Nationality French Known for La Cite de Hobbes Role Philosopher | Occupation Philosopher Name Joseph Vialatoux | |
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Born 2 July 1880 ( 1880-07-02 ) Grezieu-la-Varenne, Rhone, France Died March 2, 1970, Vaugneray, France | ||
Joseph Vialatoux (2 July 1880 – 2 March 1970) was a French Catholic philosopher based in Lyon, a leading member of the Catholic social activist Chronique sociale. He had liberal Christian democratic views. He was a prolific author, and an early critic of the right-wing Action Francaise.
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Early years
Joseph Vialatoux was born in Grezieu-la-Varenne, Rhone, on 2 July 1880. His parents were Gabriel Vialatoux, a notary, and Jeanne Perrier. His mother died when he was five. He was sent as a boarder to the Carthusian college in Lyon. He admired the philosophers Rene Descartes, Maurice Blondel and Henri Bergson. Arthur Hannequin, professor of philosophy at the University of Lyon, introduced him to Immanuel Kant, whose work was frowned upon by conservative Catholics at the time. He obtained diplomas in Law, Literature and Philosophy.
At first Vialatoux was influenced by positivism and the counter-revolution. This changed when he met Marius Gonin, who introduced him to a living form of Christianity, much more than dry texts and legends. He decided to give up his law studies and, after he had completed his military service, to place himself at the service of the church.
Journalist
Vialatoux was a journalist and lecturer from 1904 to 1914, and was editorial secretary for the journal Democratie du Sud Est. He was an active member of the Semaines Sociales. He married Jeanne Audibert in Vaugneray in 1905. They had five children. Vialatoux was one of the first Catholics to criticize the right-wing Action Francaise. Between April 1908 and March 1909 the Chronique du Sud-Est published three articles by Vialatoux that criticized the Action Francaise.
Teacher
Vialatoux taught philosophy in various private secondary schools in Lyon between 1914 and 1945. He was influenced by Blondel, but after World War I (1914–18) he considered himself a Thomist. He wrote a study of the Action Francaise leader Charles Maurras that appeared in the Chronique sociale de France 35 (December 1926), and was then published as a monograph La Doctrine catholique et l'ecole de Maurras: Etude critique in 1927. He found that the positivism of Maurras was completely incompatible with Christianity. Vialatoux supported the Christian democratic Parti democrate populaire (PDP). He thought politics should by "moralized", and morality should "penetrate and inform from within all human activities, in order to determine essentially and in the interior the weight to be given to each form of activity, and to integrate all of them in the unifying finality of Man."
In a treatise on Thomas Hobbes, La Cite de Hobbes: Theorie de l'etat totalitaire (1935), Vialatoux wrote, "To proclaim a kingdom of God is to let loose—apparently—a new war in the heart of the citizen. For shall we not, in consequence, run the risk of finding ourselves divided between two laws—that of the State and that of God? This problem was bound to disturb, at the very least, the author of Leviathon." Carl Schmitt wrote of this treatise that "he elevates [Hobbes] into the philosopher of the present-day totalism and ultimately, indiscriminately as the church father of bolshevism, fascism and national socialism as well as German Christians." Rene Capitant disputed Vialatoux's position, saying Hobbes had founded the modern tradition of individualism, which led to liberalism rather than totalitarianism.
From 1945 to 1960 Vialatoux was a professor at the Catholic University of Lyon. In a letter to Bishop Alfred-Jean-Felix Ancel dated 7 April 1949 Vialatoux explained although he was aged 69, due to lack of savings he still had to teach full-time at the secondary and undergraduate levels. Joseph Vialatoux died in Vaugneray, Rhone, on 2 March 1970.