LEROUX, PIERRE. - Writer, b. in Parigi on 17 Apr. 1797, d. there on 12 Apr. 1871. He was one of the founders of Le globe (1824).
Initially 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 humanity’s very ethical and social destiny: for L., all religions are but transitory and progressive forms of one eternal truth: the subjective knowledge we have of life.
This mixture of religious evolutionism, Romantic humanitarianism, and mystical, communitarian, and democratic socialism, held together only by fervent pathos, exerted great influence on the culture of the time. George Sand stated that L.’s theory (to whom she was intimately attached) saved her from a profound depression. Nor should a certain influence of L. on the “democratic” and “socialist” Victor Hugo be forgotten. L. was also of considerable importance as a theorist of Romantic aesthetics, insofar as he perceived that the construction of a poetics rests not upon the concept but upon the image, not upon comparison but upon the symbol.