THEODORE

See also:

• SIMON, ABRAHAM (1622-1692)
• SIMON, JULES FRANCOIS (1814–1896)
• SIMON, RICHARD (1638–1712)
• SIMON, SIR JOHN (1816–1904)
• SIMON, THOMAS (c. 1623-1665)

SIMON

See also:

• JOUFFROY, JEAN (c. 1412–1473)
• THEODORE SIMON JOUFFROY (1796-1842)

JOUFFROY (1796-1842)  , French philosopher, was born at Pontets, near Mouthe, department of Doubs . In his tenth year, his father, a tax-gatherer, sent him to an uncle at Pontarlier, under whom he commenced his classical studies . At Dijon his compositions attracted the attention of an inspector, who had him placed (1814) in the normal school, Paris . He there came under the influence of Victor Cousin, and in 1817 he was appointed assistant professor of philosophy at the normal and Bourbon schools . Three years later, being thrown upon his own resources, he began a course of lectures in his own house, and formed literary connexions with Le Courrier francais, Le Globe, L'Encyclopedie moderne, and La Revue europeenne . The variety of his pursuits at this time carried him over the whole field of ancient and modern literature . But he was chiefly attracted to the philosophical system represented by Reid and Stewart . The application of " common sense " to the problem of substance supplied a more satisfactory analytic for him than the scepticism of Hume which reached him through a study of Kant . He thus threw in his lot with the Scottish philosophy, and his first dissertations are, in their leading position, adaptations from Reid's Inquiry . In 1826 he wrote a preface to a translation of the Moral Philosophy of Stewart, demonstrating the possibility of a scientific statement of the laws of consciousness; in 1828 he began a translation of the works of Reid, and in his preface estimated the influence of Scottish criticism upon philosophy, 'giving a biographical account of the movement from Hutcheson onwards . Next year he was returned to parlement by the arrondissement of Pontarlier; but the work of legislation was ill-suited to him . Yet he attended to his duties conscientiously, and ultimately broke his health in their discharge .

In 1833 he was appointed professor of

Greek and Roman philosophy at the college of France and a member of the Academy of Sciences; he then published the Melanges philosophiques (4th ed . 1866; Eng. trans . G . Ripley, Boston, 1835 and 1838), a collection of fugitive papers in criticism and philosophy and history . In them is foreshadowed all that he afterwards worked out in metaphysics, psychology, ethics and aesthetics . He had already demonstrated in his prefaces the possibility of a psychology apart from physiology, of the science of the phenomena of consciousness distinct from the perceptions of sense . He now classified the mental faculties, premising that they must not be confounded with capacities or properties of mind . They were, according to his analysis, personal will, primitive instincts, voluntary movement, natural and artificial signs, sensibility and the faculties of intellect ; on this analytic he founded his scheme of the universe . In 1835 he published a Cours de droit naturel (4th ed . 1866), which, for precision of statement and logical coherence, is the most important of his works . From the conception of a universal order in the universe he reasons to a Supreme Being, who has created it and who has conferred upon every man in harmony with it the aim of his existence, leading to his highest good . Good, he says, is the fulfilment of man's destiny, evil the thwarting of it .

Every man being organized in a particular way has, of

necessity, an aim, the fulfilment of which is good; and he has faculties for accomplishing it, directed by reason . The aim is good, however, only when reason guides it for the benefit of the majority, but that is not absolute good . When reason rises to the conception of universal order, when actions are submitted, by the exercise of a sympathy working necessarily and intuitively to the idea of the universal order, the good has been reached, the true good, good in itself, absolute good . But he does not follow his idea into the details of human duty, though he passes in review fatalism, mysticism, pantheism, scepticism, egotism, sentimentalism and rationalism . In 1835 Jouffroy's health failed and he went to Italy, where he continued to translate the Scottish philosophers . On his return he became librarian to the university, and took the chair of recent philosophy at the faculty of letters . He died in Paris on the 4th of February 1842 . After his death were published Nouveaux melanges philosophiques (3rd ed . 1872) and Cours d'esthetique (3rd ed . 1875) . The former contributed nothing new to the system except a more emphatic statement of the distinction between psychology and physiology . The latter formulated his theory of beauty .

Jouffroy's claim to distinction rests upon his ability as an expositor of other men's ideas . He founded no system; he contributed nothing of importance to philosophical science; he initiated nothing which has survived him . But his

enthusiasm for mental science, and his command over the language of popular exposition, made him a great international medium for the transfusion of ideas . He stood between Scotland and France and Germany and France; and, though his expositions are vitiated by loose reading of the philosophers he interpreted, he did serviceable, even memorable work . See L . Levy Bruhl, History of Modern Philos. in France (1899), pp . 349-357; C . J . Tissot, Th . Jouffroy: sa vie et ses ecrits (1876) ; J . P . Damiron, Essai sur l'histoire de la philos. en France an xixe siecle (1846) .