Adolphe Garnier


Adolphe Garnier was a French academic philosopher, the main disciple and continuator of Théodore Jouffroy.

Biography

Garnier was born in Paris. He studied at the Collège Bourbon, where he had Jouffroy as a teacher and won the first prize in philosophy in the concours général. He later became a lawyer while contributing to several literary and philosophical collections.
In 1827, he published a pamphlet on the death penalty that drew attention to him and brought him back to philosophy. After passing the agrégation in philosophy in 1827, he taught in Versailles, then in the Parisian colleges of Saint Louis, Louis-le-Grand, and Henri-IV as well as at the École normale supérieure.
On May 25, 1840, Garnier defended his two theses for the Doctorate of Letters at the University of Paris. The first, in French, is a critique of the philosophy of Thomas Reid. The second, in Latin, is a reflection on poetry.
He was appointed assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Paris Faculty of Letters in 1842, then succeeded Jouffroy in the chair of dogmatic philosophy in 1845 in this university. He was elected a member of the Académie des sciences [morales et politiques] in 1860.
His work on Social Morality was awarded a Montyon Prize in 1850. His Treatise on the Faculties of the Soul, considered his most important work, earned him his second Montyon Prize in 1853 and was hailed by the Revue des Deux Mondes as "the best monument of psychological science of our time". He also contributed to Le Globe.
He died in Jouy-en-Josas and is buried in the Montmartre Cemetery.

Works

  • ', 1827
  • Précis d'un cours de psychologie, 1831.
  • Œuvres philosophiques de Descartes, publiées d'après les textes originaux, avec notices, sommaires et éclaircissements, par Adolphe Garnier, 4 vol., 1835
  • ', 1839
  • ', doctoral thesis, 1840
  • Quid poesis?, doctoral thesis, 1840
  • De la Perception de l'infini et de la foi naturelle, 1846
  • ', 1850
  • ', 3 vol., 1852.
  • Histoire de la morale, 2 vol., 1855–1857
  • ', Éd. Germer Baillière, coll. «Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine», 1865