Everything about Charles Batteux totally explained
Charles Batteux (
May 6 1713 –
July 14 1780) was a
French philosopher and writer on
aesthetics.
Batteaux was born near
Vouziers (
Ardennes), and studied
theology at
Reims. In
1739 he came to
Paris, and after teaching in the colleges of
Lisieux and
Navarre, was appointed to the chair of
Greek and
Roman philosophy in the
Collège de France. In
1746 he published his treatise
Les Beaux-Arts réduits à un même principe, an attempt to find a unity among the various theories of
beauty and
taste, and his views were widely accepted.
The reputation thus gained, confirmed by his translation of
Horace (
1750), led to his becoming a member of the
Académie des Inscriptions (
1754) and of the
Académie Française (
1761). His
Cours de belles lettres (
1765) was afterwards included with some minor writings in the large treatise,
Principes de la littérature (
1774). His philosophical writings were
La morale d'Épicure tirée de ses propres écrits (
1758), and the
Histoire des causes premières (
1769). In consequence of the freedom with which in this work he attacked the abuse of authority in philosophy, he lost his professorial chair. His last and most extensive work was a
Cours d'études à l'usage des élèves de l'école militaire in forty-five volumes.
In the
Beaux-Arts, Batteux developed a theory which is derived from
John Locke through
Voltaire's sceptical
sensualism. He held that
Art consists in the faithful imitation of the beautiful in nature. Applying this principle to the art of
poetry, and analysing, line by line and even word by word, the works of great poets, he deduced the law that the beauty of poetry consists in the accuracy, beauty and harmony of individual expression. This theory had at least the merit of insisting on propriety of expression. His
Histoire des causes premières was among the first attempts at a history of philosophy, and in his work on
Epicurus, following on
Gassendi, he defended
Epicureanism against the general attacks made against it.
See
Dacier et Dupuy, Éloges, in
Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions.
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