Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais

Hugues Félicité (François ) Robert de Lamennais (actually Hugues Félicité Robert de la Mennais; * June 19, 1782 in Saint- Malo, † February 27, 1854 in Paris) was a French priest, philosopher and author of political writings.

Life

Lamennais sat down in his youth intensively with the philosophers of the French Enlightenment apart, especially with Jean -Jacques Rousseau. Lamennais's philosophical writings are devoted to the attempt to combine Catholicism with liberal and progressive ideas of the Enlightenment. In particular, the ideological and institutional interdependence between clergy and feudal kingdom was doing him a thorn in the eye. Influenced by Rousseau, he stood up for democracy and republic and called religion and freedom of the press and the separation of church and state. At the same time deeply religious Catholic Lamennais supported the papal authority in matters of faith and the centralization of the church. Mouthpiece of his liberal political views was the journal L' Avenir, which he published together with the theologians Lacordaire, Montalembert the politicians and several other intellectuals.

His revolutionary ideas inevitably led to violent hostility from conservative bishops. 1832 Pope Gregory XVI condemned. without mention of the name Lamennais ' writings in his encyclical Mirari vos and also wrote the encyclical Singulari nos ( 1834), with the subtitle: "On the errors Lamennais ".

Lamennais is also considered one of the founders of fideism, an extreme form of Catholic religious philosophy.

Works (selection)

• Réflexions sur l' état ​​de l' église en France pendant le siècle et sur ​​sa 18ieme situation actuelle (1808 )
• De la tradition de l' église sur l' institution of évêques (1814 )
• Essai sur l' indifference en matière de religion ( 1817ff. )
• De la religion dans ses rapports avec l' considérée ordre public et civil (1825-1826)
• Les Progres de la revolution et de la guerre contre l' église (1828 )
• Paroles d'un croyant (1834 )
• Le Livre du peuple (1837 )
• De l' esclavage modern (1839 )
• Politique à l' usage du peuple (1839 )
• Esquisse de philosophie (1840 )