泰納是引領19世紀后半期法國學術思想的少數大師級人物之一。在普法戰爭失敗和巴黎公社血腥內戰的刺激下,他從純粹的學術研究轉向了現實關懷,歷經二十年出版了煌煌巨著《現代法國的起源》,希圖探查現代法蘭西文明衰弱不振的病源。《舊制度》卷是其中最重要的組成部分,泰納在書中將舊制度時期的中央集權化進程,視為造成法國文明內在解體的根源,并詳盡生動地描繪了這個趨向衰弱的文明種種外在的表征。由于1870年代法國特定的時代情境,這部著作出版本身就成為當時的一起重要事件,知識界對它褒貶紛陳。隨著第三共和國的確立和穩固,大革命成為新生共和國的合法性來源,泰納的著作受到官方革命史學的猛烈攻擊,并沉淪近一個世紀,直至第二次世界大戰后民主共識在法國知識界的形成,他的著作及思想才重新受到關注并得到較為客觀的評價。

Hippolyte Taine was one of leading intellectual masters of France in the latter nineteenth century. The Franco-Prussian and the Paris Commune acted to force Taine away from the field of philosophy and psychology. He began to project the work which was to occupy him for the next twenty years,The Origins of Contemporary France( Les origines de la France Contemporaine),and wished to diagnose the etiology of contemporary civilization of France. The Ancient Regime(L’ancien Régime) was the most important part of this multi-volume master-piece. Taine attributed all France’s subsequent misfortunes to monarchic centralization during the old regime and the "classical spirit" of 17 th century,because they destroyed the solid foundation of traditional France. His work brought about drastic controversy among French intellectuals. Particularly with establishment of the Third Republic of France,the Revolution was imbued with strong ideological meanings. Taine and his work was violently attacked by left-wing republican historians,and evicted from the genealogy of historiography of the French Revolution for nearly a century. Until the consensus about democracy was reached among French intellectuals after World War II,some historians of the French Revolution paid attention again to Taine’s work and ideas.