Elme Marie Caro (4 March 1826,
Poitiers
Poitiers is a city on the river Clain in west-central France. It is a commune in France, commune, the capital of the Vienne (department), Vienne department and the historical center of Poitou, Poitou Province. In 2021, it had a population of 9 ...
,
Vienne13 July 1887,
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
) was a French
philosopher
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...
.
Life
His father, a professor of philosophy, gave him an education at the
Stanislas College and the
École Normale, where he graduated in 1848. After being professor of philosophy at several provincial universities, he received the degree of doctor in 1852 on the subject of
Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, and came to Paris in 1858 as master of conferences at the École Normale.
In 1861 he became inspector of the
Academy of Paris, in 1864 professor of philosophy to the Faculty of Letters, and in 1874 a member of the
Académie Française
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the go ...
. He married
Pauline Cassin, the author of ''Le Péché de Madeleine'' and other well-known novels.
In his philosophy, he was mainly concerned to defend
Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...
against modern
Positivism
Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positivemeaning '' a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. Gerber, ''Soci ...
. The philosophy of
Victor Cousin
Victor Cousin (; ; 28 November 179214 January 1867) was a French philosopher. He was the founder of " eclecticism", a briefly influential school of French philosophy that combined elements of German idealism and Scottish Common Sense Realism. ...
influenced him strongly, but his strength lay in exposition and criticism rather than in original thought.
He wrote important contributions to ''La France'' and the ''
Revue des deux Mondes''.
Selected publications
*''Du mysticisme au XVIII
e siècle'' (1852–1854)
''Études morales sur le temps présent''(1855)
''L'Idée de Dieu''(1864)
''Le matérialisme et la science''(1867)
*''Jours d'épreuve'' (1872)
''Le Pessimisme au XIXe siècle''(1878)
''La Philosophie de Goethe''(2nd ed., 1880)
*''La fin du dix-huitième siècle'' (1881)
(1883)
''George Sand''(1887)
''Mélanges et portraits''(1888)
References
Sources
*
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Caro, Elme Marie
1826 births
1887 deaths
People from Poitiers
Members of the Académie Française
19th-century French philosophers
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Collège Stanislas de Paris alumni
French male non-fiction writers