Victor Cousin

Victor Cousin (1792–1867) was a French philosopher and educational reformer. A brilliant student at the École Normale, he began lecturing at the Sorbonne in 1815; suspended by the government for liberal views, he returned in 1828 to huge audiences. His philosophy, which he called eclecticism, sought to combine the truths found in earlier systems, and he made German philosophy known in France. He translated Plato, served as minister of public instruction in 1840, and for decades controlled the teaching of philosophy in French schools. His lectures On the True, the Beautiful and the Good summarized his system, and he later wrote studies of seventeenth-century French society.