THE ECLECTIC LEGACY:
Academic Philosophy and the Human Sciences
in Nineteenth-Century France
Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1998 (available from Amazon.Com)
This study offers a new interpretation of the emergence of scientific psychology and
sociology in late nineteenth-century France. Focusing on their relationship with the
philosophy taught in the French education system, the author the profound impact on the
individuals most responsible for the introduction of the human sciences into the French
university--Théodule Ribot, Alfred Espinas, Pierre Janet, and Emile Durkheim. This impact
was recognized by contemporaries but has been underestimated by subsequent historians and
social scientists. Philosophers helped shape the human sciences by their criticisms of
conceptual and methodological problems in the emerging disciplines. The human sciences
that emerged were less reductionist and more methodologically sound than they would have
been without the vigorous debate with philosophy. This influence is the eclectic legacy of
academic philosophy to the human sciences in France.
Academic philosophy and the human sciences were intimately connected in France. For
most of the nineteenth century, psychology and sociology were considered parts of
philosophy and were taught in the French educational system in a highly standardized form
known as eclectic spiritualism. Most of the individuals who first attained university
positions as social scientists had begun their careers as academic philosophers. Examining
the careers and early writings of Ribot, Espinas, Janet, and Durkheim, the author argues
that their philosophical training had a greater influence than has generally been
acknowledged. Institutionally, social scientists depended on academic philosophers for
career advancement and support, even as they sought positions outside philosophy.
Intellectually, academic philosophy influenced their conception of science, their
scientific method, their choice of topics, and their answers to the problems they
addressed.
At the same time, the efforts to separate the human sciences from philosophy forced
academic philosophers to rethink their conceptions of both philosophy and science.
Eclectic spiritualists insisted that philosophy should be a science of observation, like
physics. Other academic philosophers came to redefine their discipline as something
essentially different from science. They also reexamined the foundations of science and
found it to be a much more complicated enterprise than they or their colleagues in the
human sciences had imagined. This reappraisal contributed to new philosophies of science
such as conventionalism that would have a profound influence on the twentieth-century
understanding of science.
The author addresses the internalist/externalist debate in intellectual history by
arguing for an integrated approach that treats texts as rhetorical acts in a historically
constituted field of actors. He negotiates the continuist/discontinuist debate by
suggesting that early social scientists often invoked the rhetoric of revolution while
simultaneously pursuing strategies of accommodation and incorporation with respect to
their intellectual opponents. Finally, he attempts to resolve the issue of rational
reconstruction vs. unlimited deconstruction by arguing that although texts cannot be
reduced to a unitary interpretation, their range of meaning can be circumscribed by
attending to the audiences they addressed.
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. Philosophy as Science: The Academic Tradition and Its Critics
- Chapter 2. Eclectic Buddhist: Théodule Ribot
- Chapter 3. Incurable Metaphysician: Alfred Espinas
- Chapter 4. Becoming Philosophy: The Transformation of the Academic Tradition
- Chapter 5. The Synthesis of Philosophical and Medical Psychology: Pierre Janet
- Chapter 6. Metaphysician: Emile Durkheim's Science of the moral
- Conclusion
- Appendix A. Academic Philosophers, Notable Philosophers, and Social Scientists in
Nineteenth-Century France
- Appendix B. The Programmes of 1832, 1874, 1880, and 1902
- W. Jay Reedy, Journal of the History of
the Behavioral Sciences 37 (2001): 200-01
- Nathalie Richard, Journal of the History of
the Behavioral Sciences 37 (2001): 67-68
- Mary Pickering, Journal of Modern History
72 (2000): 537-39
- Ceri Crossley, French Studies 54
(2000): 97-98
- Willie Watts Miller, Durkheimian
Studies/Etudes durkheimiennes 5, n.s. (1999): 101-03
- Robert A. Nye, American Historical Review
104 (1999): 1769-70
- Stephen Jacyna, Isis 90 (1999): 831
|
John I. Brooks III