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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2009
In Charles Renouvier we have one of the lone, stern, and indefatigable workers in philosophy in the nineteenth century. His powerful mind, moral earnestness, and intellectual vigour command respect and attention and place him high in the ranks of the philosophical thinkers of his century. He differed profoundly from his English contemporary Spencer and his German contemporary Lotze, both of whom have received more attention than Renouvier. His long and immensely active life fell into periods which coincide with, and partly reflect, the political and intellectual fortunes of his country from the Battle of Waterloo, through the Revolution of 1830, the Second Republic of 1848, the Second Empire, the War and the Commune of 1871, into the Third Republic, with its Dreyfus struggles and its Educational and Disestablishment problems in the early years of the present century.
page 43 note 1 La Critique philosophique, vol. xii, p. 275.Google Scholar
page 44 note 1 As I pointed out some years ago in my Modern French Philosophy (1922), Lequier had a profound influence on Renouvier’s work, especially in the Second Essay (Psychology) and its treatment of the problem of freedom. Lequier was born in 1814 and entered the École Polytechnique in 1834, leaving two years later for a military staff appointment, which he abandoned. He died in 1862, after destroying much of his writings and enduring much mental suffering and madness. Three years after his death was published the volume. La Recherche d’une premiere Vérité, fragments posthumes de Jules Lequier. This was reissued in 1924 and reviewed in Mind.
page 45 note 1 Bonjean, , after holding various offices under the Empire, was shot in 1871 as a hostage by the Communists.Google Scholar
page 46 note 1 This applies to Höffding, who does not deal with Renouvier at all in his History of Modern Philosophy. Setting out to remedy certain omissions by his volume Modern Philosophers, Höffding does indeed give a section to Renouvier, but does not examine the Essais de Critique générale.
page 47 note 1 Renouvier held no academic position, and his views were unacceptable, if not unintelligible, to those who professed the “official” sentimental idealism of Cousin.
page 47 note 2 Lotze’s, Mikrokosmos covered the same period, 1854–1864.Google Scholar Comte concluded his Philosophie positive in 1854.
page 47 note 3 Present editions of the Essais total ten volumes (Logic, 2; Psychology, 2; Principles of Nature, 1; Introduction to Philosophy of History, 1; Philosophy of History, 4).
page 48 note 1 The letters of James are given in The Letters of William James. Renouvier's letters to James, are published in the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (two numbers of 1929, January and April).Google Scholar
page 49 note 1 These letters have been published in a separate volume. Secrétan was the same age as Renouvier. As a thinker he was essentially religious and mystic, and this is shown in the published correspondence by his preference for ‘love’ as an ethical ideal, while Renouvier used ‘justice.’ Secrétan’s training had been largely German. He had followed Schelling’s lectures at Munich. While Renouvier’s other friend, Lequier, was a Catholic, Secrétan was a strong Protestant. Secrétan died in 1895. He did much to make Renouvier’s work known to Swiss Protestant clergy, several of whom have written articles and monographs on his religious thought.
page 50 note 1 La Critique philosophique, 1873, pp. 145—146
page 51 note 1 This essay is an enormous work and contains an extremely fine account of social philosophy in the nineteenth century.
page 53 note 1 I have since learned that his examiners in 1840 considered his manuscript to be from the hand of “un étranger.”
