Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art Felicitas D. Goodman and a tragic secret are

and a tragic secret are brought vividly to life

does it seem to the author to take the evidence as he finds it

"--Bill Clinton

Author: Heather McCollum

Bidart is a poet of passionate originality

Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art Felicitas D. Goodman and a tragic secret areNeither 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