Anne Le Févre Dacier: Of the Causes of the Corruption of Taste

Anne Le Fèvre Dacier (1645-1720) was the most important woman of letters of her time and Of the Causes of the Corruption of Taste is her most significant work. This book is one of the wellsprings of modern aesthetics. While Dacier was a classical philologist—not an aesthetician or philosopher of art—in several ways she anticipated and laid the groundwork for subsequent writers on the fine arts, including Batteux and Du Bos, both of whom cite her. Her views on art are at least as sophisticated and interesting as those found in contemporaries such as Addison and Shaftesbury or anyone in France. Dacier addresses topics that would become staples in the philosophy of art, in many cases long before other writers did. She contributed to the demise of the rationalist approach to art criticism and to the rise of the view that the beauties of art are apprehended by means of experience, a view which came to dominate eighteenth-century thinking about the arts.

Dacier was one of the first eighteenth-century authors to emphasize that art is essentially the imitation of nature and belle nature. She raised questions about whether art can be a source of moral knowledge long before this became a widely discussed question in the philosophy of art. She richly deserves a prominent place in the early history of aesthetics. This volume is the first-ever translation of a work by Dacier into English. It includes a substantial introduction that not only examines her contributions to the philosophy of art but also traces her influence on the development of the subject through the eighteenth century.

James O. Young, Professor of Philosophy, University of Victoria, Michel-Antoine Xhignesse, Instructor of Philosophy, Capilano University

James O. Young, FRSC, is professor of philosophy at the University of Victoria. He works primarily in metaphysics and philosophy of art. He is the author of several books, including Art and Knowledge (2001), Cultural Appropriation and the Arts (2008), Critique of Pure Music (2014) and A History of Western Philosophy of Music (2023). He is also the author of more than 75 articles in refereed journals and many chapters, and he has translated or co-translated 18th century French work on philosophy of art.

Michel-Antoine Xhignesse is instructor of philosophy at Capilano University. His work focuses on the philosophy of art, the philosophy of literature, and metaphysics. He is the author of Aesthetics: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments (2023) and some twenty articles and chapters on aesthetics.