Portraits of Empiricism

Portraits of Empiricism reveals how pictures can expose paradoxes at the heart of empiricist philosophy. Although many people believe that knowledge derives primarily from sensory experience, this defining principle brings with it persistent problems: the role of logic in knowledge production, the place of ethics and politics in empirical judgment, and the veil of perception that seems always to stand between observer and world.

Engaging these enduring questions, C. Oliver O’Donnell turns to the visual culture of the Anglo-American eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—a historical milieu in which empiricism was forcefully articulated. He examines images made in close proximity to canonical figures and texts of the empiricist tradition, showing how they dramatize the tradition’s riddles. Among them are artworks owned and discussed by John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and Charles Sanders Peirce; allegorical portraits of David Hume and John Stuart Mill; and satirical illustrations linked to George Berkeley and Ralph Waldo Emerson. By situating these works in their historical contexts and connecting them to the arguments and beliefs of empiricist thinkers, O’Donnell demonstrates how empiricism was inseparable from its problems—and how those problems manifested themselves in visual form.

Treating images not as ancillary illustrations but as central evidence in the history of ideas, this book reframes empiricism’s intellectual legacy. It will interest scholars of Anglo-American art history and art historiography, intellectual history, and philosophy.

“Portraits of Empiricism is a fascinating, relentlessly provocative investigation of the poly vocal conversations between empiricist philosophy and naturalist art. O'Donnell shows how paintings and drawings illustrate, crosshatch, and refocus claims about the basis of knowledge, revealing colonial shadows and logical aporias within seemingly self-evident theories of sensory knowledge and individualism. Packed with bright complication, Portraits unfolds the thinking done by pictures and the images pressing on thought.”—John Tresch, author of The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

“In a stimulating book that is sure to prompt much discussion, Oliver O’Donnell addresses the intricate relationships between philosophy and art in Britain and the United States over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  By considering caricatures, diagrams, and landscape paintings, as well as portraits more conventionally defined, he invites readers to explore deep affinities between empiricism and forms of visual culture in their specific historical contexts.  His volume reveals key figures grappling with momentous issues such as slavery, feminism, and technological change; it will appeal to all those with an interest in these rich intellectual worlds.”—Ludmilla Jordanova, author of The Look of the Past: Visual and Material Evidence in Historical Practice

“The question that never ceases to arise is whether life and art converge. C. Oliver O'Donnell finds an answer that is only obvious and affirmative at first glance, by referring to academic naturalism in painting in the context of empiricism. His observations about proximity, distance, and ambivalence, about the dynamics that unfold between the respective epistemic qualities of thinking and artistic activity are striking. The book sees itself as a critical renewal of the Warburg tradition and is a seminal lesson, presented with equal elegance and sensitivity, not only in the inherent logic of all imagery, but also in philosophy's need for images.”—Andreas Beyer, author of Cellini: A Life in Fury

“Oliver O’Donnell’s groundbreaking study shifts the focus from reading artistic masterpieces against a conventionally defined empiricist backdrop to asking how the artworks cherished by leading empiricist thinkers reveal the epistemological and ethical tensions at the heart of their philosophies. Portraits of Empiricism make a compelling, definitive case for artists and artworks as agents in intellectual history, offering indispensable insights into empiricism, pragmatism, and the myriad ways in which pictures and ideas shape one another.”—Hannah Spahn, author of Thomas Jefferson, Time, and History

C. Oliver O’Donnell is Senior Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the prizewinning Meyer Schapiro’s Critical Debates: Art Through a Modern American Mind, also published by Penn State University Press.

Art History & Architecture

           Aesthetics

           American

           Eighteenth-century

           European

           Art Theory & Criticism

Philosophy

           Aesthetics