Charles Fourier: Utopian Socialist

Francois-Marie-Charles Fourier, one of the most influential utopian socialist was born on April 7th, 1772 at Besançon. He was the son of Charles and Marie Muguet. His father Charles was a small businessman who ran a business of cloth but enjoyed a good reputation in the town he lived. Since his early age, Fourier enjoyed more the work of engineering and architecture rather his father’s trading business. As he did not come from a noble family he could not pursue the engineering carrier. M. Victor Considerant, shares his memories of Fourier as a child by saying that his genius and strong character were early noticed when Fourier was only five years old. He claims that even though young he judged the falseness of commercial world and because of his outspoken character he was often punished by his parents. During his childhood he was known to defend justice and to always have consideration of smaller and weaker people. Later on, as his father dies he inherits one fifths of the testimony. The property that he inherited will be taken later on after 1793, by the Republicans. Therefore, the historical event that had the most impact in his life and later on in his original outstanding ideas of how the world should get out of chaos was the French Revolution. As Fourier states in his book “Such was the first consideration which made me suspect of the existence of a Social Science as yet unknown, and which excites me to attempt the discovery of it.” (Théorie des Quatre Mouvements). Charles Fourier was known to be a lonely, bizarre and often insane man due to his often vague ideas of human nature, morality and reality. But, besides that it is hard to contest his genius in his writings, visionary spirit, original thinking and influence in many...

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... be afraid of ideas.” (The Marseilles Block, 22).

Works Cited

Bowles, Robert. The Reaction of Charles Fourier to the French Revolution. French Historical Studies. Vol. 1, No. 3 (spring, 1960), pp. 348-356

Fourier Charles. Théorie des Quatre Mouvements. Published in 1808.

Fourier Charles. Théorie de l’unité universelle. Le Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire. Published in 1829.

Goldstein F. Leslie. Early Feminist Themes in French Utopian Socialism: The St.-Simonians and Fourier. Journal of the History of Ideas. Vol. 43, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1982), pp. 91-108

Serenyi, Peter. Le Corbusier, Fourier, and the Monastery of Ema. The Art Bulletin: Vol. 49, No.4 (Dec., 1967), pp. 277-286

Vidler, Anthony. The New Industrial World: The Reconstruction of Urban Utopia in Late Nineteenth Century France. Perspecta. Vol. 13/14, (1971), pp. 243-256