Jean-Baptiste Du Bos (b. 1670, d. 1742) was a French antiquarian,historian, diplomat, polymath, and aesthetician. He participated inthe Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns, wrote on numismatics, delvedinto a variety of historical questions, and had an enduring love ofthe fine arts. Today he is primarily known as the author ofCritical Reflections on Poetry and Painting (1719) and as oneof the founders of modern aesthetics. Deeply influenced by his friendJohn Locke, Du Bos made a major contribution to the spread ofempiricism in France, both in aesthetics and other areas ofphilosophy. He influenced almost all eighteenth-century contributorsto aesthetics, including Charles Batteux, Alexander GottliebBaumgarten, David Hume, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn,and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

• 1. Life and works
• 2.Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting
• 3. Du Bos’s impact on the development of aesthetics
• 4. Du Bos on epistemology and philosophy of science
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Life and works

Du Bos was born in Beauvais on 14 December 1670. Little is known ofhis family or childhood. He was educated in Paris, where he received aMaster of Arts in 1688 and a Bachelor of Theology in 1692. Althoughlater in life he was a titular abbé and canon, he seems to havehad little interest in the ecclesiastical life. He was more interestedin politics and in the life of a man of letters and he soon moved inleading intellectual circles. His friends included NicolasBoileau-Déspreaux, an important poet and literary critic,Charles Perrault, another major poet, and Pierre Bayle, the famousphilosopher. He was a friend of Jean Jacques-Rousseau though, as wasoften the case with Rousseau’s friendships, the friendship didnot endure. Du Bos was particularly closely associated with Bayle, whohad an important impact on Du Bos’s thought. Du Bos traveledextensively in Europe in his capacity as a diplomat and in order tomeet the leading intellectuals of the day. Lombard (1913) remains thestandard account of his life.

Du Bos’s first book wasHistoire de Quatre Gordiens,prouvée et illustrée par les Médailles(History of the Four Gordians, Proven and Illustrated byMedallions) (1695). In this work, he argued, on the basis ofnumismatic evidence, that there had been four, not three Gordianemperors. His hypothesis was quickly refuted by historians.

Du Bos worked as a diplomat and was involved in negotiating a peacetreaty between the Netherlands and France. In this connection, hewroteLes Interests de l’Angleterre mal entendus dans laguerre présente (England’s Interests in thePresent War Misunderstood) (1703).

His next book wasL’Histoirede la Ligue deCambray (History of the League of Cambrai). This was aclear and engaging history of the alliance, including France,assembled by Pope Julius II to wage war against the Venetian Republicbetween 1508 and 1516. The book was praised by, among others,Voltaire.

Du Bos travelled to England in 1698 to meet John Locke at the requestof their mutual friend Nicolas Toinard. Toinard wanted advice on thepreparation of a translation of Locke’sEssay concerningHuman Understanding. Locke and Du Bos became close friends andLocke asked his French friend to review the French translation of theEssay. The influence of Locke’s empiricism is evidentthroughout theCritical Reflections.

In 1719 Du Bos publishedRéflexions critiques sur lapoésie et sur la peinture (Critical Reflections onPoetry and Painting), the book on which his posthumous reputationdepends. Further editions appeared in 1732, 1733, 1740, 1746, 1755,1760, and 1770. The work was significantly expanded and revised forthe 1740 and subsequent editions. It was translated into German,Dutch, and English. Largely on the basis of theCriticalReflections, Du Bos was elected to the Académiefrançaise in 1720. He became perpetual secretary of theAcadémie in 1723.

Du Bos’s final major work was theHistoire critique del’établissement de la monarchie française dans lesGaules (Critical History of the Establishment of the FrenchMonarchy in Gaul) (1734). The book’s thesis is that theFranks did not conquer Gaul. Rather, according to Du Bos, the Gaulsinvited them to become the rulers of what became France. The book wonthe praise of many, including Edward Gibbon, but it was effectivelycriticized by Montesquieu inThe Spirit of the Laws.

By all accounts, Du Bos was a pleasant and charming man. Manyaffectionate remembrances were published in the wake of his death on23 March 1742.

2.Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting

Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting begins with aninvestigation of the “striking pleasure (94)” that humansreceive from the experience of poetry and painting. (All references totheCritical Reflections are to pages of Du Bos 1719/2021.)The book focuses on the two fine arts mentioned in the book’stitle, but Du Bos also discusses sculpture, engraving, dance, andmusic. According to Du Bos, we receive pleasure from the fine artsbecause works of art are imitations of objects in the world.Presumably, on Du Bos’s view, the similarity between imitationsand the objects imitated is responsible for the arousal of emotion.When we experience imitations, we receive emotions similar to, butless intense than, the emotions we feel when we experience the objectsimitated. If these emotions are pleasing, Du Bos has an account of thepleasure that humans receive from experience of the fine arts.

Du Bos’s account of the striking pleasure that we receive fromthe fine arts commits him to the ancient view that the fine arts areimitative arts. This view is traceable to Plato and Aristotle and DuBos acknowledges these ancient sources. Although the view that thefine arts make up a coherent ‘system’ is sometimesattributed to Charles Batteux (Kristeller 1951; 1952), Du Bos’sviews clearly anticipate those of Batteux (Young 2015).

According to Du Bos, all arts are imitative, but the arts do not allrepresent in the same way. In the course of theCriticalReflections, Du Bos makes a contribution to philosophy oflanguage by distinguishing between natural signs and the artificialsigns found in language. Natural signs, such as those found inpainting, sculpture, and music, represent because they resemble theirobjects. The artificial signs of language are arbitrary orconventional. They are employed in poetry (that is, literature).

Du Bos asks which of the arts is best able to arouse emotions. Hebelieves that painting has an advantage over poetry on the groundsthat natural signs affect us more effectively. He argues, however,that poetry when combined with music or acting (or both, as in opera)has an advantage over painting.

Du Bos is aware that his account of the pleasure we receive from artfaces a serious objection. When the emotions we receive from viewingan imitation are positive, Du Bos’s account has a prima facieplausibility. Sometimes, however, as he recognizes, we receiveunpleasant emotions from the experience of artistic imitations. Du Bosconsiders, for example, an imitation of the sacrifice ofJephthah’s daughter and Le Brun’s painting,Massacreof the Innocents. These works arouse negative emotions.Nevertheless, we willingly, even enthusiastically, experience theworks. Our willingness to experience works that arouse negativeemotions is often referred to as the paradox of tragedy.

Du Bos tries to resolve the paradox by making two points. He begins bysaying that, although imitations of unpleasant events will arouseunpleasant emotions, these emotions are not as intense or as enduringas we receive from experience of the events themselves. This pointcannot, by itself, resolve the paradox. Du Bos’s second point isthat although the emotions aroused by imitations of unpleasant eventsare unpleasant, they are preferable to an emotion that we wouldotherwise feel. According to Du Bos, we are constitutionally subjectto a feeling of deep ennui. This ennui is not merely boredom. Ratherit is a weariness of the human condition.

In ‘On Tragedy,’ Hume endorses Du Bos’s solution tothe paradox, at least up to a point. Hume notes that, according to DuBos, “nothing is in general so disagreeable to the mind as thelanguid, listless state of indolence, into which it falls upon theremoval of all passion and occupation.” Hume then adds that,when a work of tragic art arouses an emotion “Let it bedisagreeable, afflicting, melancholy, disordered; it is still betterthan…insipid languor” (Hume 1757, 217). Some contemporaryphilosophers have also found merit in Du Bos’s approach to theparadox of tragedy (Livingston 2013).

Later in theCritical Reflections Du Bos returns to theparadox of tragedy and gives a rather different solution. This laterpassage is apparently influenced by Aristotle’sPoeticssince Du Bos speaks of the purging of emotions. He means by this,however, something other than Aristotle meant. According to Du Bos,“The faithful depiction of the passions suffices to make usafraid and make us resolve to avoid them with all of the determinationof which we are capable” (318). For example, we watch aperformance ofMedea and we are horrified by the passion forvengeance and resolve not to indulge in it.

The concept of sentiments is crucial to Du Bos’s thought. Heseems to have been the writer who made talk of sentiments socommonplace in eighteenth-century aesthetics. Du Bos never preciselydefines what he means when he speaks of sentiments. In what is,perhaps, the closest he comes to a definition he writes that,“The first ideas born in the soul, when it receives a livelystimulus,…we callsentiments” (237). Accordingto Du Bos, sentiments are not produced by a special sort of aestheticexperience. Rather, they are, as already indicated, ordinary emotionalresponses. We can receive sentiments from experience of ordinaryobjects and from experience of the imitations found in art. Thedifference, as already noted, is that sentiments produced by art arefainter.

Despite believing that sentiments are ordinary emotions or faintercopies of them, Du Bos posits a sense of beauty. He writes that,“We have in us a sense intended to judge the value of works thatimitate touching objects in nature” and calls this a“sixth sense” (519). Du Bos compares the sense of beautyto gustatory taste and seems to have been among the first writers todo so.

Since artistic imitations are intended to arouse emotions similar tothose aroused by the objects imitated, Du Bos values what he callsvraisemblance (verisimilitude). Painters, for example, must“make a painting consistent with what we know of the customs,habits, architecture, and arms of the people that one intends torepresent” (226). A work can, however, bevraisemblablewithout being an imitation of the real world and historical events. Awork can bevraisemblable and yet be an example of what DuBos calls “the marvelous”. An opera, for example, can bevraisemblable even though it depicts marvelous ancient Greekgods and goddesses. It must, however, depict them as existing in a waythat gods and goddesses can exist.Vraisemblance is not anend in itself as it was for some earlier thinkers. The real goal ofthe arts is to arouse sentiments andvraisemblance is only ameans of doing so.

According to Du Bos, we judge artworks by means of our sentimentsrather than by means of reason. He rejects the rationalist school ofcriticism associated with writers such as Roland Fréart deChambray (1606—76), the author ofL’Idée de laperfection de la peinture demonstrée par les principles del’art (1662) and Jean Terrasson, whose workDissertation critique sur l’Iliade d’Homereappeared in 1715. Terrasson wrote that the “proper and naturalprinciple by which we must judge a work of literature [belleslettres] is the real conformity that it must have with goodreason andbelle nature; this is philosophy” (Terrason1715, iv). He adds that this philosophy comes from Descartes and“the spirit of our philosophy is not limited to works of naturalscience [physique]; the pulpit, the courts and even poetryfeel it….[modern philosophy] submits everything toreason” (Terrason 1715, lxi). In a similar vein, Bosse wrotethat the “nobleart of painting must be based for themost part on correct and rule-governed reasoning, which is to say,geometrical and, consequently, demonstrative” (Bosse 1649,sommaire). Du Bos mocks these writers as ‘geometricalcritics.’

He writes that the evaluation of art “is not left to reason. Itmust submit to the judgement that sentiment pronounces. Sentiment isthe competent judge of this issue.” He goes on to compare theevaluation of an artwork to making a judgement about a ragout. Reasonis of no use here. Rather, “We taste the ragout and…weknow that it is good. It is the same with works of wit and picturesmade to please us by touching us” (519).

In making sentiments the means by which artworks are judged, Du Bosgave rise to a question that he did not fully appreciate and certainlydid not solve. This is the question of providing a standard of taste.Du Bos is a subjectivist. He makes the value of an artwork aresponse-dependent property. A work of art is valuable if it arousescertain valuable sentiments in audience members. Du Bos was aware thatdifferent works will arouse different pleasing sentiments in differentpeople:

To want to persuade a man who prefers colour to expression, inaccordance with his own feelings, that he is wrong, is to want topersuade him to take more pleasure in seeing Poussin’s paintingsthan Titian’s. The matter depends no more on him than it does ona man, whose palate is formed in such a way as to prefer champagne toSpanish wine, to change his taste and prefer the Spanish wine toFrench (345).

The problem, as Hume clearly recognized, was that not everyonereceives the same sentiments from a work of art. This leads to theconclusion that a work has value for some people and not for others.However, as Hume also recognized, thorough-going subjectivism iscounterintuitive. It seems that there is a fact that Milton is agreater poet than Ogilby, even if some people prefer Ogilby.

Du Bos was unaware of the full extent of the problem caused bysubjectivism. Likely this was because he believed that everyone hasvery much the same sentiments. In fact, he believed that the generalpublic was the best judge of the value of artworks because their tastewas least corrupted by prejudice.

Du Bos also proposes the test of time. When a work of art repeatedlypleases audiences over a long period of time, this is conclusiveevidence that it is a work of high value. Du Bos point out, forexample, that the reputations of the best Greek and Roman poets arefirmly established since they have pleased audiences through theages.

Some writers, Du Bos was aware, believe that artworks can be valuableas a source of knowledge. At times Du Bos indicates that there issomething to this, and that art is valuable as more than the source ofvaluable sentiments. In the end, however, his considered opinion isthat, “We can acquire some knowledge by reading a poem, but thisis scarcely the motive for opening the book” (244).

Du Bos speaks about audience members’ states of mind but he alsospeaks of the artist’s state of mind. Artists, he believes, feelthe emotions that their works arouse in audience members. Indeed, theartist’s “goal is to make us share his sentiments”(354). The difference between the artist’s state of mind, andthose of audience members, is that the artist’s sentiments aremore intense. Artists must be in a state of “enthusiasm”if they are to create successful works of art. This enthusiasm canborder on madness. Since Du Bos believes that artists convey theiremotions to their audiences, he is an early advocate of an expressiontheory of the arts.

TheCritical Reflections make a contribution to the Quarrelof the Ancients and Moderns. This was a long running debate about therelative merits of ancient and modern writers and artists. DuBos’s contribution to the debate is judicious. He reaches theconclusion that modern sculptors have not surpassed their ancientcounterparts. With regard to painting, he says that it is difficult toreach a judgement since so few ancient paintings have survived.Nevertheless, he thinks it unlikely that modern painters havesurpassed the ancients. Ancient poets have a significant edge overmodern ones. Du Bos allows that, in the natural sciences, modernscientists have eclipsed the ancients.

Much of Du Bos’s book is devoted to an explanation of artisticgenius. He is particularly concerned to explain why certain eras (theGolden Age of Athens, the Rome of Augustus, the Italian Renaissance,and the era of Louis XIV) are more productive of geniuses. Although DuBos says, in passing, that a “poet needs divineinspiration” (241), he decisively rejects the Platonicconception of genius. Instead, he believes that genius has physicalcauses. In part, genius is to be explained by physiologicalconsiderations. According to Du Bos, a genius has a well-formed brainand other physiological advantages over other people. Mostimportantly, he believes, genius is the result of certainenvironmental factors. These factors include climate, air quality,soil, and diet. For example, England is supposedly unable to producepainters of the first rank because the climate is too cold. Althoughhighly influential in the eighteenth century, Du Bos’s views ongenius have been supplanted. Nevertheless, Du Bos’s views ongenius are noteworthy as an early effort to provide a scientificexplanation of genius.

Although Du Bos was primarily concerned with poetry and painting, hemade a significant contribution to philosophy of music. He was anadvocate of the resemblance theory of musical expression. According tothis theory, music is expressive of emotions because it resembleshuman expressive behavior. This view is found, in the contemporaryworld, in Davies (1994) and Kivy (1980). (See the article onPhilosophy of Music, 3.1.) Music can resemble either vocal ornon-vocal expressive behavior. It can resemble, for example, theplodding steps of a sad person or the joyful cries of a happy one.Because music resembles such expressive behavior, it is heard as sad,joyful, or expressive of some other emotion.

In theCritical Reflections, the resemblance theory iscrucial in explaining how music can be, like painting and poetry, animitative art. It does so by resembling and, consequently, imitating“natural signs of the passions”. Du Bos also believes thatmusic can imitate sounds in nature. He writes that “There istruth in a symphony, composed to imitate a tempest, when the music ofthe symphony, its harmony and its rhythm, make us hear a noise similarto the tumult of the wind and the roaring waves, which clash with eachother or break against the rocks” (323). (Here the word‘symphony’ means instrumental music. It does not refer toa symphony in the modern sense of the word.) Notice that, on DuBos’s view, even purely instrumental music can be imitative.

Unlike some modern advocates of the resemblance theory, Du Bosbelieves that the experience of musical imitations arouses emotion.Music arouses emotions in very much the same way that poetry andpainting do. The emotion aroused will be the emotion that would bearoused by the object represented.

Du Bos’s prose is often execrable. Voltaire wrote, withreference to Du Bos and theCritical Reflections, that,“the judgement is good, the style bad. It is necessary to readhim, but re-reading him would be tiresome” (VoltaireCorrespondence, letter 3917). An English translation of theCritical Reflections was published in the eighteenth century.Thomas Nugent translated the book asCritical Reflections onPoetry, Painting and Music (Du Bos 1748). Unfortunately, thistranslation is inaccurate and preserves all of the problems of theoriginal French. A new translation (Du Bos 1719/2021) recentlyappeared.

3. Du Bos’s impact on the development of aesthetics

No single person deserves to be credited as the inventor of modernaesthetics. Several figures in the early eighteenth centuryindependently made contributions to criticism and philosophy thatwould become modern aesthetics. In England, Shaftesbury’sCharacteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times (1711)and Joseph Addison’sPleasures of the Imagination(1712) laid some of the groundwork for aesthetics. On the Continent,Jean-Pierre de Crousaz’sTraité de beau (1715)and Christian Wolff’sRational Thoughts on God, the World,and the Soul of Man (1720) were pioneering contributions toaesthetics. All of these works appeared in the second decade of theeighteenth century, as did Du Bos’sCriticalReflections. Du Bos deserves to be recognized as among theoriginators of modern aesthetics and philosophy of art. His importancewas widely recognized in the eighteenth century. Johann Georg Sulzer,in hisGeneral Theory of the Fine Arts (1771–74)described Du Bos as “the first of modern critics to construct atheory of art upon general principles” (Baker and Christensen1995, 25).

The influence of Du Bos on aesthetics in France began with his impacton Voltaire (Williams 1966). He described Du Bos as “a verywise, very learned, and very esteemed man” and, according toVoltaire, “All artists read with profit hisReflectionson poetry, painting, and music” (Voltaire 1877–85, vol. 3,10; vol. 14, 66). Du Bos’s influence is found at a number ofpoints in Voltaire’s writings. He adopts Du Bos’ssubjectivism, writing that, “In order to judge poets, it isnecessary to know how to feel” (Voltaire 1877–85, vol. 8,319). Voltaire agreed with Du Bos that there have been four ages wherethe arts particularly flourished and he agreed with Du Bos’sassessment of which ages they have been. Voltaire also adopted one ofDu Bos’s controversial views: the belief that national characteris affected by matters such as climate.

Du Bos had a significant impact on theEncyclopaedia ofDiderot and d’Alembert. Louis, chevalier de Jaucourt was theauthor of many of this work’s articles on the fine arts and hecites Du Bos in the articles on Painting, Modern Painting,Inscription, Landscape Painting, and Landscape Painter. In fact, alarge chunk of the article on Landscape Painting is lifted wholesaleout ofCritical Reflections, vol. 1, chapter6 (d’Alembert et al. 2003).

The influence of Du Bos on Jean Jacques Rousseau has long since beenestablished (Jones 1974). This influence is particularly apparent intheLettre à mr d’Alembert sur les spectacles(1758). Rousseau agrees with Du Bos that theatre does not aim toarouse in audience members the sentiment that the charactersrepresented feel. Rousseau agrees that, on the contrary, theatrearouses quite opposed sentiments. For example, if a character in atragedy is represented as feeling fear and despair, audience memberswill have pity aroused in them.

Du Bos seems to have been one of the important sources of theresemblance theory of musical expression in the eighteenth century.Batteux is known to have read theCritical Reflections andwas apparently influenced by Du Bos when he wrote that gestures andsounds are “natural means of expression” that are“especially suited to the expression of emotion”. He addsthat “music is half-formed in the words that express someemotion. It takes only a little art to turn the words into music” (Batteux 1746/2015, 129; 133). These passages fromTheFine Arts are little more than paraphrases of passages from theCritical Reflections.

Du Bos had a significant influence on aesthetics in Britain. Hisinfluence is found, for example, in James Harris’sThreeTreatises, particularly in the second of these treatises,‘A Discourse on Music, Painting and Poetry’ (Harris 1744).In fact, this treatise is little more than a brief reprisal of centralthemes from theCritical Reflections. Harris, like Du Bos,distinguishes between the fine arts according to their means ofexpression. Painting employs natural signs and poetry artificial ones.They agree that this gives painting an advantage when it comes to thearousal of emotion, but both believe that the power of poetry can beenhanced by music and staging to the point where it has the advantageover poetry. They agree that art owes its value to its capacity toarouse sentiments.

Since Jones (1982) it has been known that Du Bos had an impact onHume’s thinking about art. Hume owned the 1732 edition of theCritical Reflections (Norton and Norton, 1996, 88). He musthave acquired it soon after his move to France to begin writing hisTreatise.

Hume’s discussion of Du Bos in ‘Of Tragedy’ hasalready been noted, but Jones (1982) argues that Du Bos’sinfluence is also apparent in ‘Of the Standard of Taste’.Hume’s views on art were influenced by several of hiscontemporaries, including Francis Hutcheson, and it can be difficultto disentangle their contributions to his thought. (See the article onScottish Philosophy in the 18th Century, section 4 for a discussion ofHutcheson’s influence on Hume.) The difficulty is compounded bythe fact that the views of Hutcheson and Du Bos are similar in certainrespects. Nevertheless, Jones (1982) finds significance in the factHume, like Du Bos, believed that we have an internal sense of beauty.Both believe that this sense of beauty, not reason, is the means bywhich the beauty of work is determined. Moreover, there is an uncannysimilarity between the ways in which they express these views. Du Bos,in theCritical Reflections, and Hume, in ‘Of theStandard of Taste,’ say that they are opposed to“geometrical” criticism. Both believe that rules ofcriticism can be given, but that they can be violated by great worksof art. Both give Ariosto as an example of a poet who violates therules of criticism.

Jones (1982) noted the impact of Du Bos on Hume’s essays, butdid not remark on the impact of the Frenchman on Hume’sTreatise. Norton and Norton, in their edition of theTreatise (Hume 1739–40 [2007]) noted some passageswhere Du Bos influenced Hume, but many more passages have recentlybeen identified (Mazza and Mori 2016; Young and Cameron 2018).Virtually every passage in theTreatise where the fine artsare mentioned shows signs of Du Bos’s influence. Young andCameron (2018) have argued that several passages in theTreatise so closely resemble passages in theCriticalReflections that the similarity cannot be coincidental. Forexample, both Du Bos and Hume agree that poetry and painting arousethe same emotions that we feel in ordinary life, but that the emotionsaroused by the arts are fainter. Hume, like Du Bos, believes thatpassions that are displeasing when experienced in daily life can bepleasing when aroused by art. A passage in theTreatise(2.2.4.4) refers to Du Bos’s view that humans are plagued byennui and they seek to escape it by gaming and other activities. Onthe other hand, Hume explicitly rejects Du Bos’s view on theinfluence of climate on national character. Goldhaber (2021) arguesthat Hume adopted a four humor psycholgy under the influence of DuBos.

Lombard (1913) judged that Du Bos’s impact was greatest inGermany. Du Bos was responsible for a move away from a rationalistapproach to criticism there as in France. His influence in Germany isfound as early as Johann Jakob Breitinger’sCritischeDichtkunst (1740). Subsequently, Baumgarten, Herder, Lessing,Mendelssohn, and Winckelmann either adopted some of Du Bos’sviews or argued against them. Lessing translated part of theCritical Reflections into German and was deeply influenced byhim. For a study of the relationship between Du Bos and Lessing seeLeysaht (1874).

4. Du Bos on epistemology and philosophy of science

Du Bos’s primary contributions to philosophy are in aestheticsbut he also contributed to the revolt against Cartesianism in France.Cartesianism dominated French thinking about knowledge and scienceuntil well into the eighteenth century (Illiffe 2003, 269). DuBos’s approach to philosophy of art was thoroughly empiricistand so was his attitude towards science. He deserves credit forapplying Locke’s empirical account of knowledge to scientifichypotheses.

In the first instance, Du Bos applied empiricism to the study of art,as we have seen. According to Du Bos, judgements of works of art mustbe empirical. He writes that

Do we use reason to determine whether a ragout is good or bad? Did youever, after having applied geometrical principles to the flavour,determine the properties that each of the ingredients contributes, goon to discuss the proportions preserved in their mixture, in order todecide whether the ragout is good? You never have. We have a sensethat makes us recognize whether the cook has followed the rules of hisart. We taste the ragout and, even without knowing these rules, weknow that it is good. It is the same with works of wit and picturesmade to please us by touching us (519).

Elsewhere Du Bos adds that

if there is some matter where reason should fall silent in the face ofexperience, it is certainly in questions that can be raised regardingthe value of a poem. It is when we want to know whether a poem ispleasing or not; if, generally speaking, a poem is an excellent workor just average…there are few general principles to rely onregarding the value of a poem (531).

Du Bos stresses the importance of sentiments, that is, the feelings wehave in response to works of art.

While Du Bos rejected rationalism in judgements about art, hisempiricism did not end there. He was opposed to the a prioriconstruction of scientific systems. He notes that

The two most famous philosophical organizations in Europe, the Academyof Sciences in Paris and the Royal Society in London, refuse to adoptor build a single general system of natural science. Agreeing with theview of Chancellor Bacon, they have espoused not a single one out offear that having to justify it should draw attention from onlookersand make them see experiments not as they truly are, but as theyshould be, in order to give weight to an opinion they try to pass offas true. Our two famous academies rest content to verify facts andpublish them in their journals, persuaded that nothing is easieraccording to reason and that they would stumble if they took two stepsbeyond what they acquired from experience. These two organizationsexpect a general system on the basis of first-handexperience (527).

In another passage, Du Bos discusses Harvey’s discovery of thecirculation of blood and makes clear that it could only have beendiscovered a posteriori. People have accepted Harvey’shypothesis, Du Bos writes, because

they know that it no longer relies on reasoning for its proof and thatit is demonstrated by experience. To repeat, people have much moreconfidence in those who tell them “I have seen” than inthose who tell them “I have concluded” (589).

This passage is clearly an endorsement of empiricism and a rejectionof Cartesian rationalism.

Du Bos makes a related claim in a discussion of physicians. Aphysician may be a Cartesian while young, but he will end up as anempiricist. According to Du Bos,

At twenty-five, a doctor is as persuaded of the truth of hisanatomical reasoning, which tries to discover the manner by whichcinchona bark works to alleviate intermittent fevers, as he is by theeffectiveness of the remedy. By age sixty, a doctor is persuaded bythe truth of a fact that he has seen multiple times, but he does notput any faith in the explanation of the effect of the remedy thanby the piling up of examples, if it permitted to use thatexpression. (530)

Experience will transform the wise physician into an empiricist.Elsewhere, Du Bos says something similar about engineering, navigationand related sciences. He considers four modern scientific discoveries(the discovery of air pressure, the invention of the compass, thedevelopment of the printing press, and the invention of the telescope)and observes that all of these discoveries were due to the acquisitionof new experiences.

When Du Bos investigates any scientific matter, he proceeds in anempirical fashion. For example, he examines the question of whycertain eras have produced more geniuses than other periods. He beginsby considering the hypothesis that a social cause is responsible forthe production of geniuses. In particular, he considers the hypothesisthat the production of geniuses can be explained by reference togenerous patrons. He refutes this hypothesis by giving examples oferas when patrons abounded but geniuses were scarce. Havingempirically refuted this hypothesis, he considers the hypothesis thatgenius has a natural or physical cause. Du Bos supports thishypothesis by attempting to find a correlation between certainenvironmental, climatic, and dietary factors and the production ofgenius. Du Bos’s views on the origin of genius were widelyaccepted in the first two thirds of the eighteenth century. Herder,Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Winckelmann were among the importantfigures to adopt Du Bos’s views on climate and genius.

Du Bos held that scientific investigation always involves someuncertainty. He wrote that “I distrust physical explanations,since the imperfection of this science almost always makes guessworknecessary” (362). According to Du Bos, a scientific hypothesisis only probable to some extent or another. He illustrates this viewby reference to Harvey’s hypothesis concerning the circulationof blood. Du Bos writes that, “Most scholars of his[Harvey’s] time were persuaded by his views. It was as firmlyand widely established as a scientific truth as something that is notdirectly observed can be. That is, it was regarded as a view moreprobable than the contrary opinion” (588).

Bibliography

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