Cousin was the founder of eclecticism, which was a collection of the best elements of other philosophical systems. He tried to combine the commonsense view of the philosophers Hume and Hamilton with the more abstract theories of Hegel and Schelling.
Cousin taught at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1840 he became minister of public instruction for France and reorganized the primary school system. Among his works are Philosophical Fragments (1826) and Lectures on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good (1836).
