BROGLIE, AUGUSTE-THÉODORE-PAUL de. - French philosophical apologist, b. at Auteuil on 18 June 1834, d. by assassination in Paris on 11 May 1895. Having been left motherless at the age of four, he was entrusted to the care of his aunt, Baroness Augusta de Staël, who, though Protestant, gave her nephew an education inspired by the most orthodox Catholicism. In 1867 he abandoned a military career to follow his priestly vocation. Ordained priest on 18 October 1870, he devoted his first apostolate to the suburbs of Paris, at the same time initiating those apologetic courses for middle-class and student audiences which attracted the attention of Monsignor d’Hulst, who in 1879 called him to the chair of apologetics at the Catholic Institute of Paris, a position he held until the day of his tragic death, which occurred at the hands of a deranged woman whom he had often befriended.
The vast œuvre of B. embraces a large part of the problems of apologetics and related subjects (philosophy, history of religions, biblical studies) and unfolded in accordance with the intense rhythm of his academic courses, his lectures, and his oratorical activity. His apologetic work was directed against positivist scientism, which dominated the culture of the second half of the 19th century—philosophical, ethnological, and historical positivism. The penetrating analysis of epistemological problems, which occupies the two volumes of *Le Positivisme et la science expérimentale* (1880–81), is devoted to philosophical positivism. This work inaugurates his activity as a writer and lays the foundations for his apologetic work.
Launching his attack directly at the level of principles, B. refutes point by point, without bitterness but with firmness, the metaphysical agnosticism professed by positivists regarding substances and causes, exposing their gratuitous assumptions and methodological failings while highlighting the good and usable aspects that positivism also presents within traditional philosophy. Without fear of defending immediate perception of substances and causes—both in internal experience and, albeit with some caution, in external experience—he draws upon the analyses of Helmholtz himself. Such perception, immediate as an act, unfolds as a process of interpretation, as an immediate translation of certain sensible signs that we do not perceive in our organs. Perception thus involves three moments: 1) the perception of sensible signs in the impression made by the stimulus on the sensory organ; 2) the interpretation of sensible signs or perception of bodies, which constitutes seeing and touching; 3) the decomposition of the crude notion obtained from the senses, the distinction of qualities and phenomena, i.e., the description of the object seen and touched. These are distinct moments, yet they follow one another with the greatest rapidity (I, 167–169). The inner process of perceptual organization is attributed by B. to “unconscious induction,” which consists in connecting a sign to that object which in previous experiences has been shown to be associated with it, so that, upon the appearance of the “sign,” the mind, through a spontaneous movement, thinks and grasps the object. “Unconscious induction” must be carefully distinguished from scientific induction: while the latter aims at formulating general laws, the former precedes it by clarifying in consciousness the first notions and first principles without which thought of any kind, even scientific thought, cannot take a single step. It is therefore in the interest of science itself to safeguard the first convictions of reason, lest positivism condemn itself to voluntary suicide.
Inadequate in its theoretical pretensions, positivism is no less so in the realm of lived experience; such is the thesis of the mature work *La réaction contre le positivisme* (1894), in which he also denounces the emptiness of what is called Renan’s aesthetic “neo-Christianity.”
Science, it must now be conceded after so many social experiments, is unable to provide man with the principles necessary to govern himself. It leaves both the individual and society abandoned and without guidance, subject to the caprice of others’ wills and the tyranny of passions. Instead, there is in souls a profound suffering, a painful anguish, a mute unease that persists despite all efforts to shake it off, demanding an outlet in a return to forgotten ideals, to a faith, or to the acceptance of a higher principle that cannot be reduced to science. The path to reclaim lost values unfolds in two stages: 1) the affirmation of philosophical theism, which reason can demonstrate with conclusive arguments; 2) the transition to revealed Christian religion, a necessary step both to secure the notion of the true God and of ultimate destinies—so difficult for the masses—and also because the existence of the Catholic Church poses for every man the question of entering that Church which preserves the Gospel doctrine in its original integrity: every man is therefore bound to ask himself about the truth of the Gospel facts and to draw from them immediate and logical consequences (p. 227). This is what B. called the “transcendence of Christianity.”
As a first positive proof of the transcendence of Christianity, B. had undertaken in *Problèmes et conclusions de l’histoire des religions* (1885) to recognize, with serene loyalty, the merits of other religions and the partial similarities each presents with Christianity, while leaving no room for dispute regarding the superiority of Christianity in the solidity of its rational and historical foundations, the sublimity of its doctrines, and the purity of its morality. A second proof he found in biblical studies. In *L’idée de Dieu dans l’ancien et dans le Nouveau Testament* (1892), he examined some of the most important events in the history of Israel (the Exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, the promulgation of the Law affirming the dogmatic principle of monotheism, etc.) and set out to demonstrate these facts solely on the basis of the indefectible tradition of the Jewish people. Once this foundation was established, it would then be easy to recognize, *de iure*, the Mosaic authenticity of the Pentateuch and, with it, to demonstrate the existence of revelation and its progressive fulfillment up to the coming of Jesus Christ, who completes and transmits it perfected to His Church.
Outside a small circle of loyal friends, B.’s work did not receive the attention it deserved, perhaps also because of the subsequent decline of positivism. This was not the case, however, among adversarial and secular circles, which so appreciated him that they placed him alongside Gibbon and Newman. The inevitable defects in such a copious output and in a life lived at the highest pitch of tension are amply compensated by his frequent and fertile insights, the breadth of his learning, a consistently elevated style free of technical obfuscation, and above all by the certainty of possessing the truth that this faithful laborer of the Church knew how to communicate to the reader.
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