Jacques Chevalier (13 March 1882 – 19 April 1962) was a French Catholic philosopher and a politician. Chevalier was born in

Cérilly, Allier Cérilly () is a commune in the Allier department in central France. It is in close proximity to the largest and oldest untouched oak forest in western Europe: the Forest of Tronçais. Many oak trees exceed 250 years in age. The Troncais (pron ...

, educated at the

École normale supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, S ...

and the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

and taught at the Faculty of Letters in

Grenoble lat, Gratianopolis , commune status = Prefecture and commune , image = Panorama grenoble.png , image size = , caption = From upper left: Panorama of the city, Grenoble’s cable cars, place Saint- ...

. He was a specialist of

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

and author of many books, mainly about the history of

philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. ...

. A friend of

Lord Halifax Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, (16 April 1881 – 23 December 1959), known as The Lord Irwin from 1925 until 1934 and The Viscount Halifax from 1934 until 1944, was a senior British Conservative politician of the 19 ...

, he was also a Minister for education in 1941 under the

Vichy Regime Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its ter ...

, and was as such the only member of the government to be present at the funeral of the philosopher

Henri Bergson Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson Le Roy, ...

. A devout

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, he attempted to eradicate the anti-religious feeling in educational circles and consequently closed the " Écoles Normales", which had been created in each "département" by the

François Guizot François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (; 4 October 1787 – 12 September 1874) was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848. A conservative liberal who opposed the ...

law of 1833 to prepare teachers for

elementary class In model theory, a branch of mathematical logic, an elementary class (or axiomatizable class) is a class consisting of all structures satisfying a fixed first-order theory. Definition A class ''K'' of structures of a signature σ is called an ...

es, replacing them with "Instituts de formation professionnelle". The anti-clerical Collaborationists opposed him however, and he had to step down (he was replaced by the historian Jérôme Carcopino); his reform was eventually abolished and the "Écoles Normales" were recreated.

References

* Jeanne Dubois, ''Deux architectes pour reconstruire la France : Frédéric Mistral et Jacques Chevalier'', Avignon, Les Livres Nouveaux, 1941. 1882 births 1962 deaths People from Allier Lycée Henri-IV alumni Lycée Hoche alumni École Normale Supérieure alumni 20th-century French philosophers French historians of philosophy French Roman Catholics People of Vichy France French Ministers of National Education Order of the Francisque recipients Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Members of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques French male non-fiction writers 20th-century French male writers {{france-philosopher-stub