BUFFIER, CLAUDE. - Jesuit, b. in Warsaw to French parents on 25 May 1661, d. in Paris on 17 May 1737. Having moved to Normandy in his earliest years, he attended the Jesuit college in Rouen; he entered their Order on 9 Sept. 1679 and spent his whole life teaching letters at the college of Louis the Great in Paris and theology in Rouen, except for a brief exile caused by a conflict with the archbishop of that city.
A capable and lucid writer, in addition to a twenty-year period of assiduous collaboration (1701-21) on the Mémoires de Trévoux, he left about fifty works on ascetic, historical, philosophical, literary and artistic subjects. The one that made him most famous was the Traité des premières vérités et de la source des jugements (Paris 1724), summarized in Éléments de métaphysique à la portée de tout le monde (ibid. 1725). Clear and undeniable is B.'s dependence on the epistemological theories of Descartes and Locke; but equally clear, and more so, is his refutation of their doctrines, carried out with an acute and witty critical sense (G. E. Brehier, Histoire de la philosophie, II, 4th ed., Paris 1947, pp. 331-34). He exercised a great influence on the philosophical theories of T. Reid, G. Beattie and the entire Scottish philosophical school, to the point of bordering on plagiarism. Also worthy of note is his Cours de sciences sur des principes nouveaux et simples pour former le langage, l'esprit et le coeur dans l'usage ordinaire de la vie (ibid. 1732), in which is included a French grammar, already printed in Paris as early as 1709, to which later grammarians drew largely and fruitfully.
Bibliography9 worksSommervogel, II, coll. 340-59; VIII, coll. 1944-45; F. Bouillier, Oeuvres philosophiques du p. B., Introduction, Paris 1843; id., Histoire d
BIBL.: Sommervogel, II, coll. 340-59; VIII, coll. 1944-45; F. Bouillier, Oeuvres philosophiques du p. B., Introduction, Paris 1843; id., Histoire de la philosophie cartésienne, I, ibid. 1868, p. 587 ff.; C. Daniel, Les Jésuites instituteurs de la jeunesse française, ibid. 1880, pp. 89-98, 101-99 and passim; G. Sortais, Le cartésianisme chez les Jésuites au XVIIe et au XVIIIe siècle, ibid. 1929; F. R. Montgomery, La vie et l'oeuvre du p. B., ibid. 1930; and furthermore: P. Bernard, s. v. in DThC, II, coll. 1168-73; A. de Bil, s. v. in DHG, X, coll. 1083-87.
Testore, Celestino. “Buffier, claude.” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. III, col. 187. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1949. https://azioneromana.com/article/buffier-claude.
MLA
Testore, Celestino. “Buffier, claude.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. III, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1949, col. 187. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/buffier-claude.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec3_buffier_claude,
author = {Testore, Celestino},
title = {Buffier, claude},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {III},
pages = {187},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1949},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/buffier-claude}
}
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