# Charles Fourier — The Story of Utopias character guide

> Charles Fourier in The Story of Utopias by Lewis Mumford.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** Charles François Marie Fourier, Fourier

**First appearance:** 0003-the-story-of-utopias

## Snapshot

A dry French commercial traveller who lost his fortune to revolution, then designed a society built not on restraint but on the free play of human passion.

## Who they are

Fourier stands apart from the early utopians because he refuses to reform human nature; he wants institutions that let our instincts run without wrecking us. His phalanxes are held together by attraction rather than duty, and his writings mix startling concrete detail with personal crotchets and an undisciplined solitude. Mumford treats him as the great Associationist, the man who asked what people actually are before deciding what they should do.

## Relationships

### [Albert Brisbane](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/characters/albert_brisbane)

_professional_

Brisbane was Fourier's leading American disciple, actively promoting and adapting Fourier's phalanx system in the United States.

### [John Amos Comenius](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/characters/john_amos_comenius)

_professional_

Fourier and Comenius are linked in utopian studies as early modern and modern theorists of harmonious social organization and education.

### [Étienne Cabet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/characters/etienne_cabet)

_rivalry_

Fourier and Cabet were competing French utopian socialists whose different systems (phalanxes vs. Icarian communities) attracted separate followings.

## In the story

### [The Eighteenth Century: Industrialism and the Birth of Modern Utopias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/chapters/vi)

Fourier's phalanx concept emerges as a response to industrialism's disruptions.

### [III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/chapters/iii)

Main subject of the chapter; his life, theory of passions, and detailed phalanx plan are discussed.

### [IV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/chapters/iv)

Central figure of the chapter; his utopian scheme is analyzed for its acceptance of human nature and its practical influence.

### [VI](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/chapters/vi)

Mentioned as having brilliant intuitions of a true social order, unlike Buckingham's acceptance of contemporary values.

### [V](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/chapters/v)

Fourier is noted as one of the few distinguished utopians who dreamed of a renovated world, in contrast to the mechanical utopias of the nineteenth century.

### [How we reckon up accounts with the one-sided utopias of the partisans.](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/chapters/xi)

Fourier's phalanx system is critiqued as a one-sided utopia overly focused on passional attraction and communal living.

### [III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/chapters/iii)

Listed among reformers who believed in human nature and external institutional change without transforming individuals.

### [The Eutopian Challenge: From Idola to Action](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/chapters/x)

Cited as an example of a utopian thinker whose dreams were frustrated by the assumption that a single man's project could be realized in society.

### [Bibliography](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/chapters/bibliography)

Mentioned as a significant figure restored to deserved attention in the bibliography.

### [Utopias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/chapters/utopias)

Author of Traité de l'Association domestique agricole and Le Nouveau Monde Industriel, proposing the phalanx system.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/characters/charles_fourier
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_story_of_utopias_se/characters