Access to the full content is only available to members of institutions that have purchased access. If you belong to such an institution, please log in or find out more about how to order.


Print

Contents

Gobineau, Joseph Arthur, Comte de (1816–82)

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-DC109-1
Published
2003
DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-DC109-1
Version: v1,  Published online: 2003
Retrieved March 28, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/gobineau-joseph-arthur-comte-de-1816-82/v-1

Article Summary

Although best remembered as the author of Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, Gobineau’s main literary activity was as a novelist and writer on Asia. Even though his thesis that racial mixing was the main cause of the decline of civilizations came to be widely accepted, as did his conviction that the White race alone was capable of civilization, his cultural pessimism was not so widely shared. Gobineau understood his work as an answer to the philosophies of progress because it established that the fall of civilizations was inevitable. However, subsequent generations invoked his name in their attempt to justify radical social programmes designed, for example, to restore a racial purity that Gobineau himself believed to be neither possible nor desirable in the sense in which they understood it.

Print
Citing this article:
Bernasconi, Robert. Gobineau, Joseph Arthur, Comte de (1816–82), 2003, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-DC109-1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/biographical/gobineau-joseph-arthur-comte-de-1816-82/v-1.
Copyright © 1998-2024 Routledge.

Related Searches

Periods

Related Articles