Jacques Maritain

Maritain was one of the most influential twentieth-century interpreters of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. His interests spanned many aspects of philosophy, including aesthetics, political theory, philosophy of science, metaphysics, education, liturgy and ecclesiology.
His acknowledged masterpiece is The Degrees of Knowledge (1932). In this work, Maritain expands on Thomistic thought and seeks to explain the [...]

Henri Bergson

So far as he can be classified, Bergson would be called a ‘process philosopher’, emphasizing the primacy of process and change rather than of the conventional solid objects which undergo those changes. His central claim is that time, properly speaking and as we experience it (which he calls ‘duration’), cannot be analysed as a set [...]

Maine de Biran

Maine de Biran claimed that the starting point for our understanding of human beings lay in introspective psychology: it was the awareness of willed effort. A proper understanding of the will should be the foundation of all work in psychology, including empirical psychology, as well as in the human sciences in general, which should work [...]

Victor Cousin

French philosopher, educationalist and historian, Victor Cousin is primarily associated with ‘Eclecticism’ and the history of philosophy, but his work also includes contributions to aesthetics, philosophy of history and political theory. He was a prolific writer and editor, and a significant figure in the development of philosophy as a professional discipline [...]

Auguste Comte

Comte, Isidore-Auguste-Marie-François-Xavier (1798–1857)
The French philosopher and social theorist Auguste Comte is known as the originator of sociology and ‘positivism’, a philosophical system by which he aimed to discover and perfect the proper political arrangements of modern industrial society. He was the first thinker to advocate the use of scientific procedures in the study of economics, [...]

François Maine de Biran

Maine de Biran, Pierre-François (1766–1824)
Maine de Biran claimed that the starting point for our understanding of human beings lay in introspective psychology: it was the awareness of willed effort. A proper understanding of the will should be the foundation of all work in psychology, including empirical psychology, as well as in the human sciences in [...]

Julien Offroy de La Mettrie

La Mettrie, Julien Offroy de (1709–51)
La Mettrie is best known as the author of the eighteenth-century materialist manifesto, L’Homme machine (1747). His interest in philosophical issues grew out of his preoccupation with medicine, and he developed a tradition of medical materialism within the French Enlightenment. Born in St Malo, into the family of a prosperous [...]

Jean Le Rond D’Alembert

D’Alembert, Jean Le Rond (1717–83)
Mathematician, scientist and man of letters, Jean D’Alembert is a central figure of the French Enlightenment. As a young man he made significant contributions to the refinement of mathematical techniques, and later was actively engaged in the theoretical controversies which surrounded the gradual assimilation of Newtonian mechanics into the mainstream of [...]

Condorcet

Condorcet, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat de (1743–94)
The Marquis de Condorcet belongs to the second generation of eighteenth-century French philosophes. He was by training and inclination a mathematician, and his work marks a major stage in the development of what is known today as the social sciences. He was held in high regard by contemporaries for his contributions [...]

Pierre-Jean Cabanis

Cabanis, Pierre-Jean (1757–1808)
Cabanis believed in the possibility of a ‘science of man’, having its basis in medicine. He tried to show how a materialist conception of the human organism can throw light on our mental and moral life. The properties of living matter were derived from physical laws, but had their own peculiarities. In particular, [...]