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جایگاه زیبایی در عالم هنر
کتابِ پیشِ رو پژوهشی فلسفی دربارۀ معنا و چیستیِ زیبایی در هنر و زندگیِ روزمره است. پژوهشی فلسفی است، اما بیآنکه خواننده را در فضای انتزاعیِ تحلیلهای فلسفیـمنطقی به این سو و آن سو بکشاند و هاج و واج بر جای بگذارد. نهاماس، نویسندۀ این کتاب، در تحلیلهای خود از فیلسوفان و نویسندگان و شاعران و نقاشانِ بزرگِ مغربزمین مدد میگیرد، اما کاری بسیار فراتر از بازگوییِ قابلِ فهمِ دیدگاههای آنها انجام میدهد: هدفِ او این نیست که با توشهای از نظریاتِ فلسفی دربارۀ زیبایی، سراغِ تحلیلِ آثاری هنری و اشیاءِ طبیعیِ زیبا برود؛ بهعکس، میکوشد با دریافتها و ادراکهای مستقیمِ خویش از زیبایی، حتی در صحت و سقمِ آن نظریهها چون و چرا کند. در این کتاب بهطرزی ملموس و خودمانی با پدیدههای آشنا و مأنوس زندگی برخورد و مراودهای عمیقتر (و میشود گفت فلسفی) پیدا میکنیم و (شاید) میآموزیم که زیبایی نه فقط در هنرها و طبیعت، بلکه در همین نزدیکیها هم رخ نشان میدهد به شرطی که چشمی برای دیدنِ آنها و گوشی برای شنیدنِ آنها داشته باشیم.
224 pages, Unknown Binding
First published February 5, 2007
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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
Ty lee
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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