Region: | Western philosophy |
Era: | 19th-century philosophy |
Jules Lequier | |
Birth Date: | 30 January 1814 |
Birth Place: | Quintin, France |
Death Place: | Plérin, France |
Education: | École Polytechnique (no degree) |
School Tradition: | Continental philosophy |
Notable Ideas: | Double aspect of necessity (natural determinism and divine prescience) |
Influences: | J. G. Fichte[1] |
Influenced: | Charles Renouvier, William James, Charles Hartshorne |
Jules Lequier (or Lequyer,[2] in French ləkɥije/; 30 January 1814 – 11 February 1862) was a French philosopher from Brittany. Lequier died, presumably by suicide, by swimming out into the ocean.
Lequier wrote in favour of dynamic divine omniscience, wherein God's knowledge of the future is one of possibilities rather than actualities. Omniscience, under this view, is the knowledge of necessary facts as necessary, and contingent facts as contingent. Since the future does not yet exist as anything more than a realm of abstract possibilities, it is no impugning of divine omniscience to claim that God does not know the future as a fixed and unalterable state of affairs: that he does not know what is not there to be known. Lequier's approach guarantees both divine and human freedom, and suggests a partial resolution of the apparent inconsistency of human-wrought evil and the perfect goodness, power and knowledge of God.