Les origines de la France contemporaine

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The emergence of modern France (original title: Les origines de la France contemporaine ) is a historical work of the historian and philosopher Hippolyte Taine .

Taine spent the last years of his life working on this work, but it remained unfinished. Methodically, the work is less committed to classical historicism, the structural-historical representation includes social, economic and cultural-historical facts. The French original edition was published in 1875 by the Librairie Hachette et Compagnie . The work was first published in German from 1877 to 1893 in a six-volume translation by Leopold Katscher . A selection of this work was published in 1954; In January 2019 the complete edition was reprinted.

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With this writing he tried to find the causes of the extreme centralization of political power, which he held responsible for the political instability of modern France. In contrast to other representations of the French Revolution , such as something by Adolphe Thiers , Jules Michelet or Alphonse Aulard , his work radically questioned the meaning of the revolution. He understands the revolution as a mass psychosis and inhuman brutalization. The extreme politicization of public space provokes excess. The spiral of hysterics catapults the most radical group into power, the Jacobins . Taine sees the revolution as the "conquest of France by the Jacobins", who act with the best of faith and the least scruples. The result is that “private and public, local and parliamentary freedoms have been abolished; that the government is arbitrary and absolute ”,“ in short, that there are no more human rights ”.

The presentation begins with the Ancien Régime, unfolds the middle course of the revolution, the last volumes are devoted to Napoleon and his new state building. In the third part he recognizes the school sector as a state monopoly, documents the suppression of the press and comments on the state of science. The regulated history in its legitimizing function is of interest to Taine. History, according to Bonaparte, should not be left to scholars; it must be directed, made straight. Taine explains: "Above all, it is important to make sure of the spirit in which history is to be written." From his analysis Taine draws future assumptions and prophesied "mass murder and bankruptcy [...] the perversion of productive discoveries and the perfection of destructive exploitations".

Voices about the work

Ernst Cassirer wrote about the work:

“That the strongest impulses for the French Revolution were intellectual, that from its beginnings it was under the rule of a certain ideology and that this ideology had a decisive influence on all the individual steps it takes in its further development: this is clear everywhere and unmistakably evident. It is above all to Hippolyte Taine's merit that in his great work on the emergence of modern France he traces this connection from all angles and that he portrayed it with historical mastery. For Taine, the entire French Revolution is nothing but the ripe fruit of the classical spirit of French philosophy: that 'esprit classique' as embodied in the works of Montesquieu and Voltaire , Rousseau and Condorcet , Diderot and Holbach . "

Wilhelm Dilthey judged:

“It is in the nature of things that parties represent, or rather distort, the great events of history from their point of view. The portrayal of the French Revolution suffered much more from the sense of the theatrical and emotional that lies in these events and is particularly strongly felt by the Romansh peoples. Parties and persons were taken for what they presented themselves as on this great tragic stage, and the mask under which the radical party as well as the Girondins and the royal party largely hid its essence was accepted.
After Tocqueville's preparatory work , a German researcher deserves the credit for having first given a more truthful account. Sybel returned the theatrical adornment of the previous representations to its true value and showed us the real conditions out of which the French Revolution arose; what the truth and the reality of the tremendous upheavals in the interior of the congregations ruling France were; where was the real content of those fights that began on the platform and ended on the scaffold; finally what factual conditions the upheaval, all the goings-on in those raging assemblies, created for the moment and prepared for the present.
The results of Taine's work contain an even harsher judgment about the immense drama of the French Revolution and the people who acted in it. Such judgment in a Republican like Taine springs from a sense of truth of rare purity and an inquiring mind of rare depth. Taine is without question the most outstanding writer in contemporary France. At the same time he has at his disposal an extraordinary mastery of the immense material of the files, a philosophical spirit which envisages a kind of psychology of the revolution, and the most brilliant presentation. A philosopher sees history here, and a brilliant writer of the first order portrays it. "

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Collected Works. Hamburger Edition Vol. 17, Essays and Small Writings 1927–1931, p. 283
  2. ↑ Wilhelm Dilthey: Collected Writings Volume XVII, On the Spiritual History of the 19th Century, Göttingen, 2nd ed., P. 396

German editions

  • The birth of modern France. Translated from the French by Leopold Katscher , six volumes published from 1877 to 1893.
  • The birth of modern France. Selection in one volume, Berlin 1954, Verlag GB Fischer
  • Hans Eberhard Friedrich , Ed .: Hippolyte Taine. The birth of modern France. Verlag Johannes G. Hoof in Warendorf, 2005 [selection, reprint of the 1954 edition]
  • The birth of modern France. Complete edition in six volumes, Berlin 2019, JG Hoof Verlag, ISBN 978-3-936345-98-8