BAUTAIN, LOUIS-EUGÈNE-MARIE. - Philosopher and theologian, b. in Paris on 17 Nov. 1796, d. 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 in Strasbourg. He was subsequently brought back to religion through the work of Louise 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 placed in charge of the minor seminary of Strasbourg, where he began to carry out his projects for the reform of teaching, particularly of philosophy.
In 1833 he published the pamphlet De l'enseignement de la philosophie en France au XIXe siècle, in which he proposes a considerably mitigated traditionalism, defending the necessity of Revelation not only for truths of a supernatural order but also for the higher natural ones. B.'s ideas provoked the censure of the bishop of Strasbourg (1834), subsequently approved by Rome (Gregory XVI), to which B. had appealed and whither, on the advice of Lacordaire, he had also gone in person, for an examination of his works. B. submitted on 18 Nov. 1835, and again on 8 Sept. 1840. Having then gone to Jully, he assumed 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.
Into B.'s doctrine, not entirely devoid of originality, flow attitudes of Kantian agnosticism, of French traditionalism (de Bonald) and of German Catholic Romanticism (Baader). 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. affirms that reason is only a passive form, powerless to produce of itself the vital act of knowledge and to attain truth, but a receptive capacity for the life-giving germ, that is, of faith, of the living Word in the Church and in Sacred Scripture. It is therefore, of 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 the whole 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 particular aptitudes.
Despite such doctrinal deviations, B.'s ascendancy was considerable (among his disciples were T. Ratisbonne and E. Bonnachose, later a cardinal), to the point of his being called the French Newman. His influence was effective on the spiritual life of a great part of France and, through his disciple Gratry, Ollé-Laprune and Le Roy, Blondel and Laberthonnière, it endures to this day.
Principal works: Propositions générales sur la vie, Strasbourg 1826; La morale de l'Évangile comparée à la morale des philosophes, ibid. 1827; De l'enseignement de la philosophie en France au XIXe siècle, ibid. 1833; Philosophie du christianisme, 2 vols., ibid. 1835; Psychologie expérimentale, ibid. 1839; La chrétienne de nos jours, 3 vols., Paris 1859-61; Les choses de l'autre monde. Journal d'un philosophe, ibid. 1868.
Bibliography9 works
Giovanni Müller