[2] This qualified him for a career as a teacher of philosophy, which he pursued in schools in Lorient, Rouen, Paris and, in particular, the Lycée Henri IV from 1909, where he taught the prestigious preparatory classes to the Ecole Normale.

Alain taught at the Lycée Henri IV, with an interruption for the First World War, until his retirement in 1933, having chosen not to pursue a Ph.D. and teach in the university system.

In these years he gained a reputation as an inspiring teacher; his students included major philosophers such as Simone Weil and Georges Canguilhem, writers such as André Maurois, Julien Gracq, and Roger Judrin, and even great political leaders like Maurice Schuman, a founding father of modern Europe.

Alain's influence was felt beyond his class: Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir attended his public lectures, and Raymond Aron became a close acquaintance.

These short texts, written for a general readership and in a concise and vivid style, with striking sentences and aphorisms, soon attracted a loyal following.

[5] They were inspired by topical and everyday events; at first, he commented mainly on politics, but his philosophy and wide interests also became starting points for these improvisations.

They reached an even wider public by being collected in book form, some by subject, so there have been volumes of propos  on politics, education, religion, economics, nature, aesthetics, literature etc.

In this he wrote that what he felt most strongly about the war was the slavery it led to, the scorn of officers for the ordinary soldiers, treating them as animals; the army was a huge machine aimed at keeping men in obedience for organised slaughter.

In fact, he'd written two academic books before the war, before he had adopted his pseudonym: his thesis at the Ecole Normale  on the Stoics, and a published volume on Spinoza.

In 1934 came a second major work, on religion, Les Dieux (translated as The Gods), followed two years late by his intellectual autobiography, Histoire de mes pensées.

[8] Through the thirties Alain was politically active as a prominent pacifist; in 1934 he was a co-founder of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascists.

In 1943 he was able to make another remark that was not picked up by the commentators, “Fortunately anti-Semitism will finish … it’s unfortunate that I ever tolerated this cruel madness (19/9/1943), and in 1947: “In my eyes equality is like the air we breathe.

He was an early (and quite unique) commentator of Hegel, a thorough and favourable critic of Hamelin, an admirer of Comte, three of the greatest systematic thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Despite the presence of his closely argued philosophical books, Alain is perhaps best placed in a tradition of French thinkers like Montaigne and Pascal.

Its coherence is, nevertheless, undeniable and features deep understanding of previous philosophers, from Plato through Descartes to Hegel and Comte, which correlates with the unity of his ideas, and its expression in certain regular themes.

Note that the sign for yes is that of a person falling asleep; while to wake up is to shake the head and say no.”[18] A humanist Cartesian, he is an ‘awakener of the mind’, passionate for liberty.