Abstract

In Only a Promise of Happiness Alexander Nehamas holds that beauty is the object of love. I raise three objections to this claim when formulated in terms of personal love: love is too narrow in scope to be the attitude whose formal object is beauty; one can experience a person's beauty but have no love for her; and love is of particulars, not of attributes, however specific, such as beauty. A second kind of love, hedonic love, is too broad in scope to be the attitude whose formal object is beauty. I also argue, contra Nehamas, that inner beauty exists