Jean de La Bruyère

Jean de La Bruyère ( born August 16, 1645 Paris, † May 10, 1696 in Versailles) was a French writer.

The moralist than to the great French classics projected author came from a middle, probably only recently the Paris-based family and, after studying law at Orléans in 1665 admitted to the bar at the highest court in Paris, the Parlement. In 1671 he inherited with his three younger brothers and sisters a rich uncle and bought in 1673 in Caen an office in the financial management, the ennobled him pro forma, but demanded of him no local presence. He lived rather further than reindeer in Paris and dabbled as a private scholar.

Here he came upon the character studies of ancient polygraph and Aristotle 's pupil Theophrastus (3rd century BC), which he began to transfer from the Greek.

In 1684 he was, on the recommendation of the bishop, Prince educator and great preacher Bossuet, from the Prince de Condé, the leader of a sideline of the royal family, was appointed as a tutor ( précepteur ) by his grandson, the Duc ( = Duke ) de Bourbon. After this had been married in 1687, La Bruyère was a " gentilhomme " (a kind Edeldomestik ) and secretary in his service, and lived in his tow mainly in Paris, Chantilly, Versailles.

As a marginal figure in the aristocratic milieu he became its keen observer and enriched as a consequence the Theophrastschen "characters" to the representation of social types of your own time, taking certain aristocratic and pseudo- aristocratic behaviors, but also general human, all too human weaknesses, mania and with preference ticks took a bead on. In 1688 he had a ribbon appear with the title Les Caractères de Théophraste, traduits you grec, avec les caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle ( "The characters of Th, transferred from the Greek, with the characters or customs of our century ").

Thanks to its subject matter, its division into short, readable sections and his trenchant, often ironic formulations The work was an immediate success, and La Bruyère it expanded from one to the next of the nine editions that followed in rapid succession; the last shortly after his death. In Paris soon circulated also key that attempted to identify individual figures as portraits of famous contemporaries.

After a first unsuccessful run in 1691 was fulfilled in 1693 the dream La Bruyeres: He was elected with tuition the King to the Académie française -, in the confrontation between traditionalists and progressives as a candidate of the traditionalist " Anciens " and against the resistance of the progressive " Modern " who were there now set the tone and he deliberately provoked with his inaugural speech.

Shortly before his sudden death from a stroke he wrote even the font Dialogues sur le quiétisme with which he supported his former patron Bossuet in his fight against Mme de Guyon and Fénelon.