Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Frédéric le Play
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| Born |
Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play
11 April 1806 |
| Died | 5 April 1882 (aged 75) |
| Institution | École Polytechnique, Écoles des mines |
| Field | Economics, political economy, sociology, epistemology, engineering |
| School or tradition |
Counter-Enlightenment |
| Other notable students | René de La Tour du Pin · Albert de Mun · Louis Dimier · Edmond Demolins · Frédéric Amouretti |
| Influences | Joseph de Maistre · Louis de Bonald |
Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play (born April 11, 1806 – died April 5, 1882) was a French engineer, sociologist, and economist. He studied how people lived and worked, especially focusing on families and workers.
Contents
Life and Studies
Frédéric le Play was the son of a customs official. He studied at two important French schools: the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines. Even when he was young, he was interested in how societies work. He became friends with someone who followed the ideas of a socialist thinker named Saint-Simon.
In the late 1820s, Le Play went on a long walking trip through Germany. He explored mines and learned about the lives of miners. In 1830, he had an accident in a lab that hurt his left hand. While he was recovering in Paris, he saw the July Revolution. This made him want to study the problems in French society even more.
Travels and Research
In 1834, Le Play became the head of a group that collected mining statistics. For the next ten years, he traveled all over Europe as a mining expert. He studied mines and the lives of the workers there. In 1840, he became a chief engineer and a professor at the École des Mines. He also managed a mining company in the Ural Mountains.
During this time, he met with many important French thinkers and politicians. They discussed social issues and how to improve society.
For almost 25 years, Le Play traveled across Europe. He gathered a lot of information about how working-class people lived and earned money. In 1855, he published a famous book called Les Ouvriers Européens (The European Workers). This book contained 36 detailed studies of typical family budgets from different industries. The book won an award from the French Academy of Sciences.
In 1856, Le Play started a group called the International Society for Practical Studies of Social Economy. This group focused on studying society using his methods. They also published a journal called La Réforme Sociale (Social Reform).
Work with Napoleon III
Emperor Napoleon III greatly respected Le Play. He had met Le Play in Russia years before. Napoleon III asked Le Play to help organize the World's Fair of 1855.
The next year, Napoleon III appointed Le Play to the Council of State. This was a powerful group that helped make laws for the Second French Empire. Le Play's job included overseeing many industries. He was also the main organizer for the Exhibition of 1867. He received a high honor called the Grand Officer of the Légion d'honneur.
At the Emperor's request, Le Play wrote a book called Social Reform in France (1864). In this book, he shared his ideas for making French society better. Le Play, who had not been religious before, became convinced that religion was important. In his essay, he defended Christianity against new ideas like Darwinism and scepticism.
After the Franco-Prussian War and the end of the Second Empire in 1870, Le Play started a group called the Unions of Social Peace. This group brought together important people to discuss how to heal France's political and social problems. He became a Roman Catholic in 1879, three years before he passed away.
Le Play's Ideas
Le Play's book, Social Reform in France, explains his main ideas for improving French society. He believed that many problems came from the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. He thought that these movements had gone too far in rejecting the past.
Society and Progress
Le Play disagreed with the idea that people are naturally good and that society always gets better with new inventions. He believed that societies, like people, have free will. He thought that a society that works to overcome bad habits would do well, while others would decline. He looked to the past, especially the Middle Ages, as a good example of how people should live together. Because of this, he did not like how the French Revolution completely rejected France's Christian past.
Family and Women's Role
Le Play also believed that strong families were very important for a healthy society. He especially highlighted the role of mothers and women. In Social Reform in France, he made two key points about families:
- First, he thought that social progress was linked to people owning their own homes and passing down property within families. He believed that farming families, where land stayed in the family, were ideal.
- Second, he argued that women are the main force behind social and moral progress in any society.
Legacy and Influence
Many people followed Le Play's ideas and continued his work. Some of his important students included Adolphe Focillon, Émile Cheysson, and Edmond Demolins.
After a period where his work was less known (from the 1940s to the 1960s), Le Play's methods became popular again. This happened when the "history of the family" became a new area of study in social science. In Britain, a researcher named Peter Laslett used Le Play's methods in the late 1960s. He studied family structures using information from population records and property transfers.
Around the same time in France, legal historians began using Le Play's methods again. In the early 1970s, more historians and ethnologists joined this trend. In 1989, ethnologist Georges Augustins updated Le Play's ways of classifying family types.
Some sociologists also rediscovered Le Play's work from the late 1960s onward. They realized his ideas were more than just old-fashioned.
In the late 1970s, a historian named Emmanuel Todd noticed something interesting. He saw that the areas where Le Play's "patriarchal family" system was common were also the areas where communism became strong in the 20th century. Todd re-examined Le Play's studies of family structures. He then wrote several popular books that linked traditional family structures to major historical movements in Europe. These included religious and political choices, and economic development.
Works
- (1843) "On the Manufacture of Steel in Yorkshire"
- (1846) Memoir on the Manufacture, Trade, and Use of Steel Irons from Northern Europe
- (1864). La Réforme Sociale (Social Reform).
- (1871). L'Organisation de la Famille (The Organization of the Family).
- (1875). La Constitution de l'Angleterre (The Constitution of England). (written with M. Delaire)
In English translation
- (1872). The Organization of Labor in Accordance With Custom and the Law of the Decalogue.
- (1962). "Household Economy." In: Parsons, Talcott et al., editors, Theories of Society.
- (1982). Frederic Le Play on Family, Work, and Social Change. Edited and translated by Catherine Bodard Silver.
- (2004). "Social Reform in France." In: Blum, Christopher Olaf, editor and translator, Critics of the Enlightenment.
- (2020). "Social Reform in France." In: Blum, Christopher O., editor and translator, Critics of the Enlightenment.
Gallery
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Statue of Frédéric Le Play, by André-Joseph Allar, at the Jardin du Luxembourg (Paris, 1906).
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Le Play, by L. Rousseau, 1879.
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Bust of Frédéric Le Play, by Chapu, 1869.
See also
In Spanish: Frédéric Le Play para niños
