Ernest Renan | |
|---|---|
 Ernest Renanc. 1870s | |
| Born | Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-02-28)28 February 1823 Tréguier, Kingdom of France |
| Died | 2 October 1892(1892-10-02) (aged 69) Paris, French Third Republic |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 19th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy |
| Main interests | History of religion,philosophy of religion,political philosophy |
| Notable works | Life of Jesus (1863) What Is a Nation? (1882) |
| Notable ideas | Civic nationalism[1] |
| Signature | |
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Joseph Ernest Renan (/rəˈnɑːn/;[2]French:[ʒozɛfɛʁnɛstʁənɑ̃]; 27 February 1823 – 2 October 1892)[3] was a FrenchOrientalist andSemitic scholar, writing onSemitic languages andcivilizations,historian of religion,philologist,philosopher,biblical scholar, andcritic.[4] He wrote works on theorigins ofearly Christianity,[4] and espoused popular political theories especially concerningnationalism,national identity, and thesuperiority of White people over other human races.[5] Renan is among the first scholars to advance the debunked[6][better source needed]Khazar theory, which held thatAshkenazi Jews were descendants of theKhazars,[7] Turkic peoples who hadadopted the Jewish religion[8] and allegedly migrated to central and eastern Europe following the collapse of theirkhanate.[7] On this basis he alleged that the Jews were "an incomplete race."
He was born atTréguier inBrittany to a family of fishermen.[9] His grandfather, having made a small fortune with his fishingsmack, bought a house at Tréguier and settled there, and his father, captain of a smallcutter and an ardentrepublican, married the daughter of a Royalist tradesman from the neighbouring town ofLannion. All his life, Renan was aware of the conflict between his father's and his mother's political beliefs. He was five years old when his father died, and his sister,Henriette, twelve years his senior, became the moral head of the household. Having in vain attempted to keep a school for girls at Tréguier, she departed and went toParis as a teacher in a young ladies' boarding-school.[10]
Ernest was educated in the ecclesiastical seminary of his native town.[11][10] His school reports describe him as "docile, patient, diligent, painstaking, thorough". While the priests taught him mathematics and Latin, his mother completed his education. Renan's mother was halfBreton. Her paternal ancestors came fromBordeaux, and Renan used to say that in his own nature, theGascon and the Breton were constantly at odds.[12][10]
During the summer of 1838, Renan won all the prizes at the college of Tréguier. His sister told the doctor of the school in Paris where she taught about her brother, and he informedF. A. P. Dupanloup, who was involved in organizing the ecclesiastical college ofSaint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, a school in which the young Catholic nobility and the most talented pupils of the Catholic seminaries were to be educated together, with the idea of creating friendships between the aristocracy and the priesthood. Dupanloup sent for Renan, who was then fifteen years old and had never been outsideBrittany. "I learned with stupor that knowledge was not a privilege of the Church ... I awoke to the meaning of the words talent, fame, celebrity." Religion seemed to him wholly different in Tréguier and in Paris.[10] He came to view Abbé Dupanloup as a father figure.[13]
In 1840, Renan left St Nicholas to study philosophy at theseminary of Issy-les-Moulineaux. He entered with a passion for Catholicscholasticism. Among the philosophers,Thomas Reid andNicolas Malebranche first attracted him, and, then he turned toG. W. F. Hegel,Immanuel Kant andJ. G. Herder.[13] Renan began to see a contradiction between themetaphysics which he studied and the faith he professed, but an appetite for verifiable truths restrained his scepticism. "Philosophy excites and only half satisfies the appetite for truth; I am eager for mathematics", he wrote to Henriette. Henriette had accepted in the family of CountZamoyski an engagement more lucrative than her former job. She exercised the strongest influence over her brother.[10]
It was not mathematics butphilology which was to settle Renan's gathering doubts. His course completed at Issy, in 1844 he entered the college of St Sulpice in order to take his degree in philology prior to entering the church, and, here, he began the study of Hebrew. He realized that the second part of theBook of Isaiah differs from the first not only in style but in date, that the grammar and the history of thePentateuch are later than the time ofMoses, and that theBook of Daniel is clearly written centuries after the time in which it is set. At night he read the new novels ofVictor Hugo; by day, he studied Hebrew and Syriac underArthur-Marie Le Hir.[13] In October 1845, Renan left St Sulpice for Stanislas, a lay college of theOratorians. Still feeling too much under the domination of the church, he reluctantly ended the last of his associations with religious life and entered M. Crouzet's school for boys as a teacher.[10]
Renan, educated by priests, was to accept the scientific ideal with an extraordinary expansion of all his faculties. He became ravished by the splendor of the cosmos. At the end of his life, he wrote ofAmiel, "The man who has time to keep a private diary has never understood the immensity of the universe." The certitudes of physical and natural science were revealed to Renan in 1846 by the chemistMarcellin Berthelot, then a young man of eighteen, his pupil at M. Crouzet's school. To the day of Renan's death, their friendship continued. Renan was occupied as usher only during evenings. During the daytime, he continued his researches inSemitic philology. In 1847, he obtained theVolney prize, one of the principal distinctions awarded by theAcademy of Inscriptions, for the manuscript of his "General History of Semitic Languages." In 1847, he took his degree asAgrégé de Philosophie – that is to say, fellow of the university – and was offered a job as master in thelycéeVendôme.[10]
In 1856, Renan married in Paris Cornélie Scheffer, daughter ofHendrik Scheffer and niece ofAry Scheffer, both French painters of Dutch descent. They had two children,Ary Renan, born in 1858, who became a painter, and Noémi, born in 1862, who eventually married philologistYannis Psycharis. In 1863, theAmerican Philosophical Society elected him an international Member.[14]
Within his lifetime, Renan was best known as the author of the enormously popularLife of Jesus (Vie de Jésus, 1863).[15][16] Renan attributed the idea of the book to his sister, Henriette, with whom he was traveling inOttoman Syria and Palestine when, struck with a fever, she died suddenly. With only aNew Testament and copy ofJosephus as references, he began writing.[17] The book was first translated into English in the year of its publication byCharles E. Wilbour and has remained in print for the past 145 years.[18] Renan'sLife of Jesus was lavished with ironic praise and criticism byAlbert Schweitzer in his bookThe Quest of the Historical Jesus.[19]
Renan argued Jesus was able to purify himself of "Jewish traits" and that he became anAryan. HisLife of Jesus promoted racial ideas and infused race into theology and the person of Jesus; he depicted Jesus as aGalilean who was transformed from a Jew into a Christian, and that Christianity emerged purified of any Jewish influences.[20] The book was based largely on the Gospel of John, and was a scholarly work.[20] It depicted Jesus as a man but not God, and rejected the miracles of the Gospel.[20] Renan believed by humanizing Jesus he was restoring to him a greater dignity.[21] The book's controversial assertions that thelife of Jesus should be written like the life of any historic person, and that the Bible could and should be subject to the same critical scrutiny as other historical documents caused controversy[22] and enraged many Christians[23][24][25][26] and Jews because of its depiction of Judaism as foolish and absurdly illogical and for its insistence that Jesus and Christianity were superior.[20]
American historianGeorge Mosse, inToward the Final Solution. A History of European Racism (pp 88, 129–130) argues that according to Renan, the intolerance would be a Jewish and not a Christian characteristic, but biblical Judaism would have lost its importance even among the Jews themselves as civilization progressed. That is why modern Jews are no longer disadvantaged by their past and are able to make important contributions to modern progress.[27]
In his book onSt. Paul, as in theApostles, he shows his concern with the larger social life, his sense of fraternity, and a revival of the democratic sentiment which had inspiredL'Avenir de la Science. In 1869, he presented himself as the candidate of the liberal opposition at the parliamentary election forMeaux. While his temper had become less aristocratic, his liberalism had grown more tolerant. On the eve of its dissolution, Renan was half prepared to accept the Empire, and, had he been elected to the Chamber of Deputies, he would have joined the group ofl'Empire liberal, but he was not elected. A year later, war was declared with Germany; the Empire was abolished, andNapoleon III became an exile. TheFranco-Prussian War was a turning-point in Renan's history. Germany had always been to him the asylum of thought and disinterested science. Now, he saw the land of his ideal destroy and ruin the land of his birth; he beheld the German no longer as a priest, but as an invader.[10]
InLa Réforme Intellectuelle et Morale (1871), Renan tried to safeguard France's future. Yet, he was still influenced by Germany. The ideal and the discipline which he proposed to his defeated country were those of her conqueror—a feudal society, a monarchical government, an elite which the rest of the nation exists merely to support and nourish; an ideal of honor and duty imposed by a chosen few on the recalcitrant and subject multitude. The errors attributed to theCommune confirmed Renan in this reaction. At the same time, the irony always perceptible in his work grows more bitter. HisDialogues Philosophiques, written in 1871, hisEcclesiastes (1882) and hisAntichrist (1876) (the fourth volume of theOrigins of Christianity, dealing with the reign ofNero) are incomparable in their literary genius, but they are examples of a disenchanted and sceptical temper. He had vainly tried to make his country obey his precepts. The progress of events showed him, on the contrary, a France which, every day, left a little stronger, and he roused himself from his disbelieving, disillusioned mood and observed with interest the struggle for justice and liberty of a democratic society. The fifth and sixth volumes of theOrigins of Christianity (the Christian Church andMarcus Aurelius) show him reconciled with democracy, confident in the gradual ascent of man, aware that the greatest catastrophes do not really interrupt the sure if imperceptible progress of the world and reconciled, also, if not with the truths, at least with the moral beauties of Catholicism and with the remembrance of his pious youth.[10]
Renan's definition of anation has been extremely influential. This was given in his 1882 discourseQu'est-ce qu'une nation? ("What is a Nation?"). Whereas German writers likeFichte had defined the nation byobjective criteria such as arace or anethnic group "sharing common characteristics" (language, etc.), Renan defined it by the desire of a people to live together, which he summarized by a famous phrase, "having done great things together and wishing to do more".[a] Writing in the midst of the dispute concerning theAlsace-Lorraine region, he declared that the existence of a nation was based on a "dailyplebiscite." Some authors criticize that definition, based on a "daily plebiscite", because of the ambiguity of the concept. They argue that this definition is an idealization and it should be interpreted within the German tradition and not in opposition to it. They say that the arguments used by Renan at the conference What is a Nation? are not consistent with his thinking.[28]
Karl Deutsch (in "Nationalism and its alternatives") wrote "'A Nation,' so goes a rueful European saying, 'is a group of persons united by a common error about their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbors.'"[29] This phrase is frequently, but mistakenly, attributed to Renan himself. He did indeed write that if "the essential element of a nation is that all its individuals must have many things in common", they "must also have forgotten many things. Every French citizen must have forgotten thenight of St. Bartholomew and themassacres in the 13th century in the South."
Renan believed "Nations are not eternal. They had a beginning and they will have an end. And they will probably be replaced by a European confederation".[30]
Renan's work has especially influenced 20th-century theorist of nationalismBenedict Anderson.
Shifting away from his pessimism regarding liberalism's prospects during the 1870s while still believing in the necessity of an intellectual elite to influence democratic society for the good, Renan rallied to support theFrench Third Republic, humorously describing himself as alégitimiste, that is, a person who needs "about ten years to accustom myself to regarding any government as legitimate," and adding "I, who am not a republicana priori, who am a simple Liberal quite willing to adjust myself to a constitutional monarchy, would be more loyal to the Republic than newly converted republicans."[31] The progress of the sciences under the Republic and the latitude given to the freedom of thought that Renan cherished above all had allayed many of his previous fears, and he opposed the deterministic and fatalist theories of philosophers likeHippolyte Taine.[32]
As he got older, he contemplated his childhood. He was nearly sixty when, in 1883, he published the autobiographicalSouvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse which, after theLife of Jesus, is the work by which he is chiefly known.[10]
They showed the blasé modern reader that a world no less poetic, no less primitive than that of theOrigins of Christianity still existed within living memory on the northwestern coast of France. It has theCeltic magic of ancient romance and the simplicity, the naturalness, and the veracity which the 19th century prized so highly. But hisEcclesiastes, published a few months earlier, hisDrames Philosophiques, collected in 1888, give a more adequate image of his fastidious critical, disenchanted, yet optimistic spirit. They show the attitude towards uncultured Socialism of a philosopher liberal by conviction, by temperament an aristocrat. We learn in them howCaliban (democracy), the mindless brute, educated to his own responsibility, makes after all an adequate ruler; howProspero (the aristocratic principle or the mind) accepts his dethronement for the sake of greater liberty in the intellectual world, since Caliban proves an effective policeman and leaves his superiors a free hand in the laboratory; howAriel (the religious principle) acquires a firmer hold on life and no longer gives up the ghost at the faintest hint of change. Indeed, Ariel flourishes in the service of Prospero under the external government of the many-headed brute. Religion and knowledge are as imperishable as the world they dignify. Thus, out of the depths rises unvanquished the essentialidealism of Renan.[10]
Renan was prolific. At sixty years of age, having finished theOrigins of Christianity, he began hisHistory ofIsrael, based on a lifelong study of theOld Testament and on theCorpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, published by theAcadémie des Inscriptions under Renan's direction from the year 1881 till the end of his life. The first volume of theHistory of Israel appeared in 1887; the third, in 1891; the last two posthumously. As a history of facts and theories, the book has many faults; as an essay on the evolution of the religious idea, it is (despite some passages of frivolity, irony, or incoherence) of extraordinary importance; as a reflection of the mind of Renan, it is the most lifelike of images. In a volume of collected essays,Feuilles Détachées, published also in 1891, we find the same mental attitude, an affirmation of the necessity ofpiety independent ofdogma. During his last years, he received many honors, and was made an administrator of theCollège de France and grand officer of theLegion of Honor. Two volumes of theHistory of Israel, his correspondence with his sister Henriette, hisLetters to M. Berthelot, and theHistory of the Religious Policy ofPhilippe-le-Bel, which he wrote in the years immediately before his marriage, all appeared during the last eight years of the 19th century.[10]
Renan died after a few days' illness in 1892 in Paris,[10] and was buried in theCimetière de Montmartre in theMontmartre Quarter.
Hugely influential in his lifetime, Renan was eulogised after his death as the embodiment of the progressive spirit in western culture.Anatole France wrote that Renan was the incarnation of modernity. Renan's works were read and appreciated by many of the leading literary figures of the time, includingJames Joyce,Marcel Proust,Matthew Arnold,Edith Wharton, andCharles Augustin Sainte-Beuve.[33][34] Renan’s interpretations of history become the subject of frequentpolemical sniping inJacob Burckhardt’s lectures atBasel University,[35] also receiving sustained and acid criticism from his (posthumously better-known) colleague and faculty member at Basel inNietzsche’s later works where Renan appears as a go-to exemplar ofressentiment.[36][37] One of his greatest admirers wasManuel González Prada inPeru who took theLife of Jesus as a basis for his anticlericalism. In his 1932 document "The Doctrine of Fascism", Italian dictatorBenito Mussolini also applauded perceived "prefascist intuitions" in a section of Renan's "Meditations" that argued against democracy and individual rights as "chimerical" and intrinsically opposed to "nature's plans".[38]
In 1903 a major controversy accompanied the installation of a monument in Tréguier designed byJean Boucher. Placed in the local cathedral square, it was interpreted as a challenge to Catholicism, and led to widespread protests, especially because the site was normally used for the temporary pulpit erected at the traditional Catholic festival of thePardon of St Yves. It also included the Greek goddessAthena raising her arm to crown Renan gesturing in apparent challenge towards the cathedral.[39][40] The local clergy organised a protestcalvary sculpture designed byYves Hernot as "a symbol of the triumphantultramontaine church."
Renan believed that racial characteristics were instinctual anddeterministic.[41][42] Renan believed that theSemitic race was inferior to theAryan race.[43] Renan claimed that the Semitic mind was limited by dogmatism and lacked a cosmopolitan conception of civilisation.[44] For Renan, Semites were "an incomplete race."[45] Some authors argue that Renan developed his antisemitism fromVoltaire's anti-Judaism.[46]Hannah Arendt wrote that Renan was probably the first to characterize the Semitic and Aryan races as being in opposition to each other in an essential division of humankind.[47]
He did not regard theAshkenazi Jews of Europe as being a Semitic people. Renan is acknowledged for launching the so-calledKhazar theory. This theory states that Ashkenazim had their origin in Turkic refugees that had converted to Judaism and later migrated from the collapsedKhazar Khanate westward into theRhineland, and exchanged their nativeKhazar language for theYiddish language while continuing to practice the Jewish religion. In his 1883 lecture "Le Judaïsme comme race et comme religion" ("transl. Judaism as a race and as a religion") he disputed the concept thatJewish people constitute a unified racial entity in abiological sense,[48] which made his views unpalatable withinracial antisemitism. Renan was also known for being a strong critic ofGerman ethnic nationalism, with its antisemitic undertones.[49] His notions of race and ethnicity were completely at odds with the European antisemitism of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Renan wrote the following about the long history ofpersecution of Jews:
When all nations and all ages have persecuted you, there must be some motive behind it all. The Jew, up to our own time, insinuated himself everywhere, claiming the protection of the common law; but, in reality, remaining outside the common law. He retained his own status; he wished to have the same guarantees as everyone else, and, over and above that, his own exceptions and special laws. He desired the advantages of the nations without being a nation, without helping to bear the burdens of the nations. No people has ever been able to tolerate this. The nations are military creations founded and maintained by the sword; they are the work of peasants and soldiers; towards establishing them the Jews have contributed nothing. Herein is the great fallacy inspired in Israelite pretensions. The tolerated alien can be useful to a country, but only on condition that the country does not allow itself to be invaded by him. It is not fair to claim family rights in a house which one has not built, like those birds which come and take up their quarters in a nest which does not belong to them, or like the crustaceans which steal the shell of another species.[50]
However, during the 1880s, Renan shifted away from these views. In a lecture on "Judaism as a Race and as a Religion", he stated:
When, in 1791, the National Assembly decreed the emancipation of the Jews, it concerned itself very little with race. It considered that men ought to be judged, not by the blood that runs in their veins, but by their moral and intellectual value. It is the glory of France to take these questions by their human side. The work of the nineteenth century is to tear down every ghetto, and I have no praise for those who seek to rebuild them. The Israelite race has in the past rendered the greatest services to the world. Blended with the different nations, in harmony with the diverse national unities of Europe, it will continue to do in the future what it has done in the past. By its collaboration with all the liberal forces of Europe, it will contribute eminently to the social progress of humanity.[51][52]
In the aforementioned 1882 conference onWhat Is a Nation?, Renan had spoken out against the theories that were based on race:
Both the principle of nations is right and legitimate, as that of the primordial right of races is wrong and full of dangers for true progress … The truth is that pure race does not exist and that to base politics on ethnographic analysis means to base it on a chimera.[53]
In 1883, in a lecture called "The Original Identity and Gradual Separation of Judaism and Christianity", he said:
Judaism, which has served so well in the past, will still serve in the future. It will serve the true cause of liberalism, of the modern spirit. Every Jew is a liberal ... The enemies of Judaism, however, if you only look at them more closely, you will see that they are the enemies of the modern spirit in general.[54][55]
Other comments on race, have also proven controversial, especially his belief that political policy should take into account supposed racial differences:
Nature has made a race of workers, the Chinese race, who have wonderful manual dexterity and almost no sense of honor... A race of tillers of the soil, the Negro; treat him with kindness and humanity, and all will be as it should; a race of masters and soldiers, the European race. Reduce this noble race to working in theergastulum like Negroes and Chinese, and they rebel... But the life at which our workers rebel would make a Chinese or afellah happy, as they are not military creatures in the least. Let each one do what he is made for, and all will be well.[56]
This passage, among others, was cited byAimé Césaire in hisDiscours sur le colonialisme, as evidence of the alleged hypocrisy of Western humanism and its "sordidly racist" conception of the rights of man.[5]
During the arising of racism theories around Europe and specifically inFrench Third Republic, Renan had an important influence on the matter. He was a defender of people'sself-determination concept,[57] but on the other hand was in fact convinced of a "racial hierarchy of peoples" that he said was "established".[58] Discursively, he subordinated the principle of self-determination of peoples to a racial hierarchy,[59] i.e. he supported the colonialist expansion and the racist view of the Third Republic because he believed the French to be hierarchically superior (in a racial matter) to the African nations.[60] This subtle racism, called byGilles Manceron "Republican racism",[61] was common in France during the Third Republic and was also a well-known defensing discourse in politics. Supporters of colonialism used the concept of cultural superiority, and described themselves as "protectors of civilization" to justify their colonial actions and territorial expansion. There was also another motivation for his support of colonialism: Renan wrote that "a nation which does not colonize is irrevocably doomed to socialism, to the war between rich and poor".[62]
Works in English translation
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Duclaux, Agnes Mary Frances (1911). "Renan, Ernest". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 93–95.
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