Jean-Marie Guyau | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | (1854-10-28)28 October 1854 |
| Died | 31 March 1888(1888-03-31) (aged 33) |
| Nationality | French |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 19th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
Jean-Marie Guyau (28 October 1854 – 31 March 1888) was aFrenchphilosopher andpoet.
Guyau was inspired by the philosophies ofEpicurus,Epictetus,Plato,Immanuel Kant,Herbert Spencer, andAlfred Fouillée, and the poetry and literature ofPierre Corneille,Victor Hugo, andAlfred de Musset.
Guyau was first exposed toPlato andKant, as well as thehistory of religions andphilosophy in his youth through his stepfather, the noted French philosopherAlfred Fouillée. With this background, he was able to attain his Bachelor of Arts at only 17 years of age, and at this time, translated theHandbook ofEpictetus. At 19, he published his 1300-page "Mémoire" that, a year later in 1874, won a prize from theFrench Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and helped to earn him a philosophy lectureship at theLycée Condorcet. However, this was short-lived, as he soon began to suffer frompulmonary disease. Following the first attacks of his disease, he went to southern France where he wrote philosophical works and poetry. He remained there until his death of spulmonary disease at 33 years of age.[1]
His mother,Augustine Tuillerie (who marriedFouillée after Guyau's birth), publishedLe Tour de France par deux enfants in 1877 under the pseudonym G. Bruno.
Guyau's wife published short novels for young people under the pseudonym of Pierre Ulric.
Guyau's works primarily analyze and respond to modern philosophy, especiallymoral philosophy. Largely seen as anEpicurean, he viewed Englishutilitarianism as a modern version of Epicureanism. Although an enthusiastic admirer of the works ofJeremy Bentham andJohn Stuart Mill, he did not spare them a careful scrutiny of their approach to morality.
In hisEsquisse d'une morale sans obligation ni sanction, probably his most important work on moral theory, he begins from Fouillée, maintaining that utilitarian andpositivist schools, despite admitting the presence of an unknowable in moral theory, wrongly expel individual hypotheses directed towards this unknowable. He states that any valid theory of ethics must consider the moral sphere as consisting not merely of moralfacts (the utilitarian approach) but also, and more importantly, of moralideas. On the other hand, in contrast to Fouillée, he does not see this unknowable itself as able to contribute a "principle practically limiting and restricting conduct," i.e. of "mere justice" which, he states, comes too close toKantian notions of duty; for this, in turn, would bring us back to a theory of moral obligation, which, as the title suggests, he wishes to free moral theory from. Much of his treatise is dedicated to arguing what moral theory can be based upon that relieves moral theorists from relying on e.g. duty, sanctions, and obligations. For example,
The only admissible "equivalents" or "substitutes" of duty, to use the same language as the author of "La Liberté et le Déterminisme" appear to us to be:
- The consciousness of our inward and superiorpower, to which we see duty practically reduced.
- The influence exercised byideas overactions.
- The increasing fusion of thesensibilities, and the increasingly social character of our pleasures and sorrows.
- The love ofrisk in action, of which we will show the importance hitherto ignored.
- The love of metaphysical hypothesis, which is a sort ofrisk of thought.[2]
Guyau also took interest in aesthetic theory, particularly its role in society and social evolution. Primarily, Guyau's theories ofaesthetics refuteImmanuel Kant's idea that aesthetic judgment is disinterested, and accordingly, partitioned off from the faculties of mind responsible for moral judgement. InLes Problèmes de l'esthétique contemporaine, Guyau argues that beauty in fact activates all dimensions of the mind—the sensual, the intellectual, and the moral. Aesthetic sensations are fully integrated with life and morality. They are also the mark of man's self-actualization. Contrary toHerbert Spencer's theory that the development of the arts is an indicator of the decline of society at large, Guyau maintains that as society continues to evolve, life will become increasingly aesthetic. InL'Art au point de vue sociologique, Guyau argues the purpose of art is not to merely produce pleasure, but to create sympathy among members of a society. By extension, he contends that art has the power to reform societies as well as to form them anew.
Guyau authoredLa genèse de l’idée de temps (English translationThe Origin of the Idea of Time), a book on thephilosophy of time in 1890.[3] Guyau argued that time itself does not exist in the universe but is produced by events that occur, thus time to Guyau was a mental construction from events that take place. He asserted that time is a product of human imagination, memory and will.[4]
Although Guyau is now a relatively obscure philosopher, his approach to philosophy earned him much praise from those who knew of him and his philosophy. Because he rarely made his political ideology explicit, Guyau has been portrayed as a socialist, an anarchist, and as a libertarian liberal in the style of John Stuart Mill. However, Guyau clearly expressed republican sympathies in which he praised theFrench Revolution, saluted the Third Republic's promotion of civic and moral education, described voting as a "duty," and cautiously argued that democracy offered propitious conditions for creative development.[5]
He is the original source of the notion ofanomie, which found much use in the philosophy of Guyau's contemporaryÉmile Durkheim, who first used it in his review of "Irréligion de l'avenir".[6] He is admired and well-quoted by the anarchistPeter Kropotkin, in Kropotkin's works on ethics, where Guyau is described as an anarchist.[7]Peter Kropotkin devotes an entire chapter to Guyau in hisEthics: Origin and Development, describing Guyau's moral teaching as "so carefully conceived, and expounded in so perfect a form, that it is a simple matter to convey its essence in a few words",[8] while the American philosopherJosiah Royce considered him "one of the most prominent of recent French philosophical critics."[9]
When the Australian, quoted by Guyau, wasted away beneath the idea that he has not yet revenged his kinsman's death; when he grows thin and pale, a prey to the consciousness of his cowardice, and does not return to life till he has done the deed of vengeance, he performs this action, a heroic one sometimes, to free himself of a feeling which possesses him, to regain that inward peace which is the highest of pleasures.
