Paul Masson-Oursel


Paul Masson-Oursel was a French orientalist and philosopher, a pioneer of 'comparative philosophy'.
Masson-Oursel was a student of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Henri Bergson, Emile Durkheim, Pierre Janet, André Lalande, Marcel Mauss.
With Sylvain Lévy, Alfred Foucher, Chavannes, Clément Huart, he learned Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Arab.
La Philosophie Comparée, his Sorbonne doctoral dissertation, attempted to apply Comtean positivism and a comparative method which identified 'analogies' between the philosophies of Europe, India and China. Masson-Oursel argued that "philosophy cannot achieve positivity so long as its investigations are restricted to the thought of our own civilization", since "no one philosophy has the right to put itself forward as co-extensive with the human mind".
Masson-Oursel died in Paris.
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