Book description
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…
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Why read it?
1 author picked Only a Promise of Happiness as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Nehamas’s lucid prose and lovely illustrations take us away from politics to a very different topic, our individual experience of art in all its many forms, from popular media to highfalutin forms, as an arena for the freedom of our imagination and taste.
I love Nehamas’s personal and personable voice, which cuts through centuries of theory to speak to the reader, one person to another. Few philosophy books are so accessible or have such beautiful pictures!
From Paul's list on freedom in theory and practice.
If you love Only a Promise of Happiness...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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