Abstract
Of all the great European universities, the University of Paris is the most paradoxical. Established in 1253, it ceased to exist as a single institution with the Revolution of 1789 and found itself divided into autonomous faculties and colleges. The latter remained divided throughout the greater part of the nineteenth century, only to be brought together again at the end of the century under the title of the University of Paris. However, the habits acquired as a result of this separation of disciplines were such as to ensure that this formally unified administrative body was in reality an entirely empty shell. An esprit de corps existed only at the level of such smaller units as the faculty of law, and the faculties of medicine, letters and sciences. Moreover, this fragmentation of the professorial body was sharper than in other French or foreign universities because of the sheer size of the University of Paris. In terms of student numbers each faculty was more important than every other university in the country.
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Notes
See J-P. Rioux and J-F. Sirinelli (eds), La Guerre d’Algérie et les intellectuels français (Paris, 1991).
See J-C. Caron, Générations romantiques: Les étudiants de Paris et le Quartier latin (1814–1851) (Paris, 1991).
See N. and J. Dhombres, Naissance d’un nouveau pouvoir: sciences et savants en France, 1793–1824 (Paris, 1989) and
J.Verger (ed.), Histoire des Universités en France (Toulouse, 1986). See also
R. Fox and G. Weisz (eds), The Organisation of Science and Technology (1808–1914) (Cambridge, 1980);
T. Shinn, ‘The French Science Faculty System, 1808–1914: Institutional Change and Research Potential in Mathematics and the Physical Sciences’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 10, 1979, pp. 271–332;
R. Fox, ‘Science, the University and the State in Nineteenth-Century France’, in G. Geison (ed.), Professions and the French State (Philadelphia, 1984) pp. 66–145. Also to be recommended are the excellent biography written by
M. Crosland, Gay-Lussac, Scientist and Bourgeois (Cambridge, 1978) and
J. M. Burney, Toulouse et son université, Facultés et étudiants dans la France du 19e siècle (Paris, 1989). Finally see also my biographical dictionary: Les professeurs de la Faculté des lettres de Paris (1809–1908), I (Paris, 1985).
E. Durkheim, ‘L’individualisme et les intellectuels’, La Revue bleue, 2, 1898, pp. 7–13.
See J-P. Rioux, Nationalisme et conservatisme, La Ligue de la Patrie française (Paris, 1977).
For a discussion of the concept of a field of power see P. Bourdieu, Distinction (Cambridge, Mass, 1984).
C. Charle, ‘Les étudiants et l’affaire Dreyfus’, Cahiers Georges Sorel, 4, 1986, pp. 61–78.
On the concept of habitus see P. Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge, 1978).
See J-F. Sirinelli, ‘Guerre d’Algérie, guerre des pétitions?’, Revue historique, 565, 1988, pp. 73–100 and Intellectuels et passions françaises (Paris, 1991).
See P. Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (Oxford, 1988) pp. 62–3.
D. Schalk, ‘Algérie et Vietnam’, in J-P. Rioux and J-F. Sirinelli, La Guerre d’Algérie et les intellectuels français (Brussels, 1991) pp. 365–76.
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© 1993 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Charle, C. (1993). Academics or Intellectuals? The Professors of the University of Paris and Political Debate in France from the Dreyfus Affair to the Algerian War. In: Jennings, J. (eds) Intellectuals in Twentieth-Century France. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22501-9_5
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