LEROUX, PIERRE. - Writer, b. in Paris on 17 April 1797, d. there on 12 April 1871. He was one of the founders of Le globe (1824).

Initially he was a Saint-Simonian; he later broke away from the doctrines of père Enfantin (1831). For L. the propertied class became the true enemy of every social palingenesis. A most prolific writer, from as early as 1833 he outlined a concept of "continuous progress" as the fulcrum of a new religious faith and of the very ethico-social destiny of humanity: for L. all religions are but passing and progressive forms of a single eternal truth: the subjective knowledge that we have of life.

This mixture of religious evolutionism, romantic humanitarianism and mystical-communitarian and democratic socialism, amalgamated only by a fervent pathos, had great influence on the culture of the time. George Sand declared that L.'s theory (to whom she was intimately attached) saved her from a deep prostration. A certain influence of L. on the "democratic" and "socialist" Victor Hugo is not to be forgotten. L. also had notable importance as a theorist of romantic aesthetics, in that he intuited how the construction of a poetics rests not on the concept but on the image, not on comparison but on the symbol.

Bibliography3 works

BIBL.: P. F. Thomas, P. L. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine, Paris 1904; H. Mougin, P. L., ibid. 1938; D. O. Evans, Le socialisme romantique, P. L. et ses contemporains, ibid. 1948 (with the list of all of L.'s writings).

Massimo Petrocchi

@incollection{ec7_leroux_pierre, author = {Petrocchi, Massimo}, title = {Leroux, pierre}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VII}, pages = {1197}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1951}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/leroux-pierre} }

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Leroux, Pierre

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