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Pierre Leroux

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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PIERRE LEROUX (1798-1871), French philosopher and economist, was born at Bercy near Paris on the 7th of April 1798, the son of an artisan. His education was interrupted by the death of his father, which compelled him to support his mother and family. Having worked first as a mason and then as a compositor, he joined P. Dubois in the foundation of Le Globe which became in 1831 the official organ of the Saint-Simonian community, of which he became a prominent member. In November of the same year, when Enfantin preached the enfranchisement of women and the functions of the couple-pretre, Leroux separated himself from the sect. In 1838, with J. Regnaud, who had seceded with him, he founded the Encyclopedie nouvelle (eds. 1838-1841). Amongst the articles which he inserted in it were De l'egalite and Refutation de l'eclectisme, which afterwards appeared as separate works. In 1840 he published his treatise De l'humanite (2nd ed. 1845), which contains the fullest exposition of his system, and was regarded as the philosophical manifesto of the Humanitarians. In 1841 he established the Revue independante, with the aid of George Sand, over whom he had great influence. Her Spiridion, which was dedicated to him, Sept cardes de la lyre, Consuelo, and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, were written under the Humanitarian inspiration. In 1843 he established at Boussac (Creuse) a printing association organized according to his systematic ideas, and founded the Revue sociale. After the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and in 1849 to the Legislative Assembly, but his speeches on behalf of the extreme socialist wing were of so abstract and mystical a character that they had no effect. After the coup d'etat of 1851 he settled with his family in Jersey, where he pursued agricultural experiments and wrote his socialist poem La Greve de Samarez. On the definitive amnesty of 1869 he returned to Paris, where he died in April 1871, during the Commune.

The writings of Leroux have no permanent significance in the history of thought. He was the propagandist of sentiments and aspirations rather than the expounder of a systematic theory. He has, indeed, a system, but it is a singular medley of doctrines borrowed, not only from Saint-Simonian, but from Pythagorean and Buddhistic sources. In philosophy his fundamental principle is that of what he calls the "triad" - a triplicity which he finds to pervade all things, which in God is "power, intelligence and love," in man "sensation, sentiment and knowledge." His religious doctrine is Pantheistic; and, rejecting the belief in a future life as commonly conceived, he substitutes for it a theory of metempsychosis. In social economy his views are very vague; he preserves the family, country and property, but finds in all three, as they now are, a despotism which must be eliminated. He imagines certain combinations by which this triple tyranny can be abolished, but his solution seems to require the creation of families without heads, countries without governments and property without rights of possession. In politics he advocates absolute equality - a democracy pushed to anarchy.

See Raillard, Pierre Leroux et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1899); Thomas, Pierre Leroux: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine (Paris, 1904); L. Reybaud, Etudes sur les reformateurs et socialistes modernes; article in R. H. Inglis Palgrave's Dictionary of Pol. Econ.