LACHELIER, JULES. — Philosopher, born on 27 May 1832 at Fontainebleau, died there on 18 January 1918. Professor at the Lycée of Caen (1864), he subsequently taught (1864–75) at the Ecole normale supérieure.
Under the influence of Biran and Ravaisson, L. developed Kantian transcendental idealism in the direction of a spiritualistic realism. The true, profound, and organic unity in the world of phenomena is not provided by purely mathematical laws, but rather by the law of finality, whereby nature presents itself as a set of unitary teleological systems. Thought is therefore immanent in nature (force and movement), tending by virtue of finality toward its full expression in consciousness. This teleological explanation makes room for freedom and suggests as a religious conclusion the existence of a higher Principle of thought and reality, as required by the « passage from the formal absolute to the real and living absolute, from the idea of God to God ». The ultimate essence of thought, not reached
by means of pure psychological analysis, is thus revealed, with a tendency toward the overcoming of panpsychism, in metaphysics.
L. influenced, among others, Boutroux and Bergson.
Principal works: De natura syllogismi (Paris 1871); 2nd ed., ibid. 1935; Du fondement de l'induction (doctoral thesis, ibid. 1871; 9th ed., 1907); Psychologie et métaphysique (two essays in Rev. philos., 19 [1885], reprinted in the 2nd ed. of Du fondement de l'induction, ibid. 1896); Etudes sur le syllogisme (ibid. 1907).
of the Protestants among his friends; after meeting him, Leibniz wrote to him how « precious to him still was the memory of those moments of conversation ». If Father L. C. was Gallican, he was certainly so in the manner of Bossuet and not that of the parliamentarians. His mitigated Gallicanism had nothing unorthodox about it, and he had no part whatsoever in the drafting of the four articles of 1682 (v. GALLICANESIMO).
BIBL. Sommervogel, II, cols. 1035–40; IX, col. 26; Memoires authentiques du duc de Saint-Simon, edited by P. A. Chéruel, IV, Paris 1856, p. 280 ff.; Régis de Chantelauze, Le p. de L. C., confesseur du roi Louis, Favole e leggende, Italian trans., II, Florence 1908, pp. 193–200; Pastor, XIV, 2, see index: L. Koch, Jesuiten-Lexikon, Paderborn 1934, cols. 314–15.