LEROUX, PIERRE (1798-1871), French philosopher and economist, was born at Bercy near Paris, the son of an artisan. His education was interrupted by the death of his father, which compelled him to support his mother and family. Having worked first as a mason and then as a compositor, he joined P. Dubois in the foundation of Le Globe which became in 1831 the official or gan of the Saint-Simonian community, of which he became a prominent member. In November of the same year, when En fantin preached the enfranchisement of women and the functions of the couple-pretre, Leroux with Bazard and J. Regnaud sep arated himself from the sect. In 1838, with J. Regnaud, he founded the Encyclopedie nouvelle of which only 8 volumes ap peared (1838-41). Amongst the articles which he inserted in ii were De l'egalite and Refutation de l'eclectisme, which afterwards appeared as separate works. In 1840 he published his treatise De l'humanite (2nd ed. 1845), which contains the fullest exposition of his system, and was regarded as the philosophical manifesto of the Humanitarians. In 1841 he established the Revue indepen dante, with the aid of George Sand, over whom he had great influence. Her Spiridion, which was dedicated to him, Sept cordes de la lyre, Consuelo, and La Comtesse de Rudolstadt, were written under the Humanitarian inspiration. In 1843 he established at Boussac (Creuse) a printing association organized according to his systematic ideas, and founded the Revue sociale. After the out
break of the revolution of 1848 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly, and in 1849 to the Legislative Assembly, where his speeches on behalf of the extreme socialist wing were of an ab stract and mystical character. After the coup d'etat of 1851 he settled with his family in Jersey, where he pursued agricultural experiments and wrote his socialist poem La Greve de Samarez. On the definitive amnesty of 1869 he returned to Paris, where he died in April 1871, during the Commune.
The system of Leroux was a singular medley of doctrines bor rowed, not only from Saint-Simonian, but from Pythagorean and Buddhistic sources. In philosophy his fundamental principle is what he denominates the "triad"—a triplicity which he finds to pervade all things, which in God is "power, intelligence and love," in man "sensation, sentiment and knowledge." In social economy he would preserve the family, country and property, but finds in all three, as they now are, a despotism which must be eliminated.
See Raillard, Pierre Leroux et ses oeuvres (1899) ; Thomas, Pierre Leroux: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine (1904) ; L. Reybaud, Etudes sur les reformateurs et socialistes rnodernes; article in R. H. Inglis Palgrave's Dictionary of Pol. Econ.