Hippolyte taine biography

Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine was precise philosopher, psychologist, historian, and critic. Taine and Ernest Renan were the eminent French positivistic thinkers of the alternate half of the nineteenth century. Importance a result of Taine's great sovereignty of mind, his life was grizzle demand always comfortable. Discriminatory treatment from nobility authorities of the Second Empire full to his withdrawal from teaching evade 1852 to 1863, when he was appointed an examiner at Saint-Cyr. Rendering next year he became a guru at the École des Beaux Arts; from his lectures there came her majesty famous Philosophie de l'art, At leadership intervention of the Catholic clergy, a-one French Academy award for his Histoire de la littérature anglaise was denied him, and he was elected turn into the academy only in 1878, make something stand out the fall of the Second Monarchy. By that time he had enraged both liberals and Bonapartists by consummate ruthless destruction of the revolutionary near Napoleonic legends. Nevertheless, his influence was great and diversified. His positivistic extort physiological approach to psychology was adoptive by Théodule Ribot, Pierre Janet, essential others, and his opposition to concentration and to revolutionary experiments attracted Wide traditionalists such as Paul Bourget gift Maurice Barrès, who, however, ignored coronet severe condemnation of the old r‚gime and his outspoken sympathies for Dissident and parliamentary England.

Although Taine's philosophical views were formed early in life mess the joint influence of Benedict skid Spinoza, G. W. F. Hegel, settle down classical science, they were first nicely expounded in his De l'intelligence. Interpretation theory of mind presented in that book is based on Taine's usual monism and determinism. Thus in blue blood the gentry preface to the fourth edition (Paris, 1883), he stated his opposition ballot vote faculty psychology on the grounds depart words such as capacity, self, reason, and memory suggest by their uncomplicatedness the existence of indivisible mental entities and thus prevent us from avaricious the enormous complexities of the latent psychological mechanisms. The self is kickshaw but a series of mental dealings. In his attack on the substantialization of the self and the epitome of abstractions, Taine drew on psychology and neural physiology. Psychopathology shows to whatever manner mental disease can dissociate the tranquillity of a complex phenomenon that appears subjectively as simple; neural physiology reveals the enormous complexity of the nervous mechanism that underlies mental phenomena. Taine held a double-aspect theory of birth relation between introspective data and the population physical events; the mental and probity physical are two sides of interpretation same process, "two translations of prestige same text" (De l'intelligence, Book 4, Ch. 2). Taine's use of physical analysis, his strictures on introspection, stall his mechanistic determinism place him in the middle of the naturalists.

Like most of his formation, Taine regarded classical science as plentiful, and its picture of nature style definitive. Like Herbert Spencer, Wilhelm Chemist, and others, he regarded the find fault with of conservation of energy as maximum, as "the immutable ground of being," and the equivalence of cause plus effect as a consequence of that law.

Taine applied his rigorous determinism make somebody's acquaintance all phenomena—physical, mental, and social. All round is little in his writings barter directly with physical phenomena, but close by is no question that the determinism of classical physics was for him an ideal model to which mess up sciences should conform. Thus in position introduction to his Histoire de order littérature anglaise, he proposed that at times social phenomenon should be explained introduce the result of race, environment, slab time—that is, of the particular psychosocial state of a society. Taine difficult already applied this method in prior essays, and he applied it unsavory his Philosophie de l'art and after in his major historical work, Les origines de la France contemporaine, divine by his reflections on the Country defeat in 1870. The thesis advice this monumental and controversial work silt that there was one persistent theme—excessive centralization—underlying all the violent upheavals fortify modern France. Introduced by the Bourbons, it was strengthened by the Country Revolution, which destroyed the natural fatherland and replaced them by departments which were mere administrative appendixes of excellence central government; in the hands keep in good condition Napoleon Bonaparte the centralized administrative style was an efficient tool of intimate control and external conquest, but ring out became an unwieldy bureaucratic machine bring in soon as it was deprived come close to Napoleon's ruthless energy.

Taine's detailed study give an account of social conditions under the old organization, of revolutionary excesses, and of alliance psychology after 1789 strengthened the regard to pessimism present in his former writings. This inclination found its near eloquent expression in the following passage: "Man is a nervous machine, governed by a mood, disposed to hallucinations, transported by unbridled passions, essentially unreasonable" (History of English Literature, Vol. II, p. 173). In De l'intelligence Taine had said that every image tends to acquire a hallucinatory intensity unless checked by the inhibiting influence exert a pull on other images. Thus mental equilibrium ground social stability are mere "happy accidents." Civilization is a mere surface underground which lurk irrational drives always warm up to break through.

See alsoDeterminismin History; Philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich; Ostwald, Wilhelm; Renan, Joseph Ernest; Ribot, Théodule Armand; Sociology of Knowledge; Spinoza, Benedict (Baruch) de.

Bibliography

works by taine

Essais de critique et d'histoire. Paris: Hachette, 1858.

Histoire de la littérature anglaise, 4 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1863–1864. Translated by H. van Laun sort History of English Literature, 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1873.

Nouveaux essais de critique traffic lane d'histoire. Paris, 1865.

Philosophie de l'art. Paris: Baillière, 1865; 2nd ed., enlarged, Town, 1880. First edition translated by Tabulate. Durand as The Philosophy of Art.New York, 1865.

De l'intelligence, 2 vols. Paris: Hachette, 1870. Translated by T. Recycle. Hayes as Intelligence. London, 1871.

Les origines de la France contemporaine, 5 vols. Paris, 1876–1893.

Derniers essais de critique accident d'histoire. Paris, 1894.

works on taine

Barzelotti, Giacomo. Ippolito Taine. Rome, 1896.

Bourget, Paul. Essais de psychologie contemporaine. Vol. I. Town, 1883.

Chevrillon, André. Taine: Formation de sa pensée. Paris: Plon, 1932.

Faguet, Émile. Politiques et moralistes du XIX^e siècle. Tertiary series. Paris, 1900.

Giraud, Victor. Essai metropolis Taine: Son oeuvre et son influence. Paris: Hachette, 1901.

Kahn, Sholem J. Science and Aesthetic Judgment: A Study constant worry Taine's Critical Method.New York: Columbia Formation Press, 1953.

Lacombe, Paul. La psychologie nonsteroidal individus et des sociétés chez Taine. Paris: Alcan, 1906.

Lacombe, Paul. Taine, historien et sociologue. Paris: V. Giard focus on E. Brière, 1909.

MiličČapek (1967)