COUSIN, VICTOR (1792-1807). A French philosopher and historian. Ile was born in Paris, and studied with such brilliant success at the Ecole No•male that in 1314 he was appointed assistant to Boyer-Collard in the chair of phi losophy at the Sorbonne. He threw himself heartily into the reaction against the sensualis tic philosophy and literature of the eighteenth century, which was then in possession of the field. In 1S17 he visited Germany, where he was inlrodneed to bolder and more speculative sys tents of philosophy than any lie had yet known, becoming acquainted with Jacobi, Schelling, Hegel, and Goethe. During a later visit to (h./ ninny, in 1824-25, he was suspected of revolu tionary tendencies, arrested in Dresden. and sent to Berlin, where he was detained for six months. lie took advantage of his compulsory detention in Prussia to study the philosophy of Hegel, which had no small influence on his susceptible intellect. On his return to France lie took a de cided stand against the reactionary policy of Charles X., and in 1827. when the comparatively liberal Ministry of Martignae came into office, Cousin, who had for some years been suspended from his professorial functions, was reinstated in his chair. Meanwhile he had become known as an author by his editions of Proclus and Des cartes (1820-26), and by his celebrated transla tion of Plato. which was finished in 1S40, in thir teen volumes. Cousin reached the height of his popularity and influence as a philosophic teacher in the years 1828-30, when often as many as two thousand enthusiastic hearers gathered around him. He was still young, simple, and pure in his habits; his doctrines were for the most part new to his audience, bold, and in harmony with the spirit of the time. The finest qualities of the national genius appeared in his lectures—a wonderful lucidity of exposition, and exquisite beauty of style. such as few philosophers have equaled, a brilliancy of generalization and criti cism, and a power of coordinating the facts of history and philosophy so as to make each illus trate the other and reveal their most intricate relations. At this period Cousin was one of the most influential leaders of opinion among the educated classes in Paris. After the Revolution of 1830, when his friend Guizot became Prime Minister, he was made a member of the Council of Public Instruction. in 1832 a peer of France, and later director of the Ecole Normale and vir tual head of the University. His efforts for the or
ganization of primary instruction are to be seen in the valuable reports which he drew up from personal observation on the state of public edu cation in Germany and Holland. In 1840 he was elected a member of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, and in the same year be came Minister of Public Instruction in the Cabi net of Thiess. After the Revolution of 1848 Cousin aided the Government of Cavaignac, and published an anti-socialistic brochure called Justice et charite. After 1S49 he disappeared from public life.
Cousin was greater as an expounder of his torical systems of philosophy than as an original thinker. At first a disciple of Royer-Collard and the Scottish School, he was attached to the psy chological method of investigating; afterwards a keen student of the German School, he ex pounded the views of Schelling and Hegel with snch enthusiasm that he might legitimately enough have been considered a 'German idealist.' But he endeavored to mediate between the Ger man standpoint of an impersonal reason and that of empirical psychology. In the later years of his life his views ensiled him to a modified Cartesianism. See DESCARTES.
Cousin's chief works, besides those already mentioned and his Fragments philosophiqucs (1826), appeared in two series. The first con tained Premiers essais de philosophic; Du rrai, du beau et du Lien; Philosophic sensualiste; Philosophic l'COSS(I !RC j Philosophic do Kant. The second contained Introduction a l'histoirc do la philosophic; Histoire gene.ralc de la philosophic jusqu'a la /in du Arlie sleek. He also contrib uted a great variety of papers to the French re views. Besides his philosophical work, he ren dered a very real service to the history of the seventeenth century in France by his luminous and stimulating sketches of Mmes. de Longue ville, de Hautefort, de Sable, and a number of other great personages of the period. Consult: Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy, Literature, Education, and Unircrsily Reform (London, 1S52) ; Taine, in Les philosopher classiques du ALP siccle (Paris, 1888) Janet, Victor Cousin ct son warm (Paris, 1885) ; Barthelemy Saint Hilaire, Victor Cousin, sa tie, sa correspondence (3 vols.. Paris. 1895) ; Jules Simon, Victor Cou sin (Paris, 1887).