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EMILE BOUTROUX, REDEFINING SCIENCE AND FAITH IN THE THIRD REPUBLIC*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2009

JOEL REVILL
JOEL REVILL*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Williams College E-mail: jr4@williams.edu
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Abstract

Historians have convincingly shown the extent to which Protestantism played a role in the founding of the Third Republic, undermining the once canonical claim that republicanism and religion were implacably hostile opponents in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Catholics, however, continue to be viewed as nearly universally antirepublican. Analyzing the writings of philosopher Emile Boutroux and his students, this article shows how the specifically Catholic concern with the relationship between free will and scientific concepts of determinism both influenced the direction of French philosophy of science into the twentieth century and provided a framework for defending the Republic at the height of the Dreyfus affair.

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Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 6 , Issue 3 , November 2009 , pp. 485 - 512
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

1 Mary Jo Nye, “The Moral Freedom of Man and the Determinism of Nature: The Catholic Synthesis of Science and History in the Revue des questions scientifiques,” British Journal for the History of Science 9/3 (1976).

2 Freud and Durkheim confronted the failed liberal dream of rational politics and law; I argue elsewhere that Boutroux's students at the Revue de métaphysique et de morale were engaged in an analogous project. I am using Sudhir Hazareesingh's broad definition of liberalism, describing French thinkers who supported the republic but whose vision of equality was limited to law, education, and opportunity. Boutroux associated himself with liberalism by the early twentieth century, and his students (especially Elie Halévy) were among the most important fin de siècle French liberals. Joel Revill, “‘The Bitterness of Disappointed Expectations’: Elie Halévy and European Socialism,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 35 (2007); Sudhir Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence of Modern French Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 25.

3 Mayeur and Rebérioux describe “two Frances, one republican, free-thinking and liberal, whose ideal was the secularized society that had emerged from the French Revolution, and one for which the Gospel was the guiding principle of societies and God the master of history”; Furet speaks of a “narrow” positivism rejecting ultramontane religion with little in between; and even Philip Nord argues that “the confrontations of midcentury made it plain where the battle lines were drawn in the Latin Quarter. On the one side stood the imperial state and the regime of Moral Order, seconded by Cousinist and clerical interests; on the other were sincere and manly youth, partisans of science and free thought who fought against constraints dictated from above.” Nord, Philip, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 40Google Scholar; Mayeur, Jean-Marie and Rebérioux, Madeleine, The Third Republic from Its Origins to the Great War, 1871–1914, trans. Foster, J. R. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 7Google Scholar; Furet, François, Revolutionary France, 1770–1880, trans. Nevill, Antonia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 482–83Google Scholar.

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6 Chimisso reads Boutroux as part of the Catholic antihistoricist position based on his late work, but does not examine his early writings in detail. Cristina Chimisso, Writing the History of the Mind: Philosophy and Science in France, 1900–1960s (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 8, 45–49, 60–61.

7 Paul Archambault, ed., Emile Boutroux: Choix de textes avec une étude sur l'oeuvre (Paris: Rasmussen, 1928), 41. All translations are, unless otherwise noted, my own.

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10 For a traditional reading of the conservative implications of Cousin's late philosophy see Digeon, Claude, Crise allemande de la Pensée française, 1870–1914 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), 35Google Scholar.

11 For an informative account of early French receptions of Kant see Schmaus, Warren, “Kant's Reception in France: Theories and Categories in Academic Philosophy, Psychology, and Social Science,” Perspectives on Science 11/1 (2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See Lachelier's letter of 15 July 1877. Lachelier, Jules, Lettres, 1856–1918 (Paris: Girard, 1933), 119–20Google Scholar.

13 On Zeller see Köhnke, Klaus Christian, The Rise of Neo-Kantianism: German Academic Philosophy between Idealism and Positivism, trans. Hollingdale, R. J. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

14 J. [Isaak] Benrubi, Les Sources et les courants de la philosophie contemporaine en France, 2 vols. (Paris: Alcan, 1933), 2: 325.

15 This last would, on Rosenberg's reading, undermine Kant's understanding of perception. Rosenberg, Jay, Accessing Kant: A Relaxed Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), 33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 The congress was founded by Boutroux's intellectual heirs at the Revue de métaphysique et de morale. Boutroux, Emile, “La Philosophie en France depuis 1867,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 16/6 (1908)Google Scholar.

17 Ravaisson, Félix, La Philosophie en France au XIXe siècle, 5th edn (Paris: Vrin, 1983)Google Scholar.

18 Vacherot, Etienne, La Métaphysique et la science, ou, principes de métaphysique positive, 2nd edn (Paris: Chamerot, 1863)Google Scholar.

19 Vacherot's hostility to German thought is unambiguous, for example: “Anyone in France who is not ignorant of German philosophy since Kant and Hegel is not duped by it. We have tasted it, and admired it as history, but one cannot take it seriously as science.” Ibid., xxviii.

20 Caro, Elme, Le Matérialisme et la science, 6th edn (Paris: Hachette, 1905), 2Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., 8–9.

22 Ibid., 91.

23 Janet, Paul, La Crise philosophique: MM. Taine, Renan, Littré, Vacherot (Paris: Germer Baillière, 1865), 8Google Scholar. One could also, however, find Catholic polemicists arguing that eclectic spiritualism amounted to a kind of pantheism; see Ravaisson, La Philosophie en France au XIXe siècle, 136–8.

24 Fouillée, Alfred, La Liberté et le déterminisme (Paris: Ladrange, 1872)Google Scholar.

25 Fouillée was an exception in his claim that everyday understandings of determinism allow for free will; even he, however, grounded his argument on human exceptionalism, giving metaphysics priority over science.

26 Gutting argues that every major philosopher after 1870 rejected positivism, though this depends on narrow definitions of “major” and “philosopher” (excluding the philosophically trained Emile Durkheim, for example). Gutting, French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, 9.

27 Simon, W. M., European Positivism in the Nineteenth Century, an Essay in Intellectual History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963), 154Google Scholar.

28 Quoted in Benrubi, Isaac, Contemporary Thought of France, trans. Dicker, Ernest (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), 23Google Scholar.

29 Emile Littré, “Esprit,” in Dictionnaire de la langue française, ed. Emile Littré (Paris: Hachette, 1873), 1494.

30 Hippolyte Taine, Les Philosophes classiques du XIXe siècle en France, 3d edn (Paris: Hachette, 1868), vi–vii.

31 Jan Goldstein does precisely this in her study of French psychology. Goldstein, Jan, Console and Classify: The French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

32 Renouvier clearly articulated the claims of positivists, neo-Kantians, and eclectic spiritualists in his lucid but little-read journal, hailing Lachelier's work and highlighting its Kantian elements, attacking Comte, and arguing that thoughts must be uncaused for ethical and political choices to be choices at all. That Renouvier would dedicate his Les Dilemmes de la métaphysique pure “A Emile Boutroux. A l'auteur de la Contingence des lois de la nature” suggests the influence of Boutroux's thought. Renouvier, Charles, Les Dilemmes de la métaphysique pure, 2nd edn (Paris: Alcan, 1901)Google Scholar. See also the entire “Freedom and Necessity” series of six articles in 1879, Charles Renouvier, “La Question de la certitude, IV—l'esprit scientifique,” Critique philosophique 7/13 (1878); idem, “De la Méthode scientifique: La Cause et la substance dans la science,” Critique philosophique 5/4 (1876); idem, “Qu'est-ce que le spiritualisme,” Critique philosophique 4/2 (1875); William Logue, Charles Renouvier, Philosopher of Liberty (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993).

33 I am relying here on Pierre Bourdieu's claim that certain notions are so universally agreed upon, so obvious, that they are never questioned. Bourdieu argues that these notions, which he calls “doxa,” periodically break down and are called into question and explicitly defended, creating “orthodox” and “heterodox” positions. It is my assertion that the mechanist interpretation of the material world was such doxa prior to Boutroux's thesis. See Bourdieu, Pierre, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Nice, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bourdieu, Pierre, “Intellectual Field and Creative Project,” Social Science Information 8/2 (1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a lucid explanation of Bourdieu's theory see Ringer, Fritz, “The Intellectual Field, Intellectual History, and the Sociology of Knowledge,” Theory and Society 19/3 (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 The Catholic response to positive science, popularized several years later with the Thomist revival, would concentrate on such intellectual insufficiencies.

35 Boutroux, Emile, De la Contingence des lois de la nature, 8th edn (Paris: Alcan, 1915), 32Google Scholar.

36 Ibid., 37.

37 Chimisso, Writing the History of the Mind; Gattinara, Enrico Castelli, Les Inquiétudes de la raison: Epistémologie et histoire en France dans l'entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Vrin, 1998)Google Scholar.

38 “Beings” here take on systemic attributes since they are composed of smaller elements. The history of science would become a key component in the work of Boutroux's students, especially Léon Brunschvicg. Boutroux, De la Contingence des lois de la nature, 145.

39 Ibid., 60–61.

40 Ibid., 5.

41 Ibid., 13.

42 Taine, Les Philosophes classiques du XIXe siècle en France, viii. As Donald Charlton describes positivism, “in all three definitions [of positivism there is] . . . the view that phenomena are related, that they are linked in terms of cause and effect.” Donald G. Charlton, Positivist Thought in France during the Second Empire, 1852–1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 7; original emphasis. Probability does not prove human agency, but Boutroux was not alone in his misapprehension; members of the Austrian family of jurists and scientists, the Exners, moved in similar directions around the same time. See Hacohen, Malachi, “The Culture of Viennese Science and the Riddle of Austrian Liberalism,” Modern Intellectual History 6/2 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Boutroux, De la Contingence des lois de la nature, 60–61. See also 122.

44 On the group of scientists around Boutroux see Nye, who suggests that some of Poincaré's famous conventionalist epistemology may have originated with Boutroux (though she does not discuss Poincaré's contributions to chaos theory). Nye, Mary Jo, “The Boutroux Circle and Poincaré's Conventionalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 40/1 (1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Boutroux also invoked traditional arguments for human exceptionalism; I leave these aside because, insofar as they are representative of the intellectual field from which he emerged, they don't tell us much beyond what Lachelier, Ravaisson, and Fouillée had already argued.

46 Boutroux, De la Contingence des lois de la nature, 129.

47 See letter of 15 Feb. 1873 in Lachelier, Lettres, 1856–1918, 102–3; original emphasis.

48 Boutroux, De la Contingence des lois de la nature, 150.

49 Ibid., 157.

50 Ibid., 156.

51 Ibid. There are filiations here with Kant, i.e. “reflection on our moral experience leads unavoidably to the assumption of moral responsibility and consequently of moral freedom. This he [Kant] conceives as a kind of causality which falls outside the order of fact, especially scientific fact.” Körner, Stephan, Kant (Baltimore: Penguin, 1960), 75Google Scholar.

52 For Nye, Boutroux's Catholicism is by definition “conservative”; see also Rollet. Nye, “The Boutroux Circle,” 116, 117, 120; Rollet, Laurent, Henri Poincaré, des mathématiques à la philosophie, étude du parcours intellectuel, social et politique d'un mathémathicien au début du siècle (Paris: Septentrion, 1999Google Scholar).

53 On the birth of the social sciences see Goldstein, Console and Classify; Brooks, Eclectic Legacy; Keylor, William R., Academy and Community: The Foundation of the French Historical Profession (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Charle, Christophe, La République des universitaires, 1870–1940 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1994)Google Scholar; Fabiani, Jean-Louis, Les Philosophes de la République (Paris: Minuit, 1988)Google Scholar; Joshua Humphreys, “Servants of Social Progress: Democracy, Capitalism and Social Reform in France, 1914–1940,” PhD diss., New York University, 2005; Daniela S. Barberis, “The First Année Sociologique and Neo-Kantian Philosophy in France,” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2001.

54 Nord, The Republican Moment, 37.

55 Elie Halévy attributed his youthful disinterest in politics to the Boulanger affair and the Panama scandal. Chase, Myrna, Elie Halévy, an Intellectual Biography (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 19Google Scholar.

56 A wide variety of work by the generation born around 1870 shows a concern with ethical revitalization; other members of this generation who used Boutroux's thought for their project include Alain, Dominique Parodi, and Célestin Bouglé.

57 Bachelard would develop a much more convincing version of intersubjective epistemology by stressing the extent to which scientists work on a constructed world. In his vision, as scientific techniques for creating objects of analysis change—as samples become more uniform or particles more finely divided—the scientific world actual evolves at the pace of scientific theory. See Gaston Bachelard, Nouvel esprit scientifique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1934), 170–77.

58 Because he was convinced that, if properly educated, people would act rationally in all spheres of their life, Brunschvicg channeled much of his political activity into education, working with the Dreyfusard Popular University movement.

59 Brunschvicg's reply to Cousin clearly reversed this priority: “for there to be any agreement between them, the first condition would be that common sense be recognized as incapable of guiding reason.” Though his contemporary targets are not named, it seems that he had Bergson and Brunetière in mind. Léon Brunschvicg, “Spiritualisme et sens commun,” in L'Idéalisme contemporain (Paris: Alcan, 1921), 531; Ferdinand Brunetière, “Après une Visite au Vatican,” Revue des deux mondes 65 (1895). Some of the line of thought in the following section appeared in Joel Revill, “Taking France to the School of the Sciences: Léon Brunschvicg, Gaston Bachelard, and the French Epistemological Tradition,” PhD diss., Duke University, 2006.

60 Brunschvicg, Léon, “De quelques Préjugés contre la philosophie,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 6/4 (1898), 401Google Scholar.

61 Ibid., 418.

62 Brunschvicg replicated Boutroux's institutional power, becoming the head of the jury d'agrégation in the 1930s. Even earlier, Brunschvicg managed to have science requirements included for philosophy students at the university level, ensuring, for a time, an end to the naive rejections of science typical of the previous generation. Boirel, René, Brunschvicg, sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1964), 19Google Scholar.

63 Brunschvicg, “Spiritualisme et sens commun,” 532–3.

64 For a neo-Kantian, the development of non-Euclidean geometries was particularly disturbing as it showed space to be extant rather than an a priori condition of perception. Richard Horner provides a framework for thinking about this era in an article on philosopher Frédéric Rauh. Horner argues that Rauh was a pragmatist on Richard Rorty's definition because he abandoned the search for both philosophical certitude and universal scientific method in the face of the disruption of scientific certainty. Horner argues that a pragmatic moment extended beyond Rauh, and was “in the air” at the fin de siècle. While neither Boutroux nor Brunschvicg could be called a pragmatist, the tradition of épistémologie that they founded moved progressively further from philosophical foundations in preference for an evolving, but objective, scientific method. Horner, Richard, “A Pragmatist in Paris: Frédéric Rauh's ‘Task of Dissolution’,” Journal of the History of Ideas 58/2 (1997), 308CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

65 Brunschvicg's innovations were not the only response to the nineteenth-century challenges to Kantian thought. Alain claimed that he would rather have abandoned science than “shake the foundations of the temple of reason” when confronted with the failures of Kant's vision of space and time implicit in modern physics. Half a century later, Julien Benda was still attacking Brunschvicg's discontinuous history of science and criticizing Boutroux's “stupefying” description of reason as an evolving entity. At the root of the anxiety expressed by both Benda and Alain was the sense that they were witness to the disintegration of philosophical certainties and a slide toward epistemological relativism. The fear of social and intellectual dissolution in central and western Europe at the end of the nineteenth century is cliché, but the innovative responses that historians have discovered in Freud or Durkheim (who embraced neither reaction nor intellectual anarchy) also appear in the idealist philosophical tradition. Benda, Julien, La Crise du rationalisme (Paris: Club Maintenant, 1949), 37, 41Google Scholar. Alain quoted in Aron, Raymond, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. Holoch, George (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990), 37Google Scholar.

66 I.e. “[we] make our notion of the truth more flexible in order to bring it into harmony with the advances of the sciences.” Brunschvicg, Léon, Les Etapes de la philosophie mathématique (Paris: A. Blanchard, 1972), 524Google Scholar.

67 Brunschvicg's correspondence with Elie Halévy suggests that he was intentionally slow to make up his mind about the Dreyfus case, but was clearly thinking through its implications. By the spring of 1898 he had become a Dreyfusard. Halévy, Elie, Elie Halévy Correspondance (1891–1937), ed. Guy-Loë, Henriette (Paris: Editions de Fallois, 1996), 211, 216, 254Google Scholar.

68 Around the same time, Boutroux, perhaps uncomfortable with the secular implications of his own work, stressed the limits of science and echoed Brunetière, arguing that “however extraordinary the progress of the sciences, we cannot see how they alone could lead to progress in moral ideas . . . science, as such, remains powerless to guarantee the progress of law and moral life.” Emile Boutroux, “Morale et religion,” Revue des deux mondes 59 (1910), 27.

69 On the influence of épistémologie see Benrubi, Les Sources et les courants de la philosophie contemporaine en France; Dominique Parodi, Philosophie contemporaine en France: Essai de classification des doctrines (Paris: Alcan, 1919).

70 Boutroux, Emile, “Du Rapport de la philosophie aux sciences,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 19/4 (1911), 424, 434Google Scholar.

71 Boutroux, Emile, “La Conscience individuelle et la loi,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 14 (1906), 6Google Scholar.

72 On Poincaré's fears in this regard see Nye, “The Boutroux Circle,” 120.