Background

Ferdinand Alquié was born on December 18, 1906, in Carcassonne, France. He was born into a Catholic family of winegrowers. Alquié's father, Joseph Alquié, was a teacher at the Carcassonne high school.

Education

Ferdinand Alquié attended school at the Carcassonne. Later he studied at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. In 1927 he entered Paris-Sorbonne University where he studied at the Faculty of Letters.

Career

Ferdinand Alquié started his career as a teacher at the Collège-lycée Jacques-Decour in 1931. He held this post until 1932 and then started to work as a professor at the Lycée Condorcet. He left this post in 1937 and became a professor at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. In 1947 Alquié took up a post of a professor at the University of Montpellier. In 1952, he left the University of Montpellier and became a professor at Paris-Sorbonne University where he worked until 1976.

Ferdinand Alquié published his first book Leçon de philosophie in 1931. Later he wrote such books as Le problème moral, Les tendances et la raison, Le désir d'éternité, La critique kantienne de la métaphysique and Le rationalisme de Spinoza. Alquié also was a co-founder of the magazine Chantiers. His book Philosophie du surréalisme was translated into English as The Philosophy of Surrealism in 1965.

Achievements

• Ferdinand Alquié was a French philosopher, educator, and writer who was famous for his books about Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, and European philosophy. His most famous book is The Philosophy of Surrealism. Alquié was awarded the Cross of the Resistance Volunteer Combatant and the Resistance Medal.

Works

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  • The Philosophy of Surrealism 1965

Views

Ferdinand Alquié was vehemently opposed to all forms of philosophical monism and felt that human life is permeated by various forms of dualism. He also was opposed to totalitarianism and Marxism. Alquié considered surrealism as a form of philosophy. He said that surrealism is a form of art.

Ferdinand Alquié opposed himself to those contemporary philosophers who denied transcendence and recognized only man-made truth. Equally, he opposed those who objectified transcendent being and made it into something human beings could, in some sense, possess.

Quotations: "Philosophy is analysis and separation. The history of philosophy shows no progress, only a ceaseless recall to being."

Membership

Ferdinand Alquié was a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.

Interests

• metaphysics, history of modern philosophy

Connections

Ferdinand Alquié married Denise Bouland in 1945.

Father:

Joseph Alquié

Wife:

Denise Bouland

References

• Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers This Biographical Dictionary provides detailed accounts of the lives, works, influence and reception of thinkers from all the major philosophical schools and traditions of the twentieth-century. This unique volume covers the lives and careers of thinkers from all areas of philosophy - from analytic philosophy to Zen and from formal logic to aesthetics.
  1996
• Contemporary French Philosophy First published in 1964, this is not just a chronicle or encyclopaedia, but deals thoroughly in turn with meaning, view about reason, and views about values, particularly moral values. The author's knowledge of French literature is extensive and thorough, and a feature of the book is his analysis of the philosophical implications of literary works by Sartre, Paul Valery, Camus and others.
  1984
• The General Will before Rousseau: The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic Patrick Riley traces the forgotten roots of Rousseau's concept to seventeenth-century questions about the justice of God.
  1986