Tributes: Interpreters of Our Cultural Tradition

by E.H. Gombrich

In this collection of previously published essays, E. H. Gombrich pays tribute to twelve illustrious figures whose contributions influenced many of the ideas and values that make up our intellectual lives. His bicentennial address on the humanities delivered at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences is followed by studies of G. E. Lessing, G. F. Hegel, Lord Leverhulme, Sigmund Freud, Aby Warburg, J. Huizinga, George Boas, I. A. Richards, Dame Frances Yates, Ernst Kris, and Otto Kurz.
Despite their great diversity in origin and outlook, all were involved with significant aspects of humanistic learning, ranging from humor to psychoanalysis. As Gombrich points out in his Preface, "The ease with which these minds of distinction were able to move into new fields of learning is in itself an object lesson which should not be lost on the reader." It was not piety alone, he explains, that prompted him to introduce such a varied selection of scholars and critics to the nonspecialist reader. By portraying these distinguished personalities, he intends to remind us of the value of and the need for the traditional branches of learning. Indeed, his fear that these areas of education are dangerously close to being put aside for more specialized technology and science courses provides an underlying theme for the volume.

Contents:

Focus on the Arts and Humanities
The Diversity of the Arts
The Place of the Laocoon in the Life and Work of G. E. Lessing (1729-1781)
'The Father of Art History' A Reading of the Lectures on Aesthetics of G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831)
Nature and Art as Needs of the Mind
The Philanthropic Ideals of Lord Leverhulme (1851-1925)
Verbal Wit as a Paradigm of Art The Aesthetic Theories of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
The Ambivalence of the Classical Tradition The Cultural Psychology of Aby Warburg (1866-1929)
The High Seriousness of Play Reflections on Homo ludens by J. Huizinga (1872-1945)
The History of Ideas A Personal Tribute to George Boas (1891-1980)
The Necessity of Tradition An Interpretation of the Poetics of I. A. Richards (1893-1979)
The Evaluation of Esoteric Currents A Commemoration of the Work of Frances A. Yates (1899-1981)
The Study of Art and the Study of Man Reminiscences of Collaboration with Ernst Kris (1900-1957)
The Exploration of Culture Contacts The Services to Scholarship of Otto Kurz (1908-1975)

270 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Sir Ernst Hans Josef Gombrich, OM, CBE (30 March 1909 – 3 November 2001) was an Austrian-born art historian, who spent most of his working life in the United Kingdom.