Abstract

This study focuses on the controversy that took place between Pierre LerouxLeroux, Pierre and Victor CousinCousin, Victor during the first half of the nineteenth century and was played out, above all, in LerouxLeroux, Pierre‘s Réfutation de l’éclectisme. CousinCousin, Victor and LerouxLeroux, Pierre fundamentally disagree on the ways in which a new, post-revolutionary philosophy should deal with the past and the future, and this disagreement is motivated by their differing reactions to German IdealismIdealism (also German Idealism). In particular, this study focuses on LerouxLeroux, Pierre’s avowal, paceCousinCousin, Victor, of an alliance of reason and belief by means of a new philosophy that could also be considered a new religion for the nineteenth century—as well as his use of Schelling’s philosophy, in particular, to achieve this end.