Les Amours au Phalanstere

Paris: Librairie Phalansterienne, 1847. First Edition.. orig. prtd. wrappers.. A fine copy; some small amount of wear to the base of the spine.. 12mo. 64 pp.

Hennequin's homage to Fourier. But where to begin with Fourier? His books are difficult to read; filled with seemingly endless combinations of categories and typologies of human behavior. The basis was the deliberate and total denial of all past philosophical and moralist schools of thought. This came to be known as the ' ecart absolu '. He had, however, in time, received counsel to be cautious concerning his ideas of love and sexual license in all its expression, in order to seek a favorable reception of his ideas for labor. This was impossible.The phalanstery - the basic unit of Fourier's new world society - was the engine of the conversion of men. A project, or structure, in which the permutations of passion and love would give the societal life of man a properly non-social foundation. Hennequin's pamphlet is a defense of the master's plan. It outlines the process and the means of carrying it out. The author was a Democratic - Socialist representative for the Loire in 1850, an ardent Fourierest, and soon imprisoned during a protest of the coup of 1851 - the subject of Marx's famous essay. The pamphlet was translated into English in 1849 by Henry James Sr.. Fourier's ideas echo throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. No less an instigator and poet than Breton acknowledged the influence three generations later in his poem ' Ode a Fourier ' or Dostoyevsky who suffered through a Siberian exile for his communal experiments based on Fourier's model. See Manuel, Utopian Thought ...., chap. 27; Fortunati, p. 467; see also New York Public Library catalog, Utopia .... for numerous references.