Chalmel-Lacourt, Paul Arman

He was a professor of philosophy at the Lyceum. After December 2, 1851, he was arrested as a republican and expelled from France. He traveled to Germany, Italy and England, earning a casual income from the lessons of the French language and literary work, until in 1856 he won a position as a professor of French literature at the Zurich Polytechnic.

In 1859 he returned, on the basis of an amnesty, to France, where he opened a course of public lectures, which was soon banned. In the 1860s, he was a regular employee of Temps and became known as a sincere and ardent Republican. In September 1870, his friend Gambetta appointed him Prefect of the Rhone Department ; in March 1871, he resigned from this post, not being able to interfere with the movement of the Communards and not wanting to identify himself with Thiers politics.

Subsequently, his activity as a prefect gave rise to a Catholic monastery, occupied, for strategic purposes, by an army, to start a civil process against him. Although the government officially stated that the occupation was urgently needed and that Chalmel-Lacourt acted as a government official, the clerical court recognized him as having exceeded his authority and was liable in the amount of over 150,000 francs. The government took the penalty upon itself (1878).

In 1872, Chalmel-Lacour was elected to the National Assembly , where he stood out as one of the best speakers of the extreme left. He was one of the founders and active employees of the Gambettist République Française. Since 1876 he was a senator . After the fall of McMahon, the Wadington ministry appointed Chalmel -Lacour as ambassador to Berlin (1879), from where he was moved to London in 1880. In 1882, after the fall of Gambetta, he was recalled.

In 1883, he accepted the portfolio of the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Ferry’s office and was the main culprit of the French war with China , but had a clash with Ferry, due to the latter’s willingness to move closer to Germany, and therefore resigned at the end of 1883.

In 1888–89, he was one of the main opponents of General Boulanger . In 1893, after the death of Ferry, he was elected chairman of the Senate; in the same year he was elected a member of the French Academy (instead of Renan).

Schalmel-Lacour was a profound scholar in German philosophy and a follower, but not unconditional, of Schopenhauer . After his death, his remarkable book was published: Etudes et réflexions d'un pessimiste (Paris, 1901), where his skeptical pessimistic worldview was developed, able to find solace in hopelessness, since from the point of view of hopelessness any incidental, fleeting good is good "An und für sich". During his lifetime, his book was published: Philosophie individualiste, étude sur W. Humboldt (Paris, 1864). His speeches, published in Paris in 1897 (Oeuvres oratories de Challemel-Lacour, avec une introduction et des notices de J. Reinach), provide very valuable material for the history of the second half of the 19th century, especially on the history of the fight against clericalism.

• Schalmel-Lacour // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.