Portraits of Empiricism

An art-historical intervention in the history of ideas, Portraits of Empiricism explores the varied and often counterintuitive roles pictures have played in the construction, expression, and reception of the empiricist tradition of thought. 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.