Leroux, Pierre
LEROUX, PIERRE (1798-1871), French philosopher and economist, was born at Bercy near Paris on the 7th of April 1798, the son of an artisan. His education was interrupted by the death of his father, which compelled him to support his mother and family. Having worked first as a mason and then as a compositor, he joined P. Dubois in the foundation of Le Globe which became in 1831 the official organ of the Saint-Simonian community, of which he became a prominent member. In November of the same year, when Enfantin preached the enfranchisement of women and the functions of the couple-pretre, Leroux separated himself from the sect. In 1838, with J. Regnaud, who had seceded with him, he founded the Encyclopedic nowielle (eds. 1838-1841). Amongst the articles which he inserted in it were De Vegalite and Refutation de I'eclectisme, which afterwards appeared as separate works. In 1840 he published his treatise De Vhumanitt (2nd ed. 1845), which contains the fullest exposition of his system, and was regarded as the philosophical manifesto of the Humanitarians. In 1841 he established the Revue independante, with the aid of George Sand, over whom he had great influence. Her Spiridion, which was dedicated to him, Sept cordes de la lyre, Consuelo, and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, were written under the Humanitarian inspiration. In 1843 he established at Boussac (Creuse) a printing association organized according to his systematic ideas, and founded the Revue sociale. After the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and in 1849 to the Legislative Assembly, but his speeches on behalf of the extreme socialist wing were of so abstract and mystical a character that they had no effect. After the coup d'etat of 1851 he settled with his family in Jersey, where he pursued agricultural experiments and wrote his socialist poem La Grew de Samarez. On the definitive amnesty of 1869 he returned to Paris, where he died in April 1871, during the Commune.
The writings of Leroux have no permanent significance in the history of thought. He was the propagandist or sentiments and aspirations rather than the expounder ofa systematic theory. He has, indeed, a system, but it is a singular medley of doctrines borrowed, not only from Saint-Simonian, but from Pythagorean and Buddhistic sources. In philosophy his fundamental 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 his views are very vague; 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, but 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 pushed to anarchy.
See Raillard, Pierre Leroux et ses ceuvres (Paris, 1891}); Thomas, Pierre Leroux: so, vie, son cewore, so. doctrine (Paris, 1904) ; L. Reybaud, Etudes sur les reformaieurs et socialistes modernes; article in R. H. Inglis Palgravc's Dictionary of Pol. Econ, LEROY-BEAULIEU. HENRI JEAN BAPTISTE ANATOLE (1842- ), French publicist, was born at Lisieux, on the 12th of February 1842. In 1866 he published Une troupe de comediens, and afterwards Essai sur la reslauralion de nos monuments ttistoriques devant I' art et dcvant le budget, which deals particularly with the restoration of the cathedral of Evreux. He visited Russia in order to collect documents on the political and economic organization of the Slav nations, and on his return published in the Revue des deux mondes (1882-1889) a series of articles, which appeared shortly afterwards in book form under the title L' Empire des tsars et les Russes (4th ed., revised in 3 vols., 1897-1898). The work entitled Un empereur, un roi, un pape, une restauration, published in 1879, was an analysis and criticism of the politics of the Second Empire. Un homme d'etat russe (1884) gave the history of the emancipation of the serfs by Alexander II.
Other works are Les Catholiques libfraux, I'fglisc et le liberalisme (1890), La Papaute, le socialisme et la democracie (1892), Les Juifs et I'antisemitisme; Israel chez les nations (1893), Les Armeniens et la question armenienne (1896), L' Antisemitisme (1897), Etudes russes et europeennes (1897). These writings, mainly collections of articles and lectures intended for the general public, display enlightened views and wide information. In 1881 Leroy-Beaulieu was elected professor of contemporary history and eastern affairs at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques, becoming director of this institution on the death of Albert Sorel in 1906, and in 1887 he became a member of the Acadfimie des Sciences Morales et Politiques.
Two of Leroy-Beaulieu's works have been translated into English : one as the Empire of the Tsars and the Russians, by Z. A. Regozin (New York, 1893-1896), and another as Papacy, Socialism, Democracy, by B. L. O'Donncll (1892). Sec W. E. H. Lecky, Historical and Political Essays (1908).
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
