Claude Henri de Rouvroy of Saint-Simon

See also: Saint-Simon

Cousin far away from the duke of Saint-Simon, celebrates memorialist court of Louis XIV and Régence, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, count of Saint-Simon (1760 - 1825) is a economist and a Philosophe whose ideas had a posterity and an influence on the majority of the philosophers of the 19th century.

Biography

Rather turbulent child, Claude Henri de Rouvroy accepted from his education of a Précepteur the lesson of of Alembert and Rousseau.

Follower of the novel ideas, the young aristocrat engages at 17 years in the army of release of the United States at the sides of Fayette and of the count of Rochambeau.

During the French revolution, giving up its particle, Saint-Simon grows rich by the sale by the goods by the Église. It was in addition Franc-maçon.

In 1798, with the money thus gained, it settles in an apartment opposite the Polytechnic school. Under the influence of Doctor Jean Burdin, and probably of the ideologists, it then follows the courses of physics vis-a-vis the Polytechnic school. In 1801, it marries Alexandrine de Champgrand, which will animate its living room during one year. Then he moves near the Medical school, where he takes courses of biology and physiology.

Saint-Simon indeed wished to give a common direction of science, and to unify the scientific principles. In 1803, after having organized a subscription in the honor of Newton, it wrote the letter of an inhabitant of Geneva to his contemporaries . It is about a kind of praise to the science, considered as a new religion. With the eclectic knowledge recorded its contacts with scientists, but especially with ideologists, it builds a philosophy preaching the progress of humanity by industry.

In 1814, it took as private secretary Augustin Thierry, a normalien, historian. To this time the industry goes back (1816 - 1817), which mentions already the question of the positive policy (term taken again by Auguste Count later).

In 1817, it was Auguste Count, recently congédié of the Polytechnic school, which became its private secretary, and who collaborated actively with him in the drafting of philosophical works and press articles.

To this time go back the following works:

  • the policy (1819)
  • the organizer (1819 - 1820): with the taste for the History which came to him recently by collaboration from the historian Augustin Thierry, it had recourse to the Histoire in order to justify its vision of the present, and opposed the industrial age to the feudal age.

Auguste Count took part as a secretary in these first reflections on the passage of the theological age and feudal in the positive age and industrialist, ideas that it will detail in the course of positive philosophy between 1830 and 1842. This famous Loi of the three states will have a considerable influence on the French company until our days.

In 1824, Auguste Count, aggravated by the aristocratic manners of Saint-Simon, left it. Leon Halévy replaced it as secretary. The following year, Saint-Simon finished his work, which it called the “ Nouveau Christianity ”.

Many of these topics will build the doctrines Socialiste after having nourished an ideological movement which will venerate it as if it had been true a Prophète: the Saint-Simonism.

He died the May 19th 1825, almost unknown. Its funerals, purely civil, took place with the Cimetière of the Father-Lachaise on May 22nd. Its family was not present. Several of his/her friends or old friendly were there: Olinde Rodrigues, Auguste Count, Augustin Thierry, Barthelemy Childish Prosper. Dr. Bailly and Leon Halévy pronounced each one a speech. The press was made the echo of the event, ( Constitutional the , Mail of the Netherlands , the Earth ).

Olinde Rodriguès brings together some friends and founded, with Enfantin, the newspaper the Producer, philosophical newspaper of industry, sciences, and the Art schools .

Doctrines

See also: Saint-Simonism

The doctrines of Saint-Simon are exposed in various works:

The doctrines of Saint-Simon raise a kind of “worship” to the scientists, in particular with Isaac Newton, which established the laws of the gravitation. For Saint-Simon, God is to some extent replaced by the universal gravitation. This thesis is felt at the beginning of its work (a very simple experiment consisting in placing a Aimant on a surface Métal lic vertical shows that the magnet does not fall, therefore that the force of gravitation is not the only force of the Univers).

One can consider that Saint-Simon is to some extent the heir, with two centuries of delay, of the theory of the Héliocentrisme and the Révolution copernician, which developed at 18th and the 18th centuries.

The doctrines are based on the concept of network and capacity. The relation between the to be S human depends on the capacity of the network to establish the bond. It proceeds by metaphor with the organic networks of the human beings (blood network, nervous system…), according to the ideas in vogue in Physiology at that time. It is Saint-Simon who is at the origin of the Philosophie of the networks according to Pierre Musso.

As of the Years 1820, Saint-Simon sees in the beginning of industrialization the engine of the social Progrès.

Pragmatic, he preaches a form of government controlled by a council trained of scientists, artists, craftsmen and heads of undertaking and dominated by the economy which it is advisable to plan to create of the richnesses and to make progress the standard of living. He belongs to the Capitaliste S to work with the material and moral rise in the Prolétariat.

Two last works reveal certain a Religiosité, according to Olivier Pétré Grenouilleau.

The name of new Christianity is actually misleading, because its system rests only on scientific or social considerations, without reference to the religious. One can characterize the philosophy of Saint-Simon like a Rationalisme or a Scientisme, insofar as it is based exclusively on scientific concepts. This philosophy influenced the theories of value of exchange, as well in the Socialisme as in the Libéralisme. One spoke about “fetichisation” of the exchange value in the Marxisme.

Influences

The ideas of Saint-Simon influenced, at least indirectly, the majority of the philosophical currents ideological materialists , or utopian of the 19th century in France and Europe, Positivisme, Libéralisme and Socialisme. Among the characters who were directly influenced, one will note:

  • Augustin Thierry, normalien, was the secretary of Saint-Simon of 1814 with 1817.

  • Auguste Count, polytechnician (congédié in 1816), was also secretary of Saint-Simon of 1817 with 1824; Auguste Count started to work out the Loi of the three states with Saint-Simon (states theological, metaphysical, positive).
  • Childish Prosper, polytechnician, began again and amplified the doctrines saint-simonienne. Childish was of a liberal tendency. He diffused the doctrines in the mediums of the companies of Railroads. Childish the Paris-Lyon-Mediterranean]] (" was first leading Railroad company; PLM").
  • Saint-Amand Bazard was rather of a tendency which one could include/understand like (pre) socialist. It separated from Childish towards the end 1831. Certain people say that these are the tendencies of the Saint-simonisme which opened the way with the Marxisme, others are rather of the opinion that the Saint-simonisme does not have to see with the Marxisme.
  • Karl Marx took up certain ideas of Saint-Simon in his theories materialists.
  • the influence of Saint-Simon on the polytechnicians was felt until the Second world war, and still nowadays.
  • the creation of the deposit banks at the 19th century was of inspiration saint-simonienne, of the Crédit Lyonnais of Henri Germain, at the General society, until the creation of BNP in 1966.
  • Saint-Simon had his statue in Moscow for the Soviet period , beside that of Lénine.

Posterity

In sciences and the philosophical thought

See also: Philosophy of the networks

The first part of its work, in which it compares God to the force of universal gravitation finds today only one echo very reduced, since it can shock the religious spirits as much that the atheistic spirits, but one can bring it closer to the famous sive formula Deus Natura of Spinoza.

Saint-Simon is commonly considered, with Proudhon and Fourier, like pertaining to the current of the Utopian socialism. In fact, it is difficult to classify its thought, so much it had heirs to be claimed of his imposing system, at the same time liberal side and socialist side.

It is inaccurate to allot to Saint-Simon the introduction concept of Social class, putting at the catches exploiteurs and exploited. This idea will arrive gradually with its successors in the socialist branch like Saint-Amand Bazard or Karl Marx.

Being given the genesis of its ideas (school of the ideologists, sciences positive), it would be more exact to regard Saint-Simon as a Idéologue.

The philosophy of Saint-Simon, that Pierre Musso calls the Philosophie of the networks, had a very significant importance in several fields: Theory of knowledge, economy, Sociology.

In colonization

See also: French colonial Ideology

The ideas of the count of Saint-Simon had a very important influence in the colonialisation through Barthélemy Prosper Enfantin and his successors. In the Années 1880 was born a Cercle Saint-Simon, which gathered personalities wanting “to maintain and extend the influence of France by the propagation of its Langue”. Some French colonial Idéologie were thus criticized, being given certain excesses of the Colonialisme.

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