Abstract EN:

This work constitutes the first part of Pierre Leroux's biography; unpublished documents have been extensively used to destroy a number of previous legends about him. Whatever he may have said, P. Leroux's family background is not, properly speaking, that of a proletarian. His successful school-record (at the Lepitre boarding-school, at the lycée Charlemagne, at the lycée de Rennes) demonstrates that he is no self-taught man. An apprentice at a famous printer's, the inventor of a new typography, a militant carbonaro, one of the founders of le globe, he finds himself involved owing to the 1830 revolution in day-to-day politics. He is later attracted by a half-hearted variety of republicanism, and eventually turns, a disappointed and disheartened defender of the "republican monarchy" to saint-simonism - which he in time rejects. The part he plays in the romantic battle for liberalism, his ever-deeper practical involvement, help him initiate a thorough inquiry into philosophy, esthetics and politics which is the corner- stone of his later leadership as romantic prophet and socialist thinker.