Joseph Ernest Renan was a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, writing on Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar, and critic.
36 Facts About Ernest Renan
2.
Ernest Renan wrote works on the origins of early Christianity, and espoused popular political theories especially concerning nationalism, national identity, and the alleged superiority of White people over other human "races".
3.
Ernest Renan was born at Treguier in Brittany to a family of fishermen.
4.
Ernest Renan's grandfather, having made a small fortune with his fishing smack, bought a house at Treguier and settled there, and his father, captain of a small cutter and an ardent republican, married the daughter of a Royalist tradesman from the neighbouring town of Lannion.
5.
All his life, Ernest Renan was aware of the conflict between his father's and his mother's political beliefs.
6.
Ernest Renan was five years old when his father died, and his sister, Henriette, twelve years his senior, became the moral head of the household.
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Ernest Renan, meanwhile, was educated in the ecclesiastical seminary of his native town.
8.
Dupanloup sent for Ernest Renan, who was then fifteen years old and had never been outside Brittany.
9.
Ernest Renan came to view Abbe Dupanloup as a father figure.
10.
In 1840, Ernest Renan left St Nicholas to study philosophy at the seminary of Issy-les-Moulineaux.
11.
Ernest Renan began to see a contradiction between the metaphysics which he studied and the faith he professed, but an appetite for verifiable truths restrained his scepticism.
12.
Ernest Renan's course completed at Issy, in 1844 he entered the college of St Sulpice in order to take his degree in philology prior to entering the church, and, here, he began the study of Hebrew.
13.
In October 1845, Ernest Renan left St Sulpice for Stanislas, a lay college of the Oratorians.
14.
Ernest Renan, educated by priests, was to accept the scientific ideal with an extraordinary expansion of all his faculties.
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Ernest Renan became ravished by the splendor of the cosmos.
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In 1856, Ernest Renan married in Paris Cornelie Scheffer, daughter of Hendrik Scheffer and niece of Ary Scheffer, both French painters of Dutch descent.
17.
Ernest Renan attributed the idea of the book to his sister, Henriette, with whom he was traveling in Ottoman Syria and Palestine when, struck with a fever, she died suddenly.
18.
Ernest Renan argued Jesus was able to purify himself of "Jewish traits" and that he became an Aryan.
19.
Ernest Renan believed by humanizing Jesus he was restoring to him a greater dignity.
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However, it is questionable whether Ernest Renan can be considered a racist, much less an anti-Semite.
21.
In La Reforme Intellectuelle et Morale, Ernest Renan tried to safeguard France's future.
22.
Ernest Renan had vainly tried to make his country obey his precepts.
23.
Ernest Renan's work has especially influenced 20th-century theorist of nationalism Benedict Anderson.
24.
Ernest Renan was nearly sixty when, in 1883, he published the autobiographical Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse which, after the Life of Jesus, is the work by which he is chiefly known.
25.
Ernest Renan died after a few days' illness in 1892 in Paris, and was buried in the Cimetiere de Montmartre in the Montmartre Quarter.
26.
Hugely influential in his lifetime, Ernest Renan was eulogised after his death as the embodiment of the progressive spirit in western culture.
27.
Anatole France wrote that Ernest Renan was the incarnation of modernity.
28.
Ernest Renan has been criticised for his claims that the Semitic race is inferior to the Aryan race.
29.
Ernest Renan claimed that the Semitic mind was limited by dogmatism and lacked a cosmopolitan conception of civilisation.
30.
Ernest Renan did not regard the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe as being a Semitic people.
31.
Ernest Renan was known for being a strong critic of German ethnic nationalism, with its antisemitic undertones.
32.
Ernest Renan wrote the following about the long history of persecution of Jews:.
33.
Ernest Renan retained his own status; he wished to have the same guarantees as everyone else, and, over and above that, his own exceptions and special laws.
34.
Ernest Renan desired the advantages of the nations without being a nation, without helping to bear the burdens of the nations.
35.
However, during the 1880s, Ernest Renan shifted away from these views.
36.
Ernest Renan was a defender of people's self-determination concept, but on the other hand was in fact convinced of a "racial hierarchy of peoples" that he said was "established".