François Hemsterhuis (December 27, 1721 - July 7, 1790), Dutch writer on aesthetics and moral philosophy, son of Tiberius Hemsterhuis, was born at Franeker in Holland. December 27 is the 361st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Events Pope Innocent XIII becomes pope Johann Sebastian Bach composes the Brandenburg Concertos April 4 - Robert Walpole becomes the first prime minister of Britain September 10 - Treaty of Nystad is signed, bringing an end to the Great Northern War November 2 - Peter I is proclaimed Emperor of All the Russias... July 7 is the 188th day of the year (189th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 177 days remaining. ... 1790 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Aesthetics (or esthetics) (from the Greek word αισθητική meaning a perceiver or sensitive) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty. ... Philosophy (from a combination of the Greek words philos meaning love and sophia meaning wisdom), as a practice, aims at some kind of understanding, knowledge, or wisdom about fundamental matters such as reality, knowledge, meaning, value, being, and truth. ... Tiberius Hemsterhuis (January 9, 1685 - April 7, 1766), Dutch philologist and critic, was born at Groningen in Holland. ... Franekeradeel is a municipality in the northern Netherlands. ...

He was educated at the university of Leiden, where he studied Plato. Failing to obtain a professorship, he entered the service of the state, and for many years acted as secretary to the state council of the United Provinces. He died at the Hague on the 7th of July 1790. Through his philosophical writings he became acquainted with many distinguished persons--Goethe, Herder, Princess Amalia of Gallitzin, and especially Jacobi, with whom he had much in common. Both were idealists, and their works suffer from a similar lack of arrangement, although distinguished by elegance of form and refined sentiment. His most valuable contributions are in the department of aesthetics or the general analysis of feeling. His philosophy has been characterized as Socratic in content and Platonic in form. Its foundation was the desire for self-knowledge and truth, untrammelled by the rigid bonds of any particular system. Leiden University in the city of Leiden, is the oldest still existing and most famous university in the Netherlands. ... Statue of a philosopher, presumely Plato, in Delphi. ... Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (pronounced [gø tə]) (August 28, 1749 – March 22, 1832) was a German writer, humanist, scientist, and philosopher. ... Johann Gottfried Herder Johann Gottfried von Herder (August 25, 1744 - December 18, 1803), German poet, critic, theologian, and philosopher, is best known for his concept of the Volk and is generally considered the father of ethnic nationalism. ... Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (January 25, 1743 - March 10, 1819), was a German philosopher who made his mark on philosophy by coining the term nihilism and promoting it as the prime fault of Enlightenment thought and Kantianism. ... In philosophy, idealism is any theory positing the primacy of spirit, mind, or language over matter. ... Socrates This article is about the ancient Greek philosopher, for all other uses see: Socrates (disambiguation) Socrates (June 4, 470 – May 7, 399 BC) (Greek Σωκράτης Sōkrátēs) was a Greek (Athenian) philosopher and one of the most important icons of the Western philosophical tradition. ...

His most important works, all of which were written in French, are:

• 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 fur les désirs (1770)
• Lettre sur l'homme et ses rapports (1772), in which the "moral organ" and the theory of knowledge are discussed
• Sopyle (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).

The best collected edition of his works is by PS Meijboom (1846-1850); see also SA 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.

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. (Redirected from 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica) The Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1911) in many ways represents the sum of knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. ...