François Hemsterhuis

Frans Hemsterhuis, Franz Hemsterhuis or François Hemsterhuis, (* December 27 1721 in Franeker, † July 7, 1790 in The Hague) was a Dutch philosopher and writer in the Age of Enlightenment.

Life and work

Hemsterhuis was the son of the philologist Hemsterhuis Tiberius and his wife, née Maria Cornelia de Wilde ( 1685-1766 ). He studied at the University of Leiden, the works of Plato. Since he was not able to take up a professorship, he applied for service in the State of the United Netherlands.

He belonged to the Munster county of Princess Amalie of Gallitzin in Münster, in which Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Johann Georg Hamann wrong. At the Princess Amalie, he ( Diotima see ) called Diotima, his Lettre de DIOCLES à Diotima sur l' athéisme (Paris, 1785) directed. In 1773 he met Denis Diderot in The Hague know personally that was on his trip to Russia to Empress Catherine II.

Hemsterhuis ' philosophy was influenced by his study of the ancient world (especially Socrates and Plato ), and of the Enlightenment Locke and Shaftesbury. He made it his mission to establish an eclectic association between rationalism and sensualism. His explanation, after which the beautiful is that which in a short time produced the greatest amount of ideas, influenced Goethe and Jacobi. His most dialogic writings show the clarity and grace of a tasteful and stylist connoisseur.

Works

• Lettre sur la sculpture (1769 )
• Sur les désirs (Paris 1770)
• Lettre sur l' homme et ses rapports (Paris 1772)
• Sophyle, ou de la philosophie (Paris 1773)
• Aristée, ou de la divinité (Paris 1779)
• Alexis, ou sur l' âge d'or (Paris 1787)
• Oeuvre philosophiques, Collected Works, edited by Jansen, (Paris 1792)