Lecture 3 Crowd Psychology and the Fin-de-siècle

1. Lecture 3 Crowd Psychology and the Fin-de-siècle

2. Gustave Le BonLa Psychologie des Foules(1895) “Unecivilisationimplique des règles fixes, une discipline, le passage de l’instinctif au rationnel, la prévoyance de l’avenir, un degréélevé de culture, conditions totalementinaccessibles aux fouleselles-mêmes. Par leur puissance uniquementdestructif, ellesagissentcommeces microbes qui activent la dissolution des corps débilitésou des cadavres.”

3. Lecture plan • A. The scientific study of society • B. The cult of decadence and the fin-de-siècle • C. Case studies: Hippolyte Taine, Gustave Le Bon

4. The scientific study of society • The idea of ‘sciences morales et politiques’ began to be developed in France a few decades before the Revolution • During the Revolution, these moral and political sciences received official recognition through their representation in the Institut de France. • In 1795, the new Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques ranked just under the Académie des Sciences. This disappeared under Napoleon’s reorganization in 1803, but was reestablished in the early 1830s.

5. ‘The backward state of the moral (human) sciences can be remedied by applying to them the methods of physical science, duly extended and generalized.’ John Stuart Mill (1843) In German, the ‘moral sciences’ were referred to as Geisteswissenschaften

6. Positivism • Positivism: ‘Any philosophical system that confines itself to the data of experience, excludes a priori or metaphysical explanations, and emphasizes the achievements of science.’ • Strongly associated (in the French context) with Claude Bernard (Introduction àl’Etude de la MédecineExpérimentale) and Auguste Comte

7. Claude Bernard and Auguste Comte

8. Auguste Comte • Believed in a hierarchy of sciences: mathematics came lowest, then astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, and finally sociology, the most advanced of all. • Outlined three rules for the positivistic study of society: to confine one’s study to observable externals; to use rigorous methods, and to abstain from moral judgements

9. Statistics and society • A handful of censuses had been conducted in the mid to late eighteenth century, e.g. in Sweden (1749) and the USA (1790). • Many European countries established census offices in the 1830s, and provide invaluable records of births, deaths, occupations etc. • In France, the Statistical Society of Paris was set up in 1860.

10. Psychology • In the emergence of experimental psychology, German psychologists were particularly influential, e.g. the ‘psycho-physicist’ Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887), and Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920), who created a new kind of scientific laboratory intended to study reaction times and thought processes. • Later, in the 1890s, Sigmund Freud in Vienna began to use a case study approach to develop methods of psycho-analysis, exploring aspects of the personality encoded in the subconscious.

11. Emile Zola and Paul Bourget

12. Paul Bourget and the scientific approach to literature • ‘Si derrière la Science il y a méthode, derrière la méthode il y a quelque chose encore. Ce quelque chose, qui constitue l’essence même de la recherche expérimentale, c’est le fait.’Essais de PsychologieContemporaine (Paris, LibrairiePlon, 1899) • ‘Notre observation à nous ne consiste pas uniquement à noter les faits. Nous en induisons les conséquences, et nous poussons sans cesse, dans nos hypothèses, jusqu’au terme de leur logique…’ (Le Démon de Midi )

13. A decadent France? • Defeat by Prussia sparked off fears of national decadence • Pamphlets of the 1870s expressed this very clearly, with titles like La Fin du monde Latin, Des Causes de la décadencefrançaise and Républiqueoudécadence? • Fears of decadence were also associated with the city; withurban anonymity, a concentrated population of workers but also of vagrants and the unemployed, concerns about poor hygiene in living and working conditions and about the difficulty of identifying and controlling criminal elements.

14. A literary cult of decadence • In Joris-Karl Huysmans’ A Rebours(1884), the hero despairs of modern life and creates an artificial world for himself. The novel was described by one critic as «un véritable festival d’excentricités, d’extravagances, de foliesinquiétantes». • First referred to by Théophile Gautier in his study of Baudelaire’s poetry in 1869the idea of decadence in literature was later adopted by Verlaine, and by 1882 Jules Laforgue was using the term to describe many young poets of the day.

15. Bourget on decadence • « Si les citoyensd’unedécadencesontinférieurscommeouvriers de la grandeur du pays, ne sont-ils pas trèssupérieurscomme artistes de l’intérieur de leurame? » • Essaisde PsychologieContemporaine (1883)

16. Hippolyte Taine & Gustave Le Bon

17. Taine on the crowd • « Une puissance formidable, destructive et vague, sur laquelle nulle main n’a de prise, et qui, avec sa mère, la Liberté aboyante et monstrueuse, siège au seuil de la Révolution.» Les Origines de la France, Vol. I, p.79

18. Le Bon on the crowd • ‘Connaîtrel’artd’impressionerl’imagination des foules, ‘c’estconnaîtrel’art de les gouverner’ (La PsychologiedsFoules, 1895)