We explain what eclectic means, its characteristics and the common use of the term. Eclecticism in philosophy, art and architecture.
What does eclectic mean?
We have often heard the adjective eclectic or eclectic used, but perhaps ignoring its meaning and its origin, which goes back to one of the philosophical schools of antiquity. Eclectic is the opposite of dogmatic.
Popularly, this term is used to indicate that something (a person, a perspective, or an approach to a subject) avoids choosing a specific side or path altogether, preferring instead to take elements or ideas from different sources at will.
Said like this, the eclectic would be the mixed, It is what is composed of elements of different origin or that, generally in a bipolar panorama, of opposing sides, takes from each one what is best for them.
Therefore, we can call positions on different subjects, solutions to a problem, but also artistic and architectural styles as eclectic. Eclecticism in itself is not a value, that is, it is neither good nor bad, it is simply a characterization that we can make of some reference.
Philosophical eclecticism
The word “eclectic” comes from ancient Greek. éklektikos which would translate “he who chooses” or “he who is capable of choosing.” It was used as the name of a philosophical school in Ancient Greece, founded around the 2nd century BC. c.
His thought did not seek to be bound by certain axioms or paradigms, but rather to synthesize the powerful classical philosophical tradition. So, reconciled positions as different as those of the pre-Socratics, that of Plato or that of Aristotle.
For example, one of its best-known representatives, Antiochus of Ashkelon (130-68 BC) combined stoicism and skepticism. For his part, Panaetius of Rhodes (185-110 BC) combined Platonism and Stoicism.
This thinking model was inherited by the Roman philosophers who never had their own doctrine, but instead used Stoicim, Skepticism and Peripatetics interchangeably, as occurs for example in the work of Cicero (106-43 BC).
During the Middle Ages, eclecticism was put into practice through the combination of Christian and Islamic, or Christian and Greco-Roman, thought. It later developed within the Enlightenment movement in the 18th century, as an alternative to the medieval scholastic tradition, and even later, in the 19th century, in the work of the Frenchman Victor Cousin (1792-1867).
artistic eclecticism
In the artistic field, the term eclectic or eclecticism is used to indicate the free combination of different artistic styles which means at the same time not registering in any specific artistic tradition. For this reason, eclecticism was always present in the world of creation, but it never constituted its own movement.
However, Eclecticism in art was formally discussed for the first time in the 18th century when the German critic and art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) criticized the Caracci family of Italian artists, who combined classical elements with Renaissance forms in their paintings, trying to combine Michelangelo with Titian, Raphael and Correggio .
On the contrary, artistic eclecticism was defended by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792), director at the time of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, in his Academic speeches of 1774, where he stated that any artist has the right to take from antiquity the elements that seem best to him.
Architectural eclecticism
Eclecticism in architecture was born in France in the mid-19th century such as the tendency to combine architectural styles and elements from different traditions and different historical periods. He even aspired to a mixed style that contained within itself the best elements of the entire history of art.
For that reason it was also known as Historicism, and Its main references were Gothic, Romanesque, Orientalism and exoticism. However, the historicist proposal focused on the recovery of historical features, coming from past traditions.
For this reason, it often lent itself to nationalism and the desire to recover “one's own” in the architectural tradition. On the other hand, eclecticism was much freer: it proposed taking from wherever one wanted, at the free whim of the architect.
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References
- “Eclecticism” in Wikipedia.
- “Eclecticism (art)” on Wikipedia.
- “Eclectic architecture” on Wikipedia.
- “Eclectic” in the Language Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Eclecticism” (video) in Entelekia Summary.
- “Eclecticism” (video) on ABC of Philosophy and Culture.
