Editing Charles Renouvier

{{Short description|French philosopher}}
{{Infobox philosopher
|region           = [[Western philosophy]]
|era              = [[19th-century philosophy]]
|image       = Charles Renouvier.png
|name             = Charles Renouvier
|birth_date       = {{birth date|1815|1|1|df=y}}
|birth_place      = [[Montpellier]], France
|death_date       = {{death date and age|1903|9|1|1815|1|1|df=y}}
|death_place      = [[Prades, Pyrénées-Orientales]], France<ref>[http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/psy_0003-5033_1903_num_10_1_3545 "Herbert Spencer et Charles Renouvier"]</ref>
|alma_mater       = [[École Polytechnique]]
|school_tradition = [[Critical philosophy]]<ref>John I. Brooks, ''The Eclectic Legacy: Academic Philosophy and the Human Sciences in Nineteenth-century France'', University of Delaware Press, 1998, p. 150.</ref>
|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]]
|caption=Charles Renouvier in 1883}}

'''Charles Bernard Renouvier''' ({{IPA|fr|ʁənuvje|lang}}; 1 January 1815 – 1 September 1903) was a  [[French people|French]] [[philosopher]]. He considered himself a "[[Emanuel Swedenborg|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 [[sociology|sociological]] method of [[Émile Durkheim]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Geenens |first1=Raf |last2=Rosenblatt |first2=Helena |title=French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day |date=2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=239}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Ferguson |first1=Niall |title=Virtual History: Alternatives And Counterfactuals |date=2008 |publisher=Basic Books |page=9}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Robert Alun |title=The Secret of the Totem: Religion and Society from McLennan to Freud |date=2005 |publisher=Columbia University Press}}</ref>

==Biography==
Renouvier was born in [[Montpellier]] and educated in [[Paris, France|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.<ref name=EB1911>{{EB1911 |wstitle=Renouvier, Charles Bernard |volume=23 |page=102 |inline=1}}</ref>

==Philosophy==
Renouvier was the first French philosopher after [[Nicolas Malebranche]] to formulate a complete [[idealism|idealistic system]], and had a vast influence on the development of French thought. His system is based on [[Immanuel Kant]]'s,<ref>{{Cite Catholic Encyclopedia|wstitle=Philosophy of Kant |volume=8 |first=William |last=Turner |authorlink=William Turner (bishop of Buffalo)}}</ref> as his chosen term "''[[néo-criticisme]]''" indicates; but it is a transformation rather than a continuation of Kantianism.<ref name=EB1911/>

The two leading ideas are the dislike of the "unknowable" in all its forms, and a reliance on the validity of personal experience.<ref name=EB1911/> 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 [[Buddhism|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.<ref name=EB1911/>

The insistence on the validity of personal experience leads Renouvier to a yet more important divergence from Kant in his treatment of [[Volition_(psychology)|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_(philosophy)|will]] affirming what we hold to be morally good.<ref name=EB1911/>

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_(philosophy)|pluralism]], I might never have got free from the monistic superstition under which I had grown up."

==Religious views==

In his religious views, Renouvier makes a considerable approximation to [[Gottfried Leibniz]]. He holds that we are [[rationality|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.<ref name=EB1911/>

Renouvier rejected [[absolute idealism]], [[Spinozism]] and classical [[Christian theology]] finding its views on an infinite, omniscient and omnipotent God to be deterministic.<ref name="Cooper 2006">{{cite book |last=Cooper|first= John W. |date=2006 |title=Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=aokfbkOdjuEC |publisher=Baker Publishing Group |page=143 |isbn=978-1585584048}}</ref> Instead he posited a finite personal God that was good but limited in knowledge and power. His theology preserved human free will and absolved God from evil that humans commit. He described God as the "permanent personality in the world".<ref name="Cooper 2006"/>

==Selected publications==

* ''Essais de critique générale'' (1854–64)
* ''Science de la morale''<ref name="Textes philosophiques complets">{{Cite web |url=http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/philo/textesph/default.htm#renouv |title=Textes philosophiques complets<!-- bot-generated title --> |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20041204144533/http://www.ac-nancy-metz.fr/enseign/philo/textesph/default.htm#renouv |archive-date=December 4, 2004 |publisher= at www.ac-nancy-metz.fr }}</ref> (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''<ref name="Textes philosophiques complets"/> (1901)
* ''Le Personnalisme'' (1903)
* ''Critique de la doctrine de Kant''<ref name="Textes philosophiques complets"/> (1906)

==See also==
* [[Neo-Kantianism]]

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

== Further reading ==
{{wikisource author|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}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Renouvier, Charles Bernard}}
[[Category:1815 births]]
[[Category:1903 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century French philosophers]]
[[Category:Critical theorists]]
[[Category:École Polytechnique alumni]]
[[Category:Finite theists]]
[[Category:French epistemologists]]
[[Category:French male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:French historians of philosophy]]
[[Category:French philosophers of history]]
[[Category:French philosophers of science]]
[[Category:Idealists]]
[[Category:Kantian philosophers]]
[[Category:Metaphilosophers]]
[[Category:Ontologists]]
[[Category:Phenomenologists]]
[[Category:Philosophers of literature]]
[[Category:French philosophers of mind]]
[[Category:Philosophers of time]]
[[Category:Rationalists]]
[[Category:Writers from Montpellier]]