Gustave Le Bon

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Gustave Le Bon in the fin de siècle

Gustave Le Bon (born May 7, 1841 in Nogent-le-Rotrou , † December 13, 1931 in Paris ) was a French medic , anthropologist , psychologist , sociologist and inventor . He is considered one of the founders of mass psychology , a branch of social psychology . His best known work is the book Psychology of the Masses published in 1895 . Le Bon's effect on posterity, scientifically on Sigmund Freud and Max Weber , politically in particular on National Socialism and its protagonists, was great.

Life

Charles-Marie Gustave Le Bon was born on May 7, 1841 in Nogent-le-Rotrou, Center-Val de Loire. The family was of Breton origin, his father was a provincial official in the French government.

In 1848 Le Bon experienced the crisis of the February Revolution and the Commune of 1871, both events apparently having a central effect on his work. After studying medicine, he became a military doctor in 1870 and, from 1881, undertook ethnographic studies on various trips to North Africa and India, among others, during which he published several relevant works between 1881 and 1891, in which he dealt with anthropology, archeology and ethnology and studies Turned on matter and energy, developing his own recording devices. This was followed by further studies on peoples, groups and masses between 1894 and 1903 , including his major work Psychology of the Masses , which made him an influential sociologist of his time. In old age, Le Bon began to deal intensively with cataloging humanity by establishing hierarchies for races (which, somewhat unclearly, he understood not strictly biological, but as culturally inherited complexes), genders, intelligence and political currents.

Youth and Studies

In 1860 he began studying medicine at the University of Paris. He completed his practical year at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris and received his doctorate in 1866. From then on, he described himself as a doctor, although he was not active as a general practitioner. During his student days, Le Bon wrote articles on a range of medical topics. His first book, La mort apparente et inhumations prématurées (1866) dealt with the definition of death and anticipated the legal debates of the 20th century about it.

Life in paris

After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, he enlisted in the French army, where he worked as a hospital doctor. During the war, Le Bon organized a department of military ambulances. In this capacity he observed the behavior of soldiers in conditions of total defeat and wrote about his reflections on military discipline, leadership and the behavior of people in a state of stress and suffering. After the war, Le Bon was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor . He was also a witness to the Paris Commune of 1871, which greatly influenced his view of the world. The then thirty-year-old Le Bon saw Parisian revolutionaries burn down the Palais des Tuileries, the Louvre library, the Hôtel de Ville, the Gobelins Manufactory, the Palace of Justice and other irreplaceable works of art.

to travel

In the 1870s, Le Bon became interested in anthropology and toured Europe, Asia and North Africa. Influenced by Charles Darwin , Herbert Spencer, and Ernst Haeckel , Le Bon supported biological determinism and a hierarchical view of races and genders.

In 1884 he traveled through Asia on behalf of the French government to report on the civilizations there. The trips were reflected in a number of books. The first book, entitled La Civilization des Arabes , appeared in 1884. In it, Le Bon praised the Arabs for their contribution to civilization, but criticized Islam as a cause of stagnation. He then traveled to Nepal as the first Frenchman and in 1886 published the book Voyage au Népal about it .

He next published Les Civilizations de l'Inde (1887), in which he praised Indian architecture, art and religion, but argued that Indians were comparatively inferior to Europeans in terms of scientific progress, which made British rule easier. In 1889 he published Les Premières Civilizations de l'Orient and gave an overview of the Mesopotamian , Indian, Chinese and Egyptian civilizations. In the same year he gave a speech at the International Colonial Congress in which he criticized the attempts at cultural assimilation through colonial policy: "Leave the locals to their customs, their institutions and their laws." Le Bon published the last book on the subject of his travels in 1893, entitled Les Monuments de l'Inde , in which he again expressed his admiration for the architectural achievements of the Indians.

Catalog of works in German translation

Le Bon's work also includes numerous scientific works.
  • The regional nature park of Brenne. 1860.
  • New method for simplified chemical soil analysis. 1862.
  • Apparent death and premature burial. 1866.
  • Cholera. 1867.
  • Practical treatment of diseases of the urinary organs. 1869.
  • Practical hygiene for soldiers and wounded. 1870.
  • Physiology of the origin of humans and primates. 1870.
  • Histological and anatomical findings through light projections. 1872.
  • The life. Treatise on Human Physiology. 1874.
  • The coordinate compass (new cephalometer). 1878.
  • The atmospheric clock. 1878.
  • Anatomical research on the laws of variation in skull volume. 1879.
  • A new chronoscope for diagnosis. 1879.
  • The tobacco smoke. 1880.
  • Man and societies. 1881.
  • Trip to the Tatras. 1881.
  • The Tierra del Fuego. 1883.
  • The culture of the Arabs. 1884.
  • Trip to Nepal. 1886.
  • The culture of the Indians. 1887.
  • Beginnings of photography. 1888.
  • The role of the Jews in civilization. 1888.
  • The early cultures of the Orient. 1889.
  • The art monuments of India. 1891.
  • The current art of riding and its principles. 1892.
  • The basic psychological laws of human development. 1894.
  • Psychology of the masses . Paris 1895.
  • Psychology of socialism . 1898.
  • Psychology of education. 1902.
  • Evolution of matter. 1905.
  • Development of forces. 1907.
  • Origin and disappearance of matter. 1907.
  • Psychology of politics. 1910.
  • Opinion and conviction. 1911.
  • The French Revolution and the Psychology of Revolutions. 1912.
  • Aphorisms of the Present. 1913.
  • The life of truths. 1914.
  • Psychological Lessons of the European War. 1915.
  • First consequences of the First World War. 1917.
  • Yesterday and tomorrow. Short thoughts. 1918.
  • New Age Psychology . 1920.
  • The world out of balance. 1923.
  • The uncertainties of the present. 1924.
  • The present development of the world: deceptions and facts. 1927.
  • Scientific foundations of a philosophy of history. 1931.
Le Bons tomb in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris

literature

  • Benoit Marpeau: Gustave Le Bon: parcours d'un intellectuel. 1841-1931. CNRS Ed., Paris 2000.
  • Serge Moscovici : The Age of the Masses: A Historical Treatise on Mass Psychology. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986.
  • Catherine Rouvier: Les idées politiques de Gustave Le Bon. Presses Univ. de France, Paris 1986.
  • RA Nye: An Intellectual Portrait of Gustave Le Bon. A Study of the Development and Impact of a Social Scientist in his Historical Setting. Dissertation . University of Wisconsin, 1969.
  • Wilhelm Schwalenberg: Gustave le Bon and his ″ Psychologie des foules ″, a contribution to the critique of mass psychology. Dissertation. Bonn 1919.

See also

Web links

Commons : Gustave Le Bon  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Gustave Le Bon  - Sources and full texts (French)
Wikisource: Gustave Le Bon  - Sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Gustave Le Bon  - Quotes

Remarks

  1. ^ German by Peter Aschner: The medieval world of the Arabs. FA Herbig, Munich / Berlin 1974.
  2. ^ German by Helmuth Leonhardt: The world of ancient India. Munich / Berlin 1974.
  3. ↑ German Arthur Seiffhart: The fundamental psychological law of nations development. Leipzig 1922.
  4. ^ Digitized version of the 2nd edition of the German translation by Rudolf Eisler ( Kröner , Leipzig 1912)
  5. ↑ Stuttgart 1961 with an introduction by Helmut Dingeldey.
  6. ↑ First published in German in Hamburg 2019.
  7. ↑ First published in German by Steyrermühl-Verlag , Vienna 1930.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Michael Adas: Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance . Cornell University Press, 1990. p. 195.
  2. ↑ Alice Widener: Gustave Le Bon, the Man and His Works . Liberty Press, 1979.
  3. ↑ H. Lueck: Le Bon, Gustave. In: MA Wirtz (ed.): Dorsch - Lexicon of Psychology (18th edition, p. 994). Hogrefe Verlag, Bern 2014.
  4. ↑ Alice Widener (1979), p. 27 f.
  5. ↑ Frederick Quinn: The Sum of All Heresies: The Image of Islam in Western Thought . Oxford University Press, 2007. p. 104.
  6. ^ Raymond F. Betts: Assimilation and Association in French Colonial Theory, 1890-1914 . University of Nebraska Press, 1960. p. 68.
personal data
SURNAME Le Bon, Gustave
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French social psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 7, 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Nogent-le-Rotrou
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1931
Place of death Paris