Royer-Collard, Pierre Paul

Royer-Collard, Pierre Paul (pyĕr pōl rwäyā`-kô-lär`), 1763–1845, French statesman and philosopher. After entering the law, he took part in the French Revolution and became a constitutional monarchist. During the Consulate he devoted himself entirely to philosophy, and from 1811 to 1814 he lectured at the Sorbonne. Becoming active in government after the Bourbon restoration, he sat in the chamber of deputies almost continuously from 1815 to 1839. From 1815 to 1820 he was president of the commission for public instruction. Royer-Collard was a leader of the Doctrinaires, a middle-of-the-road group that included François Guizot, Camille Jordan, Charles de Rémusat, and the duc de Broglie. In philosophy he opposed the sensationalism of Étienne Bunnot de Condillac and helped to introduce the ideas of Thomas Reid into France.

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Royer-Collard, Pierre Paul 

Born June 21, 1763, in Sompuis; died Sept. 4, 1845, in Châteauvieux. French political figure and philosopher. Member of the Académie Française (1827).

In the first stage of the French Revolution, Royer-Collard was a member of the Paris Commune. After the popular uprising of Aug. 10, 1792, however, he broke with the revolutionary movement, remaining in hiding throughout the Jacobin dictatorship. Under the Directory he was a member of the Council of the 500. From 1798 to 1803 he was a member of a secret royalist council seeking to restore the Bourbons. From 1811 to 1814 he was a professor of the history of philosophy at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) and from 1815 to 1820 presided over the university council. In 1815, Royer-Collard was elected to the Chamber of Deputies, where he headed a group of moderate bourgeois liberals known as the Doctrinaires. He presided over the Chamber of Deputies between 1828 and 1830.

An ideologist of the constitutional monarchy, Boyer-Collard helped organize the address of the Chamber to King Charles X in March 1830, which demanded the dissolution of the ultra-royalist cabinet of A. J. A. M. Polignac. He ceased his political activity after the July Revolution (1830).

Royer-Collard’s eclectic philosophical views, derived mainly from M. Maine de Biran and T. Reid, exerted an influence on V. Cousin.

WORKS

Les Fragments philosophiques. Edited by A. Schimberg. Paris, 1913.

REFERENCES

lstoriia filosofii, vol. 3. [Moscow] 1943. Pages 399–400.
Spuller, E. Royer-Collard. Paris, 1895.