Pierre-Hyacinthe Azaïs

Pierre-Hyacinthe Azaïs (born March 1, 1766, Sorèze, Fr.—died Jan. 22, 1845, Paris) was a philosopher whose optimism was rooted in the idea that human experience is imbued with a natural and harmonious balance between joy and sadness and that it is in this balance that meaning can be discovered. He advocated the idea in the work that first brought him fame, Des compensations dans les destinées humaines, 3 vol. (1809). In a following work, Système universel, 8 vol. (1809–12), he further developed the same idea and related it to certain cosmological concepts. At the core of this voluminous work is the notion that all experience (past, present, and future) can be understood in terms of an interaction between expansive and compressive forces.

Later, Azaïs moved into politics, and he was appointed to minor administrative posts in France. When the Bourbons were restored to power in France he was dismissed and eventually sank into poverty. Years later he was granted a government pension, and with his wife, Sophie Cotton, a novelist, he turned to fiction and assisted her in writing L’Ami des enfants, 12 vol. (1816; “The Friend of Children”), a sequel to a collection of children’s stories by Arnaud Berquin.