks about the "hope of agreement", which I think strikes the right balance—we can hope for agreement even when we have good reason to think it won't happen. (Nehamas discusses the role of hoping for agreement in aesthetic judgment in a couple places but doesn't recognize how it shows there is another way of thinking about agreement beyond the strong Kantian requirement.)
Nehamas is critical of the Kantian idea that when you make an aesthetic judgment, you make it with a "demand" that everyone agree with it, even if there's no way to convince people to agree with it in the way that you could with a straightforward empirical claim. That Kantian claim is probably too strong, but Nehamas's reaction to it swings too far in the opposite direction, where he says that the very idea of universal agreement is not only highly unlikely, or even impossible, but a NIGHTMARE:
But that dream [of universal aesthetic agreement] is a nightmare, already described by Aldous Huxley, a brave new world where everyone is happy ‘nowadays’ except for the Savage, who claims for himself the right to his own taste and, with it, the right to unhappiness. Imagine, if you can, a world where everyone likes, or loves, the same things, where every disagreement about beauty can be resolved. That would be a desolate, desperate world. Such a world, even if Shakespeare, Titian, and Bach were to be part of it—impossible with artists too complex an ambiguous to provoke a uniform reaction—would be no better (but also no worse) than a world where everyone tuned in to Baywatch or turned on Wayne Newton at the same time [really?]. What is truly frightful is not what everyone likes but simply the fact that everyone likes it. Even the idea that everyone might share one of my judgments sends shivers down my spine, although it is no less repulsive than the possibility that one other person might accept all of them. (p. 84)
The "nightmarishness" of this possibility seems overblown. And surely the claim "what is truly frightful is not what everyone likes but simply the fact that everyone likes it" is just false—we can find aesthetic judgments that everyone who considers them agrees to, maybe like some of Hume's proposed comparisons, like Milton being better than Ogilby, or (my own candidate) the sun rising over Mount Tam as viewed from Bolinas Lagoon is more beautiful than the sun rising over the scorched Sierra hills after a wildfire. Why would agreement about those judgments be frightful? Disagreement can itself be pleasurable, and lead to aesthetic enlightenment, but it should hardly turn into an end in itself.
Cavell, I think, offers a way to keep the proper place for agreement in aesthetic judgment that doesn't need the Kantian "demand" for agreement, and that doesn't recoil into Nehamas's fear of agreement in aesthetic judgments. Cavell talks about the "hope of agreement", which I think strikes the right balance—we can hope for agreement even when we have good reason to think it won't happen. (Nehamas discusses the role of hoping for agreement in aesthetic judgment in a couple places but doesn't recognize how it shows there is another way of thinking about agreement beyond the strong Kantian requirement.)
February 20, 2014
I read it during my Undergraduate Psychology classes. It gave me some good insights to prepare my course project paper, "What is Beauty: I’ll Eat You Orange Lips".
May 23, 2023
A wonderful, personal, and philosophic essay concerned with the restoration of beauty's place in art - a rich conversation of ideas and feelings.
This book is a thought-provoking book that explores the concept of beauty and its significance in the realm of art and human experience. Nehamas, presents a comprehensive analysis of beauty, delving into its connection with our understanding of art, interpretations of artistic objects, and its broader impact on our lives.
The book is divided into four parts and encompasses seventeen chapters. Nehamas skillfully combines elements of art history, philosophy, and cultural commentary to construct his argument. Despite its erudite nature, the book is accessible to both general readers and scholars, making it appealing to a wide audience.
This book is a thought-provoking book that explores the concept of beauty and its significance in the realm of art and human experience. Nehamas, presents a comprehensive analysis of beauty, delving into its connection with our understanding of art, interpretations of artistic objects, and its broader impact on our lives.
The book is divided into four parts and encompasses seventeen chapters. Nehamas skillfully combines elements of art history, philosophy, and cultural commentary to construct his argument. Despite its erudite nature, the book is accessible to both general readers and scholars, making it appealing to a wide audience.
February 29, 2024
Literally don't remember a single thing but probably because I read this for class
December 3, 2025
Four stars considering I read it for school
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews