Edgar Quinet, (born Feb. 17, 1803, Bourg-en-Bresse, Fr.—died March 27, 1875, Versailles), French poet, historian, and political philosopher who made a significant contribution to the developing tradition of liberalism in France.
After moving to Paris in 1820, Quinet forsook the faith of his Protestant mother, became greatly attracted to German philosophy, and published in 1827–28, as his first major work, a translation of Herder’s monumental philosophy of history, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man). Soon, however, he became disillusioned with German philosophy and alarmed by the aggressive nature of Prussian nationalism. His literary reputation was increased by the publication of his epic prose poem Ahasvérus (1833), in which the legend of the Wandering Jew is used to symbolize the progress of humanity through the years. In Le Génie des religions (1842; “The Genius of Religions”) he expressed sympathy for all religions while committing himself to none, but shortly afterward his increasingly radical views alienated him finally from Roman Catholicism.
It was not until 1842 that he obtained what he had really wanted—a professorship in Paris. His lectures at the Collège de France attacked Roman Catholicism, exalted the French Revolution, offered support for the oppressed nationalities of Europe, and promoted the theory that religions were the determining force in society. Because his treatment of these topics aroused heated controversy, the government intervened in 1846 and, to the satisfaction of the clergy and dismay of the students, he lost his chair.
Quinet hailed the revolution of February 1848, but with Louis-Napoleon’s coup d’etat of December 1851 was forced to flee, first to Brussels (1851–58) and then to Veytaux, near Montreux, Switz., where he remained until 1870. His faith in humanity shaken, Quinet’s optimism failed him for a while, and in La Révolution religieuse au XIXe siècle (1857; The Religious Revolution of the 19th Century) and La Révolution (1865) he sympathized with the use of force against an all-powerful church and even wistfully hoped that France might yet embrace Protestantism. In his last years the conquests of science fascinated him and restored his faith in the progress of humanity, as indicated in La Création (1870) and L’Esprit nouveau (1874; “The New Spirit”). He returned to Paris on the fall of the empire in 1870 and was elected to the National Assembly in the following year but exercised little influence over his fellow deputies.
His histories, political essays, and works on the history of religion are little read in the 20th century. It is in the educational reforms of the Third Republic, including the banishing of religious instruction from the schools, that his most lasting influence is seen.