Intellectual History

Durant les révolutions en Amérique hispanique du début du XIXe siècle, une vingtaine de républiques s’organisent sur le continent après trois cents ans de monarchie. Comment expliquer cette explosion républicaine, la plus vaste du monde atlantique ? C’est à cette question que ce livre cherche à répondre. À partir d’une histoire conceptuelle de la république dans le monde hispanique depuis le XVIe siècle, il montre comment se sont entrelacées la nouveauté d’une vision émancipatrice des révolutions modernes et les anciennes références classiques à la res publica de la monarchie catholique. En analysant la révolution d’indépendance en Amérique du Sud, notamment sur le territoire de la vice-royauté du Rio de la Plata, l’ouvrage explore la mise en place d’un scénario républicain face à l’incertitude des abdications royales imposées par Napoléon en 1808. Plus qu’une forme de gouvernement, on voit ici se dévoiler une république catholique qui renvoie tout autant à l’institution d’une communauté politique, centrée sur la cité, qu’à l’articulation d’un langage de liberté publique et de patriotisme. Les deux dimensions ont permis aux révolutionnaires hispano-américains de donner sens à leur expérience dans un contexte de guerre. Cette histoire de la république révèle aussi les ambiguïtés et les enjeux constitutifs du républicanisme atlantique.

Joseph Priestley was a man of many and varied intellectual interests. This thesis surveys his philosophical thought, with a central focus on his philosophical theology. The subject can be divided into two parts, natural theology and moral theology. Priestley's natural theology is a perhaps unique attempt to combine and harmonize materialism, determinism and theism, under the auspices of Newtonian methodology. His materialism is based on three arguments: that interaction between matter and spirit is impossible; that a dynamic theory of matter breaks down the active/passive dichotomy assumed by many dualists; and that Newton's "Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy" require the rejection of the "hypothesis" of the soul. His determinism arises from his theory of causation. He attempts to show that the only acceptable account of causation is one in which every cause is invariably followed by the same effect, and that libertarianism violates this central assumption of scientific thought. His theism rests on the Argument from Design. He defends the Argument by trying to show that none of the alternatives to Design advanced in Hume's Dialogues concerning Natural Religion constitute a plausible scientific hypothesis. His critics accused his synthesis of materialism, determinism and theism of leading to atheism or pantheism. His defence against these charges is that his system is essentially theistic, and that its ontology is determined by the Argument from Design. Priestley's moral theology is also in part a response to Hume's Dialogues. He offers a number of replies to the "problem of evil". Evil and adversity heighten our appreciation of good; they are a consequence of the finitude of the creation; they follow from the desirability of having a world governed by general laws; and they make possible the achievement of moral character. Character-formation is his main defence, and his methodology requires him to show that adversity leads more often than not to positive results. This requirement is embodied in his progressivist philosophy of history. History, he holds, exhibits temporal purpose and Design, just as nature exhibits atemporal purpose and Design. Priestley's political thought can be seen as arising from his moral theology, mediated by the notions of "luxury", which he regards as morally harmless, and "idleness", which is the main source of moral evil. His combination of liberalism and radicalism is examined both for internal consistency and as a response to the events of his day, ending with the French Revolution. Priestley is interesting partly for his unorthodoxy, partly for the interconnectedness of his diverse concerns, and partly because he debated with distinguished contemporaries. Throughout the thesis his views are juxtaposed with those of Hume, Reid, Price, Boscovich, Burke and a number of other thinkers.

Mu'tazila is one of the schools of kalam that appears in Islamic intellectual history. Although considered a heresy, the Mu'tazilite scholars played an important role in the development of various traditional Islamic disciplines. Initially, Western historians considered Mu'tazila rationalism as an anomaly in Islamic history. However, various studies show that they are not only an integral part of the Islamic intellectual tradition, but they have also even influenced Islamic scholars from various Islamic schools of thought in the next generation. This article will focus on the narrative of the Mu'tazila in Western scholarship by focusing on the history of its early emergence and development, the originality of the theological and philosophical ideas they developed, and their intellectual legacy in Islamic intellectual history. This research is library research with content analysis approach. This article shows that despite their adoption of foreign concepts and method...

The 19th century was a defining era for psychology, rich with an intellectual diversity that shaped modern thought but which remains largely overlooked. The roots of 20th century thought can be traced to the 19th century, when a mechanical worldview took hold, society grew increasingly secular, modern urban metropolises emerged, and evolutionist ideas reshaped the understanding of nature’s developmental principles. Throughout this century, the natural sciences extended beyond their traditional limits, influencing and reshaping the human, moral, and social sciences, among which psychology was especially impacted, as this transformation sparked profound debates on the very possibility of a science of the soul.

Forgotten Streams in the History of 19th-Century German Psychology recovers the vibrant roots of psychology in empiricism, romanticism, idealism, phenomenology, among other streams of thought that explored consciousness, the soul, and the self before experimental psychology took center stage. Unlike the standard view, this book invites readers to reconsider psychology’s history, revealing a complex landscape that questions the simplistic story of a linear path toward empiricism. Through profiles of significant yet forgotten thinkers, this work uncovers how their ideas contributed to discussions of the unconscious, mind-body duality, and inner experience.

Written by leading scholars, each chapter offers a unique window into an intellectual movement that continues to influence debates in psychology, philosophy, and beyond. Essential for historians, psychologists, and anyone curious about psychology’s deeper origins, Forgotten Streams is an indispensable reference that fills an important gap, enriching our understanding of psychology’s complex and multifaceted development.

Historical objectivity is a polysemic concept whose genesis and validity merit more nonpolemical attention than it usually receives. As a notion that encapsulates the special applications of the language of objectivity to methodological and ethical issues faced by historical scholars all across the human sciences, it will be addressed here from a perspective that combines conceptual history, history of ideas, and theoretical reflection. A peculiar mode of claiming objectivity will be at focus, one that assumes that historians can bring together two attitudes often regarded as mutually contradictory: objectivity and engagement. My main assertion is that from at least the mid 19th century a new avenue for historical thought was opened, as a few intellectuals challenged the traditional requirement that histories be written sine ira et studio; and especially as they did so while at the same time upholding a strong commitment to the value of research. I intend to show how in the mode of engaged objectivity, a disposition like anger, which was traditionally taken to be a historiographical vice, was turned into a potential virtue. This general point will be illustrated with a case study of the underlying motives and the structural configurations of Alexandre Herculano's History of the Origin and Establishment of the Inquisition in Portugal, a confessedly committed, utterly critical, and sometimes furious researchbased historical account.

Данная статья посвящена исследованию стилистической функции нереферентно употреблённых имён в текстах Станислава Лема. Выделяется функция создания текстов научного стиля (классификация инопланетной флоры и фауны в романе «Звёздные дневники»); функция создания текста, подобного Библии или летописи (списки неизвестных объектов в рассказе «Как уцелел мир»); функция создания нового литературного произведения (стихотворения робота из рассказа «Электрибальт»). Изучение стилистической функции нереферентно употреблённых имён в текстах Лема позволяет определить его идиостиль, установить особенности употребления неологизмов Лема как средств создания фантастической текстовой картины мира

El primer texto de Aranguren sobre el intelectual (1959) ya lo señala como la conciencia moral de la sociedad. El encargado de reducir la distancia entre lo que es y lo que debe ser. En 1969 apunta la necesidad de que el intelectual se independice de la sociedad a la que pertenece para poder criticarla y ponerla en cuestión. Asimismo propone la democracia como moral. Su labor como intelectual en el franquismo y el post-franquismo resultó fundamental. Entendió el intento de golpe de estado del 23 de febrero de 1981 como el afianzamiento, la mayoría de edad, de la joven democracia española.

Galen was the most prolific author in antiquity, having written more than any other ancient figure, with only a third of his work surviving to the present. Despite this, his writings still account for about ten percent of all surviving ancient Greek literature. Renowned as both a physician and a philosopher, we are fortunate to have records of both his medical expertise and philosophical thoughts.

Il 19 febbraio 2015 faceva notizia la messa all'asta da parte della RR Auction di Boston, a partire da un'offerta base di 55 mila dollari, di una lettera di Albert Einstein: un anonimo collezionista avrebbe acquisito il prezioso cimelio -si sarebbe saputo il giorno successivo -per la cifra di 75 mila dollari. 1 La lettera (materialmente una cartolina), datata 17 luglio 1925 e indirizzata al fisico lucchese, docente alla Sapienza, Giovanni Giorgi, ha la particolarità di essere scritta in lingua italiana. 2 La notizia avrà messo al corrente non pochi lettori del fatto che il grande scienziato tedesco si cimentò in alcune occasioni con la nostra lingua, imparacchiata in gioventù durante alcuni soggiorni tra Pavia e Milano, in visita alla famiglia. Nel 1894 il padre Hermann aveva aperto in Lombardia, in società con il fratello Jakob e l'ingegnere italiano Lorenzo Garrone, una fabbrica di illuminotecnica. Albert era rimasto a Monaco, in casa di un parente, per concludere il triennio di studi al Luitpold Gymnasium, che tuttavia non porterà a termine perché abbandonerà anzitempo la scuola. 3 Il giovane Einsteinche sarebbe un giorno diventato, come è risaputo, uno dei più illustri e convinti esponenti del pacifismo internazionale -aveva maturato presto una forte avversione per l'impronta militaresca della scuola in Germania, organizzata in modo da infondere nei giovani un ferreo culto dell'autorità, secondo metodi che lo scienziato in seguito non avrebbe esitato a definire "da esercito prussiano". 4 Determinato a lasciare Monaco e la Germania, in vista delle vacanze natalizie del 1894 si fece fare dal medico di famiglia un certificato di esaurimento nervoso che gli consentì di allontanarsi dalla scuola e non farvi più ritorno. Raggiunta la famiglia in Italia, prese la deci-* Ringrazio Francesco Crifò, Rocco Luigi Nichil e Irene Rumine per una lettura in anteprima e le osservazioni che ne sono seguite.

This chapter discusses the impact of humanism, the reformation and the counter reformation on early modern institutions of education, with a particular focus on central Europe and the Iberian peninsula. The institutional landscape was in broad terms largely the same across
Europe: a secondary tier prepared students for a tertiary education based
on scholastic and humanist learning, rooted in a productive combination
of Greco-Roman and Christian traditions, which were also shaped in many
ways by Arabic and Jewish scholarship. Latin was important as a European lingua franca, despite the rise of Italian in the sixteenth century and French in the seventeenth century. What is particularly striking is the high number of schools. With the overarching frames of Christendom and
classical tradition ensuring a common frame of reference, learning might have appeared conservative locally, but from a bird’s-eye view, the educational landscape was rich and variegated, creating a relatively open market for ideas.

In the seventeenth century, Isaac Casaubon had been remembered by the Reformed scholarly community of North-Western Europe as a champion of learning against what was perceived as a disingenuous and philologically flawed interpretation of Catholic historical traditions. However, these religious propagandists did not keep the memory of Casaubon’s martyrdom alive singlehandedly: in this particular case, the oddity of the ‘monstrous bladder’ fascinated medical scholars throughout the seventeenth century, and was spread by humanistic and medical scholars rather than theologians. Casaubon’s ‘double bladder’ grew into a medical cause célèbre. Now forgotten, it kept alive the memory of Casaubon in the century following his death.

Dirk van Miert discusses the concept and history of the Republic of Letters and the ways patterns of exchange transform over time and rules can precipitate. From the rather informal ‘imagined community’ of the Erasmian Respublica Literaria of the sixteenth century, the Republic
of Letters became a more self-aware community with explicit strategies of gaining authorial recognition by creating scholarly personae. At a systems level, it is not so much the rules themselves that count and have to be maintained, but the system in which rules are linked together, function, and are performed. The processes of regulating the transfer of secrets, doctrines, and information are more important than the contents of those secrets and doctrines. Even when regulating practices precipitate in codified regulations and institutions, rules require use and maintenance to be effective.

Chapter "Shi ji" in the Yi Zhou shu contains a record of 28 unsuccessful ruling lineages from the past, and a version of this text is also attested in the Dunhuang manuscript of the Liu tao. The text's peculiar way of recording history as a collection of disjointed didactic precedents corresponds to what has been discussed in scholarship as "exemplary history", which served to promote the interests of subordinate elites in their negotiations with hereditary rulers. This style of history-writing is connected to the text's self-presentation as an efficacious ritual artefact, purportedly inherited from the Western Zhou court scribes but almost certainly created by the Warring States textual experts. The similarity between the text's title in the Yi Zhou shu and Sima Qian's monumental composition suggest that both may be influenced by the same mythology of empowering textual knowledge transmitted via the traditions of ancient court scribes.

The images of Széchenyi versus Kossuth by Henrik Marczali. Széchenyi–Kossuth debate not only attracted the attention of contemporaries but also the continuous interest of historical literature. Only a small part of Henrik Marczali’s enormous work affected 19th-century Hungarian history. In his Hungarian historical summaries, based on his university lectures, he dealt with the reform era and its protagonists, Széchenyi and Kossuth. In his interpretation of the debate between the two, he went beyond the constructions of the former actors to define their political positions. It was also novel that he compared the arguments of the debate mainly to their image of society, and their program about society. The paper not only reconstructs Marczali’s historiographical position but also places it in the context of contemporary historical interpretations.

With his eyes riveted on the crumbling, neglected remnants of ancient Rome, Piranesi coined the term "speaking ruins," ruins that spoke to him of Rome's former grandeur. 1 In ways similar to the Renaissance scholars who entered the wilderness that was Rome in the early sixteenth century, Piranesi made the imperial Roman stage visible once again. 2 Establishing himself as the premier ruin gazer of the modern age, Piranesi endowed Rome's ruins with new vitality. By the time Piranesi was selling his mass-produced vedute in Britain, Charles's conquistadors had performed their bloody imperial mimesis in the New World, reading Virgil and boasting that they were better colonizers than the Romans. Now Britain was about to follow suit, turning from its Western to its Eastern empire. The era that saw the American Revolution, the revolutions in France and Haiti, and their Napoleonic aftermath was an era that reinvented imperial mimesis in theory and practice. This process helped center the era's imperial imagination on the metropolitan cities of Paris or London as well as Rome's

Objetivo/contexto: el artículo examina la configuración del Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades, órgano de la Academia Nacional de Historia, como parte del proceso de institucionalización que experimentó la historia patria en las dos primeras décadas del siglo xx. Metodología: con base en las herramientas de la historia de la cultura escrita, se estudia el papel que ejerció la dirección en la orientación de la revista, la selección y el posicionamiento de ciertas temáticas, la estructuración interna, los tipos de contribuciones, las dinámicas de impresión y circulación, así como las prácticas de lectura de las que fue objeto. Originalidad: a partir de documentación desconocida, el trabajo reconstruye las condiciones intelectuales y editoriales que explican la creación de la primera revista de historia del norte de Suramérica. Con ello, problematiza la noción de historia oficial para mostrar las tensiones que surgieron entre la Academia Nacional de Historia y el Estado central por el control del impreso. Conclusiones: el Boletín ostentó la doble condición de órgano noticioso de la corporación a la que pertenecía y medio de divulgación de trabajos y documentos históricos. Con ello, aportó al afianzamiento de una escritura histórica que se concibió como científica. Con un énfasis en la Independencia, la publicación intentó dar cabida a una historia del país en sus distintos periodos con base en los aportes de letrados provenientes de diferentes puntos de la geografía nacional. La existencia material de la revista fue el resultado de gestiones y negociaciones entre los académicos, funcionarios públicos y autoridades nacionales.

El texto parte de los antecedentes y experiencias historiográficas decimonónicas e ibéricas para situarse en el caso de la escritura histórica colombiana, considerando las iniciativas institucionales y el papel de las academias de historia, las posturas revisionistas y la apertura de los programas de formación profesional en las universidades.

En el caso de Colombia, la práctica de la disciplina histórica ha devenido
durante el siglo xx hasta hoy en el predominio de un ejercicio intelectual asociado con tres aspectos. El primero tiene que ver con la práctica de la escritura y el reconocimiento social que se conjugan en las labores de la Academia Colombiana de Historia y de asociaciones similares que funcionan a nivel local y regional, como los Centros de Historia. El segundo aspecto tiene que ver con las actividades de estas asociaciones, que han diseñado e implementado iniciativas para identificar, rescatar y enaltecer individuos o bienes patrimoniales que deben ser restaurados y conservados, como ha ocurrido con el rescate de piezas antiguas y edificaciones de los centros históricos de varias ciudades colombianas. Al mismo tiempo, estas agremiaciones han impulsado la creación y renovación de archivos
y bibliotecas, tanto en Bogotá como en algunas capitales departamentales, como ejes para la realización de las investigaciones históricas. Por último, el tercer aspecto tiene que ver con la apertura de espacios de formación en las universidades establecidas en las capitales departamentales, así como la presencia de las asignaturas de Historia y Geografía en la enseñanza primaria y secundaria. El análisis de cada uno de estos aspectos no se puede desplegar en la extensión disponible para este capítulo, pero, a continuación, se propone una descripción sintética de cada uno de ellos.

La institucionalización y profesionalización de la historia en Colombia es el objeto central de la presente compilación. Los autores desarrollan un trabajo de investigación y reflexión ensayística, a modo de reseña histórica, teniendo en cuenta instituciones (archivos, academias y centros de historia, universidades e institutos), departamentos y programas de Historia (pregrado y posgrado), además de cierta regionalización de la historiografía local y regional según las características, limitaciones o alcances de cada caso. El objetivo central es describir experiencias
en la creación de conocimiento histórico, la formación de historiadores, e incluso su enseñanza y difusión. El conjunto de autores sintetiza una comprensión individual, diversa y descriptiva a partir de los referentes institucionales, prácticas realizadas y procesos evidenciados en los que participaron historiadores, profesionales y autodidactas de diferentes generaciones e instituciones.
En la primera parte —Precedentes, escrituras de la historia e instituciones— se establecen antecedentes generales y algunas instituciones de referencia que sirvieron para apoyar el trabajo de investigación y de difusión del conocimiento del pasado nacional, hasta el punto de servir de soporte central para el establecimiento de un relato y de los hitos que constituyen los referentes del pasado nacional.
En la segunda parte —Profesionalización, carreras y programas de Historia— se aborda la difusión de los procesos de institucionalización de la disciplina histórica, que tiene como referente el desenvolvimiento del Departamento de Historia de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Bogotá.
En la tercera y última parte —El oficio y la disciplina en las provincias— se consideran experiencias distintas y resultados del oficio de historiar en zonas donde aún no existen programas de formación profesional. De hecho, la apertura de espacios de formación de especialistas en Historia, en el marco de las políticas de la enseñanza de las ciencias sociales a nivel de primaria y secundaria, justificó que a su vez se abrieran espacios para la difusión y la formación de personas que asumieron las ciencias sociales y las humanidades como profesiones y no solo como divertimento en los ratos libres.
Finalmente, a modo de advertencia, nuestra intención inicial, como ya se
señaló, se manifestó en una invitación abierta a profesores investigadores vinculados a todas las instituciones universitarias donde existen programas de Historia e incluso a otras regiones colombianas; no obstante, por distintas razones, en el contexto del confinamiento por el covid-19, no todos los invitados lograron presentar un texto para este proyecto.

This chapter examines Reinhart Koselleck’s hitherto unremarked contribution to the methodological debate in intellectual history regarding the linguistic turn. It argues that despite dedicating much of his career to producing a lexicon of social and political concepts, Koselleck was insistent that the categories of history and language be kept analytically distinct. The difference was maintained by means of an emphasis on history’s pre- and extra-linguistic conditions. This was to be understood in contradistinction to philosophical hermeneutics’ emphasis on what Gadamer called “linguisticality.”

This chapter discusses the conception of justice put forward by the Roman thinker Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE). Cicero wrote in the context of the collapse of the Roman republic, the largest and longest-lived republic hitherto in existence, and developed a political theory that put justice and legality front and center. Cicero’s jural or constitutional republicanism differs interestingly from both his eudaemonist Greek predecessors and present-day republicans. His theory of justice formulated a principle of popular sovereignty, albeit one limited by natural law; it gave fundamental importance to a set of equal rights, some of which were seen as pre-political; and it sketched a view of the common good understood as what accrues to people living under a system of public law (ius). This yields a jural theory of the state (res publica), a view that accords justice priority even before liberty, but justice here is not understood as personal virtue, but as something that necessarily has to be expressed in legal form, as rules. These rules survive Cicero’s scepticism: we can know them with a high degree of certainty, unlike conceptions of the highest good (summum bonum). The chapter closes by discussing how Cicero’s Roman theory of justice differs from some of the views put forward by some of today’s republicans.

This article aims to clarify the stakes of the reading of Dante that concludes Ernst Kantorowicz's 1957 book The King's Two Bodies. It does so by reconstructing the relevant argumentative contexts for appraising it, starting from the account of the sovereign individual that Kantorowicz developed in his 1940s lecture courses at the University of California, Berkeley. It argues that, for Kantorowicz, Dante's articulation of an exclusively human dignity constitutes a decisive chapter in the larger genealogy of the "superman" idea he begins to trace in that forum.

This paper explores the intellectual and the biographical relationship between Georg Simmel (1858-1918) and Max Scheler (1874-1928). This topic has been examined through correspondences, direct and indirect references, as well as investigations in the Munich Archive (Bayersiche Staatsbibliothek -BSB). Simmel and Scheler lived in Berlin in the early twentieth century, so they shared the German Jahrhundertwende "Zeitgeist" and many fascinations, anxieties, hopes, and feelings. Scheler was Simmel's pupil (Berliner Humboldt Universität) in 1895, but they were destined to meet again and again. Simmel attended some of Scheler's lectures as he searched for his theoretical path. Their roots of reciprocal influence also spanned many indirect interests and they developed personal acquaintance. There are many similarities and affinities in Simmel's and Scheler's work, that behind the reciprocal effect of their respective intellectual work hide an undeniable and unavoidable ambivalence. They converge on many topics (the cultural and moral analysis of values, the rediscovery of "emotional" issues in the foundation of social and cultural theory, the historical and anthropological interests, etc.), even though their respective philosophical and sociological findings were quite different. Scheler's "essentialist" position, in opposition to some Simmelian "functionalism" (i.e. relationalism), does not detract from the mighty importance of Simmel's unique approach, which brought a breath of novelty to both philosophical and sociological fields through its eclectic and innovative inquiry into modernity and from Scheler's new phenomenological * I am very grateful to Prof.

This article seeks to explain the sharply increasing tendency to quantify Chinese society in the twentieth century. It argues that this trend is inherently connected to the passage from a hierarchically stratified society to a one that was more functionally differentiated, which also resulted in the emergence of a new concept of society. The relation between social differentiation and quantification is explored by way of comparing an eighteenth-century essay by Qian Weicheng, which presents a rather typical late imperial vision of social order, with an early twenti-eth-century article by Liang Qichao, which is one of the earliest texts to lament the lack of numbers and statistics regarding the Chinese population.

We present the edition of the manuscript on the Introduction to the History of the Basque Country that Bonifacio Echegaray Corta wrote, commissioned by the Basque Studies  Society-Eusko-Ikaskuntza,  between  1932  and  1936.  This  manuscript  is  di-vided into three main parts: Geography, Names of the Basque Country, and Prehis-tory.  Thanks  to  his  prestige  as  a  jurist  and  historian,  Echegaray  was  chosen  to  pro-duce a History of the Basque Country as a whole for use in schools and universities within  the  framework  of  a  Statute  of  Autonomy  presumed  to  be  attainable  soon.  However, the anti-republican coup d’état and the consequent civil war prevented its complete realization. Our study of the manuscript tries to contextualize the work of Echegaray and its value

This article presents an edited conversation between Kenneth Hyltenstam, Christopher Stroud, Linus Salö and David Karlander. Its main topic is the rise and consolidation of bilingualism research/multilingualism research as a demarcated subject area in Swedish academe. The article delves into this history via the professional, scholarly trajectories of Hyltenstam and Stroud. By mapping and discussing their involvement in the field of bilingualism/multilingualism, the article offers analytical perspectives on the formation of the field, and on the general atmosphere surrounding this process. The account focuses on past and current research themes, institutional settings and modes of knowledge exchange. The creation of the Centre for Research on Bilingualism at Stockholm University in the 1980s emerges as a significant event in the evolving account of the research area. The conversation also makes clear that the history of bi/multilingualism research encompasses a variety of agents and interests. The subject area maintains mutable connections to numerous other scientific disciplines and is susceptible to various forms of intellectual influence. It has likewise been shaped in relation to various scholarly and societal values and concerns. By clarifying some of these dynamics, the article contributes to the yet-to-be-written history of bi/multilingualism research. It also comments on conversation as a scholarly method, and clarifies the scope and strength of its claims.

This paper brings forth the philosophical issues of the institutionalization of the philosophical canon in 19th-century French school system. More specifically, it reintroduces the two decisions that organized the institutionalization of a “list of authors”, in 1809 and 1842, into the intellectual production of the two philosophers responsible for it: Joseph-Marie Degérando and Victor Cousin. This study shows that, by explaining the philosophical nature of the ‘authorities’ that make up this canon, they can present it as a theoretical instrument that ensures that philosophy can achieve certain results, at a time when philosophy was accused of leading to scepticism.