François Hemsterhuis

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François Hemsterhuis (27 December 1721 – 7 July 1790) was a Dutch writer on aesthetics and moral philosophy.^[1]

The son of

• Lettre sur la sculpture (1769), in which occurs the well-known definition of the Beautiful as "that which gives us the greatest number of ideas in the shortest space of time"
• its continuation, Lettre sur les désirs (1770)
• Lettre sur l'homme et ses rapports (1772), in which the "moral organ" and the theory of knowledge are discussed
• Sophyle (1778), a dialogue on the relation between the soul and the body, and also an attack on materialism
• Aristée (1779), the "theodicy" of Hemsterhuis, discussing the existence of God and his relation to man
• Simon (1787), on the four faculties of the soul, which are the will, the imagination, the moral principle (which is both passive and active)
• Alexis (1787), an attempt to prove that there are three golden ages, the last being the life beyond the grave
• Lettre sur l'athéisme (1787).^[2]

A collected edition of his works was made by P. S. Meijboom (1846-1850); see also S. A. Gronemann, F. Hemsterhuis, de Nederlandische Wijsgeer (Utrecht, 1867); E. Grucker, François Hemsterhuis, sa vie et ses œuvres (Paris, 1866); E. Meyer, Der Philosoph Franz Hemsterhuis (Breslau, 1893), with bibliographical notice;^[3] Augustinus P. Dierick, "Pre-Romantic Elements in the aesthetic and moral writings of François Hemsterhuis (1721-1790)." Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 26 (1998), 247–271. A bilingual French-Dutch edition was published, introduced and commented on by Michael John Petry in 2001, titled Wijsgerige werken / Frans Hemsterhuis.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hemsterhuis, François". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 264–265.