Prosper Despine's Psychologie naturelle and the discovery of the remorseless criminal in nineteenth-century France

Abstract

At the end of the nineteenth century criminal anthropologists often referred to the French philosopher and psychologist Prosper Despine (1812-92). His three- volume collection of remorseless criminals Psychologie naturelle (1868) supported the popular claim that most criminals were born without a moral sense. In this paper I will show that the intellectual agenda of this so-called pioneer of criminal anthropology opposed the ideas of Lombroso, Ferri and Lacassagne. I argue that Despine's remarkable collection of criminals without a moral sense goes back to his ambition to build a new 'natural psychology' that could save most spiritualist dogmas.