Henri Frédéric Amiel
From Philosopedia.org
Amiel, Henri Frédéric (1821—1881)
A Swiss poet and philosopher, descendant of an exiled Huguenot family, Amiel was professor of aesthetics and moral philosophy at Geneva Academy.
His Journal Intime (1883—1884) is an expression of a mind that rejected Christianity with pain and regret. “We are always making God our accomplice,” he wrote, “so that we may legalize our own inequities. Every successful massacre is consecrated by a Te Deum, and the clergy have never been wanting in benedictions for any victorious enormity.”
Amiel remained theistic and mystic, yet his skepticism was profound. “The apologies of Pascal, Leibnitz, and Secretan,” he wrote, “seem to me to prove no more than those of the Middle Ages.”
