Alexander Nehamas (Greek: 螒位苇尉伪谓未蟻慰蟼 螡蔚蠂伪渭维蟼; born 1946) is Professor of philosophy and Edmund N. Carpenter, II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He works on Greek philosophy, aesthetics, Nietzsche, Foucault, and literary theory.
He was born in Athens, Greece in 1946. In 1964, he enrolled to Swarthmore College. He graduated in 1967 and completed his doctorate on Predication in Plato's Phaedo under the direction of Gregory Vlastos at Princeton in 1971. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pennsylvania before joining the Princeton faculty in 1990.
His early work was on Platonic metaphysics and aesthetics as well as the philosophy of Socrates, but he gained a wider audience with his 1985 book Nietzsche: Life as Literature, which argued that Nietzsche thought of life and the world on the model of a literary text. Nehamas has said, "The virtues of life are comparable to the virtues of good writing鈥攕tyle, connectedness, grace, elegance鈥攁nd also, we must not forget, sometimes getting it right." More recently, he has become well known for his view that philosophy should provide a form of life, as well as for his endorsement of the artistic value of television. In 2008, he delivered the Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh.
This is one of those rare philosophy books that's approachable for philosophers and non-philosophers alike, is incredibly insightful, and (the really hard part for academics these days) a delight to read.
Nehamas has a deceptively light touch, but he's doing nothing less than taking down Aristotle and the prevailing Western interpretation of friendship from Classical Antiquity to the 21st century, using a handful of carefully-selected personal anecdotes and incisive readings of artistic works. His two-fold thesis 鈥� that we love the ineffable essence of our friends, not any discrete set of qualities or benefits they possess, and that this love has the power to shape both our friends and ourselves in our never-ending quest to learn and grow into our respective unique personas 鈥� feels both startlingly eye-opening and deeply, timelessly true.
And for the philosophy nerds: I especially loved how the last chapter was imbued with the spirit of Nietzsche 鈥� not the two-dimensional philosophy-101 Nietzsche of "God is dead" lore, but the light, playful, aesthetically-minded Nietzsche who reminds us that all drives (not only the will to power, or goodness, or even happiness) seek to be master, and to become (not be) who we are.
Nehamas deserves credit for writing as well as he does on so many different philosophers and subjects, which is a rare thing among academic philosophers, but this book isn't about friendship.
This book is actually about how 'aesthetic' theories of life that move beyond morality, especially Aristotle's type of morality, better explain this subjective love called 'friendship.'
Nehamas hopes to take down Aristotle and larger the tradition that sees friendship as which Aristotle represents. This larger tradition is practically all of Greco-Roman philosophy. Big task.
To this end, Nehemas relies on Nietzche, Foucault, and Montaigne. The Montaigne famous for his inability to describe why he loved his friend: "If you press me to say why I loved him, I can say no more than because he was he, and I was I."
Nehemas argues that Montaigne's unwillingness to explain his love is good, it is actual the truest expression of love. Because, after all, all explanations of why we love something will always be unsatisfactory in the most complete sense.
I'm not convinced by this, perhaps because I lack the mystic inclination to see language as a prison from which we must escape in order to know the true Platonic forms of things, such as friendship. Why say, as Nehemas does, that a love like friendship is impossible to truly describe, but still go on to describe it anyway?
And so only the vigor, strength, and clarity of Nehemas's prose kept me reading as he strayed from what friendship is in practice into what art means in theory.
I have no interest in learning how to see my friends as art, only to then discover that neither art nor friendship are moral, but simply amoral. I intend to learn how to lead a good life with my friends, for my own sake, and for theirs.
Finally, what baffled me the most about Nehemas's work was he thinks we can ignore the love lives and friendships of philosophers when discussing their practical views on love and friendship.
I think Nietzche, Foucault, and Montaigne's love lives and friendships were something we should think about when we read their advice on love and friendship. And from what I've read about these men, by their own hand or others, they were abnormally individualistic, moody, and suspicious people. This matters.
But it doesn't mean we should ignore their views either. If you, like me, think what matters more are your actual friendships and social relationships, rather than your words and thoughts about them, then we must notice and seriously consider what the socially suspicious side of Nietzche, Foucault, and Montaigne means when we read them on love and friendship.
At the end of the day, I guess I just think an overpowering hermenetuics of suspicion is the wrong way to approach friendship if we actually want to say something constructive about friendship, or actually become a better friend. Suspicion is great, but unless counterbalanced with a hermeneutics of respect, you just end up a misanthrope with few good friends. Plato more or less say this himself.
To paraphrase part of Plato's Phaedo:
SOCRATES: We must not become haters of reason as people become haters of humanity. There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse. A hatred of reason and a hatred of humanity arise in the same way.
A hatred of humanity comes when someone without knowledge or skill has placed great trust in someone else and believes him to be altogether truthful, sound and trustworthy.
Then a short time afterwards, they find him to be wicked and unreliable. Then this happens in another case. When this happens enough, especially with those you believed to be close friends, then in the end, after many such blows, people come to hate all humanity and to believe that no one is sound in any way at all.
Such a hatred of humanity comes most easily to those that have little experience and skill in social relationships. For great experience would lead one to believe -what is in fact true- that the very good and the very wicked are both quite rare, and that most people are between these two extremes
In conclusion, I am not convinced by much of what Nehemas says about friendship, though he does have many interesting things to say, particularly about art theory. For me at least, we can't ignore someone's conduct when we read them on the subject of friendship. Relying so heavily on Nietzche, Foucault, and Montaigne strikes me as mistaken. But a reader who, like Nehemas, is comfortable approving of or idealizing their social lives and relationships will likely disagree with me. And I have no rancor for such a reader, read whatever best suits your own growth as a friend and person. This work of Nehemas's just doesn't suit mine.
If I sound too uncharitable or suspicious myself, it's because I think this book just isn't about the everyday practice of becoming a better friend, or the lived experience of the social relationship. Nehemas' book is a kind of skeptical art theory repackaged as a book about friendship.
This is a lovely read. It doesn't say anything new or particularly insightful, but it articulates important truths in vivid and powerful ways. Moreover, it is highly readable; it's not like an academic book, but reads as smoothly as a popular article. These truths include ideals we ought to strive towards in our friendships and perspectives for evaluating and navigating our friendships. As a whole I appreciate that a philosopher focuses on friendship and makes explicit its very special character. Friendship is underrated. So much hype is placed on romantic relationships. But friendships can perform all the same roles in our lives that we most cherish and desire that are typically thought of as distinctive of romantic relationships. Nehemas nicely shows this.
The main point Nehemas covers is the relationship between friendship and treating people as ends in themselves. When we relate to each other as friends, this essentially allows us to behold each other as individuals: we are each irreplaceable and unique, and we are loved for our individuality. So friendship is necessarily partial; this should not be seen as ethically wrong in itself, but in fact we desire and need to be recognized for our individuality, and doing this is ethically good in its own way.
(Nehemas doesn't explore this point in much detail; but I'm thinking that perhaps it's important to treat all people equally when it comes to general moral behavior, like recognizing human rights. But the dictum of equality doesn't itself say anything about how we should perceive and relate to people. Friendship does. It is incompatible with treating people instrumentally; and while it'd be ideal to be able to see every person as a beloved end in his/herself as it happens in friendship, this is impossible given our practical limitations).
Nehemas also covers that friends see certain features in each other and facilitate each other to develop in ways as to more fully realize those features. This can be ethically good or bad; friends can be bad influences, or they can liberate us in ethically good ways. We can't predict this fully beforehand, so friendship always comes with a risk.
Another point Nehemas discusses is how we relate to people in friendship may be usefully understood in analogy with how we relate to artworks. In both, we are partial; not all people resonate with us, and not all art does either. We love and admire friends, as we do with our favorite artworks. Friends and artworks both also transform our lives.
My favorite parts of this book might've been Nehemas's analyses of his favorite artworks which speak to friendship (e.g., Yasmina Reza鈥檚 play "Art," Thelma and Louise). He illustrates these commonsense points above by examining details in these narratives; this was especially interesting because understanding the characters in these narratives gives a deeper understanding of these commonsense points that could perhaps never be conveyed by theoretical argument and description alone. I wish more ethics-related philosophy books treated literature and art; it is powerful.
Some random thoughts reading this book helped spur: I liked thinking about the analogy Nehamas drew between our relationship to friends and our relationship to artworks. Nehamas discusses how some "friendships" might be more instrumental; we hang out with someone, for example, because they are cheerful and often make us feel happy. But if they stopped making us feel happy, we'd stop engaging with them. I realize that often my relationship with artwork can be instrumental in this way; I will listen to music and read novels that more instantaneously put me in desirable moods or states. I can contrast this with a relationship I know some of my friends have with art: they will put in so much work and effort to engage with very complex pieces, and go into it with faith that they'll ultimately be changed in some meaningful way in the process. That attitude seems analogous to having a non-instrumental, genuine friendship with someone. I'd like to import my attitude towards my closest friends into the domain of my engagement with art.
A very interesting discussion on friendship. Personally found it a little hard to follow at times, as I lacked a lot of the knowledge you鈥檙e expected to already have.
I鈥檝e had never considered all those things that a friendship is surrounded by. Even the tiniest difference makes every friendship one of its kind. This book is a beautiful journey -from Aristotle up to this date- in which the author places friendships and works of art in a same level, allowing the reader to understand the magic, happiness and love that they both bring to our lives.
On the whole, I enjoyed this read: the subject is obviously one of my favorites and the book had some memorable passages. I liked the tangents taking us through various works of art and literature (even if I took issue with his blurring of male love/friendship) and the breadth of the examples given is quite impressive. I think it might have been better suited to an essay or talk, however, as it was a bit repetitive without packing any punches - it felt more like I was listening to a very well-educated person explore an interesting topic, but I鈥檓 not sure what specific conclusions or new insights I am left with.
He was easy to read and made the philosophy easy to understand. The chapter on why we love our friends cut right through me. I loved that! The remaining two chapters were a bit of a disappointment after that. I had hoped to read more about why friendships fall apart. The example he used was right on the head except, the friendship seemed to continue, which seemed to not be the point of the chapter. The first part of the book and most of the second part were fantastic.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Princeton professor Alexander Nehamas gives perhaps the finest synopsis of the philosophical foundations of friendship that has ever been published. Beginning with Aristotle, Nehamas takes us on a chronological journey through the philosophical examinations of the various forms of friendship, taking us right up to the present, all the while interspersed with analyses of his own personal friendships. Nehamas himself sums up his thesis best: "Despite their double face, however, nonmoral values are and remain values - features without which life would be pointless, without variation, intricacy, intimacy, or joy. They provide a justification of friendship that is independent of both its benefits and its moral or immoral features, and despite the pains, disappointments, and dangers it brings with it."
I really liked a lot of what Nehamas had to say about friendship, and find myself agreeing with a large portion of the sort of phenomenological structure of friendship he describes. That said, I am uncertain whether I agree with him about all the phenomenological aspects of friendship; I suspect I have a less intimate or emotional feeling towards my friends than he does. However, I may certainly be wrong and will consider his arguments further. I will additionally note that this book was written extremely accessibly and was pleasant to read.
On Friendship was a good break from my typical reading. Being taken through the understandings of friendship through the centuries by philosophers and in the way friendships have been portrayed in art was a very interesting journey and provides a lot to think about. The ways that each individual relationship you have is different and how no friendship could ever be the same is something that made me take a step back and think, as did the idea as to the different values each friendship brings, both good and bad. Overall, this was a great book that I am glad I took a change of pace to read.
I really enjoyed this eminently readable book, the half dozen or so central ideas in which circle around enough times for them to stick. Nehamas did make me wonder, however, whether I actually have any friends! He partially rejects Aristotle's idealistic definition of friendship, but his own implicit understanding of how friendship works is also strikingly intimate and intense. Makes me want to think further about it, perhaps through writing...and to ask myself some hard questions.
I wanted to love this book. I heard an interview with him on NPR and did something I rarely do... Buy a book instead of waiting for the libry to get it. It took me over a year to slog thru this. If you love Greek philosophy more than current scientific studies- this book IS for you. It was not for me. It was dry, mundane and too haughty. There were a handful of decent takeaways in a sentence or two. The NPR interview was 1000 times more interesting in my opinion. Listen to that and skip this.
Too much reliance on literature, film, and art. But it gets a lot better when the focus turns to talking about the disintegration of friendships. Not a practical book on how to develop or maintain good friendships, but nevertheless a worthwhile read.
A simply written book for an easy read. Unlike most other philosophy books that requires you to read a sentence twice to figure out what exactly the author meant, Nehamas has made it light but insightful enough so that it does not become too watered down nor too heavy for an afternoon read.
Aristotle's conception of categories of friends Idea that the reasons we care for closest friends can't be described accurately because it's an asthetic
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.