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Alain (philosopher)

French philosopher (1868–1951)

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Life

Early life and teaching

Alain was born in 1868 in the rural town of Mortagne-au-Perche, Normandy, the son of a veterinary surgeon. After attending the local Catholic school, in 1881, he entered the lycée of Alençon, where he passed the examinations of the baccalauréat in literature (and failed the science baccalaureat). He proceeded to the Lycée Michelet in Vanves, a suburb of Paris, where he came under the influence of the philosopher Jules Lagneau. His exceptional intelligence led him to the École Normale Supérieure in 1889, and to the agrégation in philosophy in 1892. This qualified him for a career as a teacher of philosophy, which he pursued in schools in Lorient, Rouen, Paris and, in particular, the Lycée Henri IV from 1909, where he taught the prestigious preparatory classes to the École Normale. Sartre's career would begin in a similar way, forty years later. Alain taught at the Lycée Henri IV, with an interruption for the First World War, until his retirement in 1933, having chosen not to pursue a Ph.D. and teach in the university system. In these years he gained a reputation as an inspiring teacher; his students included major philosophers such as Simone Weil and Georges Canguilhem, writers such as André Maurois, Julien Gracq, and Roger Judrin, and even great political leaders like Maurice Schuman, a founding father of modern Europe. Alain's influence was felt beyond his class: Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir attended his public lectures, and Raymond Aron became a close acquaintance.

He adopted his pseudonym Alain as the most banal he could find. There is no evidence he ever thought in so doing of the 15th-century Norman poet Alain Chartier.

The propos

In 1903, as part of his political activity in support of the Radical Party in Rouen, he began contributing brief columns to the party's newspaper, La Depêche de Rouen et de Normandie. He called them propos, a difficult word to translate; it implies a proposal, a proposition and, most simply, remarks. In 1906 and after his move to Paris, Alain made writing these a daily commitment and one he continued right up to the outbreak of the First World War. By the time he wrote the last, in the train on his way to join his regiment, he'd written over three thousand.

These short texts, written for a general readership and in a concise and vivid style, with striking sentences and aphorisms, soon attracted a loyal following. They were inspired by topical and everyday events; at first, he commented mainly on politics, but his philosophy and wide interests also became starting points for these improvisations. As Alain put it later, he found that he had a taste for firing arrows at passers-by to get them to look up from their path in life; he liked to provoke. And, as he himself wrote, by not thinking that philosophy was unsuitable for journalism, he invented a genre of journalism. To quote one admirer, the French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, "the propos seem to me to be, in many respects, a masterpiece of French prose."

He began to write these again, at a slower pace and in other journals, principally Libres Propos, in 1921 and continued until 1936, to make a total of around five thousand. They reached an even wider public by being collected in book form, some by subject, so there have been volumes of propos on politics, education, religion, economics, nature, aesthetics, literature etc. The bestseller, a collection which has always remained in print in France is Propos sur le Bonheur (translated as Alain on Happiness).

World War I

As war approached, Alain campaigned in his writing for peace in Europe, and when war did come, without compromising his views and aged forty-six, he volunteered immediately. As he wrote, he could not stand the idea of remaining in civilian life, while the 'best', who included his own pupils, were sent to be massacred. He was assigned to the artillery where he served conscientiously as a telephonist on the front lines, and refused promotion to the officer ranks. In 1916, his ankle was crushed in the wheel of a cart carrying munitions to Verdun. After several weeks in hospital and an unsuccessful return to the front, he was transferred to the meteorological service and then demobbed in October 1917.

While convalescing, he began to write again, this time more substantial works. The first of these was Mars ou la guerre jugée (translated as Mars, or the truth about war), published in 1921. In this, he wrote that what he felt most strongly about the war was the slavery it led to, the scorn of officers for the ordinary soldiers, treating them as animals; the army was a huge machine aimed at keeping men in obedience for organised slaughter.

Writing

This wartime writing was the beginning of a prolific output on a variety of subjects. The first works to be published were Quatre-vingt un chapitres sur l'Esprit et les Passions, in 1917, and Système des Beaux-Arts, in 1920. In fact, he had written two academic books before the war, before he had adopted his pseudonym: his thesis at the École Normale on the Stoics, and a published volume on Spinoza. The first major work of the post-war years was Les Idées et les Ages, published in two volumes in 1926. Apart from the several collections of propos, there followed many books, including works on philosophy, Plato, Stendhal, Balzac, and Charles Dickens. In 1934 came a second major work, on religion, Les Dieux (translated as The Gods), followed two years later by his intellectual autobiography, Histoire de mes pensées. André Comte-Sponville has described his later work as 'the finest prose of ideas of the century'.

Later life and World War II

Through the 1930s, Alain was politically active as a prominent pacifist; in 1934, he was a co-founder of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes (CVIA). After retirement from teaching, many publications followed, with books published every year.

But he was also struggling against illness, which confined him to a wheelchair, as the Second World War started. His spirits revived with his marriage in December 1945 to Gabrielle Landormy, twenty years his junior, and with whom he had fallen in love nearly forty years before.

Death

Alain died June 2, 1951, in his home on the outskirts of Paris. He is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

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