SECRETAN, CHARLES. — Philosopher, born in Lausanne on 19 January 1815, died there on 20 January 1895. He taught philosophy there for about thirty years.
The central problem of S.’s philosophy is the problem of freedom, which he understands, in the manner of Kant, as the realm of metaphysics and of morality: freedom as a metaphysical principle is God Himself acting upon the world. But the most lively and deeply felt interest of S. is the ethical-religious one. The law of charity becomes the supreme law: “charity tends toward unity and if the aspirations of charity are fully realized, moral unity will be constituted through freedom.” This union is love, an act of freedom. “The creature cannot attain its supreme destiny unless it unites itself to God through its freedom” (La raison et le christianisme, pp. 202-203).
Principal works: *La philosophie de Leibniz* (Lausanne 1840); *Philosophie de la liberté* (Paris 1849); *Recherches de la méthode* (Lausanne 1857); *La raison et le christianisme* (Paris 1863); *Etudes sociales* (Lausanne 1889); *Les droits de l'humanité* (ibid. 1890).