Nehamas, Alexander 1946-

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NEHAMAS, Alexander 1946-

PERSONAL: Born March 22, 1946, in Athens, Greece; son of Albert (a banker) and Christine (Yannuli) Nehamas; married Susan D. Glimcher (an attorney), June 22, 1983; children: Nicholas Albert. Ethnicity: "Greek." Education: Swarthmore College, B.A., 1967; Princeton University, Ph.D., 1971. Hobbies and other interests: Arts, literature, travel, opera, film.

ADDRESSES: Home—692 Pretty Brook Road, Princeton, NJ 08540. Office—Princeton University, Program in Hellenic Studies, Henry House, Princeton, NJ 08540. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Educator and author. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, assistant professor, 1971-76, associate professor, 1976-81, professor of philosophy, 1981-86; University of Pennsylvania, professor of philosophy, 1986-90; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, professor of philosophy, comparative literature, and humanities, 1990—, chairman of Hellenic studies program, 1994-2003, head of Council of the Humanities, 1994-2003, head of society of fellows in the liberal arts, 1999-2003. Visiting professor at University of California at Berkeley, 1983, 1993, and at Princeton University, 1988.

MEMBER: American Philosophical Association (program chairman, 1982-83; president, eastern division, 2003-04), American Society for Aesthetics, Modern Language Association, Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, Modern Greek Studies Association, North America Nietzsche Society, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Grant from National Endowment for the Humanities 1978-79; Guggenheim fellowship, 1983-84; Lindback Foundation Teaching Award, University of Pennsylvania, 1989; Behrman Award in humanities, Princeton University, 1999; International Nietzsche Prize (co-recipient), 2001; Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award in the Humanities, 2002.

WRITINGS:

Nietzsche: Life As Literature, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1986.

(Translator, with Paul Woodruff, and author of introduction and notes) Plato, Symposium, Hackett (Indianapolis, IN), 1989.

(Coeditor, with David J. Furley) Aristotle's Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1994.

(Translator and author of introduction, with Paul Woodruff) Plato, Phaedrus, Hackett (Indianapolis, IN), 1995.

The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1998.

Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1998.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art.

SIDELIGHTS: Educator Alexander Nehamas was born in Greece into a banking family. He came to the United States for his education and in 1967, after completing his bachelor's degree at Swarthmore College, decided not to return home, yet. There had been a coup d'etat in Greece that spring, so Nehamas chose to apply for graduate school at Princeton University. At Princeton he majored in philosophy, a study he enjoyed, although his father, a banker, considered it to be a mistake. "From my family's point of view, I'm a failure," Nehamas joked with David Carrier in an interview posted at the Sanford Presidential Lectures Web site. "Greece was not and is not a country where an intellectual and academic career is considered proper." Nehamas added: "It's all right to be cultured and educated, but you are not really supposed to live off your education. You work; it's a mercantile society."

By the time he finished his doctorate at Princeton University, Nehamas realized it was too late in his life for him to get a degree in business, so he stuck with philosophy, despite the fact that his "official plan was to go into business and retire at a relatively young age in order to discuss intellectual issues" on his yacht. In his interview, he added: "I never got a yacht, I got tenure instead."

The first book that Nehamas published, 1986's Nietzsche: Life As Literature, focuses on the nineteenth-century German philosopher Nehamas refers to as one of his intellectual heroes. One reason Nehamas is attracted to Friedrich Nietzsche's thought is that Nietzsche believed that "many things happen for no particular reason. But once they happen you can use them for your purposes." If you successfully use such arbitrary occurrences, by your action "you have given them a reason," Nehamas explained during his interview.

Times Literary Supplement reviewer Michael Tanner proclaimed Nietzsche: Life As Literature to be "the best and most important book on Nietzsche in English." In this scholarly critical work, Nehamas offers a post-structuralist analysis of Nietzsche's philosophy. Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Karsten Harries deemed the volume an "elegant and challenging interpretation" unified by the related themes of Nietzsche's perspectivism—"we know no fact independent of interpretation; there is no vision of reality untainted by prejudice and perspective," noted Harries—and his aestheticism—that one can view the world as one would a literary text, wherein "persons and things," according to Harries, are "characters or entities in some work of fiction, [and] our relationship to the world . . . [is] textual interpretation."

The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault is Nehamas's second published book. In this work, the author focuses on three philosophers, Michel Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault, all of whom, according to Kenneth Baker in the San Francisco Chronicle, "translated into modern terms the question [of] what it is to live a good life." These philosophers were all inspired by Socrates, emulating the ancient thinker's emphasis on the examined life. They were attracted to Socrates for the freedom of interpretation his philosophy allows. As New Republic contributor Martha C. Nussbaum put it, Nehamas wrote this book to demonstrate his own belief that "philosophy is an art of individual self-cultivation through which one may eventually succeed in forging a unique and unified personality, as unforgettable as that of a major literary character."

It is through The Art of Living, Nussbaum wrote, that Nehamas traces the "origins of this aesthetic model of philosophy," which the author believes should be "a practical discipline, capable of shaping the conduct of life." Unfortunately, modern society has lost sight of this fact, forgetting that an understanding of philosophy can change lives. Baker commented that "to appreciate Nehamas's book one need not have read all the thinkers he discusses. Nehamas is a fine explainer and tells his readers what they need to know to feel the force of his arguments." Writing for the Philosophical Review, C. C. W. Taylor stated: "Nehamas is at home in a wide range of disciplines, including classics, philosophy, and literary studies, and has much to say to the specialist in each of those areas, as well as to the general reader. His is a rich and complex work, which invites and rewards repeated study."

Nehamas's third book, 1998's Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates, collects sixteen essays Nehamas wrote on various themes concerning Socrates and Plato. The topics include goodness, metaphysics, and aesthetics as well as discussions of Plato's Republic, Phaedrus, and the Symposium. Library Journal contributor Terry C. Skeats commented that Virtues of Authenticity offers "an excellent introduction" to Nehamas's work.

Nehamas once told CA: "It is extremely difficult to write philosophical works that meet the high standards of rigor and detailed discussion necessary to deal with abstract problems and also focus on issues that a broad public will find engaging and important. To be able to do so has been an important concern of mine in recent years. Plato and Nietzsche, the two philosophers I most admire, and the most different thinkers one can imagine, were masters of this. I continue studying them in the hope that I can learn from them a little about their art."

In addition to writing his own books and continuing his teaching duties at Princeton University, Nehamas also has translated several works and has coedited a collection of essays by other writers.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, March, 1999, J. Bussanich, review of The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault, p. 1280.

Library Journal, November 1, 1998, Terry C. Skeats, review of The Art of Living and Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates, pp. 86-87,

New Republic, January 4, 1999, Martha C. Nussbaum, "The Cult of the Personality," p. 32.

New York Times Book Review, January 19, 1986, Karsten Harries, review of Nietzsche: Life As Literature, p. 14; October 25, 2998, Jonathan Lear, review of The Art of Living, p. 26.

Philosophical Review, July, 2000, C. C. W. Taylor, review of The Art of Living, p. 423.

Philosophy Today, summer, 2000, James S. Hans, "Alexander Nehamas and 'The Art of Living,'" pp. 190-205.

San Francisco Chronicle, October 4, 1998, Kenneth Baker, "Modern Philosophers Still Look to Socrates for Guidance," p. 8.

Times Literary Supplement, May 16, 1986.