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See also: born at See also: Montpellier on the 1st of See also: January 1818, and educated in See also: Paris at the Ecole Polytechnique
.
In early See also: life he took an See also: interest in politics, and the approval extended by Hippolyte See also: Carnot to his See also: Manuel republicain de l'homme et du citoyen (1848) was the occasion of that See also: minister's fall
.
He never held public employment, but spent his life writing, retired from the See also: world
.
He died on the 1st of See also: September 1903
.
Renouvier was the first Frenchman after See also: Malebranche to formulate a See also: complete idealistic See also: system, and had a vast influence on the development of French thought
.
His system is based on See also: Kant's, as his chosen See also: term " Neo-criticisme " indicates; but it is a trans-formation rather than a continuation of Kantianism
.
The two leading ideas are a dislike to the Unknowable in all its forms, and a reliance on the validity of our See also: personal experience
.
The former accounts for his acceptance of Kant's phenomenalism, combined with rejection of the thing in itself
.
It accounts, too, for his polemic on the one See also: 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 See also: Monism explains the world
.
He holds that nothing exists except presentations, which are not merely sensational, and have an See also: objective aspect no less than a subjective
.
To explain the formal organization of our experience he adopts a modified version of the Kantian categories
.
The insistence on the validity of personal experience leads Renouvier to a yet more important divergence from Kant in his treatment of volition
.
Liberty, he says, in a much wider sense than Kant, is See also: man's fundamental characteristic
.
Human freedom acts in the phenomenal, not in an imaginary noumenal sphere
.
Belief is not intellectual merely, but is determined by an See also: act of will affirming what we hold to be morally See also: good
.
In his religious views Renouvier makes a considerable approximation to Leibnitz
.
He holds that we are rationally justified in affirming human immortality and the existence of a finite See also: God who is to be a constitutional ruler, but not a despot, over the souls of men
.
He would, however, regard atheism as preferable to a belief in an infinite Deity
.
His chief See also: works are: Essais de critique generale (1854-64), Science de la morale (1869), Uchronie (1876), Esquisse d'une See also: classification systematique See also: des doctrines philosophiques (1885-86), Philosophic analytique de l'histoire (1896-97), Histoire et solution des problemes metaphysiques (19ot); Victor Hugo: Le Pate (1893), Le Philosophe (1900); See also: Les Dilemmes de la metaphysique pure (1901); Le Personnalisme (1903) ; Critique de la See also: doctrine de Kant (1906, published by L
.
Prat)
.
See L
.
Prat, Les Derniers entretiens de See also: Charles Renouvier (1904) M
.
Ascher, Renouvier and der franzosische Neu-Kriticismus (1900) ; E
.
See also: Janssens, Le Neocriticisme de C
.
R . (19o4); A . Darlu, La Morale de Renouvier (19o4); G . Seailles, La Philosophie de C . R . (1905); A . See also: Arnal, La Philosophic religieuse de C
.
R
.
(1907)
.
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