The 2025 E. Maynard Adams Symposium

“Love, Beauty, Interpretation: Other Ways of Knowing?”

Dr. Alexander Nehamas, Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature, Princeton University

The systematic, articulate, and quantifiable pursuit of knowledge is one of modernity’s great achievements.It has established the detached, impersonal attitude of scientific investigation as the paradigm of our cognitive relationship to the world and one another. But we all live within a vast web of personal relationships with both people and things. Here, love and beauty are paramount. Blending intellect with feeling and knowledge with passion, they impose upon us the task of interpretation. Unlike the generalizing tendency of science, interpretation reveals the individuality of what we love and, to the extent it succeeds, it contributes to our own. It is a knowledge that changes us. And it is the purpose of the humanities to try and make sure that it changes us for the better.

WHEN:
Friday, April 4, 2025 | 5:30 PM – Keynote Address; 7:00 PM – Welcome Reception
Saturday, April 5, 2025 | 10:00 AM – Panel Discussion

COST:
FREE TO ATTEND

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER

Alexander Nehamas was born in Athens, graduated from Athens College, and attended Swarthmore College and Princeton University, where he is currently Professor in the Humanities, Philosophy, and Comparative Literature. Before coming to Princeton, he taught at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Nietzsche: Life as Literature, The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault, Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates, and Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art. He has translated, with Paul Woodruff, Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus into English. At Princeton, he has chaired the Council of the Humanities, directed the Program in Hellenic Studies, and was the Founding Director of the Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts. In 1993, he was the Sather Lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley. He has received a Mellon Foundation Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities, and he was recently named a Brigadier of the Order of the Phoenix by the Greek Government.

Influenced by the place of philosophy in the life of Ancient Greece and Rome as well as by Nietzsche, he questions the transformation of philosophy from a way of living into a purely academic discipline. Similarly, he holds the view that the arts constitute an indispensable part of human life and not a separate domain, of interest only to a few. He teaches courses on Plato, Nietzsche, the philosophy of art, and intention and action.

THE HISTORY

In Spring 2017, Carolina Public Humanities offered a new initiative to bring scholars and the general public into dialogue on issues

important to living in a “Society fit for Human Beings.” Our inaugural symposium, “The Power of Emotions in Personal and Public Life,” featured distinguished philosopher, Martha Nussbaum. The 2018 Adams Symposium, “Disagreements, Intolerance, & Incivility in Public Life,” featured NYU School of Law Professor Jeremy Waldron. The 2019 Adams Symposium, “Why is Climate Change so Difficult to Address or Stop?,” featured Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. Unfortunately, the 2020 Symposium, “Philosophy, Prisons, and the Search for Social Justice” featuring Tommie Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University, was canceled due to COVID-19. We held our first virtual Adams Symposium in 2021, “What Should the Work Ethic Mean in a Twenty-First Century Capitalist Society?” featuring Dr. Elizabeth Anderson, the John Dewey Distinguished University Professor, John Rawls Collegiate Professor, and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Michigan. The 2022 Adams Symposium, “Social Class Differences and the Search for Political Solidarity Among Black Americans“, featured Dr. Tommy Shelby, Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African & African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University.

The Adams Symposium is named for E. Maynard Adams, who was Kenan Professor of Philosophy at UNC Chapel Hill. Professor Adams (1919-2003) played a key role in the creation of the UNC Humanities Program and was an eloquent spokesman for the role of the humanities and human values in contemporary education and culture.