Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/363

 RENARD

REYNAUD

RENARD, Professor Georges Francois,

French writer. B. Nov. 21, 1847. Ed. Lycee Bonaparte and Ecole Normale, Paris. Renard served as a volunteer in the Franco-German War. Proscribed for his active share in the Commune, he fled to Switzerland, and in 1875 he was appointed professor of French literature at the Lausanne Academy. In 1879 the French Academy crowned his Poesie de la science, and his sentence of banishment was annulled. For some time he taught at the Ecole Monge at Paris ; but in 1887 he returned to Lausanne, having accepted a chair at the new university. Besides a number of beautiful descriptive books (Autour du L&man, 1891, etc.) and some political works (chiefly Etudes sur la France contemporaine, 1888), Professor Renard has written a spirited life of Voltaire (1883) and other Rationalist works. He took an active part in the Congress of Freethinkers at Rome in 1904.

RENOUYIER, Charles Bernard,

French philosopher. B. Jan. 1, 1815. Ed. Ecole Polytechnique. He was trained in mathematics and national economy, but he devoted himself to philosophy, and Eisler describes him in his Philosophen Lexikon (1912) as &quot; one of the most im portant French thinkers of the nineteenth century.&quot; He was associate editor of the Annee Philosophique, and he founded the Critique Philosophique. Renouvier, who calls his system a &quot; phenomenal neo- criticism,&quot; was influenced by Comte as well as Kant, and rejects the &quot; noumena &quot; of the German thinker. He therefore rejects a personal God and personally immortal soul, though he contends for an impersonal immortality which is quite inconsistent with Christianity (see his Uchro7iie, 1900). His general ideas are chiefly given in his Science de la morale (1869) and La nouvelle monadologie (1899). The latter work shows the influ ence of Leibnitz. See G. Seallies, La philosophic de C. Renouvier (1905). D. Sep. 1, 1903.

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REUSCHLE, Karl Gustav, German geographer. B. Dec. 26, 1812. Ed. Tubin gen, Paris, and Berlin Universities. In 1840 he was appointed professor of mathe matics and natural science at Stuttgart Gymnasium, but he was best known as a writer on geography. His chief work is his Vollstdndige Lehrbuch der Geographic (2 vols., 1851-52). He wrote also on astronomy and other branches of science. His Rationalist ideas are given in his Philosophic und Natunvissenschaft (1874), which he dedicated to Strauss. D. May 22, 1875.

REYBAUD, Marie Roch Louis, French economist and politician. B. Aug. 15, 1799. He was sent into commerce by his father, but he turned to journalism and letters, and, settling at Paris in 1829, joined in the attack on the restored monarchy. He worked on the Tribune, Corsaire, National, and other advanced papers in the thirties, and wrote a history of the French Expedition to Egypt (10 vols., 1830-36). His Etudes sur les refor- mateurs (1840) won the Monty on Prize of the Academy, and in 1850 he was admitted to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. Reybaud was a distinguished economic writer, a moderate progressive in politics, a thorough Rationalist in regard to religion. He was elected to the Chambre in 1846, and to the Legislative Assembly in 1848 ; and in 1872 he accepted a position under Thiers. Reybaud was politically more conservative in his later decades, but he retained his Rationalism. D. Oct. 28, 1879.

REYNAUD, Jean Ernest, French writer. B. Feb. 14, 1806. Ed. Ecole Polytech nique. He became a mining engineer in Corsica, and after his return to Paris he joined the Saint-Sirnonians and collaborated with Pierre Leroux and Hippolyte Carnot. In 1838 he was appointed Under- Secretary of State, and from that year to 1852 he lectured at the School of Mines. His chief work, Terre et del (1854), was con-

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