Étienne Vacherot

Étienne Vacherot studied at École Normale Supérieure. Training under Jules Michelet and Victor Cousin is recorded. Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges is recorded as having studied under Étienne Vacherot. The recorded working language is French. Places of work recorded in the authority are Paris. Employment is recorded with University of Paris. Positions recorded include member of the French National Assembly and Mayor of 5th arrondissement of Paris. Distinctions recorded are Knight of the Legion of Honour.

• Name — Étienne Vacherot • Born — 29 July 1809 • Birthplace — Torcenay, France • Died — 28 July 1897 (aged 87) • Place of death — Paris, France • Occupation — Philosopher, professor, politician • Alma Mater — École préparatoire • Notable Works — Histoire critique de l'école d'Alexandrie (1846–1851)

Vacherot was born of peasant parentage at Torcenay, near Langres in the Haute-Marne department of France. He was educated at the École préparatoire, and returned there as director of studies in 1838, after some years spent in provincial schoolmasterships. In 1839 he succeeded his master Victor Cousin as professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne. His Histoire critique de l'école d'Alexandrie (3 vols. 1846–51), was his first and best-known work. It drew on him attacks from the Clerical party which led to his suspension in 1851. Shortly afterwards he refused to swear allegiance to the new imperial government, and was dismissed from his post. His work La Démocratie (1859) led to a political prosecution and imprisonment. On 7 March 1868 he was elected to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques. Upon the fall of the Empire, he took an active part in politics, was mayor of a district of Paris during the siege, and in 1871 was in the National Assembly, voting as a Moderate Liberal. In 1873 he drew nearer the Conservatives, after which he was never again successful as a parliamentary candidate, though he maintained his principles vigorously in the press. While a noted freethinker in the 1850s and 1860s, later in life Vacherot felt remorse over the growth of atheistic anticlericalism and returned to both Catholicism and monarchism, receiving Catholic burial upon his death. The Vacherot brothers, André and Marcel, both French tennis champions, were grandsons of Étienne Vacherot.

Besides the two works mentioned above, he wrote: • La Métaphysique et la science (1858) • Essais de philosophie critique (1864) • La Religion (1869) • La Science et la conscience (1870) • Le Nouveau Spiritualisme (1884) • La Démocratie libérale (1892)