VOLNEY, CONSTANTIN-FRANÇOIS de CHASSE-BOEUF, conte di. - French philosopher, scholar, and statesman, b. at Craon (Anjou) in 1757, d. at Parigi in 1820.
Having come to Parigi at a very young age, he pursued studies in law, medicine, and the classics, frequenting the cultural and philosophical currents of Enlightenment circles, and engaging in intense political activity both under the revolutionary regime and under Napoleone, who vainly sought to make him his supporter. Philosophical works: Ruines ou méditations sur les révolutions des empires (1791); De la loi naturelle (1793). More extensive was his production in the field of historical and Oriental studies.
V., a sensationalist in philosophy, through the Parisian milieu but above all through personal reflection, enriched by his knowledge of different peoples, came to recognize in the human person self-love as the motive and end of individual and social actions: in this law of the preservation of one's own person and of the development of one's faculties lies the simple and fruitful principle, origin, center, and measure of all ideas, of good and evil, vice and virtue, truth or error. Denying every positive religion, from consideration of the universe he came to conceive of God as supreme agent, universal and identical mover, to whom belongs the sole worship of obedience to the laws of nature.