Ernest Renan

Educated for the Catholic priesthood at Saint-Sulpice, Renan abandoned the seminary in 1845 after philological analysis shook his faith in biblical infallibility. Appointed professor of Hebrew at the Collège de France, his 1863 Vie de Jésus presented Jesus as an exceptional moral human being, causing an international sensation and suspension from his chair.

In his historic 1882 lecture Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?, Renan rejected ethnic, racial, or linguistic determinism, famously defining a nation as a spiritual principle rooted in a shared past and the daily collective desire to live together: 'L'existence d'une nation est un plébiscite de tous les jours'.