JOUFFROY, THEODORE-SIMON, an eminent French philosopher, was born in 1796 at the village of Pontets, near Mouthe, a town situated on the verdant slopes of the Jura Mountains. As soon as he was able to read, he perused with avidity the pages of Rollin's History of Rome, and was to be found in the fields fighting over again the great battles of antiquity, by means of opposing rows of stones, arranged so as to represent the position of the hostile armies.
Jouffroy. At the age of ten he was placed under the care of one of his uncles in the College of Pontarlier, and afterwards removed to that of Dijon, where his skill in French composition attracted general notice. Some fragments of a five-act tragedy, which he composed at this early age, have been preserved among his papers. His precocious talents procured him admission to the Normal school, in which, at the age of twenty, he was appointed tutor in philosophy. He was shortly afterwards appointed to the chair of philosophy in the Collège Bourbon, from which, after a three years' tenure of office, he retired. When the Normal school was closed in 1822, Jouffroy opened in his own house a private course of lectures, embracing the whole range of the philosophical sciences, and began to write extensively on politics, literature, and even natural history, for the periodical press. In 1826 he gave to the world his translation of Dugald Stewart's Sketches of Moral Philosophy, with a preface on the distinction between the facts of consciousness and those of the senses. Two years later he resumed his lectures on the history of ancient and modern philosophy in the Normal school, which had been reopened under a new name. The professorship of Greek philosophy and literature in the Collège of France was his next preferment, and he shortly afterwards entered the arena of politics as a member of the Chamber of Deputies. The duties of these multifarious offices undermined his constitution so seriously, that, not long after his reception into the Academy of Moral Science, he found it necessary to retire to Italy for the benefit of his health. Here he employed his time in completing the translation of Reid's works, the first volume of which had been published eight years before, in 1828. In 1838 he quitted the Collège of France to occupy the post of librarian of the university, and in 1840 he was summoned by Cousin to assist the Royal Council of Public Instruction. Meanwhile, his health, never robust, again began to give way, and after two years of continually increasing infirmities he died in February 1842, in the forty-seventh year of his age.
In the philosophy of Jouffroy we find, as in that of the Scottish school, a rational appeal to consciousness as the broad basis upon which the inquirer builds his superstructure. The grand object of his observations and speculations is man; and, adopting the most simple division, he views this moral being in a threefold aspect,—as having existed, as now existing, and as destined to exist hereafter. That he is destined to a future existence is deduced from a consideration of his nature. "Every being," says Jouffroy, "is predestined to a certain end, and that of man is indicated by the instinctive and primitive tendencies which result in knowing, acting, and loving." From the blind impulses of childhood he rises till he comes under the dominion of reason, in so far as regards the government of self, and thence to the still higher elevation of submission to universal order, in which we have the central point, the leading maxim of Jouffroy's ethical system. "The beautiful is order expressed, the true is order thought, and the good is order accomplished." All conflicting claims are to be determined by the answer to the question which involves the greatest amount of good, for that must be accordant with universal order. As we rise from this last to the notion of God, the author of order, it follows that morality and religion are different names for obedience to universal order. But in speaking of good, and the greatest amount of good, the old question arises, whence have we evil? The answer to this brings us to the Theodicee of Jouffroy, or scheme in which he defends the Divine government. Evil, according to him, is to be regarded as an obstacle in the path of man, necessary for the development of those very characteristics which make him what he is,—a being possessing liberty and personality. He even ventures to take his station upon the slippery, if not untenable ground, that the difference between man and the lower
animals consists in this, that while the latter are born and Jovellanos. die animals, the former is born animal and dies a free being.
The psychological system of Jouffroy is developed in connection with the second of the leading divisions with which we started,—man as at present existing. Here again we have a simple threefold division into the soul as an intellectual agent, as desirous of action, and as it is per se, i.e., apart from the foregoing manifestations. As the source of intelligent acts, whether voluntary or involuntary, the soul possesses the two faculties of observation and reason (the former dividing itself into consciousness, external perception, and memory), and, by affording the knowledge of contingent truths, causes the development of reason, by which we reach the knowledge of absolute and necessary truths. To the soul, as acted upon and determined to will, Jouffroy applied the peculiar term receptivity, as he applied the term productivity to the soul in the aspect under which we have just been considering it. As liable to be acted upon, the ego is exposed to an irritation which, according as it is agreeable or the reverse, produces love, which is a positive desire, or hate, which is a negative desire,—desire being the last simple phenomenon of sensibility, and the only thing which can determine the soul to will. Putting out of view all the phenomena included under the productivity and receptivity of the ego, Jouffroy brings us to the ego itself, which is a force intelligent, free, simple, and always the same. The distinction between soul and body, or, as he preferred expressing it, the distinction between physiologic and psychologic life, was with him a favourite subject, and one which he approaches frequently from different directions, and illustrated in a variety of ways.