98

Jean Reynaud’s religious philosophy is one of the “secondary thoughts” of saint-simonianism. Among the young saint-simonians of 1830, Reynaud is one of those who took most seriously the final call of the master to exert the advent of a “new christianism.” In 1854 he synthesized 20 years of theological thought in a book, Earth and Heaven, which achieved a surprising success, monopolizing the religious columns for several months until it was formally reproved by the catholic Church. This debate belatedly highlights one of the XIXth century religious self-consciousness’ utopias, undergoing exhaustion in the 1860 decade: the project to draw a “spiritualist” third way between catholicism and scepticism that would be conformable to modernity’s social, cultural and sentimental requirements.