{"title":"Stendhal’s Definition of Beauty, in and as Philosophy","authors":"Alex Weintraub","doi":"10.1215/00358118-9812494","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n In On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), Friedrich Nietzsche misquotes Stendhal’s definition of beauty. Beauty is not, as the German philosopher claims, “a promise of happiness” (72). Rather, Stendhal proposes in a footnote to his book De l’amour (1822)—in a chapter entitled “La Beauté détrônée par l’amour”—that “la beauté n’est que la promesse du bonheur” (40). Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s misquotation of Stendhal and his subsequent interpretation of the French author’s aesthetics have held sway in later philosophy, such that Stendhal is regularly recruited to endorse views about beauty quite dissimilar from his own. This article approaches Stendhal as a philosopher in order to develop a clearer sense of what the author really meant by characterizing beauty as “only a promise of happiness.” Through close readings of De l’amour and Rome, Naples, et Florence, it is proposed that Stendhal’s restrictive only allows for and even recommends so-called mere judgments of beauty, or the experience of beauty as a completed pleasure in reflective contemplation, as opposed to the Nietzschean reading of Stendhal, which would define judgments of beauty as forepleasures to future satisfactions. More importantly, this article aims to recover what Stendhal still has to teach present-day philosophers and critics about judgments of taste.","PeriodicalId":39614,"journal":{"name":"Romanic Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Romanic Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00358118-9812494","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, ROMANCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In On the Genealogy of Morals (1887), Friedrich Nietzsche misquotes Stendhal’s definition of beauty. Beauty is not, as the German philosopher claims, “a promise of happiness” (72). Rather, Stendhal proposes in a footnote to his book De l’amour (1822)—in a chapter entitled “La Beauté détrônée par l’amour”—that “la beauté n’est que la promesse du bonheur” (40). Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s misquotation of Stendhal and his subsequent interpretation of the French author’s aesthetics have held sway in later philosophy, such that Stendhal is regularly recruited to endorse views about beauty quite dissimilar from his own. This article approaches Stendhal as a philosopher in order to develop a clearer sense of what the author really meant by characterizing beauty as “only a promise of happiness.” Through close readings of De l’amour and Rome, Naples, et Florence, it is proposed that Stendhal’s restrictive only allows for and even recommends so-called mere judgments of beauty, or the experience of beauty as a completed pleasure in reflective contemplation, as opposed to the Nietzschean reading of Stendhal, which would define judgments of beauty as forepleasures to future satisfactions. More importantly, this article aims to recover what Stendhal still has to teach present-day philosophers and critics about judgments of taste.
在《论道德谱系》(1887)一书中,弗里德里希·尼采错误地引用了司汤达对美的定义。正如这位德国哲学家所说的那样,美不是“幸福的承诺”(72)。相反,司汤达在他的《爱情》(1822)一书的脚注中提出,在题为“La beaut détrônée par l 'amour”的一章中,“La beaut n 'est que La promise du bonheur”(40)。尽管如此,尼采对司汤达的错误引用和他对法国作家美学的后续解释在后来的哲学中占据了主导地位,以至于司汤达经常被邀请来支持与他自己截然不同的关于美的观点。这篇文章将司汤达视为一位哲学家,目的是为了更清楚地理解作者将美描述为“仅仅是幸福的承诺”的真正含义。通过对《爱》和《罗马,那不勒斯,佛罗伦萨》的仔细阅读,我们发现司汤达的限制只允许甚至推荐所谓的单纯的对美的判断,或者是将美的体验作为一种完整的沉思的快乐,而不是尼采式的对司汤达的阅读,后者将对美的判断定义为对未来满足的预知。更重要的是,本文旨在恢复司汤达在品味判断方面仍然可以教给当今哲学家和评论家的东西。
Romanic ReviewArts and Humanities-Arts and Humanities (all)
CiteScore
0.20
自引率
0.00%
发文量
23
期刊介绍:
The Romanic Review is a journal devoted to the study of Romance literatures.Founded by Henry Alfred Todd in 1910, it is published by the Department of French and Romance Philology of Columbia University in cooperation with the Departments of Spanish and Italian. The journal is published four times a year (January, March, May, November) and balances special thematic issues and regular unsolicited issues. It covers all periods of French, Italian and Spanish-language literature, and welcomes a broad diversity of critical approaches.