Maine de Biran

François-Pierre-Gontier de Biran (29 November 1766 - 20 July 1824), usually known as Maine de Biran (mɛn də biʁɑ̃), was a French philosopher. Maine de Biran was born at Bergerac; died at Paris, 16 July, 1824. The name Maine he assumed (some time before 1787) from an estate called Le Maine, near Mouleydier. After studying with distinction at Périgueux, he entered the life guards of King Louis XVI of France, and was present at Versailles during the events of October 1789. He entered politics and was part of the Conseil des Cinq Cents in April, 1797; however, as he incurred the hostility of the Directory by his royalist sympathies he withdrew to his patrimonial inheritance of Grateloup, near Bergerac, where he avoided the excesses of the French Revolution and where he devoted himself to philosophy. It was at this period that, to use his own words, he "passed per saltum from frivolity to philosophy". He began with psychology, which he made the study of his life. After the Reign of Terror, Maine de Biran took part in politics and was elected to parliament in 1812, 1815, and 1820. Having been excluded from the Council of the Five Hundred on suspicion of royalism, he took part with his friend Joseph Lainé in the commission of 1813, which first expressed direct opposition to the will of the emperor Napoleon. After the restoration of the monarchy, he became treasurer to the Chamber of Deputies, retiring during each autumn recess to study at home. His constitution was delicate and sensitive and his philosophic bent had already manifested itself by his observations on the influence of the physical state on the moral. As an ideologist he won the prize at the Institut with his essay "Sur l'habitude" (1802); but his "Décomposition de la pensée" (1805) shows him deviating from the theory of that school, and in "La perception immédiate" (1807), and "Rapports du physique et du morale de l'homme" (1811), he is an opponent of the eighteenth-century philosophy.