Journal of the History of Ideas

Abstract:

In 1876, the French philosopher Charles Renouvier published Uchronie, an obscure philosophical novel narrating an alternate history where Christianity fails to take root in the West. Far from being a literary divertissement, the novel rests on an articulated philosophy of history, which emphasizes the role of contingency and human freedom in opposition to the organicist and deterministic historical visions of the time. My purpose is to provide the theoretical outlook of Renouvier's "philosophie analytique de l'histoire" and to place it within its historical context, in light of Renouvier's reactions to the political and intellectual vicissitudes of the Third Republic.