Only a Promise of Happiness

Only a Promise of Happiness
Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Total Pages : 198
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780691148656
ISBN-13 : 0691148651
Rating : 4/5 (651 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Only a Promise of Happiness by : Alexander Nehamas

Download or read book Only a Promise of Happiness written by Alexander Nehamas and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.


Only a Promise of Happiness Related Books

Only a Promise of Happiness
Language: en
Pages: 198
Authors: Alexander Nehamas
Categories: Art
Type: BOOK - Published: 2007 - Publisher: Princeton University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Neither art nor philosophy was kind to beauty during the twentieth century. Much modern art disdains beauty, and many philosophers deeply suspect that beauty me
The Promise of Happiness
Language: en
Pages: 328
Authors: Sara Ahmed
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-04-06 - Publisher: Duke University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Promise of Happiness is a provocative cultural critique of the imperative to be happy. It asks what follows when we make our desires and even our own happin
The Promise of Happiness
Language: en
Pages: 167
Authors: Betty Neels
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-03-21 - Publisher: Harlequin

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“I’M NOT ATTRACTED TO THIN MICE.” So stated the urbane Baron Tiele Raukema van den Eck—and as Rebecca Saunders was both thin and mouse-like, she knew ex
The Promise of Happiness
Language: en
Pages: 332
Authors: Justin Cartwright
Categories: Fiction
Type: BOOK - Published: 2006 - Publisher: Macmillan

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A powerful elegy to the intimacies and idiocies of family, this is a stunning novel that transcends British and American cultures as it dissects them. Told in f
God's Promise of Happiness
Language: en
Pages: 65
Authors: Randy Alcorn
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2015-10-01 - Publisher: NavPress

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Think God doesn’t want you to be happy? Think again. We know that we will experience unimaginable joy and happiness in Heaven, but that doesn’t mean we can�