He was married to Cécile Kahn,[7] a major campaigner for women's suffrage in France, with whom he had four children.
While at the Sorbonne, Brunschvicg was the supervisor for Simone de Beauvoir's masters thesis (on the ideas of Leibniz).
Forced to leave his position at the Sorbonne by the Nazis, Brunschvicg fled to the south of France, where he died at the age of 74.
Brunschvicg defined philosophy as "the mind's methodical self-reflection" and gave a central role to judgement.
The publication of Brunschvicg's oeuvre has been recently completed after unpublished materials held in Russia were returned to his family in 2001.