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Architects of the New Sorbonne: Liard's Purpose and Durkheim's Role

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Louis M. Greenberg
Louis M. Greenberg*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Extract

In those decades immediately preceding World War I, referred to nostalgically as “La Belle Epoque,” higher education returned to France. The Third Republic restored it to life, although its heartland remained the old Latin Quarter where there now arose in dominion architect Paul Nénot's “University Palace:” a giant rectangular building one hundred yards in breadth and almost three hundred yards long, a concentration of auditoriums, exam rooms, lecture halls, laboratories, offices, libraries and museums that then made of the New Sorbonne the nation's greatest institution of higher learning. A three-fold expansion and reconstruction by the republic of the original structure, its massive grey walls, nevertheless, appeared more hewn to the form of some ancient bastille than to any suitable republican symbol.

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Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Spring 1981 , pp. 77 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

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42. Cited critically as a statement representative of the New Sorbonne in the Journal des débats, August 21 and 31, 1910.Google Scholar

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47. Ibid., pp. 136, 175. On the other hand, Durkheim did not interpret modern education to mean a relaxation in training. He argued for the maintenance, and even a strengthening of Latin instruction with an exception made for those whose specialized studies did not require it. Archives Faculté des Lettres de Bordeaux, Procès-verbaux des reunions mensuelles de la faculté des lettres, I, March 22, 1888. As for the philosophers, he willingly renounced Latin, but wanted to keep a Greek requirement, Archives Faculté des Lettres de Paris (Sorbonne), Actes et délibérations de la Faculté des Lettres de Paris, IV, January 24, 1903. See also Durkheim, Emile, “L'enseignement philosophique et 1'agrégation de philosophic,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger 39, no. 2 (February 1895): 121–47.Google Scholar

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49. “Echos et nouvelles — Inauguration de l'enseignement pédagogique à l'Université de Paris,” Revue universitaire 14, no. 10 (December 1905): 435–37.Google Scholar

50. Archives de l'Académie de Paris, Dossier Durkheim, Emile, AJ16 214.Google Scholar

51. Clark, Terry, Prophets and Patrons: The French University and the Emergence of the Social Sciences (Cambridge 1973) p. 70; Archives Faculté des Lettres de Paris (Sorbonne), Actes et délibérations de la Faculté des Lettres de Paris, V, November 23, 1907.Google Scholar

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54. Archives Faculté des Lettres de Paris (Sorbonne), Actes et délibérations de la Faculté des Lettres de Paris, V, November 23, 1907; Bouglé, Célestin, “La sociologie biologique et le régime des castes,” Revue philosophique 49, no. 4 (April 1900): 337–52; Bougié, Célestin, “Le procès de la sociologie biologique,” Revue philosophique 52, no. 8 (August 1901): 121–46.Google Scholar

55. Archives Faculté des Lettres de Paris (Sorbonne), Actes et délibérations de la Faculté des Lettres de Paris, V, November 23, 1907. Victor Brochard, who had fought for years against the ravages of a painful disease that had left him blind and crippled, would die within the month. A popular professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne during the Second Empire, a frequent celebrity at the salons of Mmes. Aubernon and De Caillavet, he had pursued a life-style and a philosophical approach that would not naturally have drawn him to Durkheimian sociology. Nevertheless, like Liard, Brochard had come under the influence of Charles Renouvier, and his concern for the development of a better lay morality than his generation had either taught, or practiced, led him to encourage Durkheim and his followers. Baptiste Jacob recalled his last New Year's visit to the dying philosopher: “We others, he [Brochard] told me—and he spoke of X… and of other philosophers at the Sorbonne as well as of himself—we failed in our duty to this country; we worshipped talent, personal distinction, and because we had no care for what was socially useful, we accomplished nothing solid. We gave no vigorous moral direction to the younger generation, and our punishment is the terrible anarchy of ideas in which it flounders today.” Jacob, B., Lettres d'un philosophe (Paris, 1911), p. 188. Boutroux's, E. and Brochard's, V. refusal to oppose, and even willingness to aid the Durkheimians, was of critical importance, and lends specific support to Victor Karady's observation that Durkheim's career should be understood within the context of the evolution of French academic philosophy. Karady, V., “Durkheim, les sciences sociales et l'Université: bilan d'un semi-échec,” Revue française de sociologie 17, no. 2 (April-June 1976): 306 fn. 98; idem, “Stratégies de réussite et modes de faire-valoir de la sociologie chez les durkheimiens,” ibid. 20, no. 1 (January-March 1979): 53, 55. Google Scholar

56. Archives de l'Académie de Paris, Dossier Durkheim, Emile, AJ16 214; Registre des procès-verbaux du Conseil de l'Université de Paris, AJ16 2589, February 24, 1913; Lukes, , Emile Durkheim, pp. 372–73.Google Scholar