Louis Eugène Marie Bautain

Louis Eugène Marie Bautain

Louis Eugène Marie Bautain (* 1795 or 1796 in Paris ; † 1867 ) was a Catholic philosopher and priest who strove for freedom of research.

Life

After studying empirical and idealistic philosophy, he became professor of philosophy at the Strasbourg Academy in 1817, but was dismissed with consent after priestly denunciations and then studied medicine (graduated in 1826). Through his contact with the circle around Louise Humann , he found more access to religion again. He was still studying theology and was ordained a priest (1828). Then he was reinstated in his professorship in Strasbourg; but is again accused by the bishop as a heretic and suspended in 1834. In 1838 he personally applied to Rome for his rehabilitation; which then succeeded in 1841.

plant

His philosophical theology arose in the confusion surrounding secularization. He defends the living faith of Catholicism in the enlightened world, but not only as a pretext for quasi-Caesaropapist politics ( ultra-royalism ) such as de Maistre or that of de Bonalds ( father , son ), but especially against his own scholasticism and the teaching office that defends it . He calls for scientific freedom for philosophy and religious freedom for belief. He wants to let faith what is faith, without, however, falsifying knowledge or subordinating science to a teaching position. In this way he advances to a philosophy of faith which is modern in its contemporary argumentation and evaluation, open to republican developments, but which allows the faith felt in conscience and the revelation encountered in the Gospels to have their own reality ( fideism ).

effect

Bautain was widely received and had many students, some of whom were connected to him in a conventicular way. Through his student Gratry, he also continued to work in reform Catholic (free) churches ( Hyacinthe Loyson , Old Catholicism ). His work faced the virulent questions of the time and thus drove a Catholic Enlightenment no longer just episcopalist from above ( Hontheim , Sailer ), but at the interface to republican demands ( Lamennais , Montalembert ). Bautain constituted a Catholic liberal theology . The appeal to him was not offensive, because he had been able to avoid permanent condemnation. He died just before the infallibility dogma was proclaimed, so that he was not obliged to admit it (and thus forced to expel). Its tradition continued to lead to modernism within the Catholic community , but one could also find some cross-denominational overlaps with Kierkegaard and even dialectical theology .

Works

• Leçons dicitèes de philosophie morale, 1818
• La morale de l'Evangile comparée à la morale des philosophes (Preisschrift), 1827 again in 1855. (German by Franz Geiger . Altdorf 1830)
• De l'enseignement de la philosophie en France au XIX. siècle, Strasbourg 1833
• together with his pupil Fr. H. de Bonnechose: La Philosophie du Christianisme, Strasbourg. 2 vol. 1835
• La psychology expérimentale. 2 vols. Strasbourg 1839
• Philosophy morale. 2 vol. 1842
• Religion et la liberté. Paris 1848.
• L'esprit humain et ses facultés. 1859
• La philosophie des lois au point de vue chrétien (1860)
• La conscience ou la règle des actions humaines (1861)
• Manuel de philosophie morale (1866).

literature

• P. Poupard, L'abbé Louis Bautain. Toulouse 1961 (with bibliography).
• McCool; Gerald A .: Nineteenth-Century Scholasticism. 3. Edition. Fordham University Press 1999

Internet find, not researched

• La renaissance catholique à Strasbourg. L'affaire Bautain (1834–1840) by PONTEIL (Félix)