Alfred Jules Émile Fouillée

He held several minor philosophical lectureships, and from 1864 was professor of philosophy at the lycées of Douai, Montpellier and Bordeaux successively.

In 1872 he was elected master of conferences at the Ecole Normale, and was made doctor of philosophy in recognition of his two treatises, Platonis Hippias Minor sine Socratica contra liberum arbitrium argumenta and La Liberté et le déterminisme.

During these years he had published works on Plato and Socrates and a history of philosophy (1875); but after his retirement he further developed his philosophical position, a speculative eclecticism through which he endeavoured to reconcile metaphysical idealism with the naturalistic and mechanical standpoint of science.

Ethical and sociological developments of this theory succeed its physical and psychological treatment, the consideration of the antinomy of freedom being especially important.

[1] Fouillée's wife, Augustine Fouillée, who by a previous marriage was the mother of the poet and philosopher Jean-Marie Guyau, is better known, under the pseudonym of "G. Bruno", as the author of the books for children,[1] including educational novel and school book Le Tour de la France par deux enfants (1877).