Francois Hemsterhuis

​HEMSTERHUIS, FRANÇOIS (1721–1790), Dutch writer on aesthetics and moral philosophy, son of Tiberius Hemsterhuis, was born at Franeker in Holland, on the 27th of December 1721. He was educated at the university of Leiden, where he studied Plato. 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 the 7th of July 1790. Through his philosophical writings he became acquainted with many distinguished persons—Goethe, Herder, Princess Amalia of Gallitzin, and especially Jacobi, with whom he had much in common. Both were idealists, 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 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.