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, but perhaps ignoring its meaning and origin, which dates back to one of the philosophical schools of the antiquity. Eclectic is the opposite of dogmatic.
Popularly, this term is used to indicate that something (a person, a perspective or an approach to some subject) avoids choosing a specific side or path altogether, preferring rather to take elements or ideas from different origins at will.
Said like this, the eclectic would come to 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 brand positions in different subjects as eclectic or eclectic, the solutions of a trouble, but also to artistic and architectural styles. 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 "the one who chooses" or "the one who is apt to choose." 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 subject to specific axioms or paradigms, but to synthesize the powerful classical philosophical tradition. Thus, he 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 Ascalon (130-68 BC) combined Stoicism and skepticism. For his part, Panecio of Rhodes (185-110 BC) combined Platonism and Stoicism.
This model of thought was inherited by the Roman philosophers, who never had a doctrine their own, but they used the Stoicism, skepticism and peripatetics indistinctly, 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. Then it developed within the movement of the Illustration, 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 to be part of any particular 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 in their paintings classical elements with Renaissance forms, trying to combine Michelangelo with Titian, Raphael and with Correggio.
On the contrary, artistic eclecticism was advocated 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 affirmed that any artist has the right to take from antiquity the elements that seem best to him.
Architectural eclecticism
Eclecticism in architecture combines elements from different traditions.Eclecticism in architecture was born in France in the mid-nineteenth century, as the tendency to combine styles and architectural elements of different traditions and different historical periods. He even went so far as to aspire to a mixed style that contained in itself the best elements of the entire history of the art.
For that reason it was also known as Historicism, and had as its main references the Gothic, Romanesque, Orientalism and exoticism. However, the historicist proposal focused on the recovery of historical features, originating from past traditions.
That is why it was often lent to him nationalism and the desire to recover "what is own" in the architectural tradition. On the other hand, eclecticism was much freer: it proposed to take from wherever you wanted, at the architect's free will.