Everything about Jules Simon totally explained
Jules François Simon (
December 27,
1814 -
June 8,
1896) was a
French statesman and
philosopher, and one of the leader of the
Opportunist Republicans faction.
Biography
Simon was born at
Lorient. His father was a linen-draper from
Lorraine, who renounced
Protestantism before his second marriage with a
Catholic Breton. Jules Simon was the son of this second marriage. The family name was Suisse, which Simon dropped in favour of his third forename. By considerable sacrifice he was enabled to attend a seminary at
Vannes, and worked briefly as usher in a school before, in
1833, he became a student at the
École Normale Supérieure in
Paris. There he came in contact with
Victor Cousin, who sent him to
Caen and then to
Versailles to teach philosophy. He helped Cousin, without receiving any recognition, in his translations from
Plato, and in
1839 became his deputy in the chair of philosophy at the
University of Paris, with the meagre salary of 83 francs per month. He also lectured on the
history of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure.
At this period he edited the works of
Nicolas Malebranche (2 vols, 1842), of
René Descartes (1842),
Bossuet (1842) and of
Antoine Arnauld (1843), and in 1844-1845 appeared the two volumes of his
Histoire de l'école d'Alexandrie. He became a regular contributor to the
Revue des deux mondes, and in
1847, with
Amédée Jacques and
Émile Saisset, founded the
Liberté de penser, with the intention of throwing off the yoke of Cousin, but he retired when Jacques allowed the insertion of an article advocating the principles of collectivism, with which he was at no time in sympathy.
Political career from 1848 to 1871
In
1848 he represented the Côtes-du-Nord in the National Assembly, and next year entered the Council of State, but was retired on account of his republican opinions. His refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the government of
Louis Napoleon after the
coup d'état was followed by his dismissal from his professorship, and he devoted himself to philosophical and political writings of a popular order.
Le Devoir (1853), which was translated into modern Greek and Swedish, was followed by
La Religion naturelle (1856, Eng. trans., 1887),
La Liberté de conscience (1857),
La Liberté politique (1859),
La Liberté civile (1859),
L'Ouvrière (1861),
L'Ecole (1864),
Le Travail (1866),
L'Ouvrier de huit ans (1867) and others.
In
1863 he was returned to the
Corps Législatif for the 8th circonscription of the
Seine département, and supported "les Cinq" in their opposition to the government. He became minister of instruction in the
Government of National Defense on
September 5 1870. After the capitulation of Paris in January
1871 he was sent down to
Bordeaux to prevent the resistance of
Léon Gambetta to the peace. But at Bordeaux, Gambetta, who had issued a proclamation excluding from the elections those who had been officials under the Empire, was all-powerful. Pretending to dispute Jules Simon's credentials, he issued orders for his arrest. Meanwhile Simon had found means of communication with Paris, and on
February 6 was reinforced by
Eugène Pelletan,
E. Arago and
Garnier-Pages. Gambetta resigned, and the ministry of the Interior, though nominally given to Arago, was really in Simon's hands.
Third Republic
Defeated in the département of the Seine, he sat for the
Marne in the National Assembly, and resumed the portfolio of Education in the first cabinet of
Adolphe Thiers's presidency. He advocated free primary education yet sought to conciliate the clergy by all the means in his power; but no concessions removed the hostility of
Dupanloup, who presided over the commission appointed to consider his draft of an elementary education bill. The reforms he was actually able to carry out were concerned with secondary education. He encouraged the study of living languages, and limited the attention given to the making of
Latin verse; he also encouraged independent methods at the École Normale, and set up a school at Rome where members of the French school of
Athens should spend some time.
He retained office until a week before the fall of Thiers in 1873. He was regarded by the monarchical right as one of the most dangerous obstacles in the way of a restoration, which he did as much as any man (except perhaps the
comte de Chambord himself) to prevent, but by the extreme left he was distrusted for his moderate views, and Gambetta never forgave his victory at Bordeaux. In 1875 he became a member of the
Académie française and a
life senator, and in 1876, on the resignation of
Jules Dufaure, was summoned to form a cabinet. He replaced anti-republican functionaries in the civil service by republicans, and held his own until
May 3,
1877, when he adopted a motion carried by a large majority in the Chamber inviting the cabinet to use all means for the repression of clerical agitation.
His clerical enemies then induced
Marshal MacMahon to take advantage of a vote on the press law carried in Jules Simon's absence from the Chamber to write him a letter regretting that he no longer preserved his influence in the Chamber, and thus practically demanding his resignation. His resignation in response to this act of the president, known as the "
Seize Mai", which he might have resisted by an appeal to the Chamber, proved his ruin, and he never again held office. He justified his action by his fear of providing an opportunity for a
coup d'état on the part of the Marshal. However, the May 1877 crisis eventually ended in MacMahon's demise and in the victory of the Republicans over the monarchist
Orleanists and
Legitimists.
The rejection (1880) of article 7 of
Ferry's Education Act, by which the profession of teaching would have been forbidden to members of non-authorized congregations, was due to his intervention. He was in fact one of the chief of the left centre
Opportunist Republicans faction, opposed in the same faction to
Jules Grévy and also to the
Radical Gambetta. He was director of
Le Gaulois from 1879 to 1881, and his influence in the country among moderate republicans was retained by his articles in
Le Matin from 1882 onwards, in the
Journal des Débats, which he joined in 1886, and in
Le Temps from 1890.
Works
His own accounts of some of the events in which he'd been involved appear in
Souvenirs du 4 septembre (1874),
Le Gouvernement de M. Thiers (2 vols., 1878), in
Mémoires des autres (1889),
Nouveaux mémoires des autres (1891) and
Les Derniers mémoires des autres (1897), while his sketch of Victor Cousin (1887) was a further contribution to contemporary history. For his personal history, the
Premiers mémoires (I900) and
Le Soir de ma journée (1902), edited by his son Gustave Simon, may be supplemented by
Leon Seche's
Figures bretonnes, Jules Simon, sa vie, son œuvre (new ed., 1898), and G Picot,
Jules Simon: notice historique (1897); also by many references to periodical literature and collected essays in Hugo P Thieme's
Guide bibliographique de la litt. française de 1800 a 1906 (1907).
Simon's Ministry, 12 December 1876 - 17 May 1877
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