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.

• 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

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.