Within contemporary aesthetics, Alexander Nehamas and Richard Shusterman are perhaps the two most high-profile philosophers to have made a serious and sustained effort to make room for the erotic within aesthetics and art. In the first few pages of his book Only a Promise of Happiness (2007), Nehamas lays his cards on the table. Mentioning Kant and Schopenhauer as his adversaries, he states uncompromisingly that “the only reaction appropriate to beauty is eros—love, the desire to possess it” (2007: 6).  While eros should not necessarily be understood in a sexual sense here, Nehamas does think that erotic encounters provide an instructive model for aesthetic experiences in general: 