Bergson and Durkheim: A Traditional Dichotomy and the Crisis of the New Sorbonne

FAIN: FB-10450-70

Louis M. Greenberg
University of Maryland, College Park (College Park, MD 20742-5141)

Comparative biography of Emile Durkheim and Henri Bergson, as a study in the opposition of students and the political right to the University of Paris in the decade before World War I. ABSTRACT: Study of opposition of students and the political right to the University of Paris in the decade before World War I, through a comparative biography of Emile Durkheim and Henri Bergson. Durkheim exerted an important influence as a Sorbonne professor while Bergson, in the College de France, offered intellectual support to those who rejected the world view of Durkheim and his colleagues. The New Sorbonne closely identified the value of scientific learning with those of the democratic state. In view of the 1968 student uprisings in Paris, it is paradoxical that many students then found the Sorbonne's progressive tendencies and its scientific treatment of all studies repugnant.