Léon BrunschvicgArticle Free Pass Léon Brunschvicg, (born Nov.
10, 1869, Paris—died Feb. 2, 1944, Aix-les-Bains, Fr.), French
Idealist philosopher who regarded mathematical judgment as the
highest form of human thought. After cofounding the Revue de
Métaphysique et de Morale (1893) and the Société Française de
Philosophie (1901), Brunschvicg became professor of general
philosophy in 1909 at the Sorbonne, where he remained (except
for the war years, 1914–18) until 1940. In 1919 he was elected
to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques and served as
its president in 1932. In his widely acclaimed doctoral thesis,
La Modalité du jugement (1897; Sorbonne), Brunschvicg set down
his fundamental assertion that knowledge creates the only world
we know. He maintained that there can be no philosophy beyond
judgment, for judgment is the first activity of the mind and
synthesizes the form and content of concepts. Philosophy,
therefore, must be a critical appraisal of thought itself, for
knowledge can be subjected