Georges Vacher de Lapouge
Born(1854-12-12)12 December 1854
Neuville-de-Poitou, Vienne
Died20 February 1936(1936-02-20) (aged 81)
Poitiers, Vienne
NationalityFrench
Known forAnthroposociology
SpouseMarie-Albertine Hindré
ChildrenClaude Vacher de Lapouge

Count Georges Vacher de Lapouge (French: [vaʃe də lapuʒ]; 12 December 1854 – 20 February 1936) was a French anthropologist and a theoretician of eugenics and scientific racism. He is known as the founder of anthroposociology, the anthropological and sociological study of race as a means of establishing the superiority of certain peoples.

Biography

While a young law student at the University of Poitiers, Vacher de Lapouge read Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin.[1] In 1879 he gained a doctorate degree in law and became a magistrate in Niort (Deux-Sèvres) and a prosecutor in Le Blanc. He then studied history and philology at the École pratique des hautes études, and learned several languages such as Akkadian, Egyptian, Hebrew, Chinese, and Japanese at the École du Louvre and at School of Anthropology in Paris from 1883 to 1886.

From 1886 Vacher de Lapouge taught anthropology at the University of Montpellier, advocating Francis Galton's eugenic thesis, but was expelled in 1892 because of his socialist activities[2] (he co-founded Jules Guesde's French Workers' Party and campaigned during 1888 for city mayor in the Montpellier municipal election). He worked later as a librarian at the University of Rennes until his retirement in 1922.

Work and legacy

De Lapouge wrote L'Aryen: son Rôle Social (1899, "The Aryan: His Social Role"), in which he opposed the Aryan, dolichocephalic races to the brachycephalic races. Vacher de Lapouge thus classified human races: first the Homo europaeus, Nordic or fair-haired, then the Homo alpinus, represented by the Auvergnat and Turkic peoples, finally the Homo mediterraneus, represented by the Neapoletan or Andaluz peoples.

Vacher de Lapouge endorsed Francis Galton's theory of eugenics, but applied it to his theory of races. Vacher de Lapouge's ideas are comparable to those of Henri de Boulainvilliers (1658–1722), who believed that the Germanic Franks formed the upper class of French society, whereas the Gauls were the ancestors of the peasantry. Race, according to him, thus became almost synonymous with social class. Vacher de Lapouge added to this concept of races and classes what he termed selectionism, his version of Galton's eugenics. Vacher de Lapouge's anthropology was intended to prevent social conflict by defining a fixed, hierarchical social order.[3][4]

In 1926, he prefaced and translated Madison Grant's publication The Passing of the Great Race (Le Déclin de la Grande Race, Payot, 1926). He also translated one work of Ernst Haeckel into French.[5][6]

Lapouge had a direct influence on Nazi racial and eugenic doctrine. In his "political science" works he described the Jew as the only competitor of the Aryan, who dominated lesser races without them knowing. In this he is deemed co-responsible for the Holocaust from 1941-45. Lapouge in 1887 had predicted that the 20th century would witness genocides that slaughtered millions over their alleged racial differences, which is seen as prescient of the Holocaust, though he was not saying this should occur. The "anti-morality" (moral nihilism) Lapouge espoused, along with proposing a totalitarian "selectionist" state that would strictly enforce racist eugenics, is also viewed as a precedent of Nazism later. Anthropologist Hans F. K. Gunther, the race theorist whom the Nazis looked to most, was Lapouge's disciple. He praised his work and eulogized him when Lapouge died. Lapouge in turn championed Gunther's cause to become a chair of "anthroposociology" at the University of Jena. Indeed, most of Lapouge's followers were Germans, which caused ironic tension given their old German-French rivalry. Some also felt discomfort at his fervent atheism and materialism, but this did not stop them from adopting his eugenicist and racial ideas. They also disliked his idea that sperm from the most "fit" men should be used to impregnate many women artificially.[7]

Lapouge's work spurred a strong reaction on the political left in France, since it was seen as undermining the democratic Enlightenment values which they cherished with science, generally deemed their friend (he had repudiated the Revolutionary slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, saying this should be replaced with “Determinism, Inequality, Selection”). Lapouge had initially been on the political left but gravitated to the right over time, and held great contempt for other atheists who did not share his convictions, claiming they clung to a theistic-based morality which no longer held. His work left secular leftists with a quandary, since they cited science (some of the same as Lapouge) to advance their own views, though his were opposed to theirs. Anthropologists who shared their views attacked Lapouge's theories, along with the racist and sexist ideas common in anthropology then generally. However, this was not enough for many opponents of Lapouge. They feared that if science were upheld as determining social values, the threat his theories posed (or similar ones) would always exist. French leftists thus increasingly rejected taking science as a source of any political truths. It was argued Enlightenment democratic, egalitarian ideals should be upheld no matter what science said. Equal rights should belong to citizens even assuming any biological disparities that existed between them, they insisted. Increasingly, leftists were driven to debunking racist and sexist claims from anthropology in reaction to claims by Lapouge (among others) given the threat views like his posed to their values. Lapouge complained bitterly of this, and particularly hated one critic who was Jewish, saying his theories had been rejected because of French Jews' influence.[8]

Publications

Articles

Works in English translation

See also

References

  1. ^ Hecht, Jennifer Michael (2013). The End of the Soul: Scientific Modernity, Atheism, and Anthropology in France. Columbia University Press, p. 190.
  2. ^ Boissel, Jean (1982). "George Vacher de Lapouge: Un Socialiste Revolutionnaire Darwinien," Nouvelle Ecole 13, pp. 59–83.
  3. ^ "Vacher de Lapouge advocated a socialist order because only such an order could assure that each individual’s racially based abilities could be determined independently of his class. When the 'non-doctrinaire socialist' declared in an article published in 1896 that 'socialism will be selectionist or it will not be at all,' he meant above all that the left should adopt the program of a radical eugenic: the breeding of the Aryan man of the future could only be achieved if, without regard to family background or social status, all 'racially inferior' were prevented from procreation, while all superior men, in addition to a service militaire, would be required to perform a service sexuelle without regard to all traditional norms of sexual behavior. Only if this political model of socialist eugenics were implemented, according to Vacher de Lapouge, would there be any chance that France would survive the impending great conflicts." — Weissmann, Karlheinz (1996). "The Epoch of National Socialism," The Journal of Libertarian Studies 12 (2), pp. 260.
  4. ^ Matsuo Takeshi (University of Shimane, Japan). L'Anthropologie de Georges Vacher de Lapouge: Race, Classe et Eugénisme (Georges Vacher de Lapouge anthropology) in Etudes de Langue et littérature Françaises, 2001, No. 79, pp. 47-57. ISSN 0425-4929 ; INIST-CNRS, Cote INIST : 25320, 35400010021625.0050 (Abstract resume on the INIST-CNRS)
  5. ^ "G. Vacher de Lapouge was a man of wide interest in history, sociology and anthropology. Unlike many students of the ethnic problem, he possessed a good working knowledge of biology and human anatomy. He was a disciple of Haeckel and translated the latter's booklet on the philosophy of monism into French, and provided an introduction to it." — Baker, John R. (1974). "The Historical Background," in Race. Oxford University Press, p. 46.
  6. ^ Haeckel, Ernest (1897). Le Monisme, Lien Entre la Religion et la Science. Paris: Schleicher Frères.
  7. ^ Hecht, Jennifer Michael (2000). "Vacher de Lapouge and the Rise of Nazi Science". Journal of the History of Ideas. 61 (2): 285–304. doi:10.1353/jhi.2000.0018. S2CID 170993471.
  8. ^ Hecht, Jennifer Michael (March 1999). "The Solvency of Metaphysics: The Debate over Racial Science and Moral Philosophy in France,1890-1919". Isis. 90 (1): 1–24. doi:10.1086/384239. S2CID 143737005. Retrieved 12 April 2014.

Further reading

External links

Historical definitions of race
French Section of the Workers' International
Authority control databases
Categories