Jules Simon
French politician (1814-1896)
Jules François Simon (French: [ʒyl simɔ̃]; 31 December 1814 – 8 June 1896) was a French statesman and philosopher, and one of the leaders of the Moderate Republicans in the Third French Republic.
Acclaimed during his lifetime by several intellectual circles, he was, according to Marc Angenot, a true 'intellectual mentor' for the 'bourgeois and petty-bourgeois masses' of the late 19th century.
Biography
Simon was born at Lorient, Brittany. His father was a linen-draper from Lorraine, who renounced Protestantism before his second marriage with a Catholic Breton. Jules Simon was the son of this second marriage. The family name was Suisse, which Simon dropped in favour of his third forename. By considerable sacrifice he was enabled to attend a seminary at Vannes, and worked briefly as usher in a school before, in 1833, he became a student at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris (ENS Ulm). There he came in contact with Victor Cousin, who sent him to Caen and then to Versailles to teach philosophy. He helped Cousin, without receiving any recognition, in his translations from Plato and Aristotle, and in 1839 became his deputy in the chair of philosophy at the University of Paris, with the meagre salary of 83 francs per month. He also lectured on the history of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Jules Simon” is french politician (1814-1896). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jules, Simon and French, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q548532. VIAF identifies the subject as 54154379. The Library of Congress control number is n86824224. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1814, 1896, 1833 and 1839.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jules Simon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.