This study explored parental mentalization processes as they unfolded during a sculpting task administered to fathers of toddlers. Parental mentalization—the parent’s ability to understand behavior based on its underlying mental states —is considered crucial within parent–child relationships and child development. Eleven Israeli first-time fathers of children aged 2–3 were asked to sculpt a representation of themselves with their child using clay. Following the task, the fathers were interviewed while observing the sculpture they had created. Qualitative thematic analysis integrated three types (...) of data—video footage of the sculpting processes, the sculptures themselves, and the transcripts of the post-sculpting interviews. By focusing on data extracts relating to mentalization processes, three main aspects of the clay-sculpting task and interview were identified as processes that either preceded controlled mentalization instances and/or related to their underlying dynamics: discussing the sculpting process elicited the father’s curiosity and wonder; observing the sculpture/sculpting process revealed gaps in paternal representations; and the preplanning of the sculptures sparked non-verbal exploration of metaphors and symbolism. Special attention was given, in the analysis, to the interplay between verbal and non-verbal aspects of mentalization as they appeared in the metaphorical representations that arose through the sculpting process. Comparing this sample to a previous sample of mothers who were given the same task, similarities and differences were explored, with specific reference to topics of embodiment, gender roles, paternity leave, and an active approach in art therapy. The discussion indicates that clay sculpting may offer unique insight into implicit parental mentalization. Possible clinical applications are discussed, with reference to attachment theory and clinical art therapy approaches. (shrink)

The aim of interpretation is to capture the past in the future: to capture, not to recapture, first, because the iterative prefix suggests that meaning, which was once manifest, must now be found again. But the postulated author dispenses with this assumption. Literary texts are produced by very complicated actions, while the significance of even our simplest acts is often far from clear. Parts of the meaning of a text may become clear only because of developments occurring long after its (...) composition. And though the fact that an author means something may be equivalent to the fact that a writer could have meant it, this is not to say that the writer did, on whatever level, actually mean it.Alexander Nehamas, professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, has written articles on ancient Greek philosophy, literary theory, Nietzsche and Thomas Mann. (shrink)

Argues that Nietzsche tried to create a specific literary character in his writings and discusses the paradoxes of his work.

Neither 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 place in art, to reestablish the connections among art, beauty, and desire, (...) and to show that the values of art, independently of their moral worth, are equally crucial to the rest of life.Nehamas makes his case with characteristic grace, sensitivity, and philosophical depth, supporting his arguments with searching studies of art and literature, high and low, from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Manet's Olympia to television. Throughout, the discussion of artworks is generously illustrated.Beauty, Nehamas concludes, may depend on appearance, but this does not make it superficial. The perception of beauty manifests a hope that life would be better if the object of beauty were part of it. This hope can shape and direct our lives for better or worse. We may discover misery in pursuit of beauty, or find that beauty offers no more than a tantalizing promise of happiness. But if beauty is always dangerous, it is also a pressing human concern that we must seek to understand, and not suppress. (shrink)

For much of its history, philosophy was not merely a theoretical discipline but a way of life, an "art of living." This practical aspect of philosophy has been much less dominant in modernity than it was in ancient Greece and Rome, when philosophers of all stripes kept returning to Socrates as a model for living. The idea of philosophy as an art of living has survived in the works of such major modern authors as Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Each of (...) these writers has used philosophical discussion as a means of establishing what a person is and how a worthwhile life is to be lived. In this wide-ranging, brilliantly written account, Alexander Nehamas provides an incisive reevaluation of Socrates' place in the Western philosophical tradition and shows the importance of Socrates for Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault. Why does each of these philosophers—each fundamentally concerned with his own originality—return to Socrates as a model? The answer lies in the irony that characterizes the Socrates we know from the Platonic dialogues. Socratic irony creates a mask that prevents a view of what lies behind. How Socrates led the life he did, what enabled or inspired him, is never made evident. No tenets are proposed. Socrates remains a silent and ambiguous character, forcing readers to come to their own conclusions about the art of life. This, Nehamas shows, is what allowed Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault to return to Socrates as a model without thereby compelling them to imitate him. This highly readable, erudite study argues for the importance of the tradition within Western philosophy that is best described as "the art of living" and casts Montaigne, Nietzsche, and Foucault as the three major modern representatives of this tradition. Full of original ideas and challenging associations, this work will offer new ways of thinking about the philosophers Nehamas discusses and about the discipline of philosophy itself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nietzsche as Self-Made ManAlexander NehamasComposing the Soul: Reaches of Nietzsche’s Psychology, by Graham Parkes; xiv & 481 pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994, $37.50 cloth, $19.95 paper.I cannot resist beginning this essay on Graham Parkes’s study of Nietzsche’s psychology with the first-person pronoun. Parkes provides an erudite and suggestive presentation of Nietzsche’s views on the soul, according to which what we consider that most unitary element of human (...) nature turns out to be the product of bringing together disparate and often conflicting independent agencies. He also provides valuable information about the sources of Nietzsche’s thought, and details a number of connections between Nietzsche’s ideas and his life. Yet, in a book of close to five hundred pages, Parkes self-consciously avoids the first-person pronoun altogether. He speaks of the “I,” which is after all the subject of his book, but the I never speaks itself. Why? Because “what is important here are Nietzsche’s ideas, rather than Parkes’s”; also, because “the whole point of Nietzsche’s psychology is to put the I in question, to prompt the question ‘Who?’ at its every appearance, to hear the polyphony behind the apparent univocality of the first person singular” (p. 310).Though not the first, Nietzsche was one of the most radical dissectors of the human soul. Where others had found unity, order, and indivisibility, Nietzsche uncovered an untidy, often uncontrolled multiplicity. Instead of a consistent, harmonious whole, he saw a messy complex of beliefs, desires, values, views, drives, affects, and habits, picked up at [End Page 487] different times, from disparate, even incompatible sources, moving in different directions; far from fitting naturally into a union, these compete with one another for mastery and control of the person: “The belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon... ought to be expelled from science,” he wrote in Beyond Good and Evil. But, he continued, “between ourselves it is not at all necessary to get rid of the soul at the same time.... But the way is open for new versions and refinements of the soul-hypothesis; and such conceptions as mortal soul, and soul as subjective multiplicity, and soul as social structure of the drives and the affects want henceforth to have citizens’ rights in science.”The breakdown of the soul into independent and often conflicting parts has two radical consequences. First, it implies that some parts of our souls—of our selves—may remain hidden, obscured, suppressed or ignored by others, especially by those that achieve at least apparent dominance and can therefore speak in the first-person. In Nietzsche’s political metaphor, they are like a governing class which speaks for the whole state. This, of course, is the central idea of depth psychology; and Parkes shows how both Freud and Jung were indebted to Nietzsche’s pioneering geography of the soul. Second, to think that the soul is multiple is to think that it is not unalterable: its parts can affect one another; out of their conflict, new configurations are possible. Some parts can be cultivated or left to wither; others can be allowed to run wild or become domesticated; still others can be subordinated to one another or allowed to function in more or less equitable ways. The soul—the person—is not a preexistent unity; it is constructed, or, as Parkes, mindful of Nietzsche’s deep involvement with music, puts it so well, composed.Parkes provides a brilliant catalogue of the metaphors (mineral, vegetal, animal, personal, and political) Nietzsche uses to describe the elements of the multifarious soul. He also produces a sort of recipe for their successful composition into a coherent whole. “Opening up” to as many conflicting drives as possible, we let them be mastered by one or more dominant ones and we subject their multiplicity to the discipline imposed by those ruling passions. Once that discipline becomes instinctive, active control is relaxed and, somehow, the multiplicity spontaneously orders itself. We become, again, natural (p. 377).Now, we know that Nietzsche spent much of his life “doing battle” with Socrates. He passionately despised the... (shrink)

A LARGE NUMBER OF PEOPLE, ancient and modern alike, have always found in Socrates what seemed to them a suspicious, if not actually repugnant, aspect. This aspect, to put the point first in crude terms, is his devotion to philosophy, which presupposes an apparently unshakable faith in reason, in the power of understanding to secure goodness, and in the power of goodness to provide us with happiness.

Nehamas geeft in zijn essay een kritische reactie op de religieuze wereldvisie, en houdt een pleidooi voor het heidendom. Het heidendom zou in tegenstelling tot het monotheïsme erkennen dat er veel manieren zijn waarop mensen hun leven kunnen bevestigen, en is volgens Nehamas een combinatie tussen tolerantie en kosmopolitisme.

In this reply, I defend my views on Nietzsche's “falsification thesis” and his perspectivism against Maudemarie Clark's recent criticisms, which appeared in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 49.1. I begin by amplifying my interpretation of Gay Science 110 and 111, which, I argue, show that the falsification thesis is absent from The Gay Science. I then turn to perspectivism and argue that, contrary to Clark's claims, perspectivism never involves the falsification of the views to which it applies. It is therefore (...) unnecessary to apply perspectivism, as Clark does, only to value-imbued viewpoints and not to empirical knowledge or the natural sciences. Perspectivism, as Nietzsche, I believe, makes clear, applies to every aspect of human knowledge. (shrink)

Negotiating the relation between divine transcendence and divine immanence lies at the heart of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed and of Kierkegaard's philosophical works. The purpose of the paper is to explore the manners in which they do so. I argue that despite various differences between them, both engage with the tension between divine transcendence and immanence by turning away from objectivity to subjectivity and, moreover, by placing paradox, riddle and secret at the heart of their philosophical works. In other (...) words, I argue that they do not attempt to solve or dissolve the great paradox of God's immanent transcendence but to present it in its most acute forms as the paradox within which the religious life is lived. (shrink)

Dit essay van Alexander Nehamas is een waarschuwing aan hen, die de teloorgang van onze cultuur aantonen door de culturele uitingen die ons vandaag omringen te vergelijken met de meesterwerken uit het verleden. Dat is een scheve en oneerlijke vergelijking. Zo ontmoedigend is onze wereld niet, aldus de auteur. Jammerklachten over de teloorgang van de beschaving zijn al zo oud als de Griekse dichter Hesiodus en er is geen reden om aan te nemen dat de dingen in het algemeen nog (...) slechter worden dan ze al waren en nog altijd zijn. Op onderdelen gaat het met de hedendaagse cultuur zelfs helemaal niet zo slecht, aldus Nehamas. Hij vervolgt met een verdediging van de populaire cultuur en in het bijzonder de televisie, die door veel intellectuelen wordt veroordeeld zonder dat ze haar werkelijk kennen. Een scherp en gefundeerd oordeel blijft echter nodig bij onze inspanning om ‘de kunst te verfijnen en uit te dragen’; alleen kunst kan ons enige hoop en troost bieden tegenover de verschrikkingen van het verleden. (shrink)

Nietzsche sometimes writes as if we are not in control—at least not in conscious control—of our actions. He seems to suggest that what we actually do is independent of our intentions. It turns out, though, that his understanding of both intention and action differs radically from most contemporary treatments of the issue. In particular, he denies that our actions are caused by their intentions, whose role is hermeneutical in a sense that this essay develops. How then is responsibility to be (...) assigned, since its moral variety, at least, depends, on several views, on the intention with which an action is performed? Nietzsche, of course, is not interested in making attributions of moral responsibility. Still, his views on the relationship between an individual action, its intention, other actions by its agent, and the agent's character, as this essay presents them, provide a reasonable account of action generally and a different, broader account of responsibility for oneself. (shrink)

Along with our inordinate emphasis on managing our lives on the basis of impartial principles and rules, we have lost the sense that some of the greatest human achievements are accomplished precisely by going beyond anything that existing rules and principles allow. Along with our fixation on the values of morality and politics, which apply to everyone on the basis of our similarities to one another, we have lost the sense that there are also values that depend on our differences (...) and distinguish us from the rest of the world. Philosophical Individualism is a theory that considers the values of difference and distinction to be of crucial importance to life, and models successful lives on successful works of art. That is what is meant by “the art of living.” But such an art is manifested in the abilities of successful leaders in any field: leadership always requires going at least one step beyond wherever what has been already codified can take them. (shrink)

The eminent philosopher and classical scholar Alexander Nehamas presents here a collection of his most important essays on Plato and Socrates. The papers are unified in theme by the idea that Plato's central philosophical concern in metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics was to distinguish the authentic from the fake, the original from its imitations. In approach, the collection displays Nehamas's characteristic combination of analytical rigor and sensitivity to the literary form and dramatic effect of Plato's work. Together, the papers represent Nehamas's (...) distinct and original contributions to scholarship on Plato and Socrates and serve as a comprehensive introduction to the thought of these two philosophers. In the book's opening section, Nehamas discusses Plato's representation of Socrates as a model of authentic human goodness, showing that Plato's Socrates is a more skeptical, troubling, and individualistic thinker than is usually supposed. The papers in the second section form a sustained defense of a new and important understanding of Plato's theory of the forms and the evolution of that theory in Plato's later writings. The third section examines Plato's contention that popular entertainment--by which he meant Greek epic and tragic poetry--misleads its audience into a debased life, an argument Nehamas relates to modern anxieties about television and other forms of popular culture. The collection also includes a discussion of Plato's use of the dialogue form in his representation of Socrates and carefully examines the combination of literary and philosophical elements in his work. Nehamas argues in the book that Plato's specific judgments of what is authentic are often flawed, but that his idea of authenticity as the mark of truth, beauty, and goodness is stronger than many modern scholars have assumed. In drawing together Nehamas's many influential ideas about Plato and Socrates, Virtues of Authenticity is a major contribution to the study of ancient Greek philosophy. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In response to criticisms advanced by Christopher Janaway and Robert Pippin, I offer a rudimentary account of Nietzsche's “drives.” They are not mysterious: they stand for the different sets of motives, often in conflict, with which we are all faced. The strongest among them speak with the voice of the subject and try to get the rest to follow their lead. Such “subjugation,” whether within one or between different persons, often results not in the other's destruction but in its (...) improvement. Moreover, no drives are immune to change. Nietzsche likens their unification, which results in one's becoming an “individual,” to the unity of works of art. Aesthetic values being essentially social, unification depends not just on its agent but also on its reception by an audience. I end by arguing that “the eternal recurrence” forbids our imagining that our life could ever have been different in any significant respect. (shrink)