Writing the History of the Mind

Philosophy and Science in France, 1900 to 1960s

Cristina Chimisso

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780754657057
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134788156
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

For much of the twentieth century, French intellectual life was dominated by theoreticians and historians of mentalité. Traditionally, the study of the mind and of its limits and capabilities was the domain of philosophy, however in the first decades of the twentieth century practitioners of the emergent human and social sciences were increasingly competing with philosophers in this field: ethnologists, sociologists, psychologists and historians of science were all claiming to study 'how people think'. Scholars, including Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Léon Brunschvicg, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien Febvre, Abel Rey, Alexandre Koyré and Hélène Metzger were all investigating the mind historically and participating in shared research projects. Yet, as they have since been appropriated by the different disciplines, literature on their findings has so far failed to recognise the connections between their research and their importance in intellectual history. In this exemplary book, Cristina Chimisso reconstructs the world of these intellectuals and the key debates in the philosophy of mind, particularly between those who studied specific mentalities by employing prevalently historical and philological methods, and those who thought it possible to write a history of the mind, outlining the evolution of ways of thinking that had produced the modern mentality. Dr Chimisso situates the key French scholars in their historical context and shows how their ideas and agendas were indissolubly linked with their social and institutional positions, such as their political and religious allegiances, their status in academia, and their familial situation. The author employs a vast range of original research, using philosophical and scientific texts as well as archive documents, correspondence and seminar minutes from the period covered, to recreate the milieu in which these relatively neglected scholars made advances in the history of philosophy and science, and produced

Chapter 1 The History of Philosophy in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century: The Spaces and the Students

DOI: 10.4324/9781315546148-2

The Identity of the History of Philosophy

The task of writing a history of the mind seems perfectly suited for historians of philosophy: the study of the mind has traditionally been within the realm of philosophy; among philosophers the most historically inclined are the historians of philosophy. However, at the beginning of the twentieth-first century it would be difficult to find historians of philosophy who would thus describe their work. Indeed, in English-speaking countries, historians of philosophy are somewhat hard to find at all, and, outside specific events, such as the annual meeting of the British Society for the History of Philosophy, it is unlikely to find them in great numbers. A department of philosophy without a historian of philosophy would not raise an eyebrow; likewise, nobody would be surprised if scholars working on Machiavelli are considered historians, or if those working on Foucault are in French departments.

France in the first half of the twentieth century offered a strikingly different picture. Philosophy as a whole played a crucial role both in secondary and higher education, and the history of philosophy was considered a very important part of philosophy in higher education and research. The importance of the history of philosophy, and of the role that some historians of philosophy played in the development of the intellectual tradition that combined the study of history, philosophy and science, have not received due attention. This tradition, which has become almost synonymous with French-style history and philosophy of science, has rarely been connected with the practice of studying philosophy historically and with the history of philosophy as exegesis of texts. However, many projects in this tradition, and in particular those aimed at writing the history of the mind, did have their roots in the work of historians of philosophy, in particular of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl and Léon Brunschvicg. These two scholars, however, brought into the history of philosophy approaches that many of their colleagues resisted. In order to examine some important research programmes, which resulted in original ways of approaching the history of science and in new epistemologies, it is necessary both to understand the profile of the history of philosophy in early twentieth-century France, and the ways in which some unorthodox (from the history of philosophy's point of view) approaches managed to influence future research.

Several philosophers whom I shall discuss in this book nowadays are rarely presented as historians of philosophy (although they are by French critics). Indeed, I have sometimes encountered bemusement at my use of this professional and disciplinary category. Needless to say, I believe that it is historically and intellectually accurate to have such category. Having said this, it is by no means my intention to suggest that the history of philosophy had clear-cut boundaries. In fact, one of the main aims of the present book is to show that disciplinary boundaries were fluid, and that scholars seen nowadays as belonging to different disciplines in fact shared institutional and intellectual spaces. Their diverse approaches and methods often did not translate into a separation in terms of teaching, conferences and journals. First of all, what was called philosophy in France in the first decades of the twentieth century was much broader than for instance the field implied by the benchmarks of the United Kingdom's Quality Assurance Agency. ¹ Metaphysical and epistemological research took place alongside philological studies, the development of sociological and ethnological approaches, as well as the elaboration of experimental psychology and the study of the history of science. Notwithstanding the creation of new disciplines, namely sociology, ethnology, experimental psychology and general history of the sciences, their practitioners had still not only common philosophical roots, but also strong intellectual, institutional and even personal links. Moreover, higher education maintained these disciplines in close contact in terms of curriculum.

1 See the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education website: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/honours/philosophy.asp (accessed 18 April 2006).

The practitioners of the emergent disciplines also shared important intellectual spaces with the philosophers, including journals and learned societies. In the early twenty-first century, we are used to a very high number of learned societies and journals; even in universities in English-speaking countries, where the history of philosophy is at best struggling, there are societies and journals solely dedicated to this subject. The expansion of tertiary education, already a reality in the period under study, ² has gathered unparalleled momentum in the last few decades. It would be anachronistic to expect the same number of journals and societies dedicated to specific branches of philosophy or other disciplines in the first decades of the twentieth century as there are nowadays. However, what appears to be a lesser degree of specialization of journals, societies and indeed teaching and research, was not only the result of a smaller number of practitioners and students; it was also one of the most important characteristics of this intellectual field. The history of these disciplines, which branched out of philosophy, partly explains their closeness to philosophy and to each other in the period under study, when their respective identities were in many cases not completely formed. On the other hand, the practitioners of the new disciplines needed to mark their differences from the philosophers, in order to define their own methods. Moreover, the fluidity of disciplinary boundaries was rooted in the training of French students. French pupils were exposed to what were considered key disciplines throughout their schooling. This was no accident: the ideal of culture générale was fundamental to the educational ideals of the time, for the knowledge of a variety of disciplines was seen as the only way to form harmonious minds and good French citizens. ³

2 University officials already regarded the expansion of higher education as almost out of control in the 1930s: in his report on the academic year 1933–34, the Dean of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Paris warned students about their choice of studying humanities in increasingly great numbers (Faculté des Lettres, ‘Rapport annuel du Doyen: année scolaire 1933–34', Annales de l'Université de Paris 10/5 [1935]: 385–404 [385]). That year, 9,965 students had enrolled in the Faculty of Letters, compared with 4,422 in 1924–25 (Faculté des Lettres, ‘Rapport annuel du Doyen: année scolaire 1925–26', Annales de l'Université de Paris 2/4 [1927]: 295–309 [296]). 3 The literature on culture générale is vast. Here I will only mention two books by scholars whom the reader will encounter again in the present book: Célestin Bouglé, Humanisme, sociologie, philosophie. Remarques sur la conception française de la culture générale (Paris: Hermann, 1938); and Léon Brunschvicg, Un Ministère de l'Education Nationale (Paris: Plon, 1922). Both authors presented the ideal of comprehensive and integrated knowledge as necessary to the intellectual and moral development of students. Pierre Bourdieu has denounced the ideal of culture générale as a means of social reproduction, and presented it in less flattering terms as ‘the art of being able to mobilize instantly all available resources and to get the most out of them': Pierre Bourdieu, The State Nobility (trans. Lauretta C. Clough; Cambridge: Polity Press 1998 [1989]), p.88. I have discussed culture générale elsewhere: see Cristina Chimisso, Gaston Bachelard: Critic of Science and the Imagination (London: Routledge, 2001), ch. 2.

Despite its blurred boundaries, and its fluid development, not only philosophy, but also the history of philosophy, can be described and evaluated in the first half of the twentieth century. There are indicators that can give us a clear idea of its profile: chairs and doctoral theses at the University of Paris, publications in academic journals, discussions at the Société française de philosophie, and views of contemporaries. In order to understand the history of philosophy, and philosophy as a whole, it is crucial to grasp their institutional profiles at this stage in their development. By contrast with the nineteenth century, in the twentieth century philosophy was fully institutionalized, and enjoyed a high profile in higher education. This situation was relatively new for philosophers; as Jean-Louis Fabiani reminds us, the great nineteenth-century philosophers, such as Auguste Comte, Antoine Cournot and Charles Renouvier, never taught philosophy; and indeed they had a scientific rather than philosophical training. ⁴ In the period under study here, philosophers were overwhelmingly philosophy teachers, either in secondary or in higher education, and often both during their lifetime. Indeed, many of them had a strong interest in education, which they expressed in publications and by participating in the running of the education system. ⁵

4 Jean-Louis Fabiani, Les philosophes de la République (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1988), p. 28. 5 A few examples among many: Gustave Belot, after teaching in lycées (replacing Lucien Lévy-Bruhl at the lycée Louis-Le-Grand) was rector of the Académie de Paris and director of secondary teaching (Archives Nationales, AJ/16/952); Dominique Parodi was Inspecteur général de l'Instruction publique (Anonymous, ‘Chronique', Annales de l'Université de Paris 5/3 [1930]: 417–21 [419]; André Lalande, ‘Dominique Parodi', Revue de métaphysique et de morale 60 [1955]: 341–51 [342]); Victor Delbos was member and then president of the Société d'études pour les questions d'enseignement secondaire (Christophe Charle, Dictionnaire biographique des universitaires aux XIX^e et XX^e siècles, vol.1: La Faculté des Lettres de Paris (1809–1908) [Paris: CNRS, 1985], pp. 58–9).

I shall begin by briefly outlining the role of history of philosophy in lycées, and at the University of Paris, by looking at chairs and doctoral dissertations. The examination of the social and educational background of the Parisian professors of the history of philosophy will provide food for some very preliminary thoughts about the possible link between one's background and one's view of history and of the mind.

Studying the History of Philosophy in Paris

The Uncertain Role of the History of Philosophy in Lycée Syllabi

As Léon Brunschvicg put it, university philosophy students were ‘no novices' in this discipline; and indeed he and Henri Bergson, whom he quoted in his support, attached great importance to their students' early philosophical education. ⁶ As a rule their students would have had intense philosophy training in the last year of their secondary education, that is in the year of preparation for their baccalauréat. ⁷ The role of the history of philosophy in secondary education syllabi evolved from the time when Bergson, Brunschvicg and their contemporaries were lycée pupils, to the time when they were lycée teachers themselves, and university professors later on. In the 1870s the philosophy syllabus covered the following areas: psychology, logic, ethics, the history of philosophy and philosophical texts. The importance accorded to psychology and the history of philosophy was a legacy of Victor Cousin (1792–1867). Knowledge of the history of philosophy was crucial to Cousin's philosophical eclecticism, which was aimed at combining the ‘essential and true' elements of all philosophical systems, and as a consequence required a solid k...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Editor’s Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The History of Philosophy in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century: The Spaces and the Students
• 2 The History of Philosophy in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century: Theory and Objectives
• 3 The Meaning and Uses of History: Challenges to the History of Philosophy
• 4 Approaches to the History of the Mind: The History of Science between Philosophy and History
• 5 Approaches to the History of the Mind: The History of Science and the History of Thought
• 6 From the Laboratory to the Tribunal: Historical Epistemology
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index