Letter to the High Judge (1803)

Abstract

François Marie Charles Fourier was born on 7 April 1772 in Besançon, France. This highly original utopian socialist presented an elaborate vision of a better, harmonious society in which human passions, instead of being restrained, would have ample opportunities to develop. In his system, production would be organised in phalanstères, where a typical working day would consist of work in different series, according to the preferences of each individual. His main works are Théorie des Quatre Mouvements (1808), Traité de l’Association Domestique-Agricole (1812; republished in 1834 under the title Théorie de l’Unité Universelle), Le Nouveau Monde Industriel et Sociétaire (1829), and La Fausse Industrie (1835–1836). Between 1830 and 1850 his ideas were extremely influential in France, but also in the United States. He died on 10 October 1837, in Paris, France.

Reprint, with permission of the University of Missouri Press, of an excerpt from Charles Fourier, Letter to the High Judge (1803), in: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction, Translated, edited and with an introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983). The extract reproduced here is from pp. 87–9. Copyright © 1983 by the Curators of the University of Missouri.