A profoundly original philosophical detective story tracing the surprising history of an anecdote ranging across centuries of traditions, disciplines, and ideas Red Sea-Red Square-Red Thread is a work of passages taken, written, painted, and sung. It offers a genealogy of liberty through a micrology of wit. It follows the long history of a short anecdote. Commissioned to depict the biblical passage through the Red Sea, a painter covered over a surface with red paint, explaining thereafter that the Israelites had already crossed over and that the Egyptians were drowned. Clearly, not all you see is all you get. Who was the painter and who the first teller of the tale? Designed as a philosophical detective story, Red Sea-Red Square-Red Thread follows the extraordinary number of thinkers and artists who have used the Red Sea anecdote to make so much more than a merely anecdotal point. Leading the large cast are the philosophers, Arthur Danto and Soren Kierkegaard, the poet and playwright, Henri Murger, the opera composer, Giacomo Puccini, and the painter and print-maker, William Hogarth. Strange companions perhaps, until their use of the anecdote is shown as working its extraordinary passage through so many cosmopolitan cities of art and capital. What about the anecdote brings Danto's philosophy of art into conversation with Kierkegaard's stages on life's way, with Murger and Puccini's la vie de boheme, and with Hogarth's modern moral pictures? The book explores narratives of emancipation in philosophy, theology, politics, and the arts. What has the passage of the Israelites to do with the Egyptians who, by many gypsy names, came to be branded as bohemians when arriving in France from the German lands of Bohemia? What have Moses and monotheism to do with the history of monism and the monochrome? And what sort of thread connects a sea to a square when each is so purposefully named red?

About the Author
Lydia Goehr is Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. She is the author of The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music; The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy, and of Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory.

Reviews
An intellectual tour de force in five acts. Goehr traverses broad swathes of European cultural history, including a stunning philosophical and theological reading of Puccini's La Boheme, with brilliance and an underlying smile, offering lovers of the arts a trove of delights as she builds her argument about the nature of art itself * Anne Midgette, music critic, (formerly) The Washington Post, The New York Times *
Lydia Goehr's account of narratives and philosophies of emancipation is a stunning achievement of narrative and philosophical emancipation in its own right. Red Sea-Red-Square-Red Thread is tailor-made for addressing the pressing question of where our best images of freedom in history are hiding, especially when the surprisingly difficult answer is: in plain sight. * Gregg Horowitz, The Pratt Institute (Emeritus) *
Many books in one: an homage to the great Arthur Danto, an intellectual memoir, a philosophical detective story, an anatomy of anecdotes, and a dazzling display of erudition. Goehr has composed a magical, indeed scintillating synthesis of intellectual history, art history, music history and comparative literature-not to speak of philosophical inquiry. * Paul Barolsky, University of Virginia *
Beginning with the simplest of questions, Red Sea-Red Square-Red Thread offers a compelling, insightful, and engaging treatise on the nature of art. It's the Goldberg Variations of philosophical treatises. * James Schmidt, Boston University *
A stunning performance of the birth of philosophy from the emancipatory spirit of modernism. * Michael P. Steinberg, Brown University *
A wonderful book. Goehr takes the reader on a journey-considering how the red square-red sea allegory transforms and appears in unexpected ways in service to a modern idea of freedom and inclusion. A model of how to combine wit and analysis to great effect. * Terry Pinkard, Georgetown University *
Bringing together the histories of art, philosophy, and popular culture into a narrative of human possibility, the book is nothing less than a gift to its culture. * Daniel Herwitz, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor *
A tour de force of theoretical analysis and cultural criticism, Goehr's book charts an unprecedented path through philosophical, musical, literary, and art history. Dazzling in the wit of its style and depth of its content, it reframes our view of every subject it touches upon. * Jonathan Gilmore, City University of New York *
Sprawling and lively, confounding and engaging, and in a word, brilliant...it surely stands as a testament to [Goehr's] lifetime of teaching, writing, reading, viewing, listening, and conversing. It is a book, that teems with curiosity and erudition. More than once, it made me laugh out loud. It rewards sustained reading, and I am glad I read it cover to cover. But it would also reward the occasional perusal of any given passage, if only to give the reader the chance to marvel at the threads, red and otherwise, that it weaves together. * Lydia Moland, European Journal of Philosophy *



Book Information
ISBN 9780197572443
Author Lydia Goehr
Format Hardback
Page Count 720
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 164mm * 243mm * 54mm