BAUTAIN, LOUIS-EUGÈNE-MARIE. - Philosopher and theologian, born in Paris on 17 Nov. 1796, died there on 15 Oct. 1867. He studied from 1813 at the École Normale, where his teacher was Victor Cousin. In 1816, having abandoned the Catholic faith, he taught philosophy at Strasbourg. He was later brought back to religion through the work of Louise Humann, a person of great piety and learning. He obtained a medical degree in 1826, and then embraced the ecclesiastical state. Ordained priest the following year (1828), he was placed in charge of the direction of the minor seminary at Strasbourg, where he began to implement his plans for reform in education, particularly in 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 a supernatural order, but also for the higher natural truths. The ideas of B. provoked the censure of the Bishop of Strasbourg (1834), later approved by Rome (Gregory XVI), to whom B. had appealed and where he had also gone in person, upon the advice of Lacordaire, for an examination of his works. B. submitted on 18 Nov. 1835, and again on 8 Sept. 1840. He then went to Jully and took charge of the direction of that college. Subsequently, he gave lectures and sermons in Paris. From 1850 he was vicar general of the Archbishop of Paris, and in the years 1853–63 professor of moral theology at the Sorbonne.
In B.’s doctrine, not entirely lacking in originality, there converge elements of Kantian Augustinianism, French traditionalism (de Bonald), and German Catholic romanticism (Baader). The idea of life constitutes its centre. 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. Transposing this concept into the field of the theory of knowledge, B. asserts that reason is merely a passive form, powerless to produce of itself the vital act of knowledge and attain truth, but is a receptive capacity for the vivifying germ, that is, for faith, the living Word in the Church and in Holy 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. This doctrine is in a certain sense fideism, because all possession of truth is conditioned upon faith; it is traditionalism, because it affirms that truth, unattainable by our reason, was transmitted to humanity by chosen men—prophets, apostles, poets—endowed with special aptitudes.
Despite such doctrinal deviations, B.’s influence was considerable (among his disciples were T. Ratisbonne and E. Bonnoch, later a cardinal), to the point of earning him the title of the French Newman. His influence was effective upon the spiritual life of a large part of France, and through his disciple Gratry, Ollé-Laprune and Le Roy, Blondel and Laberthonnière, it endures still.
Principal works: *Propositions générales sur la vie*, Strasbourg 1826; *La morale de l'Evangile comparée à la morale des philosophes*, 1827; *De l'enseignement de la philosophie en France au XIXe siècle*, 1833; *Philosophie du christianisme*, 2 vols., 1835; *Psychologie expérimentale*, 1839; *La chrétienne de nos jours*, 3 vols., Paris 1859–61; *Les choses de l'autre monde. Journal d'un philosophe*, 1868.