biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1809–90)
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| biography:
| Social reformer, born in Batavia, New York, USA. The son of a wealthy landowner, he had little formal schooling, but in 1828 went off to Europe ‘to solve the mystery of man's destiny’. For six years he studied at various universities and met or studied with several great thinkers, including Goethe, Hegel, Jules Michelet, and Charles Fourier. It was Fourier's social philosophy, essentially a socialism that called for establishing small co-operative communities, that Brisbane adopted, and after his return to the USA (1834) he embarked on a phase of writing about and promoting ‘Fourierism’ (which he tended to rename ‘associationism’) through books, articles, and journals that he edited (such as The Phalanx, 1843–5). He did little to introduce utopian communities based on Fourierism, however, and by 1851, after two other trips to Europe, he had effectively withdrawn from social activism. He concentrated on managing his family's business and on publishing his various ideas on everything from psychology to Fourier's theories (including his major work, General Introduction to Social Theory, 1876), and even suggested new systems for transportation and burials and became an advocate of drinking wine. Although admired in his day, he was generally described as a propagandist, not as an effective leader. |
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