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Émile Durkheim and the Institutionalization of Sociology in the French University System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

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Extract

Between 1870 and 1914, a great deal of creative sociological research was completed in France. But this activity did not follow any sort of regular, coherent process of development; there were several quite separate lines of investigation which generally corresponded to distinct social groupings. And while the term “school” may imply too rigid a demarcation, there were at this time a number of what we may term “clusters” of researchers.

Type
Weber et Durkheim: le solitaire et le chef d'école
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1968

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References

(1) It should be mentioned that although discontinued in the late 1930's, the Revue Internationale de sociologie has been published since 1954, albeit with interruptions, under the auspices of the University of Rome. This fact has not yet been recognized by such eminent sources of documentation as the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and leading American university libraries.

(2) These models are elaborated in more detail in Clark, Terry N., Institutionalization of Innovations in Higher Education: Four Models, Administrative Science Quarterly, XIII (1968), 125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(3) Durkheim, Émile, “La sociologie”, La science française (“Exposition universelle et Internationale de San Francisco” [Paris, Librairie Larousse, 1915]), Vol. IGoogle Scholar, trans, by Folkman, Jerome D. as “Sociology”, in Wolff, Kurt H. (ed.), Émile Durkheim, 1858–1917 (Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 1960), pp. 383384Google Scholar.

Nisbet stresses the importance of the French Revolution of 1789 and the Industrial Revolution as background factors for the development of sociology. See Nisbet, Robert A., Émile Durkheim (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 19 sq.Google Scholar; and The Sociological Tradition (New York, Basic Books, 1966).Google Scholar

(4) For example, when a group of scholars around Paul Broca, a dynamic young doctor at the Paris Faculty of Medicine, requested governmental permission to form an Anthropological Society in 1858, it was only after a great deal of difficulty that they were authorized to hold meetings on condition that: (1) no more than 20 persons attend at one time, (2) there be no discussion of politics or religion, and (3) an Imperial Police officer attend all meetings. See Clark, , Institutionalization of Innovations in Higher Education.Google Scholar

(5) “The Ministry of Education had the custom, ever since Duruy, of sending to Germany, in order to study the country and follow the scholarly developments there, those of our agrégés who showed the most promise.” Andler, Charles, Vie de Lucien Herr (Paris, Rieder, 1932), p. 32.Google Scholar

(6) Cf. Durkheim, Émile, La philosophie dans les universités allemandes, Revue internationale de l'enseignement, XIII (1877), 313338, 423440Google Scholar; Id. La science positive de la morale en Allemagne, Revue philosophique, XXIV (1887), 3358, 113142, 273284.Google Scholar

(7) Bouglé, C., Les sciences sociales en Allemagne (Paris, Alcan, 1896).Google Scholar

(8) Mayeur, Jean-Marie, «La France bourgeoise devient républicaine et laïque (1875–1914)»Google Scholar, in Parias, L.-H., Histoire du peuple français (Paris, Nouvelle Librairie de France, 1964), pp. 178199.Google Scholar

(9) See the three-volume series on anticlericalism by Caperan, Louis, Histoire contemporaine de la cité française, la crise du seize mai et la revanche républicaine (Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1957)Google Scholar; La révolution scolaire (Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1959)Google Scholar; La laïcité en marche (Paris, Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1961)Google Scholar, as well as the brief study by Duveau, Georges, Les instituteurs (Paris, Seuil, 1961), pp. 102 sq.Google Scholar

(10) On the general importance of positivism in this task, see Legrand, Louis, L'influence du positivisme dans l'œuvre scolaire de Jules Ferry (Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1961).Google Scholar

(11) Lenoir, Raymond, L'œuvre sociologique d'Émile Durkheim, Europe, XXII (1930), p. 294.Google Scholar

(12) Dreyfus-Brisac, Edmond, later editor of the Revue Internationale de l'enseignementGoogle Scholar, where many fellowship students published opinions on their studies in Germany, and an educational specialist in his own right, wrote of the earlier period: “I could not help, in recurrent visits to these famous and flourishing Universities, from desiring them and even (excuse the expression) envying them for my country […] I remained struck with the superiority of these great German university centers over our Parisian institutions […] so poorly coordinated, so dispersed, so little frequented and utilized by the major part of our studious youth”; Edmond Dreyfus-Brisac, Inaugural lecture at the Ecole libre des sciences politiques, January 15, 1889, «L'enseignement en France et à l'étranger, considéré au point de vue politique et social», Revue Internationale de l'enseignement, I (1889), p. 113Google Scholar, cited in Digeon, Claude, La crise allemande de la pensée française (18701914) (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), p. 371.Google Scholar

And Gabriel Monod, the eminent scholar who reorganized the study of history in France following the more scientific Germanic approach, was proud to write that: “No country haa contributed more than Germany to giving historical studies this rigorously scientific character.” Revue historique, I (1876), p. 29Google Scholar, cited in Digeon, , op. cit. p. 373.Google Scholar

(13) Compare the enthusiasm of a Dreyfus-Brisac or a Monod with the complacency of a Lucien Herr: “There was a time when a philosophical trip to Germany was a sort of voyage of discovery; with a little tact and good luck, you could easily bring back a great man still unpublished […]. You no longer go there either in exploration or in pilgrimage, but there is still interest in going. You don't learn much if you knew almost everything already; but you learn to understand what you already knew.” Herr, Lucien, Choix d'écrits (Paris, Rieder, 1932), II, 45Google Scholar, cited in Digeon, , op. cit. p. 383.Google Scholar And even more, Camille Jullian, who said of “these German rivals”, that: “We have nothing to take, nothing to envy in our enemies, except the patience and the seriousness that they bring to everything that they do […]”; Grenier, A., Camille Jullian, p. 49Google Scholar, cited in Digeon, , op. cit. p. 379.Google Scholar

(14) Durkheim himself, for most of his life, remained curiously ambivalent toward Germany. While continually critical of individual German scholars each time that he would dissect one of their works, he remained greatly indebted to the German philosophical tradition, especially Kant, as well as to Wilhelm Wundt, not only for his theoretical suggestions, that inspired the concept of «la conscience collective», but also to Wundt's example of research organization in the form of his famous laboratory which stimulated the creation of the Année sociologique. Years later, even as the anti-German nationalism was growing in strength, Durkheim could write: “I owe a great deal to the Germans. It is in part from them that I acquired the sense of socal reality, of its complexity, and of its organic development […]”, Mercure de France (1902)Google Scholar, cited in Digeon, , op. cit. p. 381.Google Scholar

(15) Cf. Durkheim's article on sociology written during the First World War for the San Francisco World's Fair, which opens with an assertion which it is unlikely Durkheim would have made a few years before: “To set forth the role which belongs to France in the establishment and development of sociology is almost tantamount to writing the history of this science; for it was born among us, and, although there is no country today where it is not being cultivated, it nevertheless remains an essentially French science” (Durkheim, , «La sociologie», La science française, p. 376).Google Scholar On the rise of nationalism before World War in France, see Weber, Eugen, The Nationalist Revival in France (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1959)Google Scholar; on the intellectuals in particular, see Digeon, , op. cit., chap. VIII–X.Google Scholar

(16) These various clusters of researchers are discussed in more detail in Clark, Terry N., Marginality, Eclecticism, and Innovation: René Worms and the Revue Internationale de sociologie, Revue internationale de sociologie, 2nd series, III (1967), 1227Google Scholar; Clark, , Social Research and Its Institutionalization in France: A Case Study, Indian Sociological Bulletin, IV (1967), 235254Google Scholar; and Clark, , Institutionalization of Innovations in Higher Education.Google Scholar

(17) Comptes rendus des stances, Institut français d'anthropologie, 1 (19111913), 129131.Google Scholar

(18) Cf. the Bulletin de l'Institut français de sociologie.

(19) See Merton, Robert K., Recent French Sociology, Social Forces, XII (1934), 537545CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clark, Terry N., Empirical Social Research in France, 1850–1915: An Overview and Outline of Research (New York, Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University, 09, 1965)Google Scholar, mimeographed. A study of nondiffusion among the clusters and schools of researchers is Terry N. Clark, Discontinuities in Social Research: The Case of the Cours élémentaire de statistique administrative, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, III (1967), 316.Google Scholar

(20) Just after World War I, there were only three chairs of sociology in all of the French universities—at Bordeaux, Strasbourg, and Paris; in 1960, there were only five. Cf. Gugler, Josef, Die neuere französische Soziologie (Neuwied, Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, 1961), p. 18.Google Scholar Of course, these figures do not include the numerous posts that have been created in the research institutes or at the École pratique des Hautes Études, which have mushroomed in recent years.

(21) Manuel, Frank E., The Prophets of Paris (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1963), chap, III, IV, VIGoogle Scholar; Gouhier, Henri, La jeunesse d'Auguste Comte et la formation du positivisme (Paris, J. Vrin, 19331941), 3 vols.Google Scholar

(22) Sorokin, Pitirim, Contemporary Sociological Theories (New, York, Harper and Row, 1928), chap, IV and VII.Google Scholar

(23) For a critique of these tendencies, see Tarde, Gabriel, “Sociology”Google Scholar, in Clark, Terry N. (ed.), Gabriel TardeGoogle Scholar (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, Heritage of Sociology Series, forthcoming).

(24) Durkheim, Émile, The Division of Labor in Society (New York, Macmillan, 1933)Google Scholar, “Preface to the First Edition”, pp. 3235.Google Scholar Cf. also “Preface to Second Edition”, ibid. p. 23, and Durkheim's response to an enquête on “L'élite intellectuelle et la démocratic”, Revue Bleue, 5th series, I (06 4, 1904), 705706Google Scholar, for assertions of the relevance of his work to policy questions.

(25) (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1931). However, even Davy could still rhetorically ask, “is not the object of sociology in France much less the strictly limited and historical knowledge of societies than the broader more philosophical and more human one of the individual in his milieu: society, and the determination of what he, the individual, does or does not owe to this milieu?” Ibid., p. 2. But this remains an infinitely more modest program than that of Comte.

(26) (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1935).

(27) See the priority claims and terminological arguments set forth in Robert, Philippe, Le progrès contemporain, en géographie humaine, en sociologie, en histoire, et l'antériorité des découvertes de la science sociale, La science sociale, 2nd series, nos100101 (1913).Google Scholar

(28) Cf. Clark, Terry N., Empirical Social Research by Contributors to the Année Sociologique and the Revue Internationale de Sociologie (New York, Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University, 1964).Google Scholar

(29) Elmer, M. C., Century-Old Ecological Studies in France, American Journal of Sociology, XXXIX (1933), 6370CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stoetzel, Jean, Sociologie et démographie, Population, (1946), 7989Google Scholar; Chevalier, Louis, L'école géographique française et la démographie, Population (1947), 149153.Google Scholar All consider the overlapping of nomenclatures and actual work.

(30) Some of the polemical discussion is contained in Simiand, François, Méthode historique et science sociale, Revue de synthèse historique, II (1903), 1157Google Scholar; and Simiand, , Statistique et expérience, remarques de méthode (Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1922).Google Scholar

(31) “Anthropology” has much more frequently been used to refer strictly to physical anthropology in France than in the United States, although not exclusively so. Lévi-Strauss, Claude, «La sociologie française»Google Scholar, in Gurvitch, Georges and Moore, Wilbert E., La sociologie au XXe siècle (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1947), II, 513545Google Scholar, stresses the large overlap of sociology and ethnology in France. See also his “Ce que l'ethnologie doit à Durkheim”, Annales de l'Université de Paris, XXX (1960), pp. 4752.Google Scholar

(32) The most thorough documentation on the history of the controversy has been compiled by Essertier, Daniel in his two doctoral theses and subsequent work, Psychologie et sociologie (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1927)Google Scholar; La psychologie (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1929)Google Scholar; La sociologie (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1930).Google Scholar

(33) Robert, Philippe, Le progrès contemporain, en géographie humaine, en sociologie, en histoire, et l'antériorité des découvertes de la science socialeGoogle Scholar; Berk, Henri, La synthèse en histoire (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1911)Google Scholar, Part II; Faublée, Jacques, Berr, Henri et l'Année sociologique, Revue de synthèse, third series, XXXV (1964), 6874.Google Scholar On history in general, see Bellah, Robert N., “Durkheim and History”, in Nisbet, Robert A. (ed.), Émile Durkheim (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 153176.Google Scholar

(34) Cf. Durkheim, Émile, Sociology and Philosophy, trans. Pocock, D. F. (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1953)Google Scholar, and the introduction by J. G. Peristiany.

(35) See the presentation by Alpert as well as the works by Durkheim cited in Alpert, Harry, Émile Durkheim and His Sociology2 (New York, Russell and Russell, 1961), pp. 163173.Google Scholar Also Aimard, Guy, Durkheim et la science èconomique (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), pp. 3114.Google Scholar

(36) Émile Durkheim, Prefaces to L'Année sociologique, republished and translated by Kurt H. Wolff in Wolff, Kurt H., Émile Durkheim, 1858–1917, pp. 344, 348Google Scholar; Notre siècle: La sociologie en France au xixe siècle, Revue Bleue, fourth series, XIII (05 19, 1900), p. 648.Google Scholar

(37) E.g., Durkheim, , Prefaces to L'Année sociologiqueGoogle Scholar, in Wolff, , Émile Durkheim, 1858–1917, p. 352, n. 3.Google Scholar

(38) Durkheim, Émile, The Rules of Sociological Method (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1938), p. 13.Google Scholar

(39) Clark, Terry N., “René Worms”, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, Macmillan, 1968).Google Scholar

(40) Clark, Terry N., “Gabriel Tarde”, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, Macmillan, 1968).Google Scholar

(41) On the intellectual antecedents of Durkheim's ideas, see Parsons, Talcott, “Émile Durkheim”, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, Macmillan, 1968)Google Scholar; and Bierstedt, Robert, Émile Durkheim (New York, Dell, 1966).Google Scholar

(42) Canivez, André, Jules Lagrieau, professeur de philosophic Essai sur la condition du professeur de philosophie jusqu'd la fin du XXe siècleGoogle Scholar, tome I: Les professeurs de philosophie d'autrefois, Publications de la Faculté des Lettres de l'Université de Strasbourg, Fasc. 148 (Paris, Les Belles-Lettres, 1965).Google Scholar

(43) Cf. Bourgin, Hubert, Cinquante ans d'expérience démocratique (1874–1924) (Paris, Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1925), esp. pp. 188Google Scholar; Gerbod, Paul, La condition universitaire en France au XIXe sièle (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), PP. 535582.Google Scholar On continuity and change in these patterns, see Antoine, Gerald and Passeron, Jean-Claude, La réforme de l'université (Paris, Calman-Lévy, 1966).Google Scholar

(44) Outside the university, of course, anti-Semitism was not insignificant in France at this time. For Durkheim's personal experiences with this problem, first in Lorraine as a youth and later during the Dreyfus Affair, see “Émile Durkheim”, in Dagan, Henry, Enquête sur l'antisémitisme (Paris, Stock, 1899), pp. 5963Google Scholar, and Aubery, Pierre, Milieux juifs de la France contemporaine (Paris, Plon, 1962), pp. 115116.Google Scholar Contrast, however, Lasserre, Pierre, La doctrine officielle de l'Université, fourth ed. (Paris, Garnier, 1912), esp. pp. 243 sq.Google Scholar

(45) On marginal religious groups in French intellectual life, see de Candolle, Alphonse, Histoire des sciences et des savants depuis deux Siècles (Genève / Bâle / Lyon, H. Georg, 1873), pp. 70285.Google Scholar

(46) See Andler, Charles, Vie de Lucien Herr, pp. 259280.Google Scholar Eminents from Alsace and Lorraine included Lucien Herr, Leon Blum, Adrien Veber, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Christian Pfister, Sylvain Lévi, Auguste Ehrhard, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Halb wachs, and, of course, Émile Durkheim.

(47) See Duvignaud, Jean, Durkheim: sa vie, son œuvre (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1955), p. 11Google Scholar; and Sarrailh, Jean, «Allocution», Commémoration du centenaire de la naissance d'Émile Durkheim, Annales de l'Université de Paris, XXX (1960), p. 9.Google Scholar Georges Davy has a number of unpublished letters from Durkheim near the end of his life graphically demonstrating the deep sorrow he experienced in these years. A few excerpts are printed in Davy, Georges, «Allocution»Google Scholar, in Ibid., pp. 16–22.

(48) Cf. Andler, Charles, op. cit. pp. 1330.Google Scholar

(49) More than one of Durkheim's students was convinced, in listening to the master, that he was “the equivalent of an Aristotle, of a Descartes, of a Spinoza or of a Kant”. René Maublanc, in special commemorative issue on Durkheim in Europe, XXII (1930), p. 298.Google Scholar

(50) Concerning Durkheim's initial appointment to Bordeaux, René Lacroze, Professor at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bordeaux, writes: “There is every reason to believe that the initiative for this decision came from Bordeaux, more precisely from Victor [sic] Espinas, […] and that it was supported by Louis Liard.” Lacroze, René, “Allocution”: Émile Durkheim à Bordeaux (1887–1902), Annales de l'Université de Paris, XXX (1960), p. 26.Google Scholar

(51) Cf. Alpert, Harry, France's First University Course in Sociology, American Sociological Review, II (1937), 311317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(52) Liard, Louis, L'enseignement supérieur en France, 1789–1893 (Paris, Armand Colin, 1894), II, 372376.Google Scholar

(53) Liard, , L'enseigttement supérieur en France 1789–1893Google Scholar, esp. chap, IV–VII. For Durkheim's criticism of the earlier periods and of the reforms, see the first two chapters in Durkheim, Émile (ed.), La vie universitaire à Paris (Paris, Armand Colin, 1918).Google Scholar

(54) Ibid. pp. 182–193.

(55) This general pattern continues today.

(56) Izoulet, Jean, L'âme française et les universités nouvelles (Paris, Armand Colin, 1892).Google Scholar A collection of articles on reform by the editor of the Revue internationale de l'enseignement, the journal where many of the traveling scholars published their reports on Germany, is Dreyfus-Brisac, Edmond, L'éducation nouvelle: études de pédagogie comparée (Paris, G. Masson, 1882).Google Scholar The same term was revived after World War I by advocates of further change. Cf. Association nationale pour l'organisation de la démocratie, L'université nouvelle (Paris, Fischbacher, 1918).Google Scholar

(57) d'Ocagne, Mortimer, Les grandes écoles de France (Paris, J. Hetzel, 1879).Google Scholar Structural changes behind the decline of the École Polytechnique are analyzed in William, L. Peaece, “Science, Education and Napoleon I”, in Mazlish, Bruce (ed.), The Rise of Science in Relation to Society (New York, Collier-Macmillan, 1964), pp. 8490.Google Scholar

(58) Documentation on the École normale is abundant. A useful guide to further materials is a collection of short extracts on the school edited by one of De Gaulle's ministers, Peyrefitte, Alain, Rue d'Ulm: chroniques de la vie normalienne (Paris, Flammarion, 1963)Google Scholar, with an introduction by Georges Pompidou.

(59) Given the importance of the French university in politics for centuries before, this was a far from negligible consideration. For a related discussion, see Ben-David, Joseph, The Scientific Role: The Conditions of Its Establishment in Europe, Minerva, IV (1965), 1454.Google Scholar

(60) This was a particularly acute problem for new disciplines that might fit into the curriculum of more than one institution. See Hauser, Henri, l'enseignement des sciences societies (Paris, Chevalier-Marescq, 1903), pp. 89220Google Scholar, on the dispersion of the social sciences.

(61) See de Rousiers, Paul, Universités françaises, La science sociale, XIII (1892), 289307.Google Scholar

(62) This frequently neglected point is stressed by Davy, Georgesin L'Université comme corps et l'esprit propre à ce corps, Année sociologique, third series (1959), pp. 330.Google Scholar Himself a normalien, collaborator with the Année sociologique from before World War I, professor at the Sorbonne, Dean of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Paris, and in 1965 Président of the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques and director of the Fondation Thiers, his writings as well as several extensive interviews were particularly useful to me in filling in some of the lesser-known details of Durkheimia.

(63) See Bouglé, C., “The French Conception of the University”Google Scholar, in Kotschnig, Walter M. and Prys, Elined, The University in a Changing World (London, Oxford University Press, 1932), pp. 2551.Google Scholar

(64) Davy, Georges, Durkheim, Émile, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, XXIV (1919), 181198.Google Scholar

(65) Lemaistre, Alexis, L'Institut de France et not grands établissements scientifiques: Collège de France, Musium, Institut Pasteur, Sorbonne, Observatoire (Paris, Hachette, 1896), pp. 343398Google Scholar; Bonnerot, Jean, La Sorbonne (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1935), pp. 957.Google Scholar

(66) Bonnerot, , op. cit. pp. 3334.Google Scholar

(67) “The real grief against the Sorbonne, that which united against her so many different passions, is not in fact, whatever may be said, either literary or pedagogical. It is political. It is religious. She has against her conservatives and clericals of every shade […] She is an alarming specter for those who want to subject youth to the old political and religious dogmas […]”. Le Temps, June 16, 1911, quoted in Weber, Eugen, The Nationalist Revival in France (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1959), p. 81.Google Scholar

(68) Steeg, M., Ancienne et Nouvelle Sorbonne, Revue BleueGoogle Scholar, cited by Agathon (see below):

This scientific preoccupation […] has swept away our Faculties of Letters. Professors of literature no longer communicate to us their personal impressions; they wish to base their judgments on precisely observed facts. They are doing the work of historians, thus of scholars[…]

Philosophy in turn has followed this same evolution. Metaphysics occupies a modest place in our Faculties […] Disciplines are also developing here that were formerly confused with general philosophy. Psychology, pedagogy, sociology, have their chairs and their laboratories. The teaching of the Faculty of Letters is becoming penetrated by the same mentality as the Faculty of Science.

Steeg goes on to cite three major promoteurs of this movement: Lavisse, Lanson, and Durkheim.

(69) See Clark, Priscilla P., The Bourgeois in the French Novel 1789–1848 (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Department of French, Columbia University, 1967)Google Scholar, for a discussion of these and related themes.

(70) An open letter addressed to the Dean of the Faculty of Letters read as follows: “An ever-growing section of your students is hostile to the teaching it receives […]. One can feel in them something like a refusal to undergo the restraint of a few masters dazzled by German science. It is a rising, a reaction, of French minds”. Agathon, Signed, L'Opinion, 11 12, 1910.Google Scholar See below on “Agathon”.

(71) Weber, Eugen, in The Nationalist Revival in FranceGoogle Scholar, eports that riots broke out on the days of the lectures of Charles Andler, a socialist professor of German at the Sorbonne who had developed too close ties across the Rhine. Cf. also Weber, Eugen, Action fran¸aise (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1962), Parts I and II.Google Scholar

(72) Andler, Charles, Vie de Lucien Herr, pp. 112150.Google Scholar It is impossible in this limited space to go into the complex relationships between Herr, Péguy, Durkheim and his collaborators at the Année, which were further complicated by radical disagreements and changes in alliances from one year to the next. The closeness in the ties, however, is perhaps indicated in the composition of the editorial board of the leftist publishing houses, La Société Nouvelle de Librairie et d'Édition, of which Péguy was the director: referred to by Péguy as «Les Cinq», it included Herr, Léon Blum, Mario Roques, Hubert Bourgin, and François Simiand, the last two also collaborators of the Année. Herr was a close associate of virtually all the members of the équipe at the Année.

Two works on Péguy that provide a more sympathetic treatment of him than Andler are Rolland, Romain, Péguy (Paris, Albin Michel, 1944), 2 vols.Google Scholar, and Halévy, Daniel, Péguy et les Cahiers de la Quinzaine (Paris, Bernard Grasset, 1941).Google Scholar On Péguy's criticisms of Durkheim and his followers, see Péguy, Charles, Œuvres en prose 1898 (Paris, Gallimard «Collection de la Pléiade», 1959). eighth series, pp. 9911078.Google Scholar

(73) On learning of disturbances anywhere in Paris involving attacks on Drey-fusards, Peguy would run to the École normale dormitories and race through the halls, banging on the doors of students, rooms with a heavy cane that he carried for use in street fights during the Affaire, calling them to assemble wherever reinforcements were needed. See Rolland, , Péguy, I, 306 sq.Google Scholar; Halévy, , Péguy et les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, pp. 6880.Google Scholar

(74) On these debates, see Clark, (ed.), Gabriel Tarde.Google Scholar

(75) Worms, who tended to side with Tarde against Durkheim, was for some time the substitute for Bergson at the Collège de France.

(76) This matter as well as other little-known aspects of Tarde's career are found in a file of unpublished documents on him in the library of the Centre d'études sociologiques in Paris. The competition with Bergson is treated in the «Dossier Bergson».

(77) Bergson had twice submitted his candidacy for posts at the Sorbonne as well, in 1894 and 1898, and had been turned down both times.

(78) “A majestic evolutionism [was found] in the militant dogmatism of the French School of Sociology of which the great rival of Bergson, Durkheim, was the pope.” Rolland, , Péguy, I, 35Google Scholar.

“Les tendances de la nouvelle Sorbonne, lettre d'un étudiant”, L'Action, signed Jacques Jary, student in philosophy at the Sorbonne, cited by Agathon (see below):

Certainly Sorbonne professors no longer take account of the intimate life of chefs d'œuvre. They wish to reduce history, literature, philosophy to some sort of dead and dry knowledge. Armed with an infatuated scholasticism, and because they were clever enough to conserve an occasionally eloquent form for theories based on no more of a reality than puerile rhetoric, imitating the model of science, they have passed off all sorts of pretentions […] They have created a university orthodoxy, as if they received truth through revelation, they have taught ex cathedra, pounding out slogans[…].

Theologians, they have the arrogance and intolerance of professors […].

One well understands the animosity they feel for M. Bergson. It is a pleasure to note, during lectures, during thesis defenses, unfavorable allusions to “outside influences”, in general, and to that great thinker in particular.

Cf. also Chevalier, Jacques, Henri Bergson, translated by Clair, Lilian (New York, Macmillan, 1928).Google Scholar

(79) Goriély, Georges, Le pluralisme dramatique de Georges Sorel (Paris, Marcel Rivière, 1962), pp. 172182.Google Scholar Sorel was a major influence in turning Péguy away from his alliances with Lucien Herr and some of the Durkheimians that had existed during the Dreyfus Affair, to listen instead to Bergson. Sorel detested the formalism of the university, which he referred to as “le parti politico-scolastique” (Péguy called it “le parti intellectuel”), criticizing it for

the pretensions of furnishing, through sociology, a new and definitive foundation for the Republic […] It is Durkheimian sociology which appeared to constitute the major arm of this “parti intellectuel”, which, thanks to Dreyfusism, had conquered certain high university posts […] Under the pretext of cleansing the mind of all metaphysics and all mysticism, in the name of science and the experimental method, a new metaphysics and a new mysticism seemed, for Sorel and for Péguy, to be erected, that of a new sort of State religion for which the “parti intellectuel” would furnish the pontiffs, the teachers, and the lower clergy [pp. 175–177].

Bergson, in contrast, fascinated them:

Seated on the higher benches of the room [the seating was that of an amphitheater], we would listen to the fascinating words, subtle, precise, always simple and always creative. All ears, all eyes too, for the teaching of Bergson had to be watched as well as listened to. The philosopher worked alone in front of his audience like an artisan alone at his bench. The whole man applied himself in front of us. Concentrating intensely, he would bend forward, straighten up again, sometimes as if overwhelmed with the difficulties in rising. To a meticulous analysis he would add, as if he had received an inspiration, an image. What marvellous lessons! [Halévy, . Péguy, p. 111].Google Scholar

See also Sorel, Georges, “Les théories de M. Durkheim”, Le devenir social, I (1895), 136, 148180.Google Scholar

(80) Weber, , The Nationalist Revival in France, p. 80.Google Scholar

(81) Several articles published elsewhere were reprinted by Agathon as L'esprit de la Nouvelle Sorbonne: la crise de la culture classique, la cnse du français (Paris, Mercure de France, 1911)Google Scholar, with chapter headings importsuch as “The Sorbonne Against Classical Culture”, “The Sorbonne Against Philosophical Culture”, and “The Sorbonne Against Secondary Education”. One passage on Durkheim in the book is the following: Would it be M. Durkheim that M. Liard has charged with elaborating the new doctrine? The powers that he has conferred to him in the organization of the New Sorbonne leave us estabwith some basis to fear that this is the case. He has made of him a sort of préfet d'étuda. He has given him his entire confidence and had him called, first to the Conseil of the University of Paris, then to the Comité consultatif, which permits M. Durkheim to survey all appointments within the field of higher education. The casse of Durkheim is a victory of the new spirit. Charged with university pomp, he is the regent of the Sorbonne, the allpowerful master, and it is known that the professors in the section of philosophy, reduced to the role of humble civil servants, follow his every order, oppressed by his command. One is forced, to recall Cousin, who spoke of the professors of philosophy as “my regiment” and of his doctrine as “my banner”. But Cousin, although fanatical in his way, had suppleness, capriciousness, and a persuasive eloquence.

Dogmatic, authoritarian, M. Durkheim […] has created his own domain, pedagogy. This is the grand creation (should we say the great thought?) of the New Sorbonne […] The importance attributed to this subject is proven by a simple fact: it is the only obligatory course for all students preparing the aggregation, and those who miss two or three lectures are not permitted to take exams. Does he in this way have as his goal the rational formation of a future professor?

Certainly, one can collect some aphorisms there of which no one will deny the utility, such as for example: one must place the near-sighted students at the head of the class, the others at the rear […] M. Durkheim has firmly established his intellectual despotism. He has made of his teaching an instrument of domination [pp. 98–100].

Similar diatribes continue for pages. Cf. also Agathon, Les jeunes gens d'aujourd'hui, pp. 77 Sqq.Google Scholar

(82) Maublanc, , L'œuvre sociobgique d'Émile Durkheim, p. 294.Google Scholar

(83) Goyau, M., Comment juger la «sociologie» contemporaine (Marseille, Publioror, 1934), p. 184.Google Scholar

(84) Cf. Ben-David, Joseph and Zloczower, Awraham, Universities and Academic Systems in Modern Societies, European Journal of Sociology, III (1964), 3584Google Scholar; and Clark, , Institutionalization of Innovations in Higher Education: Four Models.Google Scholar

(85) These and other institutions outside the university are examined in Clark, , Institutionalization of Innovations…Google Scholar

(86) On Richard, see «Avant-propos inédit, écrit spécialement par M. Gaston Richard à l'occasion de ce numéro exceptionnel», Revue Internationale de sociologie, Supplément, LXIII (1935), 933.Google Scholar

(87) On Durkheimian sociology in the secondary schools, see Bougle, C., Humanisme, sociologie, philosophie (Paris, Hermann, 1938), pp. 2341Google Scholar; and Hauser, , L'enseignement des sciences sociales, pp. 323359.Google Scholar

(88) The most complete bibliography has been compiled by Alpert, Harry in Émile Durkheim and His Sociology, pp. 217224.Google Scholar [Since writing this, I have learned that Steven Lukes at Oxford has compiled a still more extensive bibliography.]

(89) One full-length volume attacking Durkheim's secular morality was written by a professor at the Catholic university in Louvain, Deploige, Simon, Le conflit de la morale et de la sociologie 2 (Louvain and Paris, Felix Alcan, 1912).Google Scholar The second edition contains two letters by Durkheim attacking Deploige's work in turn. See also Brunetière, Ferdinand, La science et la religion (Paris, Firmin-Didot, 1895)Google Scholar; and Weill, Georges, Histoire de l'idée laïque en France au XIXe siècle (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1925), esp. chap, VII–XIV.Google Scholar

(90) See the discussion in Parodi, D., La philosophie contemporaine en France (Paris, Félix Alcan, 1920), pp. 113160Google Scholar; and Durkheim, , Sociology and Philosophy.Google Scholar

(91) Durkheim, Émile, Crime et santé sociale, Revue pkilosophique, XXXIX (1895), 518523Google Scholar, is a vitriolic reply to an article by Tarde of the same title.

(92) See fimile Durkheim, , Suicide et involvenatalité, Revue philosophique, XXVI (1888), 446463Google Scholar, and Durkheim, Le divorce par consentement mutuel, Revue Bleue, 5th series, X (1906), 549554.Google Scholar Both articles take the manusposition of Bertillon as a point of departure; the “Bertillon Law”—that divorce and suicide are both associated with social disequilibrium—is criticized in the second study. Bertillon's important works, recognized as such by Durkheim, have been accorded less attention than they deserve. See Clark, , “Jacques Bertillon”, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, Macmillan, 1969)Google Scholar; and Clark, , “Discontinuities in social Research…”.Google Scholar

(93) Durkheim's general position is formulated in Durkheim, L'individualisme et les intellectuels, Revue Bleue, fourth series 1898), pp. 713.Google Scholar See also Morazé, Charles, The French and the Republic, translated by Demorest, Jean-Jacques (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1958), p. 29Google Scholar; and Thibaudet, Albert, La république des professeurs (Paris, Grasset, 1927)Google Scholar on the political involvement of French professors. A useful recent contribution is Steven Lukes, “Émile Durkheim: Socialism, the Dreyfus Affair and Secular Education”, unpublished manusposition cript. In this careful analysis, drawing on unpublished documents, Lukes portrays Durkheim's early involvement in Dreyfusard activities while he was still at Bordeaux.

(94) See Davy, , Émile Durkheim, Revue de métaphysique et de morale, pp. 191193Google Scholar; and Alpert, , Émile Durkheim and his Sociology pp. 7276Google Scholar, on Durkheim's war time activities.

* A draft of this paper was presented at the 1968 annual meetings of the American Historical Association in New York. This is a preliminary report on a volume in preparation, provisionally entitled Institutionalization of Innovations in Higher Education: Social Research in France, 1850–1914.

I am indebted to Harry Alpert, Joseph Ben-David, Éric de Dampierre, Georges Davy, Steven Lukes, Henri Peyre, Melvin Richter, and Edward Shils for their comments on an earlier draft. Support for preparation of the manuscript was provided by the Social Science Research Committee of the University of Chicago.

(95) This was published after the war as La vie universitaire à Paris.

(96) See the excerpts from a series of unpublished letters by Durkheim written in these years, reported in Davy, Georges, “Allocution”, Annales de l'Université de Paris, XXX (1960), 1622.Google Scholar