François Hemsterhuis was a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 writer on aesthetics

Aesthetics

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...

 and moral philosophy

Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

.

The son of Tiberius Hemsterhuis

Tiberius Hemsterhuis

Tiberius Hemsterhuis was a Dutch philologist and critic.-Life:He was born in Groningen. His father, a learned physician, gave him a good early education and he entered the university of his native city in his fifteenth year, where he proved himself the best student of mathematics...

, he was born at Franeker

Franeker

Franeker is one of the eleven historical cities of Friesland and capital of the municipality of Franekeradeel. It is located about 20 km west of Leeuwarden on the Van Harinxma Canal. As of 1 January 2006, it had 12,996 inhabitants. The city is famous for the Eisinga Planetarium from around...

 in the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. He was educated at the University of Leiden, where he studied Plato

Plato

Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...

. 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 7 July 1790. Through his philosophical writings he became acquainted with many distinguished persons--Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

, Herder, Princess Adelheid Amalie Gallitzin

Adelheid Amalie Gallitzin

Princess Adelheid Amalie Gallitzin was the daughter of the Prussian Field Marshal Samuel von Schmettau and the mother of Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin.-Life:She was born in Berlin and educated in the Roman Catholic faith, although she soon became...

, and especially Jacobi

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was an influential German philosopher, literary figure, socialite and the younger brother of poet Johann Georg Jacobi...

, with whom he had much in common. Both were idealists

Idealism

In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...

, 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

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

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.

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; 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.