Pierre Leroux - Views

Views

Leroux' thought is a unique medley of doctrines borrowed from Saint-Simonian, German Idealist, Pythagorean and Buddhistic sources. His fundamental philosophical 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 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. 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.

Leroux's significance in the history of ideas lies in his attempt to resuscitate spirituality and community in France in the wake of the revolutionary decades of the 1790s and the Napoleonic Era. As was the case with many of his romantic socialist contemporaries, Leroux sought a basis on which to refound the human community that did not rely on the pillars of the old Regime, authority, hierarchy, and the Catholic Church. The span of his lifetime were years of the rise of capitalism and liberal trade policies, and also of the rise of an organized workers' movement. Romantic socialism as a movement attempted to reconcile religious and material needs in society. Leroux' most thorough exposition of this idea is found in his Doctrine de l'Humanite, published first in 1840. In this and other works he argues for a reciprocal notion of human need and identity, emphasizing humanity's interdependence in lieu of atomized individuality.