Hippolyte Taine - Criticism

Criticism

The chief criticism of race, milieu, and moment at the time the idea was created was that it did not sufficiently take into account the individuality of the artist, central to the creative genius of Romanticism. Even Zola, who owed so much to Taine, made this objection, arguing that an artist's temperament could lead him to make unique artistic choices distinct from the environment that shaped his general viewpoint; Zola's principal example was the painter Édouard Manet. Similarly, Gustave Lanson argued that race, milieu, and moment could not among themselves account for genius; Taine, he felt, explained mediocrity better than he explained greatness.

A distinct criticism concerns the possible sloppiness of the logic and scientific basis of the three concepts. As Leo Spitzer has written, the actual science of the idea, which is vaguely Darwinian, is rather tenuous, and shortly after Taine's work was published a number of objections were made on scientific grounds. Spitzer also points out, again citing period sources, that the relationship between the three terms themselves was never well understood, and that it is possible to argue that moment is an unnecessary addition implied by the other two.