Science and social responsibility

Gobineau and Tocqueville

Abstract

Count Joseph Athur de Gobineau and Alexis de Tocqueville shared a discomfort regarding the changes in post-revolutionary French society. Both were highly critical of the emerging individualistic and massified society of the period and were nostalgic of the aristocratic values the French Revolutin had sought to erase. Such affinities, however, did not cause Tocqueville and Gobineau to converge in their opinions. In fact, they disagreed starkly on how to interpret the past and imagine the future of France and humankind in general. This essay deals with the diverging worldviews and the social responsibility of those who choose history as a science to convey meaning to the past, forge identities in the present, and design the future.