Renan - Joseph Ernest Renan

French thinker, religious historian, and philologist. Born on February 28th in Tréguier, Brittany. He enrolled at the Saint-Sulpice seminary, hoping to become a priest, but was influenced by German philology such as Hegel and Herder, and became absorbed in the study of Semitic philology and the original texts of the Bible. He began to doubt the traditional interpretation of the Bible by the church, and abandoned the priesthood to pursue academia. He became friends with Berthelot, who would later become a representative scientist of positivism, and came to trust in the methods and possibilities of science. In 1849, he wrote The Future of Science (published in 1890). He also attempted to study the origins of Christianity, and aimed to explain Christianity as a product of the Jewish environment and the society, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs that existed before the emergence of Christianity, completing his masterpiece The History of the Origin of Christianity (1863-1881). The first volume of this work was "The Life of Jesus," which did not acknowledge the divinity of Christ, but instead advocated an empirical study of the life of the human Jesus. His other major works include "The History of the People of Israel" (1887-1893). Following the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, he lost faith in democracy and came to envision social control by an intellectual elite, and the work that best represents this conservative tendency is "Philosophical Dialogues and Fragments" (1876). Along with Taine, he was a positivist thinker who had a huge influence on the intellectual and literary world of the second half of the 19th century. He died on October 2, 1892.

[Makoto Yokohari June 17, 2015]

"The Life of Jesus, translated by Yutaka Tsuda (Iwanami Bunko)"

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

フランスの思想家、宗教史家、文献学者。2月28日、ブルターニュ地方のトレギエに生まれる。聖職を志しサン・シュルピス神学校に進んだが、ヘーゲル、ヘルダーらのドイツ哲学の影響を受け、セム語文献学と聖書原典の研究に熱中するうちに、教会の伝統的聖書解釈に疑惑を抱くようになり、聖職を捨てて学問の道を選ぶ。のちの実証主義の代表的科学者ベルトロと友誼(ゆうぎ)を結び、科学の方法と可能性を信頼するに至り、1849年『科学の未来』（刊行は1890年）を書く。さらにキリスト教の起源の研究を企て、キリスト教を、ユダヤ的環境の産物、キリスト教発生以前の社会、感情、思想、信仰の産物として説明することを目ざし、代表作『キリスト教起源史』（1863～1881）を完成する。その第1巻が『イエス伝』で、キリストの神性を認めず、人間イエスの生涯の実証的な研究を標榜(ひょうぼう)した。他の主要著作に『イスラエル民族史』（1887～1893）がある。プロイセン・フランス戦争とパリ・コミューンを契機に、民主主義への不信から知的エリートによる社会支配を構想するに及ぶが、そうした保守化の傾向を代表する著作が『哲学的対話と断片』（1876）。テーヌと並んで実証主義の思想家として19世紀後半の思想・文学界に多大な影響を及ぼした。1892年10月2日没。

［横張　誠　2015年6月17日］

『津田穣訳『イエス伝』（岩波文庫）』

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