RENOUVIER, CHARLES BERNARD , French philosopher, was born at Montpellier on Jan. 1, 1815, and died on Sept. 1, 1903. His two leading ideas are a dislike for the Unknowable, and a reliance on the validity of personal experience.
The former accounts for his acceptance of Kant's phenomenalism, combined with rejection of the "thing in itself." It accounts, too, for his polemic on the one hand against a Substantial Soul, a Buddhistic Absolute, an Infinite Spiritual Substance; on the other hand against the no less mysterious material or dynamic sub stratum by which naturalistic Monism explains the world. He holds that nothing exists except presentations, which are not merely sensational, and have an objective aspect no less than a subjective. To explain the formal organization of our experience he adopts a modified version of the Kantian categories. The in sistence on the validity of personal experience leads Renouvier to a yet more important divergence from Kant in his treatment of volition. Liberty, he says, in a much wider sense than Kant, is man's fundamental characteristic. Human freedom acts in the phenomenal, not in an imaginary noumenal sphere. Belief is not intellectual merely, but is determined by an act of will affirming what we hold to be morally good. In his religious views Renouvier
makes a considerable approximation to Leibnitz. He holds that we are rationally justified in affirming human immortality and the existence of a finite God who is to be a constitutional ruler, but not a despot, over the souls of men. He would, however, regard atheism as preferable to a belief in an infinite Deity. His chief works are : Essais de critique generale (1854-64) ; Science de la morale (1869) ; Uchronie (1876) ; Esquisse d'une classification systematique des doctrines philosophiques (1885-86) ; Philosophie analytique de l'histoire (1896-97) ; Histoire et solution des prob lemes metaphysiques 0900; Victor Hugo: Le Poete (1893); Le Philosophe (1900) ; Les Dilemmes de la metaphysique pure (190I) ; Le Personnalisme (I903); Critique de la doctrine de Kant (1906, published by L. Prat).
See L. Prat, Les Derniers entretiens de Charles Renouvier (i904) ; M. Ascher, Renouvier and der franzosische Neu-Kriticismus (Iwo) ; E. Janssens, Le Neocriticisme de C. R. (19o4) ; A. Darlu, La Morale de Renouvier (1904) ; G. Seailles, La Philosophie de C. R. (1905); A. Arnal, La Philosophie religieuse de C. R. (19o7).