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In the name of science: the conceptual and ideological background of Charles Richet’s eugenics
Abstract
Abstract The French physiologist and Nobel Prize winner Charles Richet was the author of an impressive quantity of writings, including novels and poetry. He was an out-and-out eugenicist, convinced that “intentional, conscious, scientific, and methodical” selection could achieve “any result, provided we have enough patience.” He believed that the quantitative and qualitative growth of the population was of vital importance for France. In La sélection humaine (1919) and other writings, he dreamt of conscious selection to create “intellectual élites.” This process would be crowned by the production of a “higher human nature, a real surhumanité.” A staunch believer in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, Richet combined Darwinism and Lamarckism.
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“Judging Richet's eugenics in light of later Nazism leads to anachronisms and absurd amalgams but there remains an ambiguity about his supposed anti-semitism throughout his intellectual journey and his stance is not always clear”
From “Never sacrifice anything to laboratory work”: The “physiological psychology” of Charles Richet (1875–1905) (2021) · cites this paper as La Vergata, 2018
In the citing paper
“For all these reasons, Richet deserves, in our opinion, to have a place among the important figures of the beginnings of psychology, especially in France, by integrating his metapsychics as an example of application of his scientific agenda, although this does not justify rehabilitating all his conclusions and especially his later drifts toward a scientific eugenics (Carol, 1995;La Vergata, 2018).”
From “Never sacrifice anything to laboratory work”: The “physiological psychology” of Charles Richet (1875–1905) (2021) · cites this paper as La Vergata, 2018
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Research works printed but not linked: 28
- BÉJIN André, 1996, Richet, Charles, 3, 3691
- BÉJIN André, 1992, Les trois phases de l’évolution du darwinisme social en France, 353
- BÉJIN André, 1990, La fondation de l’Alliance Nationale, Population et Avenir, 45, 17
- BELLOMY Donald C, 1984, “Social Darwinism” revisited, Perspectives in American History, 1, 1
- DE LUCA BARUSSE Virginie, 2009, Pro-natalism and hygienism in France, 1900-1940: the example of the fight against venereal disease, Population, 64, 477, 10.3917/pope.903.0477 · DOI
- DROUARD Alain, 1998, Eugenics in France and in Scandinavia: two case studies, 173
- ESTINGOIX Pierrette, 1999, Race, peuple et evolution dans l’oeuvre de C. Richet (1850-1935), 109
- KOOS Cheryl A, 2014, Gender, the family, and the fascist temptation: visions of masculinity in the natalist-familiarist movement, 1922-1940, 112
- KOOS Cheryl A, 2009, The good, the bad, and the childless: the politics of female identity in Maternité (1929) and La Maternelle (1933), Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, 35, 3
- KOOS Cheryl A, 1996, Gender, anti-individualism and nationalism: the Alliance Nationale and the pronatalist backlash against the Femme Moderne, 1933-1940, French Historical Studies, 19, 699, 10.2307/286641 · DOI
- LA VERGATA Antonello, 2015, Pacifismo eugenetico, 215
- LA VERGATA Antonello, 2015, Paz por el bien de la raza, 2, 1059
- MUCCHIELLI Laurent, 2006, Criminology, hygienism, and eugenics in France, 1870-1914: the medical debates on the elimination of “incorregible”, 207
- PINARD Adolphe, 1912, De l’eugennétique, Bulletin Médical, 26, 1123
- READ Geoff, 2014, Was there a fascist femininity? Gender and French fascism in political context, 127
- READ Geoff, 2012, “Citizens useful to their country and to humanity”: the convergence of eugenics and pro-natalism in interwar French politics, 1918-1940, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadien d’Histoire Médicale, 29, 373
- READ Geoff, 2008, Des hommes et des citoyens: paternalism and masculinity on the Republican right in interwar France, 1919-1939, Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, 34, 88
- RICHET Charles, 1922, La selection humaine, 33
- RICHET Charles, 1907, Les bases psychologiques de la morale, Bulletin de l’Institut Général Psychologique, 7
- RICHET Charles, 1902, L’effort vers la vie et la théorie des causes finales, 1
- RICHET Charles, 1902, L’effort vers la vie et les causes finales, 131
- RICHET Charles, 1894, La guerre et la civilisation: réponse à M. Le Bon, Revue Scientifique, 1, 204
- RICHET Charles, 1891, La dépopulation de la France, Revue Scientifique, 47, 145
- SCHNEIDER William H, 1990, The eugenics movement in France, 1890-1940, 69
- SCHNEIDER William H, 1986, Puericulture and the style of French eugenics, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 8, 265
- SCHNEIDER William H, 1982, Toward the improvement of the human race: the history of eugenics in France, Journal of Modern History, 54, 268, 10.1086/244134 · DOI
- TURDA Marius, 2009, The biology of war: eugenics in Hungary, 1914-1918, Austrian History Yearbook, 40, 238, 10.1017/S0067237809000186 · DOI
- VOM BROCKE Berhard, 1984, Wissenschaft versus Militarismus: Nicolai, Einstein und die “Biologie des Krieges”, Annali dell’Istituto Italo-Tedesco di Trento/Jahrbuch des italienisch-deutschen historisches Institut in Trient, 10, 405
Cited by
Evrard, R., Gumpper, S., Beauvais, B., & Alvarado, C. S. (2021) · Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences · doi:10.1002/jhbs.22086 · Cited by 7
Metadata
- Authors
- Vergata, A. L.
- Affiliations
- Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy
- Venue
- História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos
- Publisher
- FapUNIFESP (SciELO)
- Published
- 2018-08
- Volume
- 25
- Issue
- suppl 1
- Pages
- 125-144
- ISSN
- 1678-4758
- 0104-5970
- Cited by
- 4
- References
- 0
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- Vergata, A. L. (2018). In the name of science: the conceptual and ideological background of Charles Richet’s eugenics. História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos. https://doi.org/10.1590/s0104-59702018000300008
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