13 Facts About Jean-Marie Guyau

Jean-Marie Guyau was a French philosopher and poet.

Jean-Marie Guyau was first exposed to Plato and Kant, as well as the history of religions and philosophy in his youth through his stepfather, the noted French philosopher Alfred Fouillee.

Jean-Marie Guyau remained there until his death of s pulmonary disease at 33 years of age.

Jean-Marie Guyau's wife published short novels for young people under the pseudonym of Pierre Ulric.

Jean-Marie Guyau took interest in aesthetic theory, particularly its role in society and social evolution.

Contrary to Herbert Spencer's theory that the development of the arts is an indicator of the decline of society at large, Jean-Marie Guyau maintains that as society continues to evolve, life will become increasingly aesthetic.

In L'Art au point de vue sociologique, Jean-Marie Guyau argues the purpose of art is not to merely produce pleasure, but to create sympathy among members of a society.

Jean-Marie Guyau authored La genese de l'idee de temps, a book on the philosophy of time in 1890.

Jean-Marie Guyau argued that time itself does not exist in the universe but is produced by events that occur, thus time to Jean-Marie Guyau was a mental construction from events that take place.

Jean-Marie Guyau asserted that time is a product of human imagination, memory and will.

However, Jean-Marie Guyau clearly expressed republican sympathies in which he praised the French Revolution, saluted the Third Republic's promotion of civic and moral education, described voting as a "duty," and cautiously argued that democracy offered propitious conditions for creative development.

Jean-Marie Guyau is the original source of the notion of anomie, which found much use in the philosophy of Guyau's contemporary Emile Durkheim, who first used it in his review of "Irreligion de l'avenir".

Jean-Marie Guyau is admired and well-quoted by the anarchist Peter Kropotkin, in Kropotkin's works on ethics, where Guyau is described as an anarchist.