Hippolyte Taine

Hippolyte Adolphe Taine is a Philosophe and Historien French, born with Vouziers (the Ardennes) the April 21st 1828, died with Paris the March 5th 1893.

Biography

Born in a clothier family from the the rather prosperous Ardennes, it makes brilliant studies with the Lycée Condorcet and enters in 1848 to the National university where he is the school-fellow of Francisque Sarcey and of Edmond About. But its attitude, it has a reputation of rebel, the fact of failing the aggregation of philosophy in 1851.

Of literary formation, Taine adopts however the ideas Positiviste S and Scientiste S which emergent at that time. After having presented its doctorate on the Fables of the Fountain, it publishes in 1855 its famous Voyage to the Pyrenees . He writes then many philosophical, literary articles and histories for the two great scientific magazines of the time: the Re-examined of the Two Worlds and the Newspaper of DEBATEs .

Professor with Nevers and Poitiers, it is sent in disgrace to Besancon. He is then made put on leave and publishes in 1863 his Histoire of the English literature in five volumes. The immense success of its work allows him, to not only live of its feather but also to be appointed then professor with the Art schools and Saint-Cyr military school. He teaches even with Oxford (1871) and he is elected member of the French Academy in 1878.

Taine is interested in many fields in particular with art, with the literature but especially with the history in which its lucid spirit, though sometimes dogmatic, finds a topic of election. Deeply shaken by the demolished of 1870 and the sudden starts of the Common of Paris, Taine mainly devoted to the study of the causes of the French revolution through its major work, Histoire of the origins of contemporary France (1875 - 1893). In an original way because it is placed from the long point of view, it denounces there the artificiality of French political constructions (the spirit abstract and rational with the excess of a Robespierre for example) which contradict with violence the natural one and slow growth of the institutions of a State.

In 1885, in visit in Salpétrière, Taine assists, in company of Joseph Delboeuf, with a meeting of hypnotism in which Jean Martin Charcot obtains vesications by suggestion.

Pessimistic spirit (" What a cemetery that history! "), Taine was sometimes unjust if not hasty in its conclusions. Author of great syntheses, it was necessary for him to go quickly and, for this reason, the recourse to the files was at least reduced. In spite of their insufficiencies, its interpretations, which one cannot deny the fulgurances, were and are still today a great success, in France and abroad, in particular while feeding from the preserving political doctrines or the " caption noire" revolution of 1789.

For these reasons, Taine was recovered politically by those which reject the methodical School, republican, dominant in historical sciences of the end of the 19th century. Not very interested by the policy, Taine is a conservative who criticizes the extremes (the Jacobins of 1793 or the Commune of 1871). It is rather liberal, and for a minimum State where the elites would dominate. He does not love crowd and is wary of the democracy. He was consequently appreciated by Maurras and the French Action and thus held in suspicion by the Republic and his defenders.

Historiographic reflection

Its fundamental work in this field is the Introduction to the study of the experimental History , which appears in 1866, the same year as the Introduction to the study of experimental medicine of Claude Bernard. This work is a proclamation in favor of the scientistic history. For him, the history belongs to the field of the experimentation as well as physiology. One must be able to apply the same methods to him as to the natural science.

The events in history would be determined by laws equivalent to those of the natural world. Each historical fact would depend on three conditions: the medium (geography, climate); the race (physical status of the man: its body and its place in the biological evolution); the moment (state of intellectual projection of the man). It is possible to set up an experimental method to study them, as for medicine (see Claude Bernard). There is not only the study of the symptoms, but also a work of laboratory with physical and chemical experiments on live animals for better including/understanding the man and his diseases and to test the reactions of the organizations with various chemical substances.

Taine knows that it is not possible to make experiments in laboratory for the History, but it is possible to subject the sources to scientific operations. It defines four stages:

Analysis: to locate the historical facts in the documents;
Classification: to classify the historical facts by categories: works of the human intelligence (art, religion, science); works of human association (political structures and social); works of the human labor (made economic) ;
Definition: to summarize these categories, these series of similar facts by a simple formula, for example: capitalist system for a series of facts économiques ;
Comparison: to establish logical relations between these categories, these series of facts to make a synthesis: the produced account is History.

Taine thus grants to the history the statute of exact science. It applies itself its program in 1875 in the Origins of contemporary France : “One will allow a historian to act as naturalist; I was in front of my subject like front the metamorphosis of an insect…”

He is promoter of the scientific character of the History, and puts his talent of writer at the service of his work of historian. He uses the History to make an account naturalist. He consults files, but to be able to tell the history, the daily life of those which he studies. Moreover, the last stage (synthesis, account) is that which quasi only interests it.

Works

Of personis platonicis (1853)
the Fountain and its fables (1853 and 1861)
Voyage to water of the Pyrenees (1855 and 1858)
Test on Tite-Live (1856)
traditional Philosophers of the XIXe century in France (1857 and 1868)
Tests of criticism and history (1858 and 1882)
History of the English literature (1864)
Philosophy of art (1865 and 1882)
New tests of criticism and history: Balzac . Hatchet, 1865 and 1901)
Voyage in Italy (1866)
Note on Paris. Life and opinions of Mr. Frederic-Thomas Graindorge (1867)
Of the intelligence (1870)
a stay in France of 1792 at 1795. Letters of a witness of the French revolution, translated from English]] (1872)
Notes on England (1872)
origins of contemporary France :

the old mode (1875)
the revolution: I - anarchy (1878)
the revolution: II - The conquest jacobine (1881)
the revolution: III - The revolutionary government (1883)
the modern mode (1890-1893)

Last tests of criticism and history (1894)
Notebooks of voyage, notes on the province (1863-1865 and 1897)
Etienne Mayran (1910), fragments
H. Taine, its life and its correspondence (1903-1907)

Bibiliography

famous writers , Volume III, the XIX and XXe centuries, Editions of art Lucien Mazenod
Dirk Hoeges, Literatur und Evolution. Studien zur französischen Literaturkritik im 19. Jahrhundert. Taine - Brunetière - Hennequin - Guyau , Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1980. ISBN 3-533-02857-7

Successive residences

Paris - 23, rue Cassette (1893)
Pau - 26, rue d'Etigny (1855)

External bond

Biographical note of the French Academy
Obituary
Genealogy

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