Hippolyte Taine
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (born April 21, 1828 in Vouziers , † March 5, 1893 in Paris ) was a French philosopher , historian and critic . He taught at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris , the military school Saint-Cyr and in Oxford and worked for the two most important scientific journals in France at the time, the Revue des Deux Mondes and the Journal des Débats . He was a member of the Académie française (1878).
Life
Taine came from a family of clothiers from the Ardennes and was accepted into the École normal supérieure in 1848 after excellent school performance , where he met Francisque Sarcey and Edmond About . His behavior - he was considered difficult - led to the failure of the desired state examination in philosophy (1851). Despite a literary training, he accepted the ideas of positivism . First teacher at the Collège von Nevers (1851-1852), then in Poitiers , he fell into disfavor and was transferred to Besançon (1852), while the subjects he chose in the field of psychology for the doctoral dissertation were rejected, so that he finally decided was released from school and returned to Paris. He now wrote numerous articles on philosophical, literary and historical topics for renowned scientific reviews and in 1857 became a permanent contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes .
In 1853 he finally received his doctorate with an Essai sur les fables de La Fontaine and the Latin text De personis platonicis . He traveled to the Pyrenees (1854), England (including 1858), Belgium, Germany and Italy and from then on devoted himself entirely to studying. In 1854 he published Voyage aux Pyrenées (Journey to the Pyrenees) and in 1863 his Histoire de la littérature anglaise (History of English Literature, in 5 volumes), the success of which led to a position at the École de Saint-Cyr (1863). From 1866 he taught art history at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris and in 1871 in Oxford . Since 1881 he was a foreign member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . Taine spent most of the last years of his life in Menthon-Saint-Bernard on Lake Annecy . He died in 1893 at the age of 64 and, according to his wishes, was given a Protestant burial in Menthon-Saint-Bernard.
The naturalists followed Hippolyte Taine's theories in their view. He understood humans as legally determined, as determined by heredity, milieu and historical situation. In Germany it was Friedrich Nietzsche who was the first to recognize Taine's importance in terms of culture and philosophy. Taine's study of Napoleon I in particular attracted great attention in intellectual circles in Germany. Taine worked out that it is primarily the person of action who, through innate and acquired characteristics, who emerges from the masses, initiates or significantly influences historical processes. Taine's prime example of this historical-philosophical thesis is the work of Napoleon I, whose outstanding military and state-political achievements were the foundation of modern Europe.
Works
- 1853 De personis Platonicis. Essai sur les fables de La Fontaine
- 1854 Essai sur Tite-Live
- 1855 Voyage aux eaux des Pyrénées
- 1856 Les philosophes français du XIXe siècle
- 1857 Essais de critique et d'histoire
- 1860 La Fontaine et ses fables
- 1864 Histoire de la littérature anglaise, 4 vol. L'idéalisme anglais, étude sur Carlyle. Le positivisme anglais, étude sur Stuart Mill
- 1865 Les écrivains anglais contemporains. Nouveaux essais de critique et d'histoire. * Philosophy de l'art
- 1866 Philosophy de l'art en Italie. Voyage en Italie, 2 vol.
- 1867 Notes sur Paris. L'idéal dans l'art
- 1868 Philosophy de l'art dans les Pays-Bas
- 1869 Philosophy de l'art en Grèce
- 1870 De l'intelligence, 2 vol.
- 1871 You suffrage universel et de la manière de voter. Un séjour en France de 1792 à 1795. Notes sur l'Angleterre
- 1875–1893 Les origines de la France contemporaine (t. I: L'ancien régime; II à IV: La Révolution; V et VI: Le Régime moderne)
- 1894 Derniers essais de critique et d'histoire
- 1897 Carnets de voyage: Notes sur la province 1863-1865
literature
- Alphonse Aulard : Taine, historien de la Révolution française. Colin, Paris 1901.
- Stefan Zweig : The philosophy of Hippolyt Taine , Phil. Diss. University of Vienna 1904.
- Marie Guthmüller: Hippolyte Taine as the initiator of the “critique scientifique” and the “psychologie expérimentale”. In: Marie Guthmüller, Wolfgang Klein (Ed.): Aesthetics from below. Empirical and aesthetic knowledge. Francke, Tübingen 2006, ISBN 3-7720-8121-5 , pp. 169-192.
- Dirk Hoeges : Literature and Evolution: Studies on French literary criticism in the 19th century. Taine - Brunetière - Hennequin - Guyau. Winter, Heidelberg 1980, ISBN 3-533-02857-7 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Hippolyte Taine in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Hippolyte Taine in the German Digital Library
- Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Taine, Hippolyte |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Taine, Hippolyte Adolphe (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French historian and critic |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 21, 1828 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Vouziers , Ardennes |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 5, 1893 |
| Place of death | Paris |