Pierre Leroux 1797 – 1871

Pierre-Henri Leroux was a French philosopher, journalist, and one of the founders of nineteenth-century French socialism. Often credited with introducing the word socialisme into the French vocabulary in something like its modern sense, he co-founded the journal Le Globe and the Encyclopedie Nouvelle and wrote his major treatise On Humanity at his printing press in Boussac. He served as a deputy in the Constituent Assembly of the Second Republic. His thought combined a metaphysics of the solidarity of all human beings with a critique of egoism and a religious hope for a renewed humanity.