French philosopher (1889?1982)
Louis Auguste Paul Rougier
(birth name:
Paul Auguste Louis Rougier
) (
French:
[?u?je]
; 10 April 1889 ? 14 October 1982) was a French
philosopher
. Rougier made many important contributions to
epistemology
,
philosophy of science
,
political philosophy
and the history of
Christianity
.
Early life
[
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]
Rougier was born in
Lyon
. Debilitated by
pleurisy
in his youth, he was declared unfit for service in
World War I
and devoted his adolescence to intellectual pursuits. He studied philosophy under
Edmond Goblot
.
[1]
[2]
After receiving the
agregation
in philosophy from the
University of Lyon
, he qualified as a philosophy teacher in 1914 and worked as a teacher in several high schools, before teaching at the Ecole Chateaubriand de Rome, Besancon, the
Cairo University
, the Institut Universitaire des Hautes Etudes Internationales de Geneve (Geneva
Graduate Institute of International Studies
), and the Fondation Edouard-Herriot (Edouard-Herriot Foundation) in Lyon.
[3]
In 1920 he obtained his doctorate from the
Sorbonne
and published his
doctoral thesis
as
La philosophie geometrique de Poincare
and
Les paralogismes du rationalisme
. Rougier already had several publications to his name, however, beginning with a 1914 paper on the use of
non-Euclidean geometry
in
relativity
theory.
Career
[
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]
Rougier taught in
Algiers
from 1917 to 1920 and then in
Rome
from 1920 to 1924. His first university appointment in
France
was at the
University of Besancon
in 1925, where he served on the faculty until his dismissal in 1948 for political reasons. Further university appointments were in
Cairo
from 1931 to 1936, the
New School for Social Research
from 1941 to 1943 and the
Universite de Montreal
in 1945. Rougier's final academic appointment was to the
Universite de Caen
in 1954, but he retired at the age of 66 after only one year there.
Philosophy
[
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]
Under the influence of
Henri Poincare
and
Ludwig Wittgenstein
, Rougier developed a philosophy based on the idea that
systems of logic
are neither
apodictic
(
i.e.
,
necessarily true
and therefore
deducible
) nor
assertoric
(
i.e.
, not necessarily true and whose truth must therefore be
induced
through empirical investigation). Instead, Rougier proposed that the various systems of logic are simply conventions that are adopted based on contingent circumstances.
That view, which implies that there are no "objective"
a priori
truths that exist independently of the human mind, closely resembled the
logical positivism
of the
Vienna Circle
. Many members of that group, including
Philipp Frank
, greatly admired Rougier's 1920 work
Les paralogismes du rationalisme.
Rougier soon became the group's only French associate and formed close personal ties to several of its leading members, including
Moritz Schlick
[4]
(to whom Rougier's 1955 book
Traite de la connaissance
is dedicated)
[5]
and
Hans Reichenbach
. Rougier also participated as an organizer and contributor to many Vienna Circle activities, including the
International Encyclopedia of Unified Science
.
[6]
Rougier's own contribution to the
Encyclopedia
never materialized, however, because he soon became one of many participants who ended up quarreling with
Otto Neurath
, the project's editor-in-chief.
Religion
[
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]
Rougier's conventionalist philosophical position naturally led him to oppose
Neo-Thomism
, which had been the official philosophy of the
Roman Catholic Church
since the 1879 encyclical
Aeterna Patris
but was gaining particular momentum during the 1920s and the 1930s. Rougier published several works during this period attacking the contemporary revival of
scholasticism
, thereby earning the personal enmity of prominent Thomists such as
Etienne Gilson
and
Jacques Maritain
.
Rougier's objections to Neo-Thomism were not merely philosophical, however, but formed part of a general opposition to
Christianity
that he had already begun to develop during his adolescence under the influence of
Ernest Renan
. His early opposition to Christianity continued to influence intellectual work of Rougier's maturity and led him in 1926 to publish a translation of
Celsus
that is still in use today.
Politics
[
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]
Rougier was also a
political philosopher
in the
liberal
tradition of
Montesquieu
,
Constant
,
Guizot
and
Tocqueville
. Consistent with his conventionalist epistemology, Rougier believed that political power rests not upon eternally-valid claims but upon, which he called
mystiques
. The only possible reason to prefer one political system over another, he believed, depends not on eternal truths but purely on pragmatic grounds. In other words, political systems should be chosen not based on how "true" they are but rather on how well they work.
After visiting the
Soviet Union
in 1932 on a visit sponsored by the French Ministry of Education, Rougier became convinced that a
planned economy
does not work as well as a
market economy
. That conviction led him to participate in the organization of the first
neoliberal
organization of the 20th century, the
Colloque Walter Lippmann
, in 1938. That year, Rougier helped to found the
Centre international d'etudes pour la renovation du liberalisme
. The political network established by both groups eventually led to the 1947 foundation of the famous
Mont Pelerin Society
to which Rougier was elected in the 1960s through the personal backing of
Friedrich Hayek
.
Rougier, as one of the founding fathers of neoliberalism, would no doubt have been admitted to the first meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society but for a second political engagement, which proved disastrous to his career and his reputation: his activities on behalf of the
Vichy regime
in France during
World War II
. In October 1940, French Head of State
Philippe Petain
sent Rougier on a secret mission to the British government in London, where Rougier met with
Winston Churchill
between 21 and 25 October.
Rougier later claimed in several published works that these meetings resulted in an agreement between Vichy and Churchill that he called the
Mission secrete a Londres : les Accords Petain-Churchill
, an allegation that the British government later denied in an official
White Paper
. Although those activities and publications eventually led to Rougier's dismissal in 1948 from his teaching position at the University of Besancon, he continued to be active throughout the 1950s in organisations that defended Petain. He also published works denouncing the
epuration
, the French equivalent of
denazification
, which was carried out on the formerly-Vichy territory by the Allies after the war, as illegal and totalitarian. Finally, Rougier was active in an effort that petitioned the United Nations in 1951 by alleging that the Allies had committed
human rights
violations and
war crimes
during the
Liberation
.
In the 1970s, Rougier formed a second controversial political alliance: with the
Nouvelle Droite
of the French writer
Alain de Benoist
. Rougier's long-standing opposition to
Christianity
, together with his conviction that "the West" possesses a pragmatically-superior
mentalite
to those of other cultures, aligned closely with the views of that movement. Benoist reissued and wrote prefaces to several of Rougier's earlier works, and in 1974, Benoist's thinktank,
GRECE
, published an entirely-new book by Rougier:
Le conflit du Christianisme primitif et de la civilisation antique
.
Death
[
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]
Rougier lived to the age of 93 and was survived by his third wife, Lucy Elisabeth (nee Herzka) Friedmann (1903-1989).
[7]
Dr. Friedmann, whom he married in 1942,
[8]
was a former secretary to
Moritz Schlick
. Although Friedman had a daughter from a previous marriage, Rougier himself had no children.
Selected works
[
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]
- 1919.
La materialisation de l'energie: essai sur la theorie de la relativite et sur la theorie des quanta.
Paris: Gauthier-Villars. English translation by
Morton Masius
: 1921.
Philosophy and the new physics; an essay on the relativity theory and the theory of quanta.
Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son & Co.; London: Routledge.
- 1920.
La philosophie geometrique de Henri Poincare.
Paris: F. Alcan.
- 1920.
Les paralogismes du rationalisme: essai sur la theorie de la connaissance.
Paris: F. Alcan.
[9]
[10]
- 1921.
En marge de Curie, de Carnot et d'Einstein: etudes de philosophie scientifique.
Paris: Chiron.
- 1921.
La structure des theories deductives; theorie nouvelle de la deduction.
Paris: F. Alcan.
- 1924.
La scolastique et le thomisme.
Paris: Gauthier-Villars.
- 1929.
La mystique democratique, ses origines, ses illusions.
Paris: E. Flammarion.
- 1933.
L'origine astronomique de la croyance pythagoricienne en l'immortalite celeste des ames.
Cairo: L'institut francais d'archeologie orientale.
- 1938.
Les mystiques economiques; comment l'on passe des democraties liberales aux etats totalitaires.
Paris: Librairie de Medicis.
- 1945.
Les accords Petain, Churchill: historie d'une mission secrete.
Montreal: Beauchemin.
- 1945.
Creance morale de la France.
Montreal: L. Parizeau.
- 1947.
La France jacobine.
Bruxelles: La Diffusion du livre.
- 1947.
La defaite des vainqueurs.
Bruxelles: La Diffusion du livre.
- 1947.
La France en marbre blanc: ce que le monde doit a la France.
Geneve: Bibliotheque du Cheval aile.
- 1948.
De Gaulle contre De Gaulle.
Paris: Editions du Triolet.
- 1954.
Les accord secrets franco-britanniques de l'automne 1940; histoire et imposture.
Paris: Grasset.
- 1955.
Traite de la connaissance.
Paris: Gauthier-Villars.
- 1957.
L'epuration.
Paris: Les Sept couleurs.
- 1959.
La religion astrale des Pythagoriciens.
Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
- 1960.
La metaphysique et le langage.
Paris: Flammarion.
- 1966.
Histoire d'une faillite philosophique: la Scolastique.
Paris: J.-J. Pauvert.
- 1969.
Le Genie de l'Occident: essai sur la formation d'une mentalite.
Paris: R. Laffont. English translation: 1971.
The Genius of the West
.
Los Angeles: Nash.
- 1972.
La genese des dogmes chretiens.
Paris: A. Michel.
- 1974.
Le conflit du Christianisme primitif et de la civilisation antique
. Paris: GRECE.
- 1980.
Astronomie et religion en Occident.
Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
Bibliography
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Encyclopedia.com website
- ^
ResearchGate website
- ^
Cairn International website
- ^
Nemeth, Elisabeth; Roudet, Nicolas, eds. (2006).
"
Louis Rougier, the Vienna Circle and the Unity of Science
by Mathieu Marion"
.
Enzyklopadien im Vergleich
. Vol. 13. Veroffentichungen des Instituts Wiener Kreis. Springer. pp. 150?178.
ISBN
978-3-211-33320-4
.
- ^
Brown, Stuart; Collinson, Diane; Wilkinson, Robert, eds. (10 September 2012).
Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers
. Routledge. pp. 677?678.
ISBN
978-1-134-92796-8
.
p. 678
- ^
Carnap, R.; Frank, P.; Joergensen, J.; Morris, C.W.; Neurath, O.; Rougier, L. (1937).
"International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Science"
.
Science
.
86
(2235): 400?401.
doi
:
10.1126/science.86.2235.400
.
PMID
17832642
.
- ^
Friedl, Johannes; Rutte, Heiner, eds. (26 July 2013).
Moritz Schlick. Erkenntnistheoretische Schriften 1926-1936
. Springer. p. 540.
ISBN
978-3-7091-1509-1
.
- ^
Christie's website
- ^
Lamprecht, Sterling P. (1921).
"Review of
Les Paralogismes du rationalisme
par Louis Rougier"
.
The Journal of Philosophy
. XVIII, January?December 1921: 246?248.
- ^
"Review of
Les paralogismes du rationalisme: essai sur la theorie de la connaissance
par Louis Rougier"
.
The Athenaeum
: 875. December 24, 1920.
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