Charles Renouvier - Wikipedia Charles Renouvier From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to navigation Jump to search Charles Renouvier Born (1815-01-01)January 1, 1815 Montpellier Died September 1, 1903(1903-09-01) (aged 88) Prades, Pyrénées-Orientales[1] Alma mater École Polytechnique Era 19th-century philosophy Region Western philosophy School Critical philosophy[2] Main interests Metaphysics Notable ideas Néo-criticisme, uchronia Influences Immanuel Kant, Jules Lequier, Emanuel Swedenborg Influenced Émile Durkheim, William James, Léon Brunschvicg, Octave Hamelin, Alfred Fouillée Charles Bernard Renouvier (French: [ʁənuvje]; January 1, 1815 – September 1, 1903) was a French philosopher. He considered himself a "Swedenborg of history" who sought to update the philosophy of Kantian liberalism and individualism for the socio-economic realities of the late nineteenth century, and influenced the sociological method of Émile Durkheim.[3][4][5] Contents 1 Biography 2 Philosophy 3 Works 4 See also 5 Notes 6 Further reading Biography[edit] Renouvier was born in Montpellier and educated in Paris at the École Polytechnique. He took an early interest in politics, but never held public office, spending his time writing, away from public scrutiny. Philosophy[edit] Renouvier was the first French philosopher after Nicolas Malebranche to formulate a complete idealistic system, and had a vast influence on the development of French thought. His system is based on Immanuel Kant's,[6] as his chosen term "néo-criticisme" indicates; but it is a transformation rather than a continuation of Kantianism. The two leading ideas are the dislike of the "unknowable" in all its forms, and a reliance on the validity of personal experience. The former accounts for Renouvier's acceptance of Kant's phenomenalism, combined with rejection of the thing-in-itself. It accounts, too, for his polemic on the one hand against a Substantial Soul, a Buddhistic Absolute, an Infinite Spiritual Substance; on the other hand against the no less mysterious material or dynamic substratum by which naturalistic Monism explains the world. He maintains that nothing exists except presentations, which are not merely sensational, and have an objective aspect no less than a subjective. To explain the formal organization of our experience, Renouvier adopts a modified version of the Kantian categories. The insistence on the validity of personal experience leads Renouvier to a yet more important divergence from Kant in his treatment of volition. Liberty, he says, in a much wider sense than Kant, is man's fundamental characteristic. Human freedom acts in the phenomenal, not in an imaginary noumenal sphere. Belief is not merely intellectual, but is determined by an act of will affirming what we hold to be morally good. In his religious views, Renouvier makes a considerable approximation to Gottfried Leibniz. He holds that we are rationally justified in affirming human immortality and the existence of a finite God who is to be a constitutional ruler, but not a despot, over the souls of people. He nevertheless regards atheism as preferable to a belief in an infinite Deity. Renouvier's dislike of the unknowable also led him to take up arms against the notion of an actual infinite. He believed that an infinite sum must be a name for something incomplete. If one begins to count, "one, two, three ..." there never comes a time when one is entitled to shout "infinity"! Infinity is a project, never a fact, in the neocritical view. Renouvier became an important influence upon the thought of American psychologist and philosopher William James. James wrote that "but for the decisive impression made on me in the 1870s by his masterly advocacy of pluralism, I might never have got free from the monistic superstition under which I had grown up." Works[edit] Essais de critique générale (1854–64) Science de la morale[7] (1869) Uchronie (1876) Comment je suis arrivé à cette conclusion (1885) Esquisse d'une classification systématique des doctrines philosophiques (1885–86) Philosophie analytique de l'histoire (1896–97) La Nouvelle Monadologie (1899) Histoire et solution des problèmes métaphysiques (1901) Victor Hugo: Le Poète (1893) Victor Hugo: Le Philosophe (1900) Les Dilemmes de la métaphysique pure[7] (1901) Le Personnalisme (1903) Critique de la doctrine de Kant[7] (1906) See also[edit] Neo-Kantianism Notes[edit] ^ "Herbert Spencer et Charles Renouvier" ^ John I. Brooks, The Eclectic Legacy: Academic Philosophy and the Human Sciences in Nineteenth-century France, University of Delaware Press, 1998, p. 150. ^ Geenens, Raf; Rosenblatt, Helena (2012). French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day. Cambridge University Press. p. 239. ^ Ferguson, Niall (2008). Virtual History: Alternatives And Counterfactuals. Basic Books. p. 9. ^ Jones, Robert Alun (2005). The Secret of the Totem: Religion and Society from McLennan to Freud. Columbia University Press. ^ Kant, Philosophy of, The Catholic Encyclopedia ^ a b c "Textes philosophiques complets". at www.ac-nancy-metz.fr. Archived from the original on December 4, 2004. Further reading[edit] Wikisource has original works written by or about: Charles Bernard Renouvier Emmanuel Carrère: Le Détroit de Behring. P.O.L., Paris 1986. Paul K. Alkon: Origins of Futuristic Fiction. University of Georgia Press, 1987. Bernard J. Looks: How I Arrived At This Conclusion: A Philosophical Memoir. Translation to English of Renouvier's Comment je suis arrivé à cette conclusion. YBK Publishers, 2011. Authority control BNE: XX1085676 BNF: cb119215764 (data) CANTIC: a10202444 GND: 11878837X ISNI: 0000 0001 2095 9903 LCCN: n50000827 NKC: jn19990006965 NLG: 157843 NLI: 000110774 NTA: 069534543 PLWABN: 9810684540905606 SNAC: w6bm4th9 SUDOC: 027095398 VcBA: 495/153241 VIAF: 41845645 WorldCat Identities: lccn-n50000827 Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Renouvier&oldid=999008343" Categories: 1815 births 1903 deaths 20th-century French non-fiction writers 20th-century French philosophers 20th-century philosophers 21st-century French non-fiction writers 21st-century French philosophers 21st-century philosophers Consciousness researchers and theorists Contemporary philosophers Continental philosophers Critical theorists École Polytechnique alumni Epistemologists French male non-fiction writers Historians of philosophy Idealists Kantian philosophers Kantianism Metaphilosophers Metaphysicians Mystics Ontologists People from Montpellier Phenomenologists Philosophers of history Philosophers of literature Philosophers of mind Philosophers of science Philosophy of time Philosophy writers Rationalists Hidden categories: Articles with hCards Wikipedia articles with BNE identifiers Wikipedia articles with BNF identifiers Wikipedia articles with CANTIC identifiers Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Wikipedia articles with ISNI identifiers Wikipedia articles with LCCN identifiers Wikipedia articles with NKC identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLG identifiers Wikipedia articles with NLI identifiers Wikipedia articles with NTA identifiers Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers Wikipedia articles with VcBA identifiers Wikipedia articles with VIAF identifiers Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers Navigation menu Personal tools Not logged in Talk Contributions Create account Log in Namespaces Article Talk Variants Views Read Edit View history More Search Navigation Main page Contents Current events Random article About Wikipedia Contact us Donate Contribute Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file Tools What links here Related changes Upload file Special pages Permanent link Page information Cite this page Wikidata item Print/export Download as PDF Printable version In other projects Wikimedia Commons Wikisource Languages Català Dansk Español Esperanto Euskara Français Bahasa Indonesia Italiano Magyar 日本語 Română Русский Slovenčina Српски / srpski Svenska Türkçe Edit links This page was last edited on 8 January 2021, at 01:56 (UTC). 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