Maine de Biran 1766 – 1824
Marie-Francois-Pierre Gontier de Biran, known as Maine de Biran, was a French philosopher and statesman, sometimes called the founder of French spiritualism. After service in the royal household and a long career as a magistrate and deputy under successive French regimes, he developed in his Memoir on the Decomposition of Thought and his late Essay on the Foundations of Psychology an introspective philosophy in which the self is known not through the play of external sensations but through the inner experience of effort and willed action. His thought shaped French philosophy from Bergson through Ricoeur.
Key facts
- Nationality
- French
- Era
- Modern
- Movements
- Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Maine de Biran:
“I will, therefore I am.”
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Attributed to Maine de Biran:
“The sense of effort is the deepest revelation of the self.”
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Attributed to Maine de Biran:
“The mind is not the spectator but the actor of its own life.”
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Attributed to Maine de Biran:
“True philosophy turns from the world to the inner self.”
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Attributed to Maine de Biran:
“All metaphysics begins in self-consciousness.”