Talk:Arthur de Gobineau

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Is his firstname Arthur or Joseph or Joseph-Arthur?

Joseph Arthur from my source Nagelfar 08:08, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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From the article:

He came to believe that race created culture, rather than the reverse.

I've removed the bold partion above, as it makes absolutely no sense to me. Does it mean that the popular opinion at the time was that the culture of a specific country basically determined the skin color of its inhabitants, or what? —Gabbe 23:11, Jan 9, 2005 (UTC)

However, it is interesting to notice that the Nazis used his book but edited the part about the Jewish people.The Nazis of course, were not to happy to realize Gobineau did not agree with their Jewish race theory.The Jews are not and will never be a race of thei own.Jews are caucasian in the broad sense of the term.But biologically speaking, there are no races.In fact a norwegian girl could be genetically closer to an Nigerian woman, than to a Swedish teenager.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.157.224.158 (talk) 03:48, 13 September 2006‎ (UTC)

"The culture of a specific country basically determined the skin color of its inhabitants, or what?"

I agree it's not coherent, but race is not skin color. Nobody believes that albinism transmutes the race of person from a dark-skinned population.

"In fact a norwegian girl could be genetically closer to an Nigerian woman, than to a Swedish teenager."

This is an example of 'Lewontin's Fallacy', and in any case race is better defined phenotypically than genetically.

?

i can't help but wonder: what proportion of the french have predominantly nordic blood? i've always been under the impression that a huge proportion of them DON'T. Gringo300 10:10, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

• There is no such thing as 'nordic blood'. Race is a predominantly cultural construction, not a biological one. Opinions to the contrary are held by nutters. Squiddy 01:10, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Gobineau was a racist but not an anti-semite

In his most well known book, The Inequality of the Human Races, he speaks of the Jewish people as "succeeding in all it undertook...who gave the world as many learned men as merchants." And there's more along those lines. I haven't come across disparaging comments about either Jews or Arabs in Gobineau. Can somone tell me where his reputation as an anti-semite comes from? Or is it conflated with his racism, generally?Madmax5 16:34, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry to report that he wasn't so enlightened about Jews and Arabs. He did not dislike them much MORE than other "non-Aryan" races, and certainly never talked about a Jewish problem or advocated genocide. He did, however, portray them as greedy, miserly, and untrustworthy, and did speak of them as a race in a derogatory fashion. We read Gobineau's correspondence from Aden in my French Orientalism class... I'll try to find the quotes for this page. Mkmo (talk) 15:05, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

re: above

Your teacher was wrong.

Fwiw, letters are not a good representation of Gobineau's philosophy, either (nor are they of most people's). It's fundamentally dishonest to teach from them. The man was essentially a social climber who wanted to be more important than he was his whole life. He even started calling himself "Count" and added "De" before his surname based on a fanciful interpretation of his own ancestry. His letters were often sycophantic. Views expressed were those of the letter's recipient, not necessarily his own.

While Gobineau's philosophy can be accused of a lot of things (chief amongst them bad writing, inane leaps of logic, and a poor grasp of history), his philosophy is untainted by anti-semitism. I own most of the books that were in heavy rotation during Weimar and Nazi era Germany available in translation, so I have a pretty fair perspective on this.

In his major work, which was the one later infamously disseminated by the Nazis, he says the Jews "succeeded in everything they undertook, a free, strong, and intelligent people...." yadda yadda from Essays on the Inequality of Races. If you'd like to see it in print, turn to page 79 of the Biddiss translation in the "Roots of the Right" academic series. This passage was expurged in many German printings. Gobineau's writings were also often interpreted by persons with anti-semitic inclinations, like some of those in Wagner's circle.

I doubt your professor, whose specialization is probably in Said or some other postcolonialist hack, would know anything about this book other than what he heard secondhand.

I'll have to edit the page. It would appear I'm one of few people who has actually read the relevant primary sources.

Guinness4life (talk) 02:12, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Moved from main article space

Interesting passage:

Arthur de Gobineau - the French writer and diplomat is the one who convinced Wagner of the importance of racial purity, the central concept of his famous and infamous ESSAY ON THE INEQUALITY OF HUMAN RACES. Note however that Gobineau wasn't a racist in the usual sense (he regarded the process of universal miscegenation as irreversible) and even less of an antisemite. (He actually regarded the Jewish people as aristocrats, an ethnic group that had succeeded more than most in preserving its original character through endogamy.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.139.103.158 (talk • contribs).

Gobineu actually thought that the Finns in Finland were mongoloids having compared a skull of a Finn, a Lapp and a Mongol. He never visited the country, but was able to describe Finns as "yellow", short, dark-haired, squinty eyed.

Why I brought this up was, that the illustrative map does not show this and the quotes I've read clearly show that he believed that short, dark, Asians populated Finland.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.245.137.28 (talk) 21:59, 14 February 2007‎ (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 03:47, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Neutrality?

In the "Miscellaneous" section of the article: "Gobinwau was also a great philhellene. He wrote an excellent work about the original Greek State, the To the Kingdom of the Greeks in the end of the 19th century". It clearly says that he wrote an excellent work, and that is the authors personal view of the text that De Gobineau wrote.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Thymo (talk • contribs) 18:58, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

New source just published

Was Hitler a Darwinian? This book has an extensive essay on influences on Hitler's thought, including much biographical detail on Gobineau, the topic of this article. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:40, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

In need of edits

I just went through huge hunks of run-on text, trying to roughly impart some order to this overlong, unorganized article. I created subsections within "Early Life: The embittered royalist," and tried to create paragraphs within the other sections and my subsections.

However, due to the large number of disparate editors and a seeming heavy reliance on sources, problems remain. The level of detail is extreme for an encyclopedia article about a person of this notability, and seems to stem from editorial close adherence to sources, without omitting what only belongs in a book dedicated to Gobineau. Also, the organization of the article is weak, with themes not solidified, giving a hodge-podge impression to the narrative.

One person who understands this subject needs to edit the article for concision, reducing the bulk down to something a bit more solid. I know I am not that person.--Quisqualis (talk) 17:30, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, a thorough copy edit is desperately needed. The writing is sloppy, confused and has a shrill, prejudiced, non-academic tone throughout. If there is anyone who does not consider my edits an improvement, state your reasons here. SamJohn2013 (talk) 00:37, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

This is a controversial subject, and an article frequented by socks and partisans, so I suggest that to avoid reversion of your edits, you discuss the specifics of what you intend to do -- as opposed to the generalities you listed above -- before youactually do them. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:46, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

I take no issue with any of the content. I am a copy editor. I have changed nothing, added nothing, and deleted nothing that was not redundant or confusing. My intention is to make the article better and easier to understand for the average reader. No article on Wikipedia is or should be "controversial." We are here to present the facts clearly for an intelligent reader. Have you not taken the time to read the changes? Why do you insist, for your own obviously personal, "partisan" reasons, on objecting to the editing I have done? The original text was written by someone who is not skilled at academic English, who has no sense of style or tone, and who lacks a thorough grasp of the subject, choosing instead to attempt a bloated, wordy imitation of an encyclopedia article. This overly long, repetitive, lumbering piece of flab would not pass in a high school writing course, why should it stand here? You obviously have personal issues with racism, and that is your business. Our task here is to present an obscure but important French intellectual who had an influence on turn-of-the century political thought, and race thinking of course. But what we need also to be aware of is his part in nineteenth-century French imperialism, his subsequent effect on theories of race and nobility, and how his theories of Aryanism influenced later philosophers such as Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and yes, the Nazis. That is why it is so important that the language be absolutely clear and understandable. We do the reader a great disservice by clouding the subject with nonsense, burying it with irrelevant claptrap, and by making it so contorted that no one will possibly want to read it through. I got to this page not as a "sock" but as a scholar who wanted to learn more about Gobineau. I was horrified by what I saw and spent several hours of intense work cleaning up just one small section. You have made no justifiable explanation for your objections other than general peevishness. You have a history of unjustified and contentious edit wars on other pages, so I suggest that you report this to an arbitrator immediately for review. SamJohn2013 (talk) 02:41, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, you give out mixed signals. Which are you, a "copy editor" or a "scholar"? Is your focus altering or correcting factual information -- something a scholar might do -- or correcting grammar, language and structure? And why, exactly, should anyone have any confidence in your ability to bring clarity to the article when you post an unreadable block of text such as your comment above? Maybe you are just someone who edit wars whenever they don't get their way - since that's what you seem to be doing. In any case, I don't need to know your philosophy about Wikipedia, I've been here for 13 years and 250,000 edits, and I understand it quite well, thanks.

Unless you specificially outline the changes you plan to make, before you make them, they will be reverted. I hope that's clear. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:45, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

• Neutral notices to this discussion have been placed on the talk pages of the four WikiProjects listed at the top of this page. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:56, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

No criticism

I wonder how the page on this racist is so detailed but doesn't have any section on how his ideas are criticized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 177.38.122.80 (talk) 20:13, 2 October 2018 (UTC)

Article needs editing

This is an extremely long article. In some ways, it is very high quality - well-written, comprehensive, and interesting. But it needs editing. The page is 163,373 bytes! As an encyclopedic project, we need to present information in a way that is readable and practical. Wading into the morass of Gobineau's opinion on every single subject he encountered in minute detail does not serve the reader well.

Additionally, as pointed out by the comment above, the article could use some more attention paid to the legacy section, with any criticism of Gobineau that is deserving of inclusion included. The article is not well-organized and sort of trails off with the section on the "Yellow peril", hardly mentioning the circumstances of his death! The four final sections, on Romania, the Ottoman Empire, Germany, and Brazil, do not make clear to the reader immediately that they deal with his legacy and the subsequent impact of his ideas.

I think that this article should undergo a thorough trim, at the very least. The whole legacy section should be revamped and material added. A larger and more worthwhile change might be to separate the preceding, exceedingly long "Life and Theories" section into two - "Personal life" and "Theories and ideas." Obviously the two are related, but this is true of every thinker. Separating the two will be a little more clear for the reader.

I think this article has a ton of potential. It just is too detailed and poorly organized for it to be truly helpful to a reader with no prior knowledge of Gobineau or his ideas. I'm happy to undertake some of this work myself, or it could be recommended to the Guild of Copyeditors. Ganesha811 (talk) 13:41, 22 September 2019 (UTC)

Unless anyone has any objections, tomorrow I'm going to go ahead and begin copyediting the article for clarity and length - perhaps reorganize somewhat as well. Please comment below if you have any thoughts or would like to help! Ganesha811 (talk) 23:50, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

I've completed my first run-through of copyediting and trimming. I think the major contribution is to organization, however - I have broken up the overlong "life and theories" section for clarity and restructured some parts of the article. It is now down to a more manageable 118,713 and presents a more encyclopedic view of Gobineau, rather than a catch-all of every one of his opinions and experiences. Ganesha811 (talk) 16:30, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree it's very long. Instead of removing content, however, it should be divided into new split articles divided by life periods (like early life, academic career and/or late life, etc). I've moved the impact of his thinking to Gobinism and this should be a start. Gabriel Yuji (talk) 01:02, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Hercule de Serre died in 1824

Whoever the father of his wife's baby was, it was not Hercule Puerre de Serre who died in 1824. Perhaps it was a son of his? Anthony Staines, Professor of Health Systems, DCU, Dublin, Ireland. (talk) 09:04, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Moses Hess

Under Legacy and Influence, the assertion "He was a main influence to the first modern elaboration of Zionism by Moses Hess.[139]" is apparently based on the following line at p.140 in the cited source (Buber, Martin. “Moses Hess.” Jewish Social Studies 7, no. 2 (1945): 137–48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4464658.):

" Fully to appreciate this, it is necessary to replace the fluctuating concept of "race" (which Hess doubtless received, though indirectly, from Gobineau) by that of Nation, and the inadequate concept of "tradition" by that of constructive faith ".

The same assertion— predicated on the same cited source— is repeated in Social thinking of Arthur de Gobineau, that "the movement influenced German nationalists and intellectuals such as Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzsche[3] and the precursor of Zionism, Moses Hess.[4].

Without settling the question of whether the influence of Gobineau on Hess a) substantially existed, nor b) was a "main" one, I think we can note that including Hess in either of these articles— on this citation alone? That it's a feeble premise.

Weird time to be going to a bat for the legacy of Zionism, but I think there are plenty of substantive critiques out there without this slapdash (and fundamentally, as it stands, here unsupported) association of Hess with Gobineau. 132.162.25.60 (talk) 13:12, 23 October 2024 (UTC)