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Elisee Reclus
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Jean Jacques Elisee Reclus
Born the 15th March 1830 in Ste-Fois-la-Grande (Gironde) Reclus was the fourth of twelve children and the second son. In 1842 Reclus traveled to Neuwied in the German Rhineland and received an education in both modern and classical subjects, learning multiple languages, at the multinational school of the Moravian Brothers. After finishing his education there in 1844, Reclus joined his older brother Elie at the Protestant College of Sainte-Foy. He studied for his baccalaureate there until 1848, when he moved to Montauban.
In 1851 Reclus moves to Berlin for a six month study where he was exposed to Carl Ritter. Reclus identified with with the Republicans during the Revolution of 1848 and his opposition to Napoleon III's coup d'état December 2, 1851 forced him to leave France whereafter he spent seven years in England, Ireland, America, Panama, Cuba, and Columbia. With the general amnesty of 1856 Reclus returned to France in 1858, and published Voyage 'a la Sierra Nevada de Ste Marthe (1861).
While visiting Florence Recluse was introduced to the anarchist theses put forth by Bakunin, whom he met in 1865, he became a theorist of anarchism. Reclus became one of the first supporters of the League of Peace and Freedom and participated in the Berne Congress, giving an address that promoted wide-ranging decentralization on 24 September 1868. Elisée Reclus was once again banished from France as a consequence of his participation in the 1870 Siege and Commune of Paris and he exiled himself to his native Switzerland.
As a consequence of his excile, he had a villa built in Clarens, which he called Le Rivage. His home was warm and inviting and he often hosted his anarchist friends. During this time Reclus would wrote for the journal Le Révolté, published by Russian anarchist Kropotkin, and ran the newspaper L'Etendard révolutionnaire. Elisée Reclus is still recognized as an important figure in both the history of geography and the history of anarchist political theory.
. In 1892, the geographer and anarchist left Clarens for Brussels, where he taught at the university. He lived in this house on the shores of Lake Geneva from 1879 to 1892. There he worked on the follow up of his previous two works of physical geography -La Terre (1867-68), and Histoire d'une montagne (1880).
Reclus’s monumental achievement Nouvelle géographie universelle which ran to seventeen-thousand pages, appeared in nineteen volumes between 1876 and 1894 would crown him the father of modern geography. According to geographer Gary Dunbar, in his biography of Reclus, "for a generation the NGU was to serve as the ultimate geographical authority" and constituted "probably the greatest individual writing feat in the history of geography."
Reclus remained in Switzerland until 1890, heavily occupied with both scholarship and political activity, In 1892, the Reclus left Clarens for Brussels, where he taught at the university and then finally returned to France. Reclus continued working and writing until his death, from heart disease, in Thourout near Brughes on 4 July 1905 at the age of 75.
Reclus was far in advance of his time, and in which he anticipated current debate in ecophilosophy and environmental ethics is in his concern with ethical and ecological issues regarding our treatment of other species. Reclus was unique in being not only a pioneer in ecological philosophy, but also an early advocate of the humane treatment of animals and of ethical vegetarianism. Even today, after several decades of discussion of "animal rights" and "ecological thinking," there are few theorists who have attempted to think through carefully the interrelationship between the two concerns.
Reclus believed that an examination of the history of the evolution of human society could guide mankind towards a more enlightened understanding of the structure and contradictions of present-day society. In his analysis of modern societies, Reclus discovers that each "is comprised of superimposed classes, representing in this century all successive previous centuries with their corresponding intellectual and moral cultures," and that when they are "seen in close juxtaposition, their vastly differing conditions of life present a striking contrast."
While Reclus' social geography makes an important contribution in many areas of scholarship, his most enduring intellectual legacy is his contribution to the development of an ecological world view, and to ecological social thought, in particular. Reclus begins the first volume of L'Homme et la Terre with the epigraph: "Man is nature becoming self-conscious." This proposition (which in the original French states literally that humanity is "nature taking consciousness of itself") captures the essence of Reclus' message: that humanity must come to understand its identity as the self-consciousness of the earth, and that it must in its own historical development realize the profound implications of this identity.
Sources:
Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith, eds., Philosophy and Geography 1: Space, Place, and Environmental Ethics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997), pp. 117-142.
Subject of Biography:RECLUS, Jean Jacques EliseeDate of Birth:1830Date of Death:1905Text:Biography from Chambers Biographies on CD-ROM (1997)
(c) Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd
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