Menschenmenge und Barbarei. Die Rezeption der Französischen Revolution

Gamper, Michael

doi:10.30965/9783846744369_004

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“…McClelland, 1989), emphasis on the late nineteenth century as the golden age of theories of imitation and crowds as expounded in the works of Gabriel Tarde, Scipio Sighele, and Gustave Le Bon has somewhat induced sociologists to lose sight of earlier proponents of analogous views. Indeed, far from being relatively recent or marginal issues, imitation, influence and crowds have presided over the growth of the social sciences since at least the late seventeenth century, paving the way for the outburst of comments on the centrality of mobs in the French Revolution a century later (Gamper, 2007). Imitation was detected not only among individuals but also at the level of entire nations: this perception, already present in Hobbes, would become more prominent in Hume (1998) and Bagehot (1873).…”

Section: A Discontinuous Yet Lively Tradition Of Thoughtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tarde’s ancestors. Imitation and crowds from Hobbes to Locke

Turina

2023

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Sociological studies on imitation and crowds usually point to the late nineteenth-century French jurist and sociologist Gabriel Tarde as their forerunner. This article argues that a lively debate on those issues already existed in Europe in the late seventeenth century. A review of works by Hobbes, Spinoza, Malebranche and Locke will show how they commented upon the dangerous influence of charismatic leaders over excitable mobs or the ordinary occurrence of someone’s opinions or manners being subsequently imitated by others until they become a new fashion. These four authors developed distinct approaches to the study of imitation and crowds. I call them the ‘authoritarian’ (Hobbes), the ‘rationalist’ (Malebranche), the ‘affective’ (Spinoza) and the ‘liberal’ (Locke) frames. The authoritarian and the rationalist approaches easily lead to dismissive or hostile views, while the affective and the liberal ones may open the way to more sympathetic (or at least practical) assessments. This study aims to show that: a) early modern discussions on imitation and crowds made a significant contribution to the formation of the field of social sciences; and b) these classical authors may still prove valuable for understanding imitation and crowds in the twenty-first century, in regard to the digital environment as well.

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Section: A Discontinuous Yet Lively Tradition Of Thoughtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tarde’s ancestors. Imitation and crowds from Hobbes to Locke

Turina

2023

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“… 27 Michael Gamper analogously identifies, for the nineteenth century, the topos, prominent in literature and media, of the “great man” who achieves extraordinary things and, as the antithesis to this figure, the masses: a large crowd that, on the one hand, was perceived as a “phenomenon of the innumerable many” and, on the other hand, left the “impression of a general confusion” (Gamper 2016, 13). On the connection between the masses and the public in the 1890s, see Gamper (2007), 476–484. …”

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Interview and interior: Procedures of narrative surveys around 1900

Heesen¹

2021

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Argument In the spring of 1893, the Austrian writer and critic Hermann Bahr began interviewing various people on antisemitism, a subject of heated discussion in the European feuilleton around 1900. “Once again, I am travelling the world sounding out people’s opinions and listening to what they have to say,” he wrote in his introduction to a series of articles on that issue that appeared in the feuilleton of the Deutsche Zeitung between March and September 1893. A year later, the Berlin publishing house S. Fischer turned Bahr’s articles into a book. Bahr conducted a total of thirty-eight interviews with prominent personages, such as August Bebel, Theodor Mommsen, Ernst Haeckel, Henrik Ibsen and Jules Simon. Bahr did not focus on the arguments in favour or against antisemitism. Instead, he set out explicitly to investigate the sentiments, perceptions and opinions on this topic within the cultured classes. Yet, as I will show in this article, Bahr tried to capture not only the “sentiments” [Empfindungen] aired by his interviewees, but also the settings and interiors in which the interviews took place. I argue that these descriptions of physical space served Bahr as authentication, as a three-dimensional certificate for the “facts of opinion” [Meinungstatsachen] he recorded.

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Menschenmenge und Barbarei. Die Rezeption der Französischen Revolution

Cited by 2 publications

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Tarde’s ancestors. Imitation and crowds from Hobbes to Locke

Tarde’s ancestors. Imitation and crowds from Hobbes to Locke

Interview and interior: Procedures of narrative surveys around 1900

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