Abstract

Summary Despite his repudiation of antisemitism, Renan influenced the development of antisemitic ideologies in both France and Germany. His typology of ?Semite? and ?Aryan? was adopted especially in Germany and and combined with biological concepts of race to become the foundation of the concepts of ?Semitism? and ?Antisemitism?. Renan, however, always insisted on a linguistic/cultural definition of race and regarded the biological conception, while it might have had some primitive reality, as outmoded and immoral in European civilization. After 1870 the growth of German racial antisemitism led Renan to elaborate repeatedly on race as a civilisational phenomenon that in modern Europe should have lost its biological origins. His argument that modern Jews were integral members of the French ?nation? and ?civilization? was profoundly influential on the emergence of the theory of the modern ?nation? as the liberal state. Gobineau's theory of race also lent itself to exploitation by racial antisemites, though it was not overtly antisemitic. Unlike Renan, however, Gobineau in his later years inclined to a vague personal antisemitism. The main difference was one of temperament as well as devotion on Renan's part to a liberal idea of the nation, as opposed to Gobineau's aversion to liberalism and modern civilization