1834

French texts

Pierre Leroux, “De la doctrine du progrès continu” (1834)

August 13, 2019 Shawn P. Wilbur
The second volume of the Œuvres de Pierre Leroux begins with a lengthy essay “De la doctrine de la perfectibilité et du progrès continu,” which combines material from this essay and two others. Pierre Leroux and the Doctrine of Humanity [main page] Aux souscripteurs de la Revue [Identified in the index as “De la doctrine du progrès continu”] Nous publions enfin, au milieu de l’année 1834, le complément de notre recueil pour 1833. Nous devons à nos abonnés une franche explication sur un si long retard. La Revue, au moment où nous nous sommes chargés de sa rédaction, avait éprouvé […]
Utopian and Scientific

Pierre Leroux, “Individualism and Socialism” (1834)

February 4, 2010 Shawn P. Wilbur
At times, even the most resolute hearts, those most firmly fixed on the sacred belief of progress, come to lose courage and to feel full of disgust at the present. In the 16th century, when one murdered in our civil wars, it was in the name of God and with a crucifix in the hand; it was a question of the most sacred things, of things which, when once they have procured our conviction and our faith so legitimately dominate our nature that it has nothing to do but obey, and even its most beautiful appanage disappears thus voluntarily before the divine will. In the name of what principle does one today send off, by telegraph, pitiless orders, and transform proletarian soldiers into the executioners of their own class? Why has our epoch seen cruelties which recall St. Bartholemew? Why have men been fanaticized to the point of making them coldly slaughter the elderly, women, and children? Why has the Seine rolled with murders which recalls the arquebuscades of window of the Louvre? It is not in the name of God and eternal salvation that it is done. It is in the name of material interests.

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