Joseph Arthur de Gobineau. Experience about inequality human races. Odyssey Publishing House - Olma Press, 2001 "An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races" (1853-1855) is the most famous work of the French diplomat, poet and philosopher Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (1818-1882). Despite the controversial nature of many of the provisions of this book, and also taking into account the negative background that was created around it, it must be emphasized that this was essentially the first conscious attempt to systematically understand history from the perspective biological determinism– a philosophical direction that considers hereditary differences in racial types as the initial prerequisites for social life and transfers the laws of organic life to the norms of human behavior and cognition. (Vladimir Avdeev)
We have to talk about work here Gobineau, who considered the problem of races not from a natural science point of view, but from the point of view of cultural history.
The main ideas of Gobineau's theory seemed then much more hypothetical than they appear in the light of the results latest research. In the middle of the 19th century, the opinion that all people were essentially the same still reigned supreme, and racial differences caused by environmental influences.
Gobineau's main idea about the hereditary nature of racial characteristics is closely related to Kant's theory. But Gobineau did not know Kant’s works on raceology and approached his views in a completely different way.
The originality and novelty of Gobineau's theory are undoubted. Until then, scientists for the most part timidly avoided assessing the results of their research. Gobineau made racial differences the driving cause of all events in human history.
Since Maupertuis's proposal for the planned breeding of people, no such attempts have been made to transfer biological principles into the field of culture, with the exception of similar attempts by Augustin and Amédée Thierry (1817 and 1828) and W. F. Edwards (1829), and after Gobineau scientists have not yet violated the boundaries between the natural sciences and the humanities.
I turn to a critical analysis of Gobineau's works. There is a deep contradiction between Gobineau's basic ideas and what he turned them into. He started by asking about true reasons decline of human societies and civilizations. He considered the main reason for this to be the degeneration of the people caused by racial mixing.
But Gobineau denied that, for all the differences between the human races, some of them are closer to primates than others.
Gobineau used descriptions of ancient authors, and did not always draw information from the best sources. He was inclined to recognize the different origins of races (towards polygenism), but he was held back from this by reverence for bible stories creations.
Gobineau admitted that in the initial period of the existence of the human race, environmental influences were much more powerful. Based on this theory of the environment of ancient times, Gobineau described the protoraces or prototypes that arose on the plateaus of Central Asia: the white (Caucasian, Semitic or Japhetic) race, the black (Hamitic) race and the yellow (Altai, Finnish or Tatar) race. Other types are the result of mixtures. There is a natural hierarchy of races: the highest level is occupied by the white race, the lowest by the black race. The hierarchy of races corresponds to the hierarchy of their languages.
In the history of almost all peoples, Gobineau looked for Aryan admixture, considering the Aryans to be the only creators of culture. In his opinion, Northern and Central Europe was inhabited by the Finnish race in the Stone Age; only in the Bronze and Iron Ages did Aryan tribes come here.
The general conclusion: the history of mankind is determined only by race. Race is primordial, all evil comes from mixing races.
Gobineau's knowledge of the natural sciences was not at the same level as his historical knowledge, so his book is not, in fact, a racial theory, but a cultural history appealing to racial theory. Gobineau imagined the complex relationships between the racial composition of a people and its cultural manifestations either in a simplified or non-biological way.
Therefore, the internal connection between racial and historical views on human life he is replaced by a racial interpretation of history, often based on one-sided, biased assessments. In general, we can say that Gobineau went to the right goal along the wrong path.
In the second edition of his work (1884), Gobineau refused to make any changes. He rejected Darwin's theory, but said: "Darwin and Buckle created the most important branches of the stream that I discovered." (From the book: Walter Scheidt. General Racology. - M.: White Alva, 2014.)
The death of civilizations and societies. Fanaticism, luxury, bad morals and lack of faith. Quality of government. Degeneration, collapse of society. Ethnic inequality. Progress and stagnation. Christianity. Definition of the word "civilization". The origin of humanity. Ethnic differences. Race inequality. Languages. Social consequences of mixing. CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX CHAPTER X CHAPTER XI CHAPTER XII CHAPTER XIII CHAPTER XIV CHAPTER XV CHAPTER XVIHamites. Semites. Seaside Canaanites. Assyrians; Jews; Horians
CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII
Development of Brahmanism. CHAPTER III. Buddhism; his defeat; present India. Yellow race. Chinese. Origins of the white race.
Ideas of the racial-anthropological school
The general features and provisions of this direction in sociology are as follows:
- the idea that culture and social life are primarily the result of the influence of racial-anthropological factors;
- denial of the existence of racial equality;
- division of races into “higher” and “lower”;
- interpretation social development and social behavior of people in terms of biological heredity and the struggle of “higher” and “lower” races;
- assessment of race mixing as a negative phenomenon from the point of view of social and cultural development of society.
The racial-anthropological school was formed in the context of the growing popularity of Darwin's teaching about the struggle for existence and natural selection, the dominance of the biological approach in sociology, the widespread use of all kinds of anthropometric measurements and attempts to biologically classify races. The racial-anthropological school was oriented towards the positivist ideal of science (the construction of social knowledge on the model of the natural sciences), bore the imprint of mechanism and biologism, and was closely associated with social Darwinism and, in the absence of the necessary factual information, often resorted to conjecture and speculation, replacing scientific conclusions with scientifically based speculative constructions ] .
Representatives of the racial-anthropological school
- J.-A. de Gobineau (France)
- Houston Stewart Chamberlain (UK)
- Otto Ammon (Germany)
- Georges Vache de Lapouge (France)
- Ludwig Woltmann (Germany)
- Madison Grant (USA)
Criticism of the racial-anthropological school
The ideas of the racial-anthropological school were subjected at the end of the 19th-20th centuries. exhaustive criticism. Absolute majority its theoretical positions were refuted, the arbitrariness and value-prejudicial background of such theses and concepts as “race”, “ Aryan race", "purity of race", the connection between physical-anatomical racial characteristics and intellectual abilities, etc. Critics stated that cultural differences between races were determined not by physiological racial factors, but by the environment in which they developed. The works of F. Boas, G. Myrdal, F. Hankins, T. Weitz, S. Ossovsky and others played a major role in this criticism.
Over the past decades, the influence of the concepts of the racial-anthropological school has not been present in more or less significant sociological theories. It is, however, present in the ideologies and ideological programs of various regimes and political movements
Main principles
Racism, i.e. the idea of the inequality of various racial and anthropological categories and the superiority of one’s category over others, has existed since time immemorial in a wide variety of societies. This idea, as a rule, merged with the ethnocentrism and egocentrism of various “we-groups”, already in ancient times acted not just as an emotional reaction to a “stranger”, characteristic of animal behavior, but as an ideology. Thus, already the ancient Greek poet Theognis from Megara (VI century BC) argued that people, like animals, are divided into unequal breeds. Aristotle derived social inequality from fundamental natural differences between people, arguing that “some people are by nature free, others are slaves, and it is both useful and fair for the latter to be slaves.” A similar idea is perfectly expressed by Shakespeare's Macbeth, addressing the murderers:
Oh yes, people include you in the general list,
Like hounds, pugs, poodles, shepherds,
Greyhounds and mutts - everyone's name is the same
Dogs, although price varies
Painted lazy and agile,
Household and hunting, depending
According to their properties, they are gifts of generous nature.
Therefore the name of the breed
To their family name - dog
We are adding. It's the same with people.
(Macbeth, III, 1. Translated by Yu. Korneev)
In European society, until the spread of the idea of equality, different classes were considered as different racial groups; the privileged position and superiority of the upper classes was not based on their special efforts or achievements, but simply the very fact of origin from another anthropological category. For social thinkers XVIII - XIX centuries, who were supporters of social equality, the superiority of the white race seemed so undoubted and obvious that they did not even consider it necessary to specifically prove it.
As a special direction in social thought, the racial-anthropological school took shape in the second half of the 20th century. At this time, the old ideology begins to appeal to a new authority - the authority of scientific knowledge. It is significant that the desire to rely on this authority arises at a time when the science of races - physical anthropology - was still in its infancy. This left room for old and new myth-making and speculation, which turned immature scientific knowledge into pseudoscientific.
Among the direct sources for the formation of racial-anthropological concepts in social science, it is worth noting the works of the French historian and philosopher Victor Courtet de l'Isle (“Political science based on the science of man, or the Study of human races in philosophical, historical and social relations”, 1835) and the German biologist and physician Carl Gustav Carus (“On the unequal abilities of different human races for high spiritual development”, 1849).
Since the most important place in the school under consideration, as is clear from its designation, was occupied by the racial-anthropological factor, it should be clarified that human races in physical anthropology are usually understood as “historically established areal... groups of people connected by a unity of origin, which is expressed in common hereditary morphological and physiological characteristics, varying within certain limits." As part of modern humanity, there are three main groups of races (“large races”): Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid. Within these large races, smaller categories of anthropological classification are distinguished, called anthropological types or groups.
Despite the many differences and shades inherent in individual racial-anthropological concepts, they all boil down to the following main postulates that unite these concepts into a “school.”
1) Various societies, social and cultural groups (classes, estates, ethnic groups, professional groups, etc.) are basically racial-anthropological formations: a variety of these formations, a “superstructure” over them or their “transformed form” . Hence certain variants of racism as a political ideology. In addition to “physical-anthropological” racism itself, which emphasizes the factor of race as a group united by morphological and physiological characteristics, there are also options such as class, class, ethnic and even professional racism. Any group differences can in principle be interpreted as racial.
2) The evolution of society and culture is the result of differences and interactions between racial-anthropological groups and characteristics.
3) Races and anthropological groups are unequal. This implies inequality (“superiority”, “inferiority”, “inferiority”), as well as the “beneficence” or “danger” of the corresponding social institutions and cultural creations.
4) Human social behavior and culture are determined entirely or predominantly by biological heredity.
5) Mixing between races or anthropological groups is harmful from the point of view of biological, social and (or) cultural development.
Founder of the school: Arthur de Gobineau
The noted postulates were first put forward in expanded form by the French philosopher, writer and diplomat Joseph-Arthur de Gobineau(1816-1882) in the four-volume treatise “An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races” (vols. 1-2, 1853; vols. 3-4, 1855).
As a writer, Gobineau was a bit boring, but he was a talented stylist and performed in a variety of literary genres: novel, short story, drama, poem 1. He wrote works on the history and culture of the East and published the linguistic “Treatise on Cuneiform” (1864). In addition, he actively spoke in the genre of journalism and was engaged in sculpture. For some time, Gobineau was the head of the office of Alexis de Tocqueville when he served as Minister of Foreign Affairs. However, neither his creative pursuits nor his diplomatic career could satisfy the vain nature of Comte de Gobineau. From his point of view, his merits and merits did not find due recognition among his contemporaries, so he, by his own admission, hated and despised the modern era.
Gobineau was very proud of his noble origins (however, it was not as noble as he tried to prove) and praised the time when the aristocracy was at the top of the social hierarchy. His racism was integral part his elitist worldview. The main theoretical problem, or rather, obsession for him, is the search for “real,” “genuine” hierarchies, and within them, “genuine” elites. The elites he seeks to discover must not be transitory, but eternal, unconditional and unchangeable. They should not depend on random and secondary circumstances, such as property, thanks to which the elite is formed in a capitalist society. The relentless extolling of the virtues of the elite (“nobles,” “royal children,” etc.) in Gobineau’s works served as an explicit or implicit justification for their privileges. The absence of such appeared in his understanding as a consequence of the degradation of society, its crisis and depravity.
Gobineau hates all types of equality: class, estate, race, etc. But racial inequality seems to him the most fundamental, original, primary. From the hierarchy of races all the main
1 See, in particular, his works in Russian translations: Century of the Renaissance / Trans. from fr. N. M. Gorbova., M., 1913; Kandahar Lovers / Trans. from fr. I. Mandelstam. Pg., 1923; Lovers from Kandahar. (The same story translated by Rurik Ivnev.) M.; L., 1926; The Great Sorcerer / Trans. from fr. R. M. Ivneva. L., 1926.
tal hierarchies, so it comes to the fore as the driving force of history.
“An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races” is a philosophical and historical work in genre. The central problem that Gobineau seeks to resolve in his main work is the problem of the decline and destruction of various civilizations. According to him, all civilizations are mortal, and European civilization in this respect differs from others only in that for the first time it begins to realize the inevitability of its death.
It should be emphasized that initially in Gobineau’s concept the main subject of consideration and the main subject of the historical process is in fact not society, culture, civilization, but a race identified with an ethnic group. Social institutions do not determine the life activity of races (ethnic groups), but, on the contrary, are determined by them: “These are consequences, not causes” [ibid., 66]. Institutions that are not in harmony with the deep tendencies of the race are not grafted in unless racial mixing occurs. Therefore, Gobineau denies the civilizing role of world religions, in particular Christianity, which, being accepted by a variety of peoples, cannot in itself shake their deepest traits and inclinations.
Before answering the question about the causes of the degeneration and death of civilizations, Gobineau asks another question: are there serious differences in the intrinsic value of different races and is it possible to evaluate these differences? Given the elitist and hierarchical tenets of his worldview, the answer is not difficult to predict. This answer, in fact, is given in the very title of his main work and is then repeated and detailed many times. The three main races: white, yellow and black, “the three pure and original elements of humanity” 2 [ibid., 247], Gobineau builds in the form of a three-stage hierarchical ladder with the white race at the top and the black at the bottom. Within the white race, the “Aryans” occupy the highest place. Races are distinguished by the constancy and indestructibility of physical and spiritual characteristics.
Gobineau emphasizes the intellectual superiority of the white race, but at the same time notes the superiority of other races in the field of feelings [ibid., 354]. Negroes, in his opinion, are superior to other races in the field of artistic creativity, and art arises only when mixed with the black race. It would seem similar comparative characteristics may lead him to relativism in his assessment of different races: some are superior in one respect, others in another. But such a conclusion is a supporter of inequality,
2 “Redskins,” according to Gobineau, are the result of mixing the “yellow” and “black” races.
Of course he doesn't. According to Gobineau, the white race is superior to the rest in physical strength, beauty, perseverance, etc. But the main criterion for him to place in the racial hierarchy is intelligence. Since he assesses the mental abilities of the white race as the highest, he places it at the top rung of the hierarchical ladder.
It should be noted that Gobineau attributes the actual existence of these three “pure” racial types to the distant past. During the subsequent historical development various combinations of them were constantly formed, then combinations of the resulting combinations, etc. [ibid., 354-355]. Thus, “pure” original races have not existed for a long time, and in the modern era, according to Gobineau, there are racial types that are mixed with each other countless times.
The categoricalness and categoricalness with which Gobineau describes (referring to the authority of science) types so distant in time are amazing. At the same time, he describes their merits in the present tense, as if forgetting about their temporary remoteness; as a result, these "pure" types appear in his concept as existing at the present time.
It is curious that An Essay on the Inequality of Human Races was written at a time when Gobineau had never left Europe and contacts with non-Europeans were extremely rare. It is obvious that his ideas about the comparative value of different races were developed on the basis of previously formed prejudices that existed in his own environment. True, he emphasizes that he compares not individual representatives of different races (this, in his opinion, is “too unworthy” of science [ibid., 257]), but groups.
However, his comparisons of various groups within the white race are as categorical and categorical as interracial ones. Without any hesitation, Gobineau asserts that the Italians are more beautiful than the Germans, Swiss, French and Spaniards; that the British more beautiful body than the Slavs, and have the greatest fist strength among the Europeans; that the French and Spaniards have better resistance to fatigue, deprivation, and unfavorable climatic conditions than other Europeans.
Gobineau's concept of “race” is not very clear. Nevertheless, it is in the sphere of races that he seeks a solution to the problem of “degeneration” and the death of civilizations, refusing to see the causes of these processes in the moral and political decay of societies or in the specifics of geographical conditions. He seeks to discover "natural laws governing the social world" and having an "unchangeable" character. These two laws in his understanding are the laws of repulsion and attraction between human races. These “laws” are concretized by the fatal phenomenon mixing races and their countless combinations. Mixing of races is considered as a fundamental process that determines the entire course of historical development.
Miscegenation represents a necessary source of the emergence and development of civilizations(with the obligatory participation of the “white” race), but in the future it is the reason for their degeneration - such, according to Gobineau, is the tragic dialectic of history. Mixtures to some extent elevate mediocre people, the masses, but at the expense of the disappearance of the best, noble elements, which ultimately leads societies and humanity to degradation and death.
Noting the necessity and inevitability of the mixing of races, their interdependence in the process of creating and developing civilizations, Gobineau assigns the leading role in this process to the “white” race. It is this race that is most characterized by the “masculine” principle, the “vital element”, without which other races remain in a state of immobility. This thesis of Gobineau echoes the division of humanity into “active” and “passive” races, which the German historian G. Klemm previously spoke about. Gobineau identifies ten civilizations in history; all of them, in his interpretation, owe their emergence to the initiative of the “white” race. These are Indian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Chinese civilizations, ancient civilization the Italian peninsula, Western civilization created by the Germans, and the three civilizations of America: Alleghenian, Mexican and Peruvian.
It is curious that the thesis about the harmful nature of racial mixing determined anti-colonialist position Gobineau, since colonial conquests, in his opinion, contribute to confusion and, consequently, the degeneration of European civilization. This distinguishes him from many other representatives of the school, but, however, did not prevent his idea of the “superiority” of the white race from being interpreted to justify colonialist aspirations.
Like Saint-Simon, Comte and Marx, Gobineau loved to make prophecies. His prophecies are generally imbued with fatalism and pessimism. In addition to the general prediction of the impending death of European civilization, he predicts not only the massification, but also the “depopulation” of the Earth as a result of racial mixing.
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gobineau does not believe in progress. Rather, he believes in regression: in all his reasoning there is always the idea that the “golden age” is a property of the distant past, and nothing can revive it. He views civilizations as local organisms going through the same development cycles (from birth to death). The very concept of civilization appears to him not as evaluative, but as purely descriptive and is applied to a wide variety of societies, including non-European ones.
Thus, the Eurocentrism of many previous philosophical-historical and sociological systems is replaced by Gobineau cultural relativism, and the concept of racial inequality coexists with the concept of equivalence different civilizations*. His concept precedes the most significant theoretical systems that consider world history as the coexistence and change of independent, self-sufficient and equivalent cultures (civilizations): the theory of cultural-historical types by N. Ya. Danilevsky, the “morphology of culture” by O. Spengler, the concept of local civilizations by A. Toynbee . More than half a century before Spengler, he predicted the “decline of the Western world.” Long before Spengler, he posed the problem of the “vitality” of cultures and used the concept of “fate”, characteristic of the German philosopher, in relation to cultures, civilizations, and peoples.
Critics of "mass society" in the West, and above all X. Orte-ha-i-Gasset, in the person of Gobineau, also had their predecessor.
Gobineau's racial theory itself found recognition after his death and mainly not in France, but in Germany, which was associated with the development of nationalism and racism in this country at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries. At the end of his life, Gobineau became close to one of the leaders of German nationalism, composer Richard Wagner; his works were greeted with approval by F. Nietzsche. In 1894, on the initiative of L. Schemann, a popularizer of the ideas of the French philosopher, the Gobineau Society was founded in Germany. In 1939-1940 The fifth edition of “Essay on the Inequality of Human Races” has been published in Germany. During the Third Reich, specially selected fragments from it were published in popular anthologies on race and even included in compulsory school textbooks.
True, Nazi ideologists gave a largely false interpretation of Gobineau’s concepts for their own propaganda purposes, just as they did with the legacy of Goethe, Schiller, and many German philosophers.
3 Gobineau criticizes Eurocentric assessments of other peoples: “Because the appearance of their civilizations does not resemble our own, we are often quick to conclude that either they are barbarians or that they are inferior to us in merit. There is nothing more superficial and, therefore, more suspicious than a conclusion drawn from such grounds” [ibid., 149]. Such judgments do not contradict his assertion regarding the superiority of the “white” race; after all, from his point of view, all civilizations, both European and non-European, were created primarily through her efforts.
fov. They tried not to notice that Gobineau considered the Germans the most mixed of European nations, attributing his discussions of the “Germans” to the population of modern Germany. His high assessment of Jews clearly did not fit into the anti-Semitic nonsense of Nazi ideologists. Gobineau's fatalism and pessimism excluded any practical application of racist postulates, for which he was criticized by one of the apostles of German National Socialism, X. Chamberlain. However, racial determinism and elitism were real contributions to the mythology of German fascism, and Gobineau as a thinker bears responsibility for this.
Paying tribute to the authority of science, Gobineau qualifies the genre in which “Essay” is written as “moral geology.” His work contains many references to scientists - representatives of various fields of specific knowledge. But in fact, the positivist-scientist shell in in this case hides a romantic-mythological interpretation world history. The Gobineau method lacks minimal scientific rigor. Interpretation historical facts, designed to substantiate his racist theory, is often a flight of unfettered fantasy. The theory as a whole is replete with many vicious circles, contradictions and tautological statements. Actually, Gobineau’s main statement is tautological: the mixing of races appears in his concept at the same time as sign degeneration of civilizations and how cause this degeneration; hence the meaninglessness of this statement. Scientific data does not in any way support the thesis that racial and ethnic mixtures are harmful, either biologically or culturally. On the contrary, there is a lot of scientific data indicating the beneficial nature of this type of mixture. Gobineau’s “prediction” regarding depopulation, depopulation as a result of mixing, was not confirmed.
In Gobineau's concept, race (and ethnic group understood as racial) is the true subject of socio-historical action. Contrary to his declared intention, he does not solve the problem of the “vitality” of civilizations, but the problem of the “vitality” of races; it is the latter that really worries him. But Gobineau was not a biologist or anthropologist to decide last problem. At the same time, he also found himself outside of social science, since he represented the history of societies in the form of a “history of blood.”
Gobineau Joseph Arthurdet (07/14/1816, Ville-Avre - 10/13/1882, Turin) - French. social philosopher, writer, amateur Orientalist and diplomat; in the 60-70s. Ambassador of France to Iran, Greece, Brazil, Sweden. One of the first prophets of imminent doom Western civilization. This is the main idea of his main work, “The Inequality of Human Races.”
Gobineau proposed a radical biological explanation of the historical process. The main factor of civilization is “purity of race,” which, however, can never be preserved for long. Hence the short-lived nature of the flourishing of civilization. “Ethnic mixtures” destroy the unity of lifestyle and lead to “degeneration of man,” and at the same time the collapse of the entire social structure.
Gobineau postulates an unchanging “hierarchy of races”: blacks are entirely sensual and incapable of rational self-control, the yellow race is imbued with utilitarianism and therefore heroic impulses and high achievements are unknown. The only "historical race" is white. She “originally held a monopoly on beauty and umisilu.” Wherever and whenever civilization arose (Gobineau believes that there were ten of them), “white blood” was sure to take part in its birth. The white race is heterogeneous within itself; it is represented by three variations: “Hamites”, “Semites” and “Japhetids”. The first two varieties turned out to be less resilient and quickly mixed with the black race; Gobineau extols the Isaphetids as “the family of Aryans,” to whom he associates all the best that is on Earth. This is a born "race of rulers", physically the strongest and most attractive, it is characterized by exceptional energy, fearlessness and creative genius.
Aware of their uniqueness, the Aryans, Gobineau believed, cared about preserving the purity of the breed, which resulted in a rigid hierarchy of social life (for example, the caste system of Ancient India). The incompatibility of the racial explanation of history with the numerous and varied facts did not bother Gobineau much.
Thus, in “History of the Persians” (1869) he declares the traditional version of the Greco-Persian wars a “monstrous lie,” since the “Aryans” of Darius and Xerxes could not be worse than the “Semitized Greeks.” The dramatic pentalogy “Renaissance” (1877) is imbued with the same motif of the inevitability of decadence due to the deterioration of the human race. Gobineau's historical arbitrariness reaches its climax in the book “The History of Ottar Jarl and His Descendants” (1879). This is a semi-fantastic genealogy of the Gobineau family, which he was pleased to trace back to the “Norwegian pirate” mentioned in the Norwegian chronicles under 843. With the posthumously published poem “Amadis,” Gobineau tried to revive the heroic knightly epic, perhaps under the influence of R. Wagner, with whom he became close in the last years of his life.
Already at its inception, Gobineau’s racial concept was convincingly criticized by an outstanding political thinker Tocqueville and a famous philosopher and Orientalist scientist E. Renan. Gobineau anticipated the concept in many ways Nietzsche. B20c. his ideas contributed to the formation and spread of the ideology of Nazism.
Works: 1) LaRenaissance. P., 1877.2) Essai sur I`inegalite des races humaines. P., 1884.
Joseph Arthur de (14.7.1816, near Paris, - 13.10.1882, Turin), French sociologist, writer and publicist, one of the founders of racist theory and the racial-anthropological school (See Racial-anthropological school) in sociology. In 1849–77 in the diplomatic service. In his main work “On the Inequality of Human Races” (1853-1855), he tried to substantiate the need for the existence of a ruling elite and put forward a reactionary theory according to which inequality associated with racial differences (white - Aryan, yellow and black races), and the resulting struggle of races are the driving force behind the development of nations. According to G., most capable of cultural development is the white race, especially its Germans. branch. In an effort to expand its influence, the white race mixes with other races, which, according to G., leads to a decrease in its abilities and culture. This leads to the loss of the dominant position by the higher races and the emergence of democracy, which G. considered the worst form of state.
G. is the author of ethnographic works on the East; he owns one of the first studies of Babism, as well as literary and literary-critical works, a number of which have been translated into Russian (“The Age of Renaissance,” 1913; “Kandahar Lovers,” 1923; “The Great Sorcerer” ", 1926).
Joseph Arthur Comte de GobineauComte de Gobineau in 1876
Biography
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau came from a noble family. In 1830 he began his studies at the Biel Gymnasium (Switzerland, canton of Bern), where he mastered the German language and became interested in Persian. In 1835 he came to Paris. He worked as an employee in the French gas lighting company, then in the postal department, while earning extra money as a journalist and writer. In 1843 he met Alexis de Tocqueville, with whom he developed friendly relations that lasted until the latter's death in 1859. In 1849, Tocqueville, who briefly held the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs, hired him as head of his chancellery. At the same time, he was the founder and editor of the monarchist magazine “Provincial Review” and published his poem “Amandina,” which for the first time outlined the foundations of his elitist racial theory. Since Tocqueville's resignation, Gobineau has been in the diplomatic service, serving as first secretary and then head of the diplomatic missions in Bern, Hanover, Frankfurt am Main, Tehran, Athens, Rio de Janeiro and Stockholm. However, he did not become an ambassador and was forced to resign prematurely.
Gobineau's activities were not limited to the sphere of diplomacy: he was a talented writer who spoke in a variety of genres: short stories, novels, poems, dramas. He wrote works on the history of the East and left a linguistic Treatise on Cuneiform. Gobineau's journalistic activities were also active. He was also interested in sculpture. His main work, the four-volume Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines (Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, 1853, 1855), was not successful during the author’s lifetime. His contemporaries hardly noticed his work.
In 1876, he met with the composer R. Wagner (father-in-law of H. S. Chamberlain), who spoke favorably of his ideas and contributed to their dissemination. So, in the early 1880s. Wagner stated that their vision of the past and the future was completely compatible, because Gobineau’s scientific works gave scientific explanation his own racial ideas. Despite the criticism, his works were generally greeted with approval by F. Nietzsche. Romain Rolland noted Gobineau’s “giftedness as a thinker and artist.”
His last published work was the tragedy "Amadis", partially published in 1876, and published in full in 1887, dedicated to the eschatological conflict of the "white" and "yellow" races.
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau died on October 13, 1882 in the city of Turin.
Ideas
Gobineau attributes the real existence of three “pure” racial types to the distant past. Thus, “pure” original races have long ceased to exist, and in the modern era there are racial types that have been mixed together countless times. Gobineau's concept of “race” emerges from narrow anthropological definitions, acquiring a symbolic meaning. Gobineau seeks to discover internal, “natural laws governing the social world” that have an unchanging character. These two laws, according to Gobineau, are the laws of repulsion and attraction between human races. These “laws” are concretized by the fatal phenomenon of mixing of separated races and their countless combinations. Mixing is a necessary source of the emergence and development of civilizations (with the obligatory participation of the “white” race), but it is also the cause of their degeneration in the future. The thesis about the harmful nature of racial mixing determines Gobineau's anti-colonialist position, since colonial conquests, in his opinion, contribute to mixing and, consequently, the degeneration of European civilization. In Gobineau's interpretation of the fate of civilizations, fatalism is closely related to pessimism. He states the degeneration of European civilization and prophesies its imminent end. Gobineau denies the existence of social progress and believes that European civilization is largely moving along the path of regression. Gobineau's fatalism and pessimism excluded the practical application of racist postulates, for which Huston Chamberlain criticized him. SlavsAccording to Gobineau, the Slavs, having once been a white Aryan people in ancient times, “went to the northeast of our continent and there entered into a destructive neighborhood with the Finns”; “The Slavic language, which has common generic characteristics of the Aryan languages, was subject to strong Finnish influence. And as for external signs, they also approached the Finnish type." Gobineau attributed passivity to the Slavs "as a result of the large proportion of yellow blood", and compared the Slavic and Semitic peoples:
FictionJoseph de Gobineau also carried out his views in works of fiction, emphatically sharply depicting the class struggle, while taking the side of the aristocracy. Being an Orientalist by passion, Gobineau conveys the “couleur locale” in his “Asian Novels,” his “Tiffen Abbey,” and “Renaissance.” Gobineau is a student of Stendhal and Mérimée. Gobineau and National SocialismFame and recognition came to Gobineau only after his death and at first not in his homeland, but in Germany. In 1894, the Gobineau Society was founded in Germany, the number of members of which reached 360 in 1914. The founder of this society, Ludwig Scheman, played a particularly active role in the spread of Gobinism in Germany, who published a number of Gobineau’s works and studies about him. In 1897-1900, he first published “Essay on the Inequality of Human Races” in German, and also wrote a two-volume biography of Gobineau (1913–1916). National Socialist theorists rated this work so highly that specially selected fragments from it were published in the 1930s in popular anthologies on race and even included in school textbooks. Thus, Gobineau’s ideas were useful in the ideology of the Third Reich and served to form Nazi racial policy, although he was not, like H. C. Chamberlain, elevated to the rank of “people's thinker.” Gobineau's theory in its Germanized version was known to some influential politicians and ideologists in Japan and became an integral part of the Japanese imperialist worldview. Gobineau's ideas spread to Japan, where they were introduced to them by the German-educated writer Mori Ogai, who noted that studying his theory was very useful to know more about the thinking of the Western enemy, and criticized Gobineau for excessive ethnocentrism and reducing human culture to the influence of heredity. In November 1903, he gave a lecture at Waseda University on Western views on the “Yellow Peril,” in which he stated, in part, “Whether we like it or not, we are doomed to confront the white race.” BibliographyNotes
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Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau was born in 1816. As a child he was introduced to ideas romanticism and political reaction. This aristocrat lived at a time when the influence of his class was finally fading. During the July Monarchy Louis Philippe Gobineau became a journalist. Like other intellectuals of the time, he was disgusted with the boring, mediocre life of the bourgeois monarchy. Gobineau sought to explain to himself and others two important facts:
1. Why is the French nobility declining?
2. Why is bourgeois life so boring, low, poor and becoming more mundane every day?
Gobineau became a critic of French liberalism. He wrote a book that was a response to Tocqueville's idea of the heaven-sent inevitability of political equality. Many authors of that time, like Comte, put forward progressive theories of historical development, but Gobineau adhered to the theory of regression.
Joseph Arthur de Gobineau
In 1853-1855, Gobineau published a four-volume work, Essay on the Inequality of Human Races. This philosophical and political treatise refuted the principles French Revolution and ideas of democracy. Gobineau considered race to be the key to understanding all of history. He believed that unless the racial factor was fully understood, the future of humanity would remain dark and meaningless.
By the very nature of the task that Gobineau set himself, his theory of history or philosophy of history was obliged to be pessimistic. He sought to show that the aristocracy was destined to fall through no fault of its own. He argued that bourgeois life was less satisfying than life under the old aristocratic regime. And since, despite all his romanticism, he remained a realist, Gobineau recognized that the aristocracy would never be able to regain its former position.
Gobineau considered racial differences, racial mixing and the degeneration arising from the latter to be the three main historical factors.
Following the example of earlier and contemporary anthropologists, Gobineau divided humanity into three races, each of which was associated with certain cultural and moral characteristics:
1. Black– a lower race, with limited intelligence and increased sensuality; has great energy, drive and will;
2. Yellow– stands above black; apathetic, prone to mediocrity in all respects; loving utilitarianism, respecting the law, valuing moderate freedom;
3. White– Aryans are thoughtful and energetic, with a keen intellect, a broad idea of utilitarianism, persistent, loving freedom, with a strong sense of honor, less sensual than other races.
Gobineau believed that all these moral and cultural characteristics are transmitted through blood. In his view, true civilization is possible only through racial mixing. He was not a strong supporter of racial purity, believing that each race had something to give to the others: for example, the energy and drive of the black race could be useful to the ruling white race. On the other hand, Gobineau was sure that civilization is always the result of the actions of the white race, that is, the blood of the white race should always prevail in any civilization. Moreover, the entire European aristocracy should be dominated by white, Aryan, and not Latin blood. Gobineau stated that representatives of two different races live in France: the Nordic aristocracy and the Frankish commoners. When the Nordic aristocracy ruled France, life was good and civilization was true. But those times are gone.
The reason for this was degeneration, inevitable due to racial mixing. As the white race had less sensuality, the dominance of Aryan blood dwindled, and in each successive generation there was less and less Aryan blood. Degeneration, according to Gobineau, meant that people had lost their former spiritual values due to the dilution of blood in the veins. Gobineau believed that races were unstable. They may have the same name, but nowadays they are different from what they used to be. Neither the environment nor social institutions cannot stop the rate of degeneration. Consequently, none of the liberal decisions, political or social problems is not suitable for solving the problem of racial degeneration. The fall of the aristocracy due to racial degeneration explains the mediocrity of bourgeois life, foreshadowing an even more mediocre future.
Gobineau's racial theory was hostile to two main pillars of 19th-century European philosophy: Christianity and liberal humanitarianism.
As a good Catholic, Gobineau did not claim that Christianity had become obsolete. But he was sure that it only affects future life and has no effect on present life. Christianity can make civilization less cruel, but it cannot stop degeneration and cannot raise the status of the race beyond that inherent in the blood.
The racial doctrine radically diverged from the liberal one, since it denied the influence of the environment and, more importantly, denied the moral basis of liberalism, which was the morally free individual. In racial philosophy, the free will of the individual turned out to be limited, because all people were declared a product of racial mixing and, therefore, products of their racial combination. Gobineau made all people helpless victims of their own birth. He put all of humanity in its own position - the position of a petty aristocrat in an era of dying aristocracy.
Gobineau's main spiritual opponent, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote to him on November 17, 1853, criticizing his theory:
Your doctrine is a kind of fatalism, predestination, if you like, but in character it is very different from the theories of St. Augustine, Jansenists and Calvinists... You constantly talk about how races are reborn or degenerate, lose or acquire through the influx of new blood social abilities that they did not previously possess... I must honestly admit that such predestination seems to me very close to the purest materialism. And rest assured that if the masses, whose common sense always leads them to follow the most hackneyed paths, accept your doctrines, they will lead them from races to individuals, from social abilities to potentialities of every kind. Whether we are talking about an element of fatality in the material order of things, or whether God himself wanted to create certain people in order to place on them a special burden of race, thereby depriving them of the capacity for certain feelings, certain thoughts, certain habits, certain qualities - all this has no relation to my concern with the practical consequences of such philosophical doctrines. The consequence of both theories will be colossal restrictions, if not a complete ban, on human freedom. I confess that after reading your book, I, as before, remained a strong opponent of your doctrines. I am convinced that they are certainly false. I know they are probably very malicious. Yes, of course, among the different families that compose the human race, there are certain tendencies, certain useful abilities, arising from a thousand different causes. But the fact that all these inclinations and abilities should be irresistible has not only never been proven, but no one will ever be able to prove it, since in order to do this, you need to know not only the past, but also the future.
Gobineau failed to achieve popularity during his lifetime, but his books were and continue to be read in intellectual circles throughout Europe. The "Essay on the Inequality of Human Races" was frequently discussed in anthropological journals. His ideas had a strong influence on intellectuals after 1870, when French conservatives tried to explain to themselves the defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, the outbreak of violence in the days Paris Commune and the triumph of spiritual mediocrity in the era Third Republic. In the second half of the 19th century, racial thinking played a much more important role in French intellectual life than in Germany. The influence of Gobineau's theories became even stronger in the first quarter of the 20th century.
The idea that occupied Gobineau most of all was the idea degeneration. In 1857, Benedict Augustin Morel defined this concept as follows: “Degeneration is a departure from the normal human type, it is inherited and gradually leads to destruction.” The idea quickly spread throughout the European medical community and the social sciences. It is discussed in more detail in the book. Max Nordau"Degeneration" (1892-1893). By this time, degeneration had come to be associated not with the loss of aristocratic values and qualities, but with threats to middle-class values and respectability in the face of the onslaught of the proletariat. This was an important ideological shift. Degenerates now began to be called those whose appearance and lifestyle contrasted sharply with the lifestyle of white, educated, clean, healthy and respectable Europeans.
After Gobineau, European racial philosophy experienced another rise at the end of the century thanks to Huston Stuart Chamberlain, the son-in-law of the great composer Richard Wagner.
