Henry Home, Lord Kames  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Difference between revisions)
Jump to: navigation, search
Revision as of 11:43, 11 March 2011
Jahsonic (Talk | contribs)

← Previous diff
Current revision
Jahsonic (Talk | contribs)

Line 1: Line 1:
{{Template}} {{Template}}
-problems to which modern poetry gives rise are [[Wilhelm von Humboldt]], the two [[Schlegel]]s and [[Georg Gottfried Gervinus|Gervinus]]. 
-===Contributions by German savants===+'''Henry Home, Lord Kames''' (1696 - 27 December 1782) was a [[Scotland|Scottish]] [[philosopher]] of the 18th century. Born at Kames House, between [[Eccles, Berwickshire|Eccles]] and Birgham, [[Berwickshire]], and [[educated at home]] by a [[private tutor]], he became an [[advocate]] and was one of the leaders of the [[Scottish Enlightenment]]. In 1752, he was "raised to the bench", thus acquiring the title of Lord Kames.
-A word may be said in conclusion on the attempts of German savants to apply a knowledge of physiological conditions to the investigation of the sensuous elements of aesthetic effect, as well as to introduce into the study of the simpler aesthetic forms the methods of natural science. The classic work of [[Hermann von Helmholtz|Helmholtz]] on "Sensations of Tone" is a highly musical composition on physics and physiology. The endeavour to determine with a like degree of precision the physiological conditions of the pleasurable effects of colours and their combinations by [[Ernst Wilhelm von Brücke|E. W. Brucke]], [[Ewald Hering]] and more recent investigators, has so far failed to realize the desideratum laid down by Herbart, that there should be a theory of colour-relations equal in completeness and exactness to that of tone-relations. The experimental inquiry into simple aesthetically pleasing forms was begun by [[Gustav Fechner|G. T. Fechner]] in seeking to test the soundness of Adolf Zeising's hypothesis that the most pleasing proportion in dividing a line, say the vertical part of a cross, is the "golden section", where the smaller division is to the larger as the latter to the sum. He describes in his work on "Experimental Aesthetics" (''Auf experimentalen Asthetik'') a series of experiments carried out on a large number of persons, bearing on this point, the results of which he considers to be in favour of Zeising's hypothesis.+Home wrote much about the importance of property to society. In his ''Essay Upon Several Subjects Concerning British Antiquities'', written just after the [[Jacobite rising]] of 1745 he described how the [[politics of Scotland]] were not based on loyalty to Kings or Queens as Jacobites had said but on royal land grants given in return for loyalty.
-==French Writers==+In ''Historical Law Tracts'' and later in ''Sketches on the History of Man'' he described human history as having four distinct stages. The first was as a [[hunter-gatherer]] where people avoided each other out of competition. The second stage he described was a [[herder]] of domestic animals which required forming larger societies. No laws were needed at these stages except those given by the head of the family or society. [[Agriculture]] was the third stage requiring greater cooperation and new relationships to allow for trade or employment (or slavery). He argued that 'the intimate union among a multitude of individuals, occasioned by agriculture' required a new set of rights and obligations in society. This requires laws and law enforcers. A fourth stage moves from villages and farms to [[civilization|seaports and market towns]] requiring yet more laws and complexity but also much to benefit from. Kames could see these stages within Scotland itself, with the pastoral/agricultural highlands, the agricultural/industrial lowlands and the growing commercial ("polite") towns of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
-In [[France]] aesthetic speculation grew out of the discussion by poets and critics on the relation of modern art; and [[Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux|Boileau]] in the [[17th century]], the development of the dispute between the "ancients" and the "moderns" at the end of the 17th century by [[Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle|B. le Bouvier de Fontenelle]] and [[Charles Perrault]], and the continuation of the discussion as to the aims of poetry and of art generally in the [[18th century]] by [[Voltaire]], [[Pierre Bayle|Bayle]], [[Denis Diderot|Diderot]] and others, not only offer to the modern theorists valuable material in the shape of a record by experts of their aesthetic experience, but disclose glimpses of important aesthetic principles. [[Yves Marie André]]'s ''Essay on Beauty'' was an exploration of visual, musical, moral, and intellectual beauty. A more systematic examination of the several arts (corresponding to that of [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing|Lessing]]) is to be found in the ''Cours de belles lettres'' of [[Charles Batteux]] (1765), in which the meaning and value of the imitation of nature by art are further elucidated, and the arts are classified (as by Lessing) according as they employ the forms of space or those of time.+The above studies created the genre of the story of civilization and defined the fields of [[anthropology]] and [[sociology]] and therefore the modern study of history for two hundred years.
-===Theories of organic beauty: Buffier===+Home was also on the panel of judges in the [[Joseph Knight (slave)|Joseph Knight]] case which ruled that there could be no slavery in [[Scotland]].
-The beginning of a more scientific investigation of beauty in general is connected with the name of [[Claude Buffier|Pere Buffier]] (see ''First Truths''), form, and illustrates his theory by the human face. A beautiful face is at once the most common and most rare among members of the species. This seems to be a clumsy way of saying that it is a clear expression of the typical form of the species.+He enjoyed intelligent conversation and cultivated a large number of intellectual associates, among them [[John Home]], [[David Hume]] and [[James Boswell]].[http://www.jamesboswell.info/People/people.php?person=57]. [[Lord Monboddo]] was also a frequent debater of Kames, although these two usually had a fiercely competitive and adversarial relationship.
- +
-===Taine===+
- +
-This idea of typical beauty (which was adopted by [[Joshua Reynolds|Reynolds]]) has been worked out more recently by [[Hippolyte Taine|H. Taine]]. In his work, ''The Ideal in Art'' (trans. by I. Durand), he proceeds in the manner of a botanist to determine a scale of characters in the physical and moral man. The degree of the universality or importance of a character, and of its beneficence or adaptation to the ends of life, determine the measure of its aesthetic value, and render the work of art, which seeks to represent it in its purity, an ideal work.+
- +
-===French systems of aesthetics: The ''spiritualistes''===+
- +
-The only elaborated systems of aesthetics in French literature are those constructed by the ''spiritualistes'', the philosophic writers who under the influence of German thinkers effected a reaction against the crude sensationalism of the [[18th century]]. They aim at elucidating the higher and spiritual element in aesthetic impressions, appearing to ignore any capability in the sensuous material of affording a true aesthetic delight. J. Cousin and Jean Charles Leveque are the principal writers of this school. The latter developed an elaborate system of the subject (''La Science du beau''). All beauty is regarded as spiritual in its nature. The several beautiful characters of an organic body — of which the principal are magnitude, unity and variety of parts, intensity of colour, grace or flexibility, and correspondence to environment — may be brought under the conception of the ideal grandeur and order of the species. These are perceived by reason to be the manifestations of an invisible vital force. Similarly the beauties of inorganic nature are to be viewed as the grand and orderly displays of an immaterial physical force. Thus all beauty is in its objective essence either spirit or unconscious force acting with fulness and in order.+
- +
-==English Writers==+
- +
-There is nothing answering to the German conception of a system of aesthetics in English literature. The inquiries of English thinkers have been directed for the most part to such modest problems as the psychological process by which we perceive the beautiful — discussions which are apt to be regarded by German historians as devoid of real philosophical value. The writers may be conveniently arranged in two divisions, answering to the two opposed directions of English thought: (1) the Intuitionalists, those who recognize the existence of an objective beauty which is a simple unanalysable attribute or principle of things; and (2) the Analytical theorists, those who follow the analytical and psychological method, concerning themselves with the sentiment of beauty as a complex growth out of simpler elements. +
- +
-===The Intuitionists===+
-====Shaftesbury====+
- +
-[[Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury|Shaftesbury]] is the first of the intuitional writers on beauty. In his ''Characteristics'' the beautiful and the good are combined in one ideal conception, much as with [[Plato]]. Matter in itself is ugly. The order of the world, wherein all beauty really resides, is a spiritual principle, all motion and life being the product of spirit. The principle of beauty is perceived not with the outer sense, but with an internal or moral sense which apprehends the good as well. This perception yields the only true delight, namely, spiritual enjoyment. +
- +
-====Hutcheson====+
- +
-[[Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)|Francis Hutcheson]], in his ''System of Moral Philosophy'', though he adopts many of Shaftesbury's ideas, distinctly disclaims any independent self-existing beauty in objects. "All beauty", he says, "is relative to the sense of some mind perceiving it." One cause of beauty is to be found not in a simple sensation such as colour or tone, but in a certain order among the parts, or "uniformity amidst variety". The faculty by which this principle is discerned is an internal sense which is defined as "a passive power of receiving ideas of beauty from all objects in which there is uniformity in variety". This inner sense resembles the external senses in the immediateness of the pleasure which its activity brings, and further in the necessity of its impressions: a beautiful thing being always, whether we will or no, beautiful. He distinguishes two kinds of beauty, absolute or original, and relative or comparative. The latter is discerned in an object which is regarded as an imitation or semblance of another. He distinctly states that "an exact imitation may still be beautiful though the original were entirely devoid of it." He seeks to prove the universality of this sense of beauty, by showing that all men, in proportion to the enlargement of their intellectual capacity, are more delighted with uniformity than the opposite.+
- +
-====Reid====+
- +
-In his ''Essays on the Intellectual Powers'' (viii. "Of Taste") [[Thomas Reid]] applies his principle of common sense to the problem of beauty saying that objects of beauty agree not only in producing a certain agreeable emotion, but in the excitation along with this emotion of a belief that they possess some perfection or excellence, that beauty exists in the objects independently of our minds. His theory of beauty is severely spiritual. All beauty resides primarily in the faculties of the mind, intellectual and moral. The beauty which is spread over the face of visible nature is an emanation from this spiritual beauty, and is beauty because it symbolizes and expresses the latter. Thus the beauty of a plant resides in its perfect adaptation to its end, a perfection which is an expression of the wisdom of its Creator.+
- +
-====Hamilton====+
- +
-In his ''Lectures on Metaphysics'' [[Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet|Sir W. Hamilton]] gives a short account of the sentiments of taste, which (with a superficial resemblance to Kant) he regards as subserving both the subsidiary and the elaborative faculties in cognition, that is, the imagination and the understanding. The activity of the former corresponds to the element of variety in a beautiful object, that of the latter with its unity. He explicitly excludes all other kinds of pleasure, such as the sensuous, from the proper gratification of beauty. He denies that the attribute of beauty belongs to fitness. +
- +
-====Ruskin====+
- +
-[[John Ruskin]]'s well-known speculations on the nature of beauty in ''Modern Painters'' ("Of ideas of beauty"), though sadly wanting in scientific precision, have a certain value in the history of divine attributes. Its true nature is appreciated by the theoretic faculty which is concerned in +
-the moral conception and appreciation of ideas of beauty, and must be distinguished from the imaginative or artistic faculty, which is employed in regarding in a certain way and combining the ideas received from external nature. He distinguishes between typical and vital beauty. The former is the external quality of bodies which typifies some divine attribute. The latter consists in "the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things". The forms of typical beauty are:-- (1) infinity, the type of the divine incomprehensibility; (2) unity, the type of the divine comprehensiveness; (3) repose, the type of the divine permanence; (4) symmetry, the type of the divine justice; (5) purity, the type of the divine energy; and (6) moderation, the type of government by law. Vital beauty, again, is regarded as relative when the degree of exaltation of the function is estimated, or generic if only the degree of conformity of an individual to the appointed functions of the species is taken into account. Ruskin's writings illustrate the extreme tendency to identify aesthetic with moral perception. +
- +
-===The analytical theorists===+
-====Addison====+
- +
-[[Joseph Addison|Addison]]'s "Essays on the Imagination" contributed to the ''Spectator'', though they belong to popular literature, contain the germ of scientific analysis in the statement that the pleasures of imagination (which arise originally from sight) fall into two classes — (1) primary pleasures, which entirely proceed from objects before our eyes; and (2) secondary pleasures, flowing from the ideas of visible objects. The latter are greatly extended by the addition of the proper enjoyment of resemblance, which is at the basis of all mimicry and wit. Addison recognizes, too, to some extent, the influence of association upon our aesthetic preferences.+
- +
-====Home====+
- +
-In the ''Elements of Criticism'' of [[Henry Home, Lord Kames|Home (Lord Kames)]] another attempt is made to resolve the pleasure of beauty into its elements. Beauty and ugliness are simply the pleasant and he appears to admit no general characteristic of beautiful objects beyond this power of yielding pleasure. Like Hutcheson, he divides beauty into intrinsic and relative, but understands by the latter the appearance of fitness and utility, which is excluded from the beautiful by Hutcheson. +
- +
-====Hogarth====+
- +
-Passing by the name of Sir [[Joshua Reynolds]], whose theory of beauty closely resembles that of [[Claude Buffier|Pere Buffier]], we come to the articulations of another artist and painter, [[William Hogarth]]. He discusses, in his ''Analysis of Beauty'', all the elements of visual beauty. He finds in this the following elements:-- (1) fitness of the parts to some design; (2) variety in as many ways as possible; (3) uniformity, regularity or symmetry, which is only beautiful when it helps to preserve the character of fitness; (4) simplicity or distinctness, which gives pleasure not in itself, but through its enabling the eye to enjoy variety with ease; (5) intricacy, which provides employment for our active energies, leading the eye "a wanton kind of chase"; (6) quantity or magnitude, which draws our attention and produces admiration and awe. The beauty of proportion he resolves into the needs of fitness. Hogarth applies these principles to the determination of the degrees of beauty in lines, figures and groups of forms. Among lines he singles out for special honour the serpentine (formed by drawing a line once round from the base to the apex of a long slender cone). +
- +
-====Burke====+
- +
-[[Edmund Burke|Burke]]'s speculations, in his ''Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful'', illustrate the tendency of English writers to treat the problem as a psychological one and to introduce physiological considerations. He finds the elements of beauty to be:-- (1) smallness; (2) smoothness; (3) gradual variation of direction in gentle curves; (4) delicacy, or the appearance of fragility; (5) brightness, purity and softness of colour. The sublime is rather crudely resolved into astonishment, which he thinks always retains an element of terror. Thus "infinity has a tendency to fill the mind with a delightful horror." Burke seeks what he calls "efficient causes" for these aesthetic impressions in certain affections of the nerves of sight analogous to those of other senses, namely, the soothing effect of a relaxation of the nerve fibres. The arbitrariness and narrowness of this theory cannot well escape the reader's attention. +
- +
-====Alison====+
- +
-[[Archibald Alison (Scottish author)|Alison]], in his well-known ''Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste'', proceeds by a method exactly the opposite to that of Hogarth and Burke. He seeks to analyse the mental process then finds that this consists in a peculiar operation of the imagination, namely, the flow of a train of ideas through the mind, which ideas always correspond to some simple affection or emotion (e.g. cheerfulness, sadness, awe) awakened by the object. He thus makes association the sole source of aesthetic delight, and denies the existence of a primary source in sensations themselves. He illustrates the working of the principle of association at great length, and with much skill; yet his attempt to make it the unique source of aesthetic pleasure fails completely. [[Francis Jeffrey]]'s ''Essays on Beauty'' (in the Edinburgh Review, and Encyclopædia Britannica, 8th edition) are little more than a modification of Alison's theory. ''Philosophical Essays'' consists in pointing out the unwarranted assumption lurking in the doctrine of a single quality running through all varieties of beautiful object. He seeks to show how the successive changes in the meaning of the term "beautiful" have arisen. He suggests that it originally connoted the pleasure of colour. The value of his discussion resides more in the criticism of his predecessors than in the contribution of new ideas. His conception of the sublime, suggested by the etymology of the word, emphasizes the element of height in objects. +
- +
-Of the association psychologists [[James Mill]] did little more towards the analysis of the sentiments of beauty than re-state Alison's doctrine. [[Alexander Bain]], in his treatise, ''The Emotions and the Will'' ("Aesthetic Emotions"), carries this examination considerably further. He seeks to differentiate aesthetic from other varieties of pleasurable emotion by three characteristics:-- (1) their freedom from life-serving uses, being gratifications sought for their own sakes; (2) their purity from all disagreeable concomitants; (3) their eminently sympathetic or shareable nature. He takes a comprehensive view of the constituents of aesthetic enjoyment, including the pleasures of sensation and of its revived or its "ideal" form; of revived emotional states; and lastly the satisfaction of those wide-ranging susceptibilities which we call the love of novelty, of contrast and of harmony. The effect of sublimity is connected with the manifestation of superior power in its highest degrees, which manifestation excites a sympathetic elation in the beholder. The ludicrous, again, is defined by Bain, improving on Aristotle and Hobbes, as the degradation of something possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion. +
- +
-====Spencer====+
- +
-[[Herbert Spencer]], in his ''First Principles'', ''Principles of Psychology'' and ''Essays'', has given an interesting turn to the psychology of aesthetics by the application of his doctrine of evolution. Adopting [[Friedrich Schiller|Schiller]]'s idea of a connexion between aesthetic activity and play, he seeks to make it the starting-point in tracing the evolution of aesthetic activity. Play is defined as the outcome of the superfluous energies of the organism: as the activity of organs and faculties which, owing to a prolonged period of inactivity, have become specially ready to discharge their function, and as a consequence vent themselves in simulated actions. Aesthetic activities supply a similar mode of self-relieving discharge to the higher organs of perception and emotion; and they further agree with play in not directly subserving any processes conducive to life; in being gratifications sought for their own sake only. Spencer seeks to construct a hierarchy of aesthetic pleasures according to the degree of complexity of the faculty exercised: from those of sensation up to the revived emotional experiences which constitute the aesthetic sentiment proper. Among the more vaguely revived emotions Spencer includes more permanent feelings of the race transmitted by heredity; as when he refers the deep and indefinable emotion excited by music to associations with vocal tones expressive of feeling built up during the past history of our species. This biological treatment of aesthetic activity has had a wide influence, some e.g. [[Grant Allen]] being content to develop his evolutional method. Yet, as suggested above, his theory is now recognized as taking us only a little way towards an adequate understanding of our aesthetic experience.+
- +
-==See also==+
- +
-* [[Aesthetics]]+
- +
-{{1911}}+
- +
-[[Category:Aesthetics]]+
 +==Major works==
 +*''Remarkable Decisions of the Court of Session'' (1728)
 +*''Essays upon Several Subjects in Law'' (1732)
 +*''Sketches of the History of Man'' (1734)
 +*''Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion'' (1751)
 +*''Principles of Equity'' (1760)
 +*''Introduction to the Art of Thinking'' (1761)
 +*''[[Elements of Criticism]]'' (1762)
{{GFDL}} {{GFDL}}

Current revision

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696 - 27 December 1782) was a Scottish philosopher of the 18th century. Born at Kames House, between Eccles and Birgham, Berwickshire, and educated at home by a private tutor, he became an advocate and was one of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1752, he was "raised to the bench", thus acquiring the title of Lord Kames.

Home wrote much about the importance of property to society. In his Essay Upon Several Subjects Concerning British Antiquities, written just after the Jacobite rising of 1745 he described how the politics of Scotland were not based on loyalty to Kings or Queens as Jacobites had said but on royal land grants given in return for loyalty.

In Historical Law Tracts and later in Sketches on the History of Man he described human history as having four distinct stages. The first was as a hunter-gatherer where people avoided each other out of competition. The second stage he described was a herder of domestic animals which required forming larger societies. No laws were needed at these stages except those given by the head of the family or society. Agriculture was the third stage requiring greater cooperation and new relationships to allow for trade or employment (or slavery). He argued that 'the intimate union among a multitude of individuals, occasioned by agriculture' required a new set of rights and obligations in society. This requires laws and law enforcers. A fourth stage moves from villages and farms to seaports and market towns requiring yet more laws and complexity but also much to benefit from. Kames could see these stages within Scotland itself, with the pastoral/agricultural highlands, the agricultural/industrial lowlands and the growing commercial ("polite") towns of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The above studies created the genre of the story of civilization and defined the fields of anthropology and sociology and therefore the modern study of history for two hundred years.

Home was also on the panel of judges in the Joseph Knight case which ruled that there could be no slavery in Scotland.

He enjoyed intelligent conversation and cultivated a large number of intellectual associates, among them John Home, David Hume and James Boswell.[1]. Lord Monboddo was also a frequent debater of Kames, although these two usually had a fiercely competitive and adversarial relationship.

Major works

  • Remarkable Decisions of the Court of Session (1728)
  • Essays upon Several Subjects in Law (1732)
  • Sketches of the History of Man (1734)
  • Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (1751)
  • Principles of Equity (1760)
  • Introduction to the Art of Thinking (1761)
  • Elements of Criticism (1762)




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Henry Home, Lord Kames" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools