ââåtreatise on the Art of Philosophising Soberly and Accuratelyã¢â❠1734

French philosopher and writer

Charles Batteux (vi May 1713 – 14 July 1780) was a French philosopher and writer on aesthetics.

Title folio of Les Beaux-Arts réduits à united nations même principe

Biography [edit]

Batteux was built-in in Alland'Huy-et-Sausseuil, Ardennes, and studied theology at Reims. In 1739 he came to Paris, and after teaching in the colleges of Lisieux and Navarre, was appointed to the chair of Greek and Roman philosophy in the Collège de France. His 1746 treatise Les beaux arts réduits à un même principe (translated into English as The Fine Arts Reduced to a Single Principle, trans. James O. Immature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) was an attempt to observe a unity among existing theories of beauty and taste on "a unmarried principle", and its views were widely accustomed,^[1] not only in France but throughout Europe.

According to P. O. Kristeller,

the decisive step towards the system of the fine arts [thereby to the modernistic idea, "fine art"] was taken by the Abbé Batteux in his famous and influential treatise ... [making him] the showtime to set forth a clearcut arrangement of the fine arts in a treatise devoted entirely to this subject.^[2]

The reputation thus gained, confirmed by his translation of Horace (1750), led to Batteux's becoming a member of the Académie des Inscriptions (1754) and of the Académie française (1761). His Cours de belles lettres (1765) was subsequently included with some minor writings in the large treatise, Principes de la littérature (1774). His philosophical writings were La morale d'Épicure tirée de ses propres écrits (1758), and the Histoire des causes premières (1769). In issue of the freedom with which in this work he attacked the abuse of authority in philosophy, he lost his professorial chair. His last and nigh all-encompassing work was a Cours d'études à 50'usage des élèves de fifty'école militaire in forty-five volumes.^[1]

In Les Beaux Arts, Batteux developed a theory influenced by John Locke through Voltaire's sceptical sensualism. He held that the fine arts are arts ("assemblages of rules for doing well"), for producing fine or cute things ("which please" of themselves), always "in imitation of la belle nature" and requiring genius. Applying this principle to the art of poetry, and analysing, line by line and even word by give-and-take, the works of swell poets, he deduced the law that the beauty of poetry consists in the accuracy, dazzler and harmony of private expression. His Histoire des causes premières was among the showtime attempts at a history of philosophy, and in his work on Epicurus, post-obit on Gassendi, he defended Epicureanism against the general attacks made against it.^[ane]

For his work "La Morale d'Épicure" 1758 see A. Toscano,"La Morale d'Épicure" di Charles Batteux ed il principio del "secondo natura", in "Scienze eastward Ricerche" n. 42, one dicembre 2016, ISSN: 2283-5873, pp. 20–29.

Strictly in Aesthetics terms Batteux sets the single principle for fine arts in imitation of nature, and this in terms of ideal of perfection to make an harmonious whole: "permit's cull the most beautiful parts of nature, to make an exquisite whole, more perfect then nature, but never ending to exist natural".^[3] In this concept, clearly, Batteux follows a long tradition, present at least in Leon Battista Alberti; as well as for the expression of fine arts, present in Giovanni Battista Armenini and more back in Sebastiano Serlio.

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c} One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Batteux, Charles". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. three (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 533. This cites Dacier et Dupuy, Éloges, in Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions.
2. ^ Paul Oskar Kristeller, "The Modern Organization of the Arts" (1951–1952), repr. in Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and the Arts (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 163-227.
3. ^ Volume I, part I: "à faire united nations choix des plus belles parties de la nature cascade en former en tout exquis, qui fùt plus parfait que la nature elle-méme, sans cependant cesser d'étre naturel". Meet: TOSCANO A. (1991). Charles Batteux: Les Quatre Poëtiques. RIVISTA DI ESTETICA, vol. 39; p. 67-78, ISSN 0035-6212

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Batteux

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