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Title: The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Sather Classical Lectures, 61) by Alexander Nehamas ISBN: 0-520-22490-6 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A tour de force
Comment: What is philosophy? Most people today assume that its primary task is to offer convincing answers to a set of well-known questions. But many philosophers, from the fifth century onwards, have felt that thinking well is only a secondary task, always in the service of *living* well; and living well may not be something for which there is a single helpful definition. Taking Socrates as their paradoxical model--a model, precisely, of how to do without models--these philosophers thus set about forging a life which is both coherent and unique, often considering their own views as simply raw material for that fashioned life. They do not tell others what to believe or even how to behave, but provide instead an *example* of a compelling mode of existence.
This, argues Alexander Nehamas in his brilliant new book, is the tradition Socrates began, and which Montaigne, Nietzsche and Foucault--perhaps Plato too, in some respects--have continued. That it is still alive today is evident in the fact that Nehamas himself practices what he preaches: not content with a presentation of the theory, Nehamas exemplifies it by bringing together, in this one work, the various strands of his intellectual life. A veritable tour de force, and one which may have lasting consequences on the world of philosophy.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Art of Living
Comment: Contrary to what one of the reviewers below contends, little knowledge of the figures under discussion is required on the part of the reader. This is owing to Alexander Nehamas's skill in lucidly and masterfully conveying the key ideas of the philosophers he brings under analysis. Although "The Art of Living" is not an explicit demand for a reorientation of philosophy, and a call for its rechannelling towards abandoning the realm of pure theory in favour of a more practical end, it nevertheless attempts to draw attention to an alternative style of philosophising which enjoins that philosophy ought to make itself subservient to the practicalities of life. This trend flourished mainly in ancient Greece, particularly in the enigma of Socrates, (the preeminent exemplum of the "art of living") until it was eclipsed by the now dominant tradition that emphasises theoretical knowledge, later to be revived by such figures as Montaigne, Nietzsche and Foucault, whose aesthicist stance Nehamas chooses as a point of departure. He evaluates, in the first book of his study, the figure of Socrates, as presented in the dialogues of Plato, and how he, in his philosophical endeavour, succeeded in fashioning a work of art out of himself or, in Nehamas's words, creating himself as a unique personality. Nehamas also explains how Montaigne, Nietzsche and Foucault, sought and, succeeded in realising, similar projects for themselves, absorbing Socrates's ironic silence about himself as well as reacting against it, in their bid for "self-creation" via the medium of their texts. It is by this aestheticist turn that Nehamas designates the "art of living", a uniquely particularlist and individualist praxis of philosophising, enabling a subordination of theoretical knowledge to actual experience. Knowledge, as Nehamas seems to imply, must be lived in order to be truly understood. The major shortcoming of the book, I felt, was the chapter on Montaigne, which was extremely tedious, though, on the whole, an outstanding and fulfilling treatise.
Rating: 5
Summary: every one should read this book who study phil.
Comment: Art of living is a context which is discussed by every one -not by only philosophers- since the mankind have created. Why do we get angry when Nehamas brings a new view about this topic? I interpret Nehamas' argues as a kind of deconstraction about the texts of Plato and Nietzsche -a useful one!- Nehamas is not an oponnent against to philosophic living; his objection is against to "the philosophic living". We must separete these two different things as Nehamas did.
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Title: Virtues of Authenticity by Alexander Nehamas ISBN: 0691001782 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 16 November, 1998 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Nietzsche: Life As Literature by Alexander Nehamas ISBN: 0674624262 Publisher: Harvard University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1987 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: What Is Ancient Philosophy? by Pierre Hadot, Michael Chase ISBN: 0674007336 Publisher: Belknap Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Philosophy As a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault by Pierre Hadot, Arnold I. Davidson, Arnold Ira Davidson ISBN: 0631180338 Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: 01 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $37.95 |
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Title: Plotinus or the Simplicity of Vision by Pierre Hadot, Micahel Chase ISBN: 0226311945 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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