Ideals and Idols: Essays on Values in History and in Art

224 pp. With 10 illustrations. In this fifth volume of his collected essays published by the Phaidon Press, Professor Gom-brich has assembled papers and lectures which deal with values and their place in the humanities. 'There are moments in the life of an academic', he writes in the Preface, 'when he feels prompted to get up from his University Chair and mount the pulpit ... Thus I stepped out of my customary field in the Creighton Lecture of the University of London on Myth and Reality in German Wartime Broadcasts. I mention it first because this choice may offer a key to the other lectures and essays. Having witnessed such evil creeds and horrible deeds (and not only in the comparatively distant past), I cannot understand how values can so often be regarded as impurities of which our research should be purged.' His Deneke Lecture, In Search of Cultural History, confronts what he considers the false values of Hegel's philosophy of history, his Romanes Lecture on Art History and the Social Sciences argues that 'the all too popular philosophy of cultural relativism could only lead to the demise of the humanities.' The volume also includes his oration to the London School of Economics on The Tradition of General Knowledge, an address on The Museum: Past, Present and Future', the author's 'profession of faith' on Reason and Feeling in the Study of Art as his response to the receipt of the Erasmus Prize; a paper on Art and Self-Transcendence composed for a symposium organized by the Nobel Foundation, The Logic of Vanity Fair, written for a work dedicated to the philosophy of Karl Popper, a discussion on Research in the Humanities', another - a Plea for Pluralism - on the state of art history, and a correspondence with Professor Quentin Bell on Canons and Values. The volume is thus not only of interest to historians and art historians but to all who care for the preservation of civilized values.