Thinking Beautifully

Ariel Colonomos is CNRS Research Professor at Sciences Po and affiliated with CERI. He has also taught at Columbia University, and has held numerous visiting positions in the US.

Thinking Beautifully makes a fascinating and fundamental claim: knowledge has a style. Plots, metaphors, suspense, intrigue, beauty even, are not just the stuff of fiction, but often key ingredients of knowledge production in the humanities and social sciences. Examining a wide range of leading philosophers, anthropologists, and sociologists, Colonomos demonstrates that thinkers, theories, and whole schools of thought have a particular aesthetic that shapes their arguments in essential ways. Written in a lively and playful manner, Thinking Beautifully is an impressive kaleidoscopic exploration of the aesthetics of knowledge and presents a passionate defense of the role of beauty in science.

• Introduction: The Repressed Enigma of BeautyThe Paradoxes of Denying BeautyFrom The Theory of Aesthetics to an Aesthetic of TheoriesReason and Enigma: F. Scott Fitzgerald Goes to CollegeArt As an Epistemic VanguardOn Performances and Ideas and Play: A Three-Tiered StageA Plea for Beauty in ThinkingPart I The Beauty of TextChapter 1: Beautiful WritingAuthoring AnthropologyThe Role of The Travelogue in Anthropological WorkStyleComposing and AssemblingLetters and NumbersJerzy Kosinski On Small Groups and Sociological NovelsImaginative Visions: Bentham On “Fictions”, and Gainsborough on GardensOn PlotsCharactersNarrative PivotsSuspenseChapter 2: Beautiful FramingFrames, Framers, and FramingShrinking Frames: Corralling RealityOpenness in investigation: The Magic of OriginalityTheories As “Emotional Genres”The Tragic NarrativeCompassionCool Thinking, Warm ThinkingThe Right BalanceOn Distance unto His Dying BreathPart II The Beauty of PlayChapter 3 A Narcissistic Game: The Embodiment of Theories and IdeasBecoming OneselfParadoxes of Identification: Freud, Arendt, FoucaultThe Transition: “I’m Finally Myself”The Pitfalls of The GameThe Author as Flag BearerThe Occidentalist Dandyism of Edward SaidThe Logic of AutobiographyChapter 4 Scenes of Revolt: From Class to GenderCritique, Old School Style: A Matter of ClassMarx: The Power of The Grand NarrativeMaos and ThugsCritique, New School Style: The Turn to GenderTransition As a Rupture in CivilityArt As “Proto-Theory”Performativity As Playforms of WritingChapter 5 Race as Performance: Portrait of The Theorist as ChameleonThe Novelistic Intrigues of RaceThe Clothes Maketh the Man?From Dark to Light and Back AgainNew forms of Passing: The Human Stain in ReverseAcademic Performers of RaceThe Aesthetics of Racial ChoiceNew CivilitiesTransracialism: Theatrical Flop, Or Striking Reveal?Violence and Passion“As If” and Self-Revelation: A Good Performance, Or A Bad One?Chapter 6 Academic Stand-Up: Make Them Laugh to Make Them ThinkCommunities of AppreciationThe Telling Grin: Irony and Games of ReasonUnconscious Violinists, Runaway Trolleys, and Other intellectual DiversionsHumorous Epistemologies and National CulturesThe Irony of HistoryWordplays and Lacanian anticsWeird Signifiers: The Beauty of Lacan’s “Lalangue”The Hysteric of The FarceExcess: The Slovenian Silene On YoutubeŽižek, The incongruous intruderThe anal Stage of Capitalism: Sex toys and “Taxporn”Part III The Beauty of IdeasChapter 7 Opacity and The Magic force of EnchantmentOpacity As A DelicacyThe Erotic Magic of Obscurantism: Too Beautiful to Be True?Hypnotic AssociationsPastiches and HoaxesChapter 8 Clarity and The Epiphanic Moment“It Is Clear That”: A Very Wittgensteinian AdageUniversal VoicesThe Two TreatisesEchoing WordsScintillating IdeasMoral LuckAn Oblique TriangleThe Paradoxes of PerfectionA Pale EnlightenmentThe Caricature of a Good LifeThe Crackup: The Beauty of ImperfectionThe Beauty of The FoxConclusion: in Praise of BeautyBeauty As Self-RevelationAn Intellectual Beauty ContestAbout the Author