“Sciences versus lettres: a state-sanctioned dualism (France, 1808–2020 ?)”

The thesis that the humanities and social sciences cannot be reduced to the natural sciences is generally considered to be typically German. This article aims to propose an alternative history of these divisions and debates, and to examine the history of secondary and university institutions in France since the early 19th century. To do this, we propose to mobilize a historical pragmatics attentive to the names of fields of knowledge. What emerges then is the opposition between the sciences and the lettres, which we will show has been a defining feature to this day. Charged with cognitive, moral, and political implications, this opposition has continued to spark controversy. This dualism was instituted by Napoleon following the Concordat signed with the Pope (1801–1802). The aim was to put an end to the Revolution and to give moral issues a central place in school education. This led to the domination of an exceptionalism of the lettres and their primacy in the French academic hierarchy. The article traces the history of this dualism and exceptionalism up to the present day, with a particular focus on the inversion of the hierarchy between sciences and lettres from the 1960s. In general, this article aims to show that questions of divisions between broad areas of knowledge and between disciplines are never purely epistemological issues, but also moral and political ones.