Théodore Simon Jouffroy, a French commonsense and spiritualist philosopher, was born at Pontets, near Pontarlier, in the department of Doubs. After his preliminary schooling he entered the École Normale in Paris in 1814 and began teaching there three years later. He was attracted to the study of philosophy by Pierre Paul Royer-Collard and Victor Cousin, who were lecturing on the Scottish school. In 1826, Jouffroy published a translation of Dugald Stewart's Outlines of Moral Philosophy, and in 1828 he prepared a six-volume translation of the works of Thomas Reid. Jouffroy's rise in the academic hierarchy was rapid; by 1828 he was lecturing at both the École Normale and the Collège de France, where he was appointed professor of Greek and Roman philosophy in 1833. In the same year he was made a member of the Academy of Science.

Jouffroy's...