ABSTRACT
In the middle of the nineteenth century in Western Europe the flaneur emerges as a new sort of hero, the product of modernity at the same time as heralding its advent. He is the 'spectator' of the modern world, as it manifests itself in the capitalist metropolises, especially Paris, strolling its streets and lovingly regarding his own image in the glass of the arcades and the new department stores. He has his antecedents in the eighteenth century. There he is to be encountered, in the works of Francis Hutcheson and his discipline, Adam Smith, where he is seen as the 'impartial spectator': a philosopher rather than a sociologist. Evolution and Ethics was first delivered as a series of lectures in 1893, two years before Huxley's death, at Oxford University. There is one more trait of Baudelaire's flaneur that requires depiction. In spite of Baudelaire's friendship with Courbet, he had harsh words to say for realism.
