Abstract
This chapter discusses antisemitism in the works of positivist scientist and father of criminal anthropology Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), and in the writing of authors close to him who took part in what has been defined the «Lombroso system». While the matter has been partly studied in several articles and works, I will highlight certain aspects of the connection between the Lombrosian conception of socialism and his analysis of antisemitism. The chronological link between the birth of socialism and the emergence of «modern» antisemitism was emphasised, in fact, by Lombroso’s principal disciple Enrico Ferri (1856–1929), when he remarked in 1893 that antisemitism represented a «form of social psychopathology, which over a short number of years had turned to violence that has no comparable occurrences within the contemporary world, but for the exception of the progress of Socialism». Like Lombroso, Ferri joined the Socialist Party of Italian Workers in 1893, the same year it was funded. In 1894, on the eve of the Dreyfus Affair, Lombroso published an analysis of the causes and nature of antisemitism, entitled Antisemitism and Modern Science, and that was translated into French in 1899.
Although long alienated from the religion of my ancestors, I never lost a feeling of solidarity with my people and I see with satisfaction that you call yourself a student of a man of my race—the great Lombroso.
—Freud, letter to Morselli, February 18th 1926
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
I also wish to thank Alessandra Tarquini for letting me read the chapter dedicated to Lombroso in her forthcoming work on the relationship between antisemitism.
- 2.
In the Origins of Totalitarianism, Lombroso’s book is one of the very few Italian references; it is mentioned by Hannah Arendt, who refers to the French translation, as «Cesare Lombroso’s famous work».
- 3.
Part of Lombroso’s analyses had also been anticipated, the same year, in an article by Enrico Ferri published on 3 September 1893 in the Nuova Rassegna.
- 4.
Lombroso, Cesare. 1899. La molla segreta nell’Affaire Dreyfus. Gazzetta del Popolo, August, 6. As E. D’Antonio wrote, «in the ‘end-of-century crisis’, Lombroso appeared as an intellectual siding with democracy. Member of the Socialist Party, he released countless articles on the problems of current political affairs, undertaking an impressive anticlerical and antimilitarist battle» (D’Antonio 2001: 296).
- 5.
In establishing an increasingly profound connection between Jewishness and mental illnesses, Lombroso belonged, as historian Francesco Germinario has observed, to the «abundant assortment of psychiatrists committed to emphasizing the Jew‘s particular tendency towards nervous diseases» (Germinario 2011: 176).
- 6.
Roberto Finzi‘s judgement appears even harsher, claiming that «the image of the Jew evoked in the Lombrosian text […] is full of ambiguities, its folds reveal more than one stereotyped image, shared by a Judeophobe feeling» (Finzi 2011: 77).
- 7.
Such is the title of the third chapter of Paolo Spriano’s work (Spriano 1972).
- 8.
As P. Spriano wrote, «positivism and moralism cooperated to transfer the socialist question of class struggle outside of its actual terms» (Spriano 1972: 39–42).
- 9.
In 1905, Lombroso published a text on the Avanti! entitled «Neo-Franciscans and neo-socialists», dipicting the dangers of socialist degeneration, «similar to that of Franciscans after the death of their founder».
- 10.
According to Alberto Cavaglion, the transition was «from an ethical universalism deprived of substance by the time […] to a social universalism at times devoid of substance» («Il socialismo ci renderà felici?» (Cavaglion 1995: 401).
- 11.
As Esther Capuzzo wrote: «It was probably with the merging of the cult of the fatherland and the belief in a God open to the highest aspirations of justice that the turning point of Jewish identity’s secularisation occurred, as it transfused the religious element in patriotic and social ideals. In the decades following (Italian national) unity, this process was accelerated by the increasingly separatist and secular character of the liberal State» (Capuzzo 2004: 81).
- 12.
Momigliano, Felice. 1897. Migliorismo o pessimismo ebraico. Critica sociale, July, 16: 221.
- 13.
This notion of «meliorism», inspired by Max Nordau’s reflections in the chapter called «Optimism or pessimism» of Psychological Paradoxes (1896), seems to be the origin of Gramsci’s famous maxim according to which the pessimism of intelligence must be combined with the optimism of the will.
- 14.
Momigliano, Felice. 1897. Migliorismo o pessimismo ebraico. Critica sociale, July, 16: 221.
- 15.
In August 1898, Lombroso wrote to Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, telling him he could not accept participating in the Second Zionist Congress as he was too old for a movement he knew little about. Lombroso asked Herzl to declare to his friends, in his name, that if he had only been thirty years younger, he would have been among «the most passionate partisans» of Zionism.
- 16.
Such was also the idea of Felice Momigliano, who in 1903 claimed that «Jews of the west are wrong in fighting Zionism, which is a necessity for their eastern co-religionists, distressed by the triple plague of absolutism, capital and antisemitism. It is nonetheless true that the issue does not concern them directly […] they do not feel united anymore in communities of beliefs with their co-religionists of the east, they see themselves as contemporaries of Renan, Spencer, Taine» (Frigessi 2003: 325).
- 17.
Lombroso in the Bril’s telephon (also reported by the Corriere israelitico, 1901). XL: 78.
References
Battini, Michele. 2010. Il socialismo degli imbecilli. Propaganda, falsificazione, persecuzione degli ebrei. Torino: Bollati.
Bidussa, David, and Levis Sullam Simon. 2005. Alle origini dell’antisemitismo moderno. In Storia della Shoah. La crisi dell’Europa, lo sterminio degli ebrei e la memoria del XX secolo, I. eds. Marina Cattaruzza, Marcello Flores, Simon Levis Sullam, Enzo Traverso, 69–95. Torino: Utet.
Bulferetti, Luigi. 1975. Cesare Lombroso. Torino: UTET.
Capuzzo, Ester. 2004. Gli ebrei italiani dal Risorgimento alla svolta sionista. Firenze: Le Monnier.
Catalan, Tullia. 2003. Le reazioni dell’ebraismo italiano all’antisemitismo europeo (1880–1914). In Les racines chrétiennes de l’antisémitisme politique, fin XIXe–XXe. eds. Catherine Brice, Giovanni Miccoli, 137–162. Roma: École française de Rome.
Catalan, Tullia. 2010. Ebrei italiani e nazione dal Risorgimento alla crisi di fine secolo. In La shoah in Italia: vicende, memorie, rappresentazioni, eds. Marcello Flores, Simon Levis Sullam, Marie-Anne Matard Bonucci, Enzo Traverso, 13–34. Torino: Einaudi.
Cavaglion, Alberto. 1988. Felice Momigliano (1866–1924). Una biografia. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Cavaglion, Alberto. 1992. Gli ebrei e il socialismo: il caso italiano. In Stato nazionale ed emancipazione ebraica, eds. Francesca Sofia, Mario Toscano, 377–392. Roma: Bonacci.
Cavaglion, Alberto. 1995. “Il socialismo ci renderà felici?” Ebraismo e cultura socialista in Piemonte. In Democratici e socialisti nel Piemonte dell’Ottocento, ed. Patrizia Audenino, 399–420. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Cavaglion, Alberto. 1997. Tendenze nazionali ed albori sionistici. In Annali di storia d’Italia. Gli ebrei in Italia, XI, 2, ed. Corrado Vivanti, 1291–1320, Torino: Einaudi.
D’Antonio, Emanuele. 2001. Aspetti della rigenerazione ebraica e del sionismo in Cesare Lombroso. Società e storia, 92: 281–309.
D’Antonio, Emanuele. 2014. Graziadio Isaia Ascoli e l’antisemitismo di Cesare Lombroso. Una critica epistolare. In Non solo verso oriente. Studi sull’ebraismo in onore di Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini, eds. Maddalena Del Bianco Cotrozzi, Riccardo Di Segni, and Marcello Massenzio, 503–518. Firenze: Olschki.
Di Fant, Annalisa. 2010. L’antisemitismo cattolico tra Otto e Novecento. In Storia della Shoah in Italia: vicende, memorie, rappresentazioni, eds. Marcello Flores, Simon Levis Sullam, Marie-Anne Matard Bonucci, Enzo Traverso, 63–84. Torino: Einaudi.
Dolza, Delfina. 1990. Essere figlie di Lombroso. Due donne intellettuali tra ‘800 e ‘900. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Ferri, Enrico. 1901. Studi sulla criminalità ed altri saggi. Torino: Bocca.
Finzi, Roberto. 2011. Il pregiudizio. Ebrei e questione ebraica in Marx, Lombroso, Croce. Milano: Bompiani.
Frétigné, Jean-Yves. 2005. Entre fascination et répulsion: la place des juifs dans les débats autour de l’anthropologie criminelle italienne (1880–1900). In Antisémythes. L’image des juifs entre culture et politique (1848–1939), ed. Marie-Anne Matard-Bonucci, 95–106. Paris: Nouveau Monde Éditions.
Frigessi, Delia. 1999. Cattaneo, Lombroso, e la questione ebraica. In Nel nome della razza. Il razzismo nella storia d’Italia (1870–1945), ed. Alberto Burgio, 247–264. Bologna: il Mulino.
Frigessi, Delia. 2003. Cesare Lombroso. Torino: Einaudi.
Germinario, Francesco. 2011. Argomenti per lo sterminio. L’antisemitismo e i suoi stereotipi nella cultura europea (1850–1920). Torino: Einaudi.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1949. Il Risorgimento. Torino: Einaudi.
Lombroso, Cesare. 1894. L’antisemitismo e le scienze moderne. Torino: Roux.
Lombroso, Cesare. 1899. L’antisémitisme. Paris: V. Giard et E. Brière.
Lombroso, Cesare. 1903. Il momento attuale. Milano: Casa editrice moderna.
Lombroso, Gina. 1915. Cesare Lombroso. Storia della vita e delle opere narrata dalla figlia. Torino: Bocca.
Lombroso, Cesare. 2000. Delitto, genio, follia. Scritti scelti, eds. Delia Frigessi, Ferruccio Giacanelli, and Luisa Mangoni. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Miccoli, Giovanni. 2013. Antisemitismo e cattolicesimo. Roma: Morcelliana.
Nani, Michele. 2006. Ai confini della nazione: stampa e razzismo nell’Italia di fine Ottocento. Roma: Carocci.
Nani, Michele. 2009. Lombroso e le razze. In Cesare Lombroso cento anni dopo, eds. Silvano Montaldo, Paolo Tappero, 165–174. Torino: UTET.
Nani, Michele. 2017. Lavoratori antisemiti ? Un sondaggio sul caso italiano. Passato e presente, 35, 101: 107–122.
Pavan, Ilaria. 2009. L’impossibile rigenerazione. Ostilità antiebraiche nell’Italia liberale (1873–1913). Storia e problemi contemporanei, 50: 34–67.
Scavino, Marco. 2009. L’interesse per la politica e l’adesione al socialismo. In Cesare Lombroso cento anni dopo, eds. Silvano Montaldo, Paolo Tappero, 117–126. Torino: Utet.
Sofia, Francesca. 1993. Su assimilazione e autocoscienza ebraica nell’Italia liberale. Italia Judaica, IV: 32–47.
Spriano, Paolo. 1972. Storia di Torino operaia e socialista. Da De Amicis a Gramsci. Torino: Einaudi.
Toscano, Mario. 2003. Ebraismo e antisemitismo in Italia. Dal 1848 alla guerra dei sei giorni. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Toscano, Mario. 2008. Integrazione nazionale e identità ebraica. Francia, Germania, Italia (1870–1918). In Le religioni e il mondo moderno, II, Ebraismo, ed. David Bidussa. Torino: Einaudi.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tabet, X. (2021). Cesare Lombroso, the «Blast of Antisemitism» and «Socialist Neo-Christianity». In: Tarquini, A. (eds) The European Left and the Jewish Question, 1848-1992. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56662-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56662-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-56661-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-56662-3
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)