Charles Bernard Renouvier

Charles Bernard Renouvier (French: [ʁənuvje]; January 1, 1815 – September 1, 1903) was a French philosopher.

Biography

Charles B. Renouvier was born in Montpellier and educated in Paris at the École Polytechnique. He took an early interest in politics. Renouvier never held public office, spending his time writing, away from public scrutiny.

Thought

Renouvier was the first Frenchman after Nicolas Malebranche to formulate a complete idealistic system, and had a vast influence on the development of French thought. His system is based on Immanuel Kant's, as his chosen term "néo-criticisme" indicates; but it is a transformation rather than a continuation of Kantianism.

The two leading ideas are the dislike of the "unknowable" in all its forms, and a reliance on the validity of personal experience. The former accounts for Renouvier's acceptance of Kant's phenomenalism, combined with rejection of the thing-in-itself. It accounts, too, for his polemic on the one hand against a Substantial Soul, a Buddhistic Absolute, an Infinite Spiritual Substance; on the other hand against the no less mysterious material or dynamic substratum by which naturalistic Monism explains the world. He holds that nothing exists except presentations, which are not merely sensational, and have an objective aspect no less than a subjective. To explain the formal organization of our experience he adopts a modified version of the Kantian categories.