Jean Grenier

Jean Grenier (6 February 1898 – 5 March 1971, Dreux-Venouillet, Eure-et-Loir) was a French philosopher and writer. He taught for a time in Algiers, where he became a significant influence on the young Albert Camus. Born in Paris, Grenier spent his childhood and adolescence in Saint-Brieuc, Brittany, the birthplace of Jules Lequier, the visionary philosopher to whom Grenier would eventually dedicate his doctoral thesis. These early years, during which he became acquainted with Louis Guilloux, Edmond Lambert and Max Jacob, are documented in his autobiographical novel Les grèves (1957). In 1922 Grenier gained a teaching qualification in philosophy and began his academic career at the Institut français in Naples, alongside Henri Bosco. He then spent some time working on the literary journal La Nouvelle Revue française (NRF) before returning to teaching as a professor of philosophy in Algiers, the capital of Algeria. Albert Camus became a student of Grenier's and a close friendship developed between them. Strongly influenced by Les Îles, which came out in 1933, Camus dedicated his first book to Grenier: L'envers et l'endroit, published in Algeria by Edmond Charlot. His L'homme révolté was also dedicated to Grenier, and Camus provided the preface to the second edition of Les Îles in 1959. However, the two thinkers followed very different ideological paths. While Camus was drawn to rebellion, despite his criticism of violent revolution in L'Homme revolte, and ultimately the desperate cries of La Chute, Grenier was more contemplative, adopting the Taoist principle of wu wei and surreptitiously practising a quietist version of Christianity. Grenier's 1938 Essai sur l'esprit d'orthodoxie is essentially a distillation of his writings from 1936 and 1937. Although it tackles the burning issues of the day, it was intended to be "a reaction against them". This essay gave rise to a generation of intellectuals divided by their attitudes towards communism. Grenier was well known in the intellectual circles of the time and contributed to numerous literary journals, including L'Œil, XXe Siècle and Preuves.