Antoine Fabre d'Olivet

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Antoine Fabre d'Olivet

Antoine Fabre d'Olivet (born December 8, 1767 in Ganges (Hérault) , † March 27, 1825 in Paris ) was a French writer, historian, philologist , theosophist and illuminist .

life and work

Memorial plaque on the house where Fabre d'Olivet was born in Ganges

Fabre d'Olivet (nee Antoine Fabre) was born in 1767 to a middle-class Protestant Huguenot family. He later added his mother's family name (d'Olivet de Sauves) to his own name.

Self-taught , he was a member of the Jacobin Club during the French Revolution and wrote patriotic plays with which he had some success.

In 1801 his Lettres à Sophie sur l'histoire (1801) appeared, an overview of old and new cosmogonic systems and a history of civilizations . In the years following this publication he went through a life crisis in which he came to the conviction that the various cosmogonic systems are based on an ancient wisdom that was founded in ancient Egypt and passed on by initiates such as Moses , Pythagoras and Orpheus .

In 1805 he married Marie Varin, who later worked as a medium in his hypnotic experiments and seances. Inspired by his wife's visions, he created a teaching that influenced the younger Martinists.

In the further course Fabre d'Olivet developed esoteric views that are attributed to theosophy (in the sense of Jakob Boehme ) and illuminism. In 1811 he published a report according to which he had cured a deaf and mute by " magnetization " ( Notions sur le sens de l'Ouïe ). In doing so, he applied knowledge that he had acquired through a new translation of the Genesis of Moses . With Les Vers dorés de Pythagore he presented a new translation of the golden verses of Pythagoras in 1813 , in the introduction of which he tried to show by comparing other ancient and Indian, Chinese and Persian texts and with the writings of modern philosophers that these all contained the “truths “Contained in the original ancient Egyptian revelation. Around 1816 the translation of the Pentateuch ( La Langue hébraïque restituée ), mentioned earlier, followed with a comment in which Fabre d'Olivet stated that Moses was also an initiate, but that the deep wisdom contained in his writings had become inaccessible because the necessary knowledge of the esoteric meanings of Hebrew had been lost. He, Fabre d'Olivet, has now rediscovered these hidden meanings and restored the original theosophical cosmogony of Moses.

De l'Etat social de l'homme (1822) was an exposition of the history of mankind based on the cosmogony developed in his earlier works. In the introduction to the new edition published in 1824 (with the new title Histoire philosophique du genre humain ), Fabre d'Olivet stated that conventional historiography was flawed because it did not know the true principles that govern the cosmos and history. In order to understand history correctly, one must first recognize the spiritual nature of humanity and its position in the hierarchy of the universe.

In 1823 Fabre d'Olivet brought out an annotated translation of Lord Byron's drama Cain . In his commentary he reiterated his cosmogony and his illuminist interpretation of Genesis.

With a few followers he founded a lodge called Théodoxie Universelle based on the model of the Freemasons , in which, however, the Masonic symbols were replaced by those from agriculture. He put down the doctrines cultivated in this lodge in writing; but they were not published until 1953 under the title La Vraie Maçonnerie et la Céleste Culture .

Epistemology

Fabre d'Olivet took up Immanuel Kant and believed that he could overcome his epistemological pessimism . His argument in this regard was based on the assumption that man consists of body, soul and spirit and that the spirit is superior to the soul. Kant did not recognize the spiritual abilities of the human mind and therefore wrongly came to the conclusion that one could not know anything about spiritual "truths". In contrast, Fabre d'Olivet postulated the ability of the human mind to intuitively grasp the ontological absolute .

reception

Fabre d'Olivet's work only became more important in the decades after his death. It found widespread recognition among illuminists in the 1830s and 1840s. In addition, he influenced social-religious theorists of Romanticism such as Pierre-Simon Ballanche and Pierre Leroux . It reached the height of its impact in the era of symbolism . His Histoire philosophique du genre humain was very well received by occultists at the end of the 19th century, and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky expanded the idea of ​​successive human "races" developed in it into her " root races " doctrine.

Works

  • Azalaïs et le gentil Aimar - Histoire provenc̜ale, traduite d'un ancien manuscrit provenc̜al , 3 vols., Paris 1798–1799
  • Le Troubadour, poésies occitaniques , 1803, new edition Lacour, Nîmes 1997
  • Notions sur le sens de l'ouïe en général, et en particulier sur la guérison de Rodolphe Grivel, sourd-muet de naissance en une série de lettres écrites par Fabre d'Olivet , 1811 ( online )
  • Les Vers dorés de Pythagore, expliqués et traduits pour la première fois en vers eumolpiques français, précédés d'un Discours sur l'essence et la forme de la poésie, chez les principaux peuples de la terre , 1813, new edition L'Âge d ' homme, Lausanne 1991 ( online )
  • La langue hébraique restituée , Paris 1816, facsimile from Raymond Fawer SA, Collection Delphica, Renes, Switzerland 1975
  • De l'état social de l'homme, ou Vues philosophiques sur l'histoire du genre humain , 2 volumes, 1822 ( online volume 1 , volume 2 )
  • Caïn, mystère dramatique en trois actes de lord Byron , traduit en vers français et réfuté dans une suite de remarques philosophiques et critiques , 1823, new edition Slatkine, Geneva 1981
  • Histoire philosophique du genre humain (2 vol.), Paris 1824

Posthumously:

  • Mes souvenirs , Boumendil, Nice 1977
  • Miscellanea Fabre d'Olivet , 2 volumes, Boumendil, Nice 1978 and 1982
  • La Langue d'oc rétablie. Grammaire , ed. by Georg Kremnitz, Braumüller, Vienna 1988
  • La Langue d'Oc rétablie dans ses principes , Steinfeld, Ganges 1989

literature

  • Léon Cellier: Fabre d'Olivet: Contribution à l'étude des aspects religieux du romantisme , Nizet, Paris 1953, Geneva 1998
  • Georg Kremnitz: Fabre d'Olivet reconsidéré , in: Revue Lengas 18, 1985, pp. 408-421.
  • Arthur McCalla: Fabre d'Olivet, Antoine , in: Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Ed.): Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism , Brill, Leiden 2006, pp. 350–354

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arthur McCalla: Fabre d'Olivet, Antoine , in: Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Ed.): Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism , Brill, Leiden 2006, pp. 350–354
  2. ↑ James Webb : The Flight from Reason , Marix, Wiesbaden 2009, p. 415
  3. ↑ a b McCalla, p. 350f
  4. ^ Karl RH Frick: Light and Darkness. Gnostic-theosophical and Masonic-occult secret societies up to the turn of the 20th century , Volume 2; Marix Verlag, Wiesbaden 2005; ISBN 3-86539-044-7 ; P. 402f.
  5. ^ Antoine Faivre : Esoteric Overview , Herder, Freiburg 2001, p. 86f
  6. ↑ McCalla, pp. 351f
  7. ^ McCalla, p. 351
  8. ↑ a b McCalla, p. 352
  9. ↑ Referred to by McCalla, pp. 352f
  10. ↑ a b McCalla, p. 354
  11. ↑ Faivre, pp. 104f
  12. ^ Webb, p. 416
personal data
SURNAME Fabre d'Olivet, Antoine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and theosophist
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1767
PLACE OF BIRTH Ganges (Hérault)
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1825
Place of death Paris