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61-607: Auguste-Maurice Barrès ( French: [oɡyst mɔʁis baʁɛs] ; 19 August 1862 – 4 December 1923) was a French novelist, journalist, philosopher, and politician. Spending some time in Italy, he became a figure in French literature with the release of his work The Cult of the Self in 1888. He was elected a member of the Académie Française in 1906. In politics, Barrès was first elected to

122-534: A Nobel Prize in Literature : Organicist Though there remains dissent among scientific historians concerning organicism's pregeneration, most scholars agree on Ancient Athens as its birthplace. Surfacing in Athenian writing in the 4th-century BC, Plato was among the first philosophers to consider the universe an intelligent living (almost sentient) being, which he posits in his Philebus and Timaeus . At

183-443: A Boulangist paper at Nancy, and was elected deputy in 1889, at the age of 27, under a platform of "Nationalism, Protectionism, and Socialism", retaining his seat in the legislature until 1893, when he was defeated under the etiquette of "National Republican and Socialist" ( Républicain nationaliste et socialiste ). From 1889, Barrès' activism overshadowed his literary activities, although he tried to maintain both. He shifted however to

244-451: A comprehensive mathematical and category-theoretic treatment of irreducible causal relations he believed to be responsible for life. The early biologists of the organicist movement have influenced the organism-centered perspective of the extended evolutionary synthesis . In the early 1930s Joseph Henry Woodger and Joseph Needham , together with Conrad Hal Waddington , John Desmond Bernal , Dorothy Needham, and Dorothy Wrinch , formed

305-529: A major creative evolution, and through the political and artistic programs of the Ancien Régime , French literature came to dominate European letters in the 17th century. In the 18th century, French became the literary lingua franca and diplomatic language of western Europe (and, to a certain degree, in America), and French letters have had a profound impact on all European and American literary traditions while at

366-490: A platform of "Nationalism and Protectionism.". Politically, he became involved with various groups such as the Ligue des Patriotes of Paul Déroulède , of which he became the leader in 1914. Barrès was close to Charles Maurras , founder of the monarchist party Action Française . Though he remained a republican , Barrès developed a strong influence on various French monarchists of his day, as well as various other figures. During

427-544: A result of the reciprocal play of all the components on each other. Examples of 20th-century biologists who were organicists are Ross Harrison , Paul Weiss , and Joseph Needham . Donna Haraway discusses them in her first book Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields . John Scott Haldane (father of J. B. S. Haldane ), William Emerson Ritter , Edward Stuart Russell , Joseph Henry Woodger , Ludwig von Bertalanffy , and Ralph Stayner Lillie are other early 20th-century organicists. Robert Rosen , founder of "relational biology", provided

488-626: Is literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in the French language by citizens of other nations such as Belgium, Switzerland, Canada, Senegal , Tunisia , Algeria , Morocco , etc. is referred to as Francophone literature . For centuries, French literature has been an object of national pride for French people, and it has been one of

549-416: Is nothing but the result of independent phenomena. Scott F. Gilbert and Sahotra Sarkar distinguish organicism from holism to avoid what they see as the vitalistic or spiritualistic connotations of holism. Val Dusek notes that holism contains a continuum of degrees of the top-down control of organization, ranging from monism (the doctrine that the only complete object is the whole universe, or that there

610-400: Is only one entity, the universe) to organicism, which allows relatively more independence of the parts from the whole, despite the whole being more than the sum of the parts, and/or the whole exerting some control on the behavior of the parts. Still more independence is present in relational holism. This doctrine does not assert top-down control of the whole over its parts, but does claim that

671-509: The Quartier Latin , he became acquainted with Leconte de Lisle 's cenacle and with the symbolists in the 1880s, even meeting Victor Hugo once. He had already started contributing to the monthly periodical, Jeune France ( Young France ), and he now issued a periodical of his own, Les Taches d'encre , which survived for only a few months. After four years of journalism he settled in Italy, where he wrote Sous l'œil des barbares (1888),

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732-515: The Chamber of Deputies in 1889 as a Boulangist and would play a prominent political role for the rest of his life. He presided over the Ligue des Patriotes from 1914 until his death in 1923. Barrès was associated in his literary works with Symbolism , a movement which had equivalence with British Aestheticism and Italian Decadentism ; indeed he was a close associate of Gabriele d'Annunzio representing

793-835: The First World War , he championed the Union Sacrée political truce. In later life, Barrès returned to the Catholic faith: he was involved in a campaign to restore French church buildings and helped establish 24 June as a national day of remembrance for St. Joan of Arc . Born at Charmes, Vosges , he received his secondary education at the lycée of Nancy , attending there the lessons of Auguste Burdeau , later pictured as social climber Paul Bouteiller in Les Déracinés . In 1883 continued his legal studies in Paris. Establishing himself at first in

854-451: The cells were first observed in 17th-century Europe following the invention of the microscope . Before that period, individual organisms were studied as a whole in a field known as "organismic biology"; that area of research remains an important component of the biological sciences. In biology , organicism considers that the observable structures of life, its overall form and the properties and characteristics of its component parts, are

915-471: The extended evolutionary synthesis . Organicism as a doctrine rejects mechanism and reductionism (doctrines that claim that the smallest parts by themselves explain the behavior of larger organized systems of which they are a part). However, organicism also rejects vitalism , the doctrine that there is a vital force different from physical forces that accounts for living things. As Fritjof Capra puts it, both schools, organicism and vitalism, were born from

976-512: The old French provinces . Les Déracinés narrates the adventures of seven young Lorrainers who set out to conquer fortune in Paris. Six of them survive in the second novel of the trilogy, L'Appel au soldat (1900), which gives the history of Boulangism; the sequel, Leurs figures (1902), deals with the Panama scandals . Later works include: He presented himself in 1905 to the Académie française , but

1037-578: The scientific racial contemporary theories and on Biblical exegesis . He founded the short-lived review La Cocarde ( The Cockade ) in 1894 (September 1894 – March 1895) to defend his ideas, attempting to bridge the gap between the far-left and the far-right. The Cocarde , nationalist, anti-parliamentarist and anti-foreign, included a diverse collection of contributors from a wide variety of backgrounds (monarchists, socialists, anarchists , Jews, Protestants), including Frédéric Amouretti , Charles Maurras , René Boylesve and Fernand Pelloutier . He

1098-555: The " Tory Radicalism" of Thomas Carlyle , John Ruskin , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , and Benjamin Disraeli . Thomas Hobbes arguably put forward a form of organicism. In the Leviathan , he argued that the state is like a secular God whose constituents (individual people) make up a larger organism. However, the body of the Leviathan is composed of many human faces (all looking outwards from

1159-477: The 'Nation' (which he used to replace the 'People') as already historically founded: it did not need a " general will " to establish itself, thus also contrasting with Ernest Renan 's definition of the Nation. Much closer to Herder and Fichte than to Renan in his definition of the Nation, Barrès opposed French centralism (as did Maurras), as he considered the Nation to be a multiplicity of local allegiances, first to

1220-508: The 11th century, literature written in medieval French was one of the oldest vernacular (non-Latin) literatures in western Europe and it became a key source of literary themes in the Middle Ages across the continent. Although the European prominence of French literature was eclipsed in part by vernacular literature in Italy in the 14th century, literature in France in the 16th century underwent

1281-519: The Catholic faith, engaging in L'Echo de Paris a campaign in favour of the restoration of the churches of France. His son Philippe Barrès followed him in a journalism career. As a young man, Barrès carried his Romantic and individualist theory of the Ego into politics as an ardent partisan of General Boulanger , locating himself in the more populist side of the heterogenous Boulangist coalition. He directed

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1342-510: The French have come to have a profound cultural attachment to their literary heritage. Today, French schools emphasize the study of novels, theater and poetry (often learnt by heart). The literary arts are heavily sponsored by the state and literary prizes are major news. The Académie française and the Institut de France are important linguistic and artistic institutions in France, and French television features shows on writers and poets (one of

1403-419: The French national character was being harmed by immigration of certain ethnic groups. Barrès was a noted hispanophile. Influenced by the romantic mythification of Spain, he described the country as "an Africa leaving your soul with a sort of furor so fast as chilli does in your mouth". Always passionate about the "South" and " Orient ", he emphasized in his work the period of Moorish domination. He interpreted

1464-495: The Nation. The Nation was to be balanced between various local nationalities (he spoke of the "Lorraine nationality" as much as of the "French nationality") through decentralisation and the call for a leader, giving a Bonapartist aspect to his thought which explained his attraction for the General Boulanger and his opposition to liberal democracy . He pleaded for a direct democracy and personalisation of power, as well as for

1525-601: The National Energy ), with the publication of Les Déracinés . In this second major trilogy, he superated his early individualism with a patriotic fidelity to the fatherland and an organicist conception of the nation ( see below for details ). Affected by the Dreyfus Affair , and finding himself on the side of the Anti-Dreyfusards, Barrès played a leading role alongside Charles Maurras , which initiated his shift to

1586-600: The Spain of the time as a nation refractory to the attempts of economic and bureaucratic rationalization threatening his own country. He visited Spain in 1892, 1893 and 1902, capturing his vision of the country in his writings, taking a particular interest in Toledo . The Dadaists organised in spring 1921 the trial of Barrès, charged with an "attack on the safety of the mind" ("attentat à la sûreté de l'esprit") and sentenced him to 20 years of forced labour. This fictitious trial also marked

1647-697: The Theoretical Biology Club, to promote the organicist approach to biology . The club was in opposition to mechanistic philosophy , reductionism , and the gene-centric view of evolution . Most of the members were influenced by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead . The club disbanded as the Rockefeller Foundation refused to fund their investigations. In ecology , "organicism" and "organicistic" (or "organismic") are used to designate theories which conceptualize populations, particularly ecological communities or ecosystems, according to

1708-613: The annexation of Luxembourg into the French Republic, and also sought to increase French influence in the Rhineland . On 24 June 1920, the National Assembly adopted his draft aiming to establish a national day in remembrance of Joan of Arc . Defunct Defunct Barrès is considered, alongside Charles Maurras , as one of the main thinkers of ethnic nationalism at the turn of the century in France, associated with Revanchism —

1769-471: The body), and these faces do not symbolize different organs of a complex organism but the individual people who themselves have consented to the social contract, and thereby ceded their power to the Leviathan. That the Leviathan is more like a constructed machine than like a literal organism is perfectly in line with Hobbes' elementaristic individualism and mechanical materialism. According to scholars Jean-Yves Camus and Nicolas Lebourg , organicism stands at

1830-643: The burgeoning field of biological studies . Within contemporary biology, organicism stresses the organization (particularly the self-organizing properties) rather than the composition (the reduction into biological components) of organisms . John Scott Haldane was the first modern biologist to use the term to expand his philosophical stance in 1917; other 20th-century academics and professionals, such as Theodor Adorno and Albert Dalcq  [ fr ] , have followed in Haldane's wake. Properly scientific interest in organicist biology has recently been revived with

1891-414: The cells of an organism. This sort of organicist sociology was articulated by Alfred Espinas, Paul von Lilienfeld , Jacques Novicow , Albert Schäffle , Herbert Spencer , and René Worms , among others. Prominent conservative political thinkers who have developed an organic view of society are Edmund Burke , G.W.F. Hegel , Adam Müller , and Julius Evola . Organicism has also been identified with

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1952-755: The complacent, skilful, sometimes enchanting ways of Barrès in mixing the sacred and the profane. His heroine [Oriante] was both pagan and irresistible—and this provoked revolt. Barrès died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 4 December 1923. French literature French Language and Literature French literary history Medieval 16th century • 17th century 18th century • 19th century 20th century • Contemporary Literature by country France • Quebec Postcolonial • Haiti Franco-American Portals France • Literature French literature Wikisource French literature ( French : littérature française ) generally speaking,

2013-529: The constitution of complex systems and theorization of organic-racial societies. In particular, one of the most significant ideological influences on the Nazis was the 19th-century German nationalist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte , whose works had served as an inspiration to Hitler and other Nazi Party members, and whose ideas were implemented among the philosophical and ideological foundations of Nazi-oriented Völkisch nationalism . In breathing organisms,

2074-632: The core of the historical far-right's worldview . Adolf Hitler himself along with other members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei , NSDAP) in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) were greatly influenced by several 19th- and early 20th-century thinkers and proponents of philosophical, onto-epistemic, and theoretical perspectives on ecological anthropology , scientific racism , holistic science , and organicism regarding

2135-754: The desire to reconquer the Alsace-Lorraine , annexed by the newly created German Empire at the end of the 1871 Franco-Prussian War (Barrès was aged 8 at that time). In fact, he himself popularised the word "nationalism" in French. This has been noted by Zeev Sternhell , Michel Winock (who titled the first part of his book, Le Siècle des intellectuels , "Les Années Barrès" ("The Barrès' Years"), followed by Les Années André Gide and Les Années Jean-Paul Sartre ), Pierre-André Taguieff , etc. He shared as common points with Paul Bourget his disdain for utilitarianism and liberalism. Opposed to Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's theory of social contract , Barrès considered

2196-531: The dissolution of Dada - its founders, among whom was Tristan Tzara , refusing any form of justice even if organised by Dada. An Orientalist romance, Un jardin sur l'Oronte (A Garden on the Orontes)—which would be the basis of an opera of the same name —was published in 1922, triggering what would be called la querelle de l'Oronte (the Orontes Quarrel). Devout and sincere Catholics were shocked by

2257-399: The earth (le sol), history (institutions, life and material conditions) and traditions and inheritance ("the dead"). His early individualism was quickly superseded by an organicist theory of the social link, in which "the individual is nothing, society is everything". Barrès feared miscegenation of modern times, represented by Paris, claiming against Michelet that it jeopardised the unity of

2318-475: The eve of World War I . During World War I, Barrès was one of the proponents of the Union Sacrée , which earned him the nickname "nightingale of bloodshed" ("rossignol des carnages"). The Canard enchaîné satirical newspaper called him the "chief of the tribe of brainwashers" ("chef de la tribu des bourreurs de crâne"). His personal notes showed however that he himself did not always believe in his purported war optimism, being at times close to defeatism. During

2379-548: The family, the village, the region, and ultimately to the nation-state . Influenced by Edmund Burke , Frédéric Le Play and Hippolyte Taine , he developed an organicist conception of the Nation which contrasted with the universalism of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen . According to Barrès, the People is not founded by an act of autonomy, but find its origins in

2440-808: The first volume of a trilogie du moi (also called Le Culte du moi or The Cult of the Self ), completed by Un Homme libre (1889), and Le Jardin de Bérénice (1891). The Cult of the Self trilogy was influenced by Romanticism , and also made an apology of the pleasure of the senses. He supplemented these apologies for his narcissism with L'Ennemi des lois (1892), and with an admirable volume of impressions of travel, Du sang, de la volupté, de la mort (1893). Barrès wrote his early books in an elaborate and often very obscure style. The Comédie Française produced his play Une Journée parlementaire in 1894. A year after establishing himself in Neuilly , he began his trilogy in 1897, Le Roman de l'énergie nationale ( Novel of

2501-411: The form of the body, the properties and characters of its diverse parts, as resulting from the reciprocal play or struggle of all its elements, cells, fibres, tissues, organs, which act the one on the other, modify one the other, allot among them each its place and part, and lead all together to the final result, giving thus the appearance of a consensus, or a pre-established harmony, where in reality there

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2562-458: The implementation of popular referendums as done in Switzerland . In this nationalist frame, anti-Semitism was to be the cohesive factor for a right-wing mass movement . Contrary to popular belief, Maurice Barrès never used the term “le grand remplacement” [great replacement], either in his novel "L'appel au soldat" or anywhere else. However he did make use of the underlying concept, namely that

2623-408: The introduction of and emphasis on the importance of relations, whether in symbolic logic , in phenomenology , or in metaphysics. William Wimsatt has suggested that the number of terms in the relations considered distinguishes reductionism from holism. Reductionistic explanations claim that two or at most three term relations are sufficient to account for the system's behavior. At the other extreme

2684-496: The latter. As the name of his trilogy suggests, his works glorified a humanistic love of the self and he also flirted with occult mysticisms in his youth. The Dreyfus affair saw an ideological shift from a liberal individualism rooted in the French Revolution to a more organic and traditional concept of the nation. He also became a leading anti-Dreyfusard popularising the term nationalisme to describe his views. He stood on

2745-716: The leader of the Patriot League. Close to the nationalist writer Charles Maurras , founder of the monarchist Action française movement, Barrès refused however to endorse monarchist ideas, although he demonstrated sympathy throughout his life for the Action française. Most of the later monarchist theorists ( Jacques Bainville , Henri Vaugeois , Léon Daudet , Henri Massis , Jacques Maritain , Georges Bernanos , Thierry Maulnier ...) have recognised their debt toward Barrès, who also inspired several generations of writers (among which Montherlant , Malraux , Mauriac and Aragon ). Barrès

2806-420: The model of the individual organism . As such, the term "organicism" is sometimes used interchangeably with " holism ", although there are versions of holism that are not organicistic/organismic but individualistic. Early iterations of Gaia theory took an explicitly organicist approach by conceptualizing the entire Earth as an integrated, self-regulating organic whole akin to a living being, rather than just

2867-481: The most influential aspects of the literature of Europe . France ranks first on the list of Nobel Prizes in literature by country. One of the first known examples of French literature is the Song of Roland , the first major work in a series of poems known as, " chansons de geste ". The French language is a Romance language derived from Latin and heavily influenced principally by Celtic and Frankish . Beginning in

2928-457: The most watched shows on French television was Apostrophes , a weekly talk show on literature and the arts). Literature matters deeply to the people of France and plays an important role in their sense of identity. As of 2022, fifteen French authors have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature which is more than novelists, poets and essayists of any other country. In 1964 Jean-Paul Sartre

2989-405: The political right; Barrès oriented himself towards a lyrical form of nationalism, founded on the cult of the earth and the dead (" la terre et les morts ", "earth and the dead" — see below for details ). The Roman de l'énergie nationale trilogy makes a plea for local patriotism, militarism , the faith to one's roots and to one's family, and for the preservation of the distinctive qualities of

3050-705: The quest for getting rid of the Cartesian picture of reality, a view that has been claimed to be the most destructive paradigm nowadays, from science to politics. A number of biologists in the early to mid-twentieth century embraced organicism. They wished to reject earlier vitalisms but also to stress that whole organism biology was not fully explainable by atomic mechanism. The larger organization of an organic system has features that must be taken into account to explain its behavior. The French zoologist Yves Delage , in his seminal text L'Hérédité Et Les Grands Problèmes de la Biologie Générale, described organicism thus: [L]ife,

3111-406: The relations of the parts are essential to explanation of behavior of the system. Aristotle and early modern philosophers and scientists tended to describe reality as made of substances and their qualities, and to neglect relations. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz showed the bizarre conclusions to which a doctrine of the non-existence of relations led. Twentieth century philosophy has been characterized by

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3172-528: The right-wing during the Dreyfus Affair , becoming a leading mouthpiece, alongside Charles Maurras , of the Anti-Dreyfusard side. The Socialist leader Léon Blum tried to convince him to join the Dreyfusards, but Barrès refused and wrote several anti-Semitic pamphlets. He wrote, "That Dreyfus is guilty, I deduce not from the facts themselves, but from his race." Barrès' anti-Jewishness found its roots both in

3233-545: The same time being heavily influenced by these other national traditions. Africa and the far East have brought the French language to non-European cultures that are transforming and adding to the French literary experience today. Under the aristocratic ideals of the Ancien Régime (the "honnête homme"), the nationalist spirit of post-revolutionary France, and the mass educational ideals of the Third Republic and modern France,

3294-466: The system could be considered as a single ten to the twenty-sixth term relation, for instance. Organicism as a structuring or worldview motif finds implementation in the dogmatic theology of the nineteenth century. It was implemented prominently by Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck , and has been variously debated and appraised. Nonetheless, Bavinck's consideration of reality as both being and becoming, with an organic unity-and-diversity rooted in

3355-518: The turn of the 18th-century, Immanuel Kant championed a revival of organicisitic thought by stressing, in his written works, "the inter-relatedness of the organism and its parts[,] and the circular causality" inherent to the inextricable entanglement of the greater whole. Organicism flourished for a period during the German romanticism intellectual movement and was a position considered by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling to be an important principle in

3416-677: The united essence of the Trinity, stands as a prominent example of a theological implementation of organicism. Likewise, organicist language can be found in relation to faith and the church by Norwegian Lutheran theologian Gisle Johnson . Johnson will construe the relationship between faith, church, and historical development as "an organic development," likening it to a sprout. Defunct Defunct Organicism has also been used to characterize notions put forth by various late 19th-century social scientists who considered human society to be analogous to an organism, and individual humans to be analogous to

3477-454: The war Barrès also partly came back on the mistakes of his youth, by paying tribute to French Jews in Les familles spirituelles de la France , where he placed them as one of the four elements of the "national genius", alongside Traditionalists, Protestants and Socialists – thus opposing himself to Maurras who saw in them the "four confederate states" of "Anti-France". After World War I, Barrès demanded

3538-674: Was again beaten during the 1896 elections in Neuilly, as a candidate of the Socialist leader Jean Jaurès , and then again in 1897 as a nationalist anti-Semitic candidate, having broken with the left-wing during the Dreyfus Affair. Barrès then assumed the leadership of the Ligue de la Patrie française (League of the French Fatherland), before taking membership in the Ligue des Patriotes (Patriot League) of Paul Déroulède . In 1914, he became

3599-535: Was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he declined it, stating that "It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner. A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form." For most of the 20th century, French authors had more Literature Nobel Prizes than those of any other nation. The following French or French language authors have won

3660-596: Was elected deputy of the Seine in 1906, and retained his seat until his death. He sat at that time among the Entente républicaine démocratique conservative party. In 1908, he opposed in Parliament his friend and political opponent Jean Jaurès , refusing the Socialist leader's will to Pantheonize the writer Émile Zola . Despite his political views, he was one of the first to show his respect to Jaurès' remains after his assassination on

3721-445: Was supplanted by Etienne Lamy . He then tried again, but inclined himself before the candidacy of the former Minister Alexandre Ribot . But he was finally elected the next year, gaining 25 voices against 8 to Edmond Hauraucourt and one to Jean Aicart on 25 January 1906. Barrès was also a friend since his youth of the occultist Stanislas de Guaita , and was attracted by Asia, sufism and shi'ism . But he returned in his later years to

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