Fourierism

Fourier and His Theories

A self-taught philosopher from a merchant family in eastern France, Fourier claimed that in 1799 he discovered “the calculus of passionate attraction,” a science of human interaction comparable to the work of Newton in physics and Leibniz in mathematics. Using this science, Fourier developed a comprehensive philosophical system filled with neologisms and complex classifications. His system can be divided into three broad parts. The first of these, a critique of the economic and social conventions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, [Page 507]justified Fourier's plans for social and economic change on the grounds that his own era was only an imperfect stage on the way to an ideal society called Harmony. In the second part of his philosophical system, Fourier described Harmony and his plans for the reorganization of daily life. The third part was a theory of the universe that incorporated all of Fourier's ideas about human interactions and outlined a system of analogies between natural and social phenomena.

Fourier's passionate attraction comprised a set of drives resulting from the effects of twelve passions that Fourier postulated all human beings shared in varying degrees. There were three kinds of passions: sensual or physical (taste, touch, sight, hearing, and smell), affective or spiritual (friendship, ambition, love, and family feeling), and “mechanizing” or “distributive” (cabalist, butterfly, and composite). The cabalist passion led people to join together to compete with others; the butterfly to need variation in activity and companions; and the composite to mix physical and spiritual pleasures. Fourier claimed to have discovered this last set of passions, which, by virtue of their effects on the other nine passions in the form of such feelings as enthusiasm or rivalry, governed the actions of individuals and groups of people.

Given all the possible combinations of the twelve passions, Fourier argued, there were 810 possible personality types, and in Harmony people would therefore live in phalanxes, communities of 1,620 inhabitants (two of every personality type), to ensure the ideal mixture of these personality types. Each phalanx would be sited on nearly 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of land, and the main structure on the property would be a magnificent phalanstery, a building that would house the workshops, meeting rooms, dining halls, and apartments of the community. Fourier's was more a pastoral than an industrial utopia, and many of the examples of work and pleasure that Fourier described in Harmony involved the production or consumption of food. Because the ideal combination of personality types would ensure the perfect complement of people with the correct combinations of passions to do every kind of work, Fourier predicted that the phalanxes would experience unprecedented abundance.

Within the phalanxes, each man, woman, and child would follow their own passions in choosing their work, their mealtime companions, and their leisure activities. A passion for a particular variety of pears, for example, would lead a person to choose work in cultivating the fruit, and they would choose the particular part of the growing process that they preferred, participating only in grafting or picking according to their desire. Mothers would undertake the care of infants only if they were passionately attracted to such work. Children would begin to do such simple work as sorting peas as early as the age of four. Dirty work would fall to those who most enjoyed it—children organized in groups called Little Hordes. Those who genuinely chose to do the least appealing labor or social tasks would gain the greatest admiration in the phalanxes. Thus, the Little Hordes would lead the grand parades that would be part of life in these communities.

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