Spiritualism in Plaster: Philosophy, Archaeology, and Figurative Practices in Félix Ravaisson’s Study of the Venus de Milo

Viola, Tullio (2026) Spiritualism in Plaster: Philosophy, Archaeology, and Figurative Practices in Félix Ravaisson’s Study of the Venus de Milo. History of the Humanities 11(1): 29–54. https://doi-org.mu.idm.oclc.org/10.1086/739914

This article discusses the case of French spiritualist philosopher Félix Ravaisson, best known today for his philosophy of habit and his influence on thinkers such as Boutroux and Bergson. Ravaisson was not only a philosopher but also a civil servant, painter, educator, art theorist, and archaeologist. Here I reconstruct his research on the Venus de Milo, the Hellenistic statue housed in the Louvre, where Ravaisson worked as a curator. Ravaisson played a key role in securing the statue during the 1870–71 Prussian siege of Paris, then proposed a speculative reconstruction of the statue, suggesting it originally belonged to a group featuring Venus paired with a warrior (Mars or Theseus) in a gesture of reconciliation. He even produced plaster reconstructions and published photos of the sculptural group. I argue that this proposed reconstruction was intended to create a visual manifesto of the kind of spiritualist philosophy that Ravaisson was championing in the same years. This case study sheds light on the role of visual thinking in philosophy and the connection between archaeology and philosophy in the nineteenth century.

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