BAUTAIN, LOUIS-EUGÈNE-MARIE. – Philosopher and theologian, born in Paris on 17 November 1796, where he died on 15 October 1867. From 1813 he studied at the «Ecole Normale», where Victor Cousin was his teacher. In 1816, having abandoned the Catholic faith, he taught philosophy at Strasbourg. He was subsequently brought back to religion through the work of Luisa Humann, a person of great piety and learning. He obtained a degree in medicine in 1826 and embraced the ecclesiastical state. Ordained a priest after a year (1828), he was appointed director of the minor seminary of Strasbourg, where he began to implement his plans for reforming education, particularly the teaching of philosophy.
In 1833 he published the pamphlet De l'enseignement de la philosophie en France au XIXe siècle, in which he proposed a somewhat mitigated traditionalism, defending the necessity of Revelation not only for truths of the supernatural order but also for the higher natural truths. B.’s ideas provoked the censure of the bishop of Strasbourg (1834), subsequently approved by Rome (Gregory XVI), to whom B. had appealed and to whom he had also gone in person, on Lacordaire’s advice, for an examination of his works. B. submitted on 18 November 1835, and again on 8 September 1840. He then went to Jully and assumed the direction of that college. Later he gave lectures and sermons in Paris. From 1850 he was vicar general of the archbishop of Paris, and from 1853 to 1863 professor of moral theology at the Sorbonne.
In B.’s doctrine, not entirely devoid of originality, elements of Kantian agnosticism, French traditionalism (de Bonald), and German Catholic Romanticism (Baader) converge. The idea of life constitutes its center. Life, a conditionally spontaneous process, derives from a germ emanated by a living being and received in a passive form or capacity, which then reacts. Transferring this concept to the field of the theory of knowledge, B. maintains that reason is only a passive form, incapable of producing by itself the vital act of knowledge and attaining truth, but a receptive capacity for the vivifying germ, that is, faith, the living Word in the Church and in Sacred Scripture. It is therefore, in itself, incapable of proving the existence of God and of Revelation, for which miracles and prophecies are not objectively valid arguments. In a certain sense, this doctrine is fideism, because the entire possession of truth is conditioned by faith; it is traditionalism, because it asserts that truth, unattainable by our reason, was transmitted to humanity by chosen men—prophets, apostles, and poets—endowed with particular aptitudes.
Despite these doctrinal deviations, B.’s influence was considerable (among his disciples were T. Ratisbonne and E. Bonnachose, later a cardinal), to the point that he came to be called the
French Newman. His influence was effective on the spiritual life of a large part of France and, through his disciple Gratry, Ollé-Laprune and Le Roy, Blondel and Laberthonnière, it continues to this day.
Principal works: Propositions générales sur la vie, Strasbourg 1826; La morale de l'Évangile comparée à la morale des philosophes, there 1827; De l'enseignement de la philosophie en France au XIXe siècle, there 1833; Philosophie du christianisme, 2 vols., there 1835; Psychologie expérimentale, there 1839; La chrétienne de nos jours, 3 vols., Paris 1859–61; Les choses de l'autre monde. Journal d'un philosophe, there 1868.
Giovanni Müller