Charles Fourier Quotes on Nature
Charles Fourier, the French utopian socialist, built his whole social philosophy on a theory of human nature and the passions, and the quotes gathered here present it. Fourier held that the passions are natural and good, and that the existing order he called Civilization is a vast machinery of repression: all repressed passion produces its counter-passion, as malevolent as the natural passion would have been beneficial. His remedy was not restraint but harmonious organisation, an order in which the natural variety of human characters could be arranged in series of groups, bringing humanity into unity with the universe. Fourier argued that natural inclinations, blameworthy only in their disordered excess, would become praiseworthy once properly equilibrated. Drawn from his works on the Phalanx and the passions, these passages present nature, in the human passions, as something to be liberated and harmonised rather than suppressed.
Quotes
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Attributed to Charles Fourier:
“Nothing is more easily destroyed than the work of nature.”
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“Ignorant as regards the unity of man with himself, the world is still more ignorant in respect to the two other unities - unity of man with God and the universe.”
Wikiquote -
“All repressed passion produces its counter-passion which is as malevolent as the natural passion would be beneficial.”
Le nouveau monde amoureux -
“IF the passions and characters of man were not subject, like the material kingdoms, to distribution in series of groups, man would be out of unity with the universe; there would be duplicity of system in creation, and incoherence between the material and the passional worlds. If man would attain to social uniy, he should seek for the means in the serial order, to which God has subject all nature.”
Le nouveau monde amoureux -
“It is certain that nature inclines us toward the amorous orgy, just as much as toward the gastronomic orgy, and that while both are blameworthy in the excess, they would become praiseworthy in an order in which they could be equilibrated.”
New Amorous World | Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World , J. Beecher (1986), p. 310 -
“Woman is degraded and made to believe that nature destined her exclusively to menial domestic labors, which in the combined order will be so abridged as to be performed without oppression to either sex.”
The Theory of Social Organization(1876) | The Theory of Social Organization