Only a Promise of Happiness

Book cover of Only a Promise of Happiness

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?

Paul Guyer

Author

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.