Émile Littré

Émile Maximilien Paul Littré (born February 1, 1801 – died June 2, 1881) was a French lexicographer and philosopher, best known for his Dictionnaire de la langue française, and his advocacy on philosophical positivism.

Life

Émile Maximilien Paul Littré was born in Paris, France. His father was a gunner, and sergeant-major of marine artillery in French navy, and was deeply imbued with the revolutionary ideas of the day. Settling down as a collector of taxes, he married Sophie Johannot, a free-thinker like himself, and devoted himself to the education of his son Émile. The boy was sent to the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, where he had Louis Christophe François Hachette and Eugène Burnouf for friends. After he had completed his course at school, he hesitated for a while in choosing which profession to pursue. He meanwhile mastered the English and German languages, and the classical and Sanskrit literature and philology.

In 1922 Littré enrolled to study medicine. He passed all his examinations in due course, and only had his thesis left to prepare in order to obtain his degree as doctor, when in 1827 his father died, leaving his mother absolutely without resources. He left the school to care for his mother. To earn a living he began teaching Latin and Greek.

Littré participated in the Revolution of February 1830, and was in the National Guard that followed Charles X to Rambouillet. In 1831 he met Armand Carrel, the editor of the National, who hired him as a reader of English and German papers for excerpts. Carrel soon realized the ability of his reader and in 1835 made him a constant contributor, and eventually the director of the paper.

In 1836, Littré began to contribute articles on all sorts to the papers, enabling him to live more comfortably. He married in 1837, and in 1839 published the first volume of his edition of the works of Hippocrates. The value of this work was recognized by his election the same year into the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. There he came across the works of Auguste Comte, the reading of which formed, as he himself said, "the cardinal point of his life," and from this time onward appears the influence of positivism on his own life, and what is of more importance, his influence on positivism, for he gave as much to positivism as he received from it.

Littré soon became a friend of Comte, and popularized his ideas in numerous works on the positivist philosophy. At the same time he continued his edition of Hippocrates, which was not completed till 1862. He also published a similar edition of Pliny's Natural History, and after 1844 took Fauriel's place on the committee engaged on the Histoire littéraire de la France, where his knowledge of the early French language and literature was invaluable.

It was around 1844 that Littré started working on his great Dictionnaire de la langue française, which took him thirty years to complete. In the Revolution of July 1848, he took part in the repression of the extreme republican party. In 1863, after completing his Hippocrates and his Pliny, he started to work again on his French dictionary. In the same year he was nominated for the Académie Française, but rejected, owing to the opposition of Mgr. Félix Dupanloup, bishop of Orléans, who denounced him in his Avertissement aux pères de famille as the chief of the French materialism.

In mid-1860s Littré started, together with G. N. Vyrubov, the Philosophie Positive, a journal which was to embody the views of modern positivists. His life was fully absorbed in literary work. The overthrow of the Empire, however, called on him to take part in politics. He was called by Léon Gambetta to take his seat in the senate, to which he had been chosen by the Département of the Seine. In December 1871 Littré was elected a member of the Académie Française in spite of the renewed opposition of Mgr. Dupanloup, who resigned his seat in protest. In 1875 Littré was elected a senator for life.

When it became obvious that Littré would not live much longer, his wife and daughter, who had always been fervent Roman Catholics, strove to convert him to their religion. He had long interviews with Père Millériot, a celebrated controversialist, and was much grieved at his death; but it is hardly probable he would have ever been really converted. Nevertheless, on the point of death, on June 2, 1881, his wife had him baptized, and his funeral was conducted with the rites of the Roman Catholic Church. He was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Work

In his early career Littré was a strong proponent of Comtean ideas. His essays contributed during this period to the newspaper National, in which he actively promoted positivist philosophy. Those essays were later collected and published under the title Conservation, revolution et positivisme (1852). In it he showed a thorough acceptance of all the doctrines propounded by Comte.

However, during the later years of Comte’s life, Littré started to realize that he could not wholly accept all the dogmas of his friend and master. He nevertheless concealed his differences of opinion, and never challenged Comte directly. Comte failed to perceive that his pupil had outgrown him, as he himself had outgrown his master Comte de Saint-Simon.

Comte's death in 1858 freed Littré from any fear of embittering his master's later years, and he published his own ideas in his Paroles de la philosophie positive in 1859, and at still greater length in his work in Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive in 1863. In the latter book he traces the origin of Comte's ideas through Turgot, Kant and Saint-Simon, then eulogizes Comte's own life, his method of philosophy, his great services to the cause and the effect of his works, and finally proceeds to show' where he himself differs from him. He approved wholly of Comte's philosophy, his great laws of society and his philosophical method, which indeed he defended warmly against John Stuart Mill, but declared that, while he believed in a positivist philosophy, he did not believe in a religion of humanity.

Littré claimed that Comte had abandoned the positive method in his later works, and suggested to clean Comte’s works from any trace of “subjectivism”. He held that Positivism was the only true philosophy, and that through scientific method one can ultimately realize everything that is known about the world, man, and society. Unlike Comte, Littré doubted that Positivism was sufficiently advanced to serve as a basis for social and political action. He also believed that ethics was not an autonomous discipline, as Comte suggested, and thus does not need to be at the top of the hierarchy of disciplines, where Comte placed it. Littré argued that psychology needed to become an independent discipline.

Littré's Dictionnaire de la langue française was completed in 1873. An authoritative interpretation is given of the use of each word, based on the various meanings it had held in the past. He also wrote a series of political papers attacking the confederacy of the Orléanists and Legitimists, and advocating in favor of the Republic.

Legacy

Littré remains chiefly famous for his dictionary of the French language - Dictionnaire de la langue française, which he was writing over almost thirty years. The dictionary proved to be of an enormous value, as it included precise definitions and showed how French language developed throughout history. Littré contributed to the spread of Comte’s ideas and to the further development of positivistic philosophy.

Publications

• Littré, Paul-Émile (Ed.). 1839-1861. Hippocrates
• Littré, Paul-Émile (Ed.). 1848-1850. Pliny's Natural History.
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1845. Analyse raisonnée du cours de philosophie positive de M. A. Comte. Utrecht: Kemink & zoon
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1849. Application de la philosophie positive au gouvernement. Paris: Librairie philosophique de Ladrange
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1852. Conservation, révolution et positivisme. Paris: Ladrange
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1859. Paroles de philosophie positive. Paris: Adolphe Delahays
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1863. Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive. Paris: L. Hachette et cie
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1865. La Verité sur la mort d'Alexandre le grand. Paris: Pincebourde.
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1867. Études sur les barbares et le moyen âge. Paris: Didier et cie.
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1873. Discours prononcés dans la séance publique tenue par l'Académie française pour la réception de M. Littré le 5 juin 1873. Paris: Typographie de Firmin Didot frères.
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1873. La Science au point de vue philosophique. Paris: Didier
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1876. Fragments de philosophie et de sociologie contemporaine. Paris: Aux bureaux de la philosophie positive.
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1880. Études et glanures pour faire suite à l'Histoire de la langue française '’. Paris: Didier et cie.
• Littré, Paul-Émile 1998 (original published in 1880). How I made my Distionary (original Comment j'ai fait mon dictionnaire). Cre-A. ISBN 8185602727
• Littré, Paul-Émile 2000 (original published between 1863-1872, 5 vols.). Dictionnaire de la langue française. Paris: Hachette. ISBN 0785979417

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

• BookRags.com. Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Littré, Émile (1801–1881). Retrieved on April 27, 2007, <http://www.bookrags.com/%C3%89mile_Littr%C3%A9>.
• Hamburger, Jean. 1992. Monsieur Littré. Grandes biographies. Paris: Flammarion. ISBN: 2080662481.
• NewAdvent.org. Paul-Maximilien-Emile Littré. Catholic Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved on May 1, 2007, <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09295b.htm>.

External links

• General View of Positivism – Article on Positivism by Auguste Comte (1856)
• Paul-Émile Littré – Biography in Catholic Encyclopedia
• Paul-Émile Littré – Biography in Encyclopedia Britannica
• What is Positivism? – Definition and criticism of positivist philosophy on Catholic Encyclopedia

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