Donougho, Martin. Review of Alexander Nehamas' ONLY A PROMISE OF HAPPINESS. NDPR (January 2009).

Nehamas, Alexander. Only a Promise of Happiness: the Place of Beauty in a World of Art. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007. In his new book Alexander Nehamas wishes to rehabilitate talk of beauty as a characteristic of art, in the face, first, of philosophical or modernist attempts to insulate art from ordinary concerns, and second, of resort to aesthetic judgment rather than passionate engagement with art, to a 'juridical' as opposed to a 'Platonic' approach. He contends (35) that beauty "is part of the everyday world of purpose and desire, history and contingency, subjectivity and incompleteness." His case for passion is made with passion. . . . Read the rest here: http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=14966.