FOUILLÉE, ALFRED. - Philosopher, b. at La Poueze (Maine-et-Loire) in 1838, d. at Lyons in 1912. After the publication of the Philosophie de Platon (2 vols., Paris 1869), he was lecturer at the École normale supérieure (1872-79), but was obliged to give up teaching for reasons of health.
He was a prolific writer and a skilful polemicist. Principal works: Histoire de la philosophie (Paris 1873); La liberté et le déterminisme (ibid. 1872); L'évolutionnisme des Idées-Forces (2 vols., ibid. 1890); La morale des Idées-Forces (ibid. 1908); Esquisse d'une interprétation du monde (posthumous, ibid. 1913). F.'s originality lies in his conception of ideas as real and effective forces, as Idées-Forces. Ideas are not external to the universe, as Plato held, but immanent within it in the form of desire, feeling, and thought, and they influence from within the cosmic process of things. An idea realizes itself if it is not hindered by an antagonistic idea. Thus the ideal formed in humanity is a force which gradually makes it real.
F.'s philosophy, although displaying a certain spiritualist impulse, is fundamentally monist and determinist.