Background
Alain, Emile was born on March 3, 1868 in Perche, France.
humanist anti-idealist: essayist
Alain, Emile was born on March 3, 1868 in Perche, France.
Lycée de Vauves, Paris, 1886-1889. École Normale Supérieure, Paris, 1890-1893.
Taught Philosophy at the Lycée Henri-IV and at the Collège Sévigné, Paris.
Under the pseudonym 'Alain', Émile Chartier wrote over 5,000 essays on political, moral and aesthetic topics for newspapers and journals. His experience at the front during the First World War conditioned his view that philosophy should have a practical moral, social and political application. The expression of philosophy through the diverse, topical and aphoristic essays reflects this view. Alain’s philosophy is an anti-idealist and anti-determinist existential humanism; he insists on the function of a fallible human judgement and spirit in making sense of the chaos of the world. This judgement is based on human conscience and active free will as they encounter and overcome human passions. For Alain, the human spirit unfolds in the history and the present of human activities, above all in religion, philosophy and art.