“A Big Piece of News”: Théodule Ribot and the Founding of the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger

Abstract

This paper describes the founding of the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger by Théodule Ribot (1839–1916) in 1876. Like the English journal Mind, which was launched the same year, this journal introduced the new scientific psychology to France. Its founding increased Ribot's scientific credibility in psychology and led him to be regarded as the most distinguished French specialist in the field. First, we review the state of French philosophy at the time of the journal's founding, focusing on the three main French schools of thought in philosophy and on their relations with psychology. Second, after analyzing the preface written by Ribot in the first issue of the Revue Philosophique, we examine how the journal was received in French philosophical circles. Finally, we discuss its subsequent history, highlighting its founder's promotion of new ideas in psychology.

The first French psychological journal was L'Année Psychologique, founded by Alfred Binet (1857–1911) in 1895 (Nicolas, Segui, & Ferrand, 2000). But 20 years earlier, the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger, founded by Théodule Ribot (1839–1916) in 1876 and edited by him, published numerous papers in psychology. Like the English journal Mind, which was launched the same year, this journal was the mouthpiece of the new scientific psychology. Since some French papers (Thirard, 1976; Mucchielli, 1998) have presented in some detail the story of the development of the journal's publication policies over time, we decided to present some other material that has not been analyzed in as much detail before. Thus, this paper focuses (1) on the conditions in which the Revue Philosophique was founded and (2) on the journal's reception in French philosophical circles.

In the mid-1870s, Théodule Ribot (shown in Figure 1), who is considered to be the founder of French scientific psychology (Nicolas, 2005; Nicolas & Murray, 1999), took the initiative of launching a new publication in the field of philosophy. On April 20, 1875, he announced this to his close friend Alfred Espinas (1844–1922) as follows:

Here is a big piece of news, the outcome of a project that has been in gestation for some months. Germer Baillière is creating a Revue Philosophique [Philosophical Review] to be published first on January 20, 1876 (editor: Théodule Ribot). Its characteristic will be to be open; no sectarian spirit (Littré, Renouvier), you will see the program soon. It will come out each month and will contain (1) two or three fundamental papers, including one translated from English or from German; (2) book analyses and reviews; (3) a bibliography of foreign works that is as exhaustive as possible. This project is approved without reservation by Bouillier, Lévêque (who promises papers), Lachelier (who nearly promised one on syllogism!). Caro is wary. Janet, very hostile especially to my editorship, is beginning to calm down. He wanted to found a journal (fruitless attempts in 1868 and

in 1872), inde irae. I count on papers by Bain, Spencer, Lewes, Taine, Wundt, Luys. (Lenoir, 1957, p. 14)1

Figure 1. Portrait of Ribot (1839–1916). S. Nicolas Private collection.

The founding of the journal was made possible by the new French philosophical and academic environment. New philosophical trends were emerging at the beginning of the 1870s, and the publisher Gustave Germer Baillière (1837–1883) probably felt that he could benefit from them. Accordingly, first, we summarize the state of French philosophy at that time. Second, after analyzing the preface written by Ribot in the first issue of the Revue Philosophique, we examine how the journal was received in French philosophical circles. Finally, we present the contents of the first volume of the journal and discuss its subsequent history, highlighting its founder's promotion of new ideas in psychology.

The State of French Philosophy in 1876

Introduction

The state of French philosophy around 1870 is attested to by several documents of the time (Ravaisson, 1868; Vacherot, 1868; Margerie, 1870; Ribot, 1877). The Paris World Fair in 1868 occasioned the publication of a series of reports on the state of the arts and sciences. Félix Ravaisson (1813–1900) was responsible for philosophy, and his report caused quite a stir (Ravaisson, 1868). The major part of this work consists of an exposition of the various systems. Although it is somewhat contemptuous of rival schools of thought, it was considered to be impartial and is an important document in the history of sciences. Ravaisson's report is characteristic of the period that preceded 1868. Around this year, French philosophy entered a period of changes and the new tendencies can be seen in an article published by T. Ribot (1877) in July 1877 in the seventh issue (volume 2) of the English journal Mind, which was founded the same year as the Revue Philosophique. This article is much less well known than Ravaisson's publication, having been ignored in French circles for doctrinal reasons. In May 1876, announcing this upcoming publication on French philosophy to Alfred Espinas, Ribot wrote (Lenoir, 1957): “The editor of Mind asked me for a paper on contemporary French philosophy for which I will be paid 12f.50 per page. I just finished it. Spiritualism is nicely castigated. The paper is a real lampoon. It will come out in England with my name on it. I was very interested in doing this. Ravaisson and the Institut have been torn to pieces.” In this paper, the main philosophical schools of thought at the time were presented in a clear way by a known opponent of the introduction of metaphysical ideas into psychology (Ribot, 1877).

These two publications by Ravaisson and Ribot show that French philosophy was characterized by the lack of a common doctrine, or even of a dominant one (Brooks, 1998), which did not prevent the field from being productive and innovative; on the contrary, it may have enhanced its productivity (Lévy-Bruhl, 1899; Boutroux, 1908; Arréat, 1910; Parodi, 1919; Nève, 1920). Together with subsequent works written by philosophers from various schools of thought or by historians of philosophy (Freuler, 1997; Brooks, 1998), they enable us to assess the state of French philosophy before the publication of the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger (1876), which was to influence an entire generation of French philosophers and psychologists.

Two major currents in philosophy (Simon, 1965) were concerned with psychological issues: (1) the spiritualist current, which involved representatives of the old psychology who relied mainly on metaphysical descriptions and hypotheses; and (2) the scientific current, which involved representatives of the new psychology who preferred facts to metaphysics. Among the latter, two groups can further be distinguished, one of which was ideological and included experimental psychologists while the other was physiological and included positivists from the school of Comte (Ribot, 1879, p. 360). A third current also emerged in France at this time, the criticist school, which considered that psychological phenomena must be explained in purely phenomenological, not physiological, terms.

The Spiritualist School of Thought from Victor Cousin to Paul Janet

To understand the state of French philosophy in 1876, it is necessary to go back 50 years earlier (Brooks, 1998). At that time, Victor Cousin (1792–1867) (Simon, 1888) had succeeded in establishing an official philosophy: eclecticism (Goldstein, 1968; Vermeren, 1995). He was the indisputable master of a host of disciples, retained control and maintained a strictly orthodox philosophy that completely avoided discussion of scientific discoveries (Nicolas, 2007). The fundamental principle of eclecticism was that everything in philosophy had already been said, the time of systems was over, all that was needed was to question history, to keep what is true in each system, and from those elements to create a lasting philosophy. Psychology was considered to be the foundation of philosophy (Nicolas, 2007), revealing everything to us by pure reflection (Cousin, 1826, 1833, 2010). However, this psychology was very superficial: it was merely a literary extension of commonsense truths. The few observable facts that can be found were borrowed from Scottish philosophers, in particular Thomas Reid (1710–1796).

If Cousin was the indisputable master of the eclectic school of thought, his colleague Théodore Jouffroy (1796–1842) was its “emancipated viceroy,” according to the well-known witty remark by the writer and literary critic Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804–1869). The psychological method inherited from the Scottish school was Jouffroy's first concern (Nicolas, 2003), which he described in his introduction to the translation of Outlines of Moral Philosophy (Esquisses de philosophie morale) by Dugald Stewart (Jouffroy, 1826; Stewart, 1826), arguing that it was possible to apply the experimental method to the observation of internal facts. As a proponent of a philosophy of consciousness based on internal observation, he developed psychology as a science of consciousness:

If in the three thousand years that philosophical questions have been discussed, there has not yet been a single one that has been permanently, or identically, scientifically solved, it is because philosophers have until now neglected to make the facts of consciousness the object of a regular science, and have studied them only to look for systematic inspirations and the foundations of their adventurous conceptions. (Jouffroy, 1826, pp. x–xi)

In the same preface, he observed a parallel between the science of external facts and that of internal ones, to which the methods of observation and experimentation apply, showing that psychology was ready to become a science that was even more firmly rooted than biology. In his posthumous paper (written in 1836) on the distinction between psychology and philosophy (Jouffroy, 1842), he did not consider psychology as a prelude to ontology but, rather, subordinated the latter to the former. As Ravaisson suggested in his 1867 report, he may have been influenced by Maine de Biran (1766–1824), a portion of whose posthumous work Victor Cousin had just published (Maine de Biran, 1834).

At the academic level, psychology as defined by Jouffroy was carried on by his successors at the chair of philosophy at the Sorbonne. For instance, Jean Philibert Damiron (1794–1862) wrote that moral sciences must change from hypothesis to observation and that they are completely dependent on psychology (Damiron, 1834). His successor in 1845, Adolphe Garnier (1800–1864), published the famous Traité des facultés de l’âme (Garnier, 1852), a monumental work directly inspired by Jouffroy, who, like Garnier, had not explored the big questions of pure metaphysics. However, this psychology was itself actually a kind of metaphysics of the mind, supported by some facts of everyday observation. It had the reputation of being the natural and necessary basis for any philosophical speculation: it concerned itself with logic, the science of the true; with morals, the science of the good; with aesthetics, the science of the beautiful; with theology, the science of God; and with politics, the science of the state. In 1876, the main tenants of eclectic spiritualism could be found among professors at the universities and the members of the Institut (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques), who were champions of philosophical orthodoxy. The more active supporters of this school were the academics Paul Janet (1823–1899) and Elme Caro (1826–1887), and the members of the Institut Adolphe Franck (1809–1893), Charles Lévêque (1818–1900), and Francisque Bouillier (1813–1899). But of all these people, the most influential was probably Paul Janet (the uncle of the famous psychologist Pierre Janet), who was considered to be Cousin's successor as the leader of the eclectic school (Brooks, 1998, p. 39). In his last philosophy lectures at the Sorbonne between 1888 and 1892 (Janet, 1892), he was still defending the famous definition of psychology given by Jouffroy in 1826: “Psychology is the science of the phenomena of consciousness.” For Janet (1897, p. 132), “This definition, despite all the jokes and objections it has encountered (…) has remained triumphant, unshakeable and unshaken.” He tried to demonstrate that this definition (1) does not deny the existence of unconscious psychological phenomena if a gradation in consciousness is admitted and (2) does not exclude the existence of an objective psychology. However, by then, the French eclectic spiritualist school of thought had had worthy opponents for some time, the first of whom was undoubtedly Auguste Comte.

The Positivist School of Thought from Auguste Comte to Emile Littré

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) founded a new school of thought in philosophy: positivism (Pickering, 1993). Classifying the fundamental sciences in his Cours de Philosophie Positive (Comte, 1830), he attributed to five of them an increased value because of their experimental character: astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, and social physics (sociology). Thus, although he did not seem to take psychology into account, he did not explicitly reject it (Georges, 1908; Petit, 1994). However, if not explicit, this exclusion was implicit in his lectures. Even though psychological considerations were omnipresent in his scientific and political works, when he spoke about psychology as a science, it was to subject it to severe criticisms, such as (1) it is impossible to observe oneself; (2) psychology cannot be reduced to the study of adults and sane individuals; and (3) the psychological study of animals cannot be excluded. His criticism was directed toward the psychological method adopted by the eclectic school of Cousin and Jouffroy. Introspection has no value; only external observation, as employed by physiologists, is science. Contrary to what is usually believed, it should be noted that the rejection of internal observation as the foundation of a psychological science was not peculiar to Comte (Broussais, 1828; Leroux, 1839), but his vigorous and repeated condemnations attached his name to that line of thought.

At the time of its publication (1830–1842), the Cours de Philosophie Positive was far from famous. In his preface to the last volume (July 19, 1842), Comte noted the strange silence of journals and established philosophers with respect to his philosophical publication. The dominant eclectic spiritualist school that he had condemned had not done him the honor of discussing his publication. It was mainly in the 1850s that his doctrine became better known and began to attract disciples (Charlton, 1959; Simon, 1963). The most famous was Emile Littré (1801–1881), who ended Comte's dogmatic isolation by popularizing the master's philosophy, making many scientists who were interested in philosophical questions rally to the doctrine and thereby greatly influencing the philosophical movement in France. Littré was a disciple of Comte's positivist philosophy. However, as far as psychology was concerned, he had different ideas. Despite this, following the publication of John Stuart Mill's Auguste Comte and Positivism (Mill, 1865), Littré (1866) had to defend Comte's position on the matter. Mill was writing a book on the system of logic in 1837 when he encountered the first two volumes of the Cours de Philosophie Positive, which made a great impression on him and influenced his own ideas. However, he was disappointed by the fourth volume dealing with social science because it lacked the psychological basis that could be its only firm foundation. Thus, Mill tried to insert a fundamental science between biology and sociology that Comte had wrongly omitted and that comprised psychology and ethology. Regarding psychology, the criticisms of Comte's philosophy he formulated mainly dealt with (1) the reduction of psychology to phrenology; (2) the absence of psychology from his classification of sciences; and (3) the imperfect constitution of sociology if psychology is not included. Littré was upset by these criticisms, although he was skeptical of Comte's “phrenologic psychology” or perhaps even as opposed to it as Mill (Littré, 1846, 1863). Littré's reaction reflects the positivists’ deep discomfort with psychology. He proposed what he called a “psychological physiology” (Littré, 1846, 1869) that had no metaphysical connotations and was a true psychophysiology in the modern sense. However, positivism has the merit of having been for many years the only philosophy based on science, the only doctrine that spoke to scientists searching for broad perspectives and general ideas.

Soon after Comte's death, Mill wrote: “We may affirm that M. Comte has done nothing for the constitution of the positive method of mental science” (Mill, 1865/1868, p. 67). What compromised the influence of Littré and his supporters in France seems to have been the introduction of a more wide-ranging positivism, called experimentalism. Positivism is a defined, completed, and supposedly unchangeable doctrine that should not be confused with the positivist mind, which is only a way of making philosophy. There were many people, especially among those who had a scientifically advanced culture, who, suspicious of metaphysics and asserting that speculations must be supported by facts, nevertheless did not want to retreat into such an unchanging doctrine as positivism. French philosophers who joined this new school of thought were greatly influenced by the English philosophy of the time represented by Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer, among others. Indeed, several French philosophers, such as Hippolyte Taine and Théodule Ribot, were attracted to English associationist psychology. The domination of the French eclectic school had concealed the considerable development of English experimental philosophy in the last third of the nineteenth century. French philosophers had kept to the works of the Scots Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart, which spiritualists such as Jouffroy had popularized. In fact, opponents of eclecticism tried to popularize later works. Hippolyte Taine was the first, with his excellent essay (Taine, 1861, 1864) on Mill's (1843/1859) System of Logic. But the significance of the new school was certainly demonstrated by Ribot in his analyses and reports on contemporary English psychology (Ribot, 1870) and German psychology (Ribot, 1874, 1875b) (e.g., by Fechner, Wundt, Helmholtz). The proliferation of such works changed the philosophical movement in France and gave it new force.

The Criticist School of Charles Renouvier and François Pillon

Around the same time, Charles Renouvier (1815–1903) was one of the strongest and most penetrating thinkers in France. He was not an academic philosopher and had been known since 1868 as the editor of an annual review of philosophy, L'Année Philosophique. Interrupted by the Franco-Prussian war (1870–1871), this annual journal was replaced in 1872 by a weekly publication titled Critique Philosophique under the editorship of Renouvier and François Pillon (1830–1914). His doctrine was first presented in his Essais de Critique Générale (Renouvier, 1854).

From a general point of view, we can say that Renouvier had decided to continue the work of Kant. In his opinion, philosophy consisted of a general criticism of knowledge as a preparation for ethics. For Renouvier, it was possible to establish a psychological science, as he asserted in 1858 in the second essay of his major publication (Renouvier, 1854–1864). This rational psychology must deal exclusively with mental phenomena and the investigation of their laws. As noted by Brooks (1998), Renouvier's psychology can be characterized by three basic propositions. First, psychological phenomena must be explained in purely phenomenological terms, not in physiological terms. Second, any phenomenological explanation must take into account the a priori element in representation. Finally, any account of the mind must acknowledge free will. So criticists were opposed to any form of scientific psychology that reduced mental to neuronal phenomena (e.g., English associationism, German physiologism, positivism). Renouvier and Pillon carried out a lifelong battle with associationist psychology in the Critique Philosophique (see Pillon, 1872, p. 32). English associationism not only constructed purely phenomenological laws but also tried to correlate mental with neural phenomena. Criticists were much more critical of German psychology, which advocated the study and explanation of psychological phenomena through their concomitant physiological phenomena. According to Renouvier (1879), it is inadmissible for psychology, which has its own specific, very well-defined domain, to claim to encompass the physiology of nerves (see also Dauriac, 1883). Instead of explaining mental phenomena by means of other mental phenomena, physiologists and positivists tried to reduce mental to neural phenomena.

The Manifesto of the New Revue Philosophique

The journal's founding was helped by the connections that Ribot had cultivated. In the early 1870s, Ribot had chosen the firm of Ladrange to publish his first works (Ribot, 1870, 1872, 1873). But at the beginning of 1874, a share in Ladrange was bought by Gustave Germer Baillière (1837–1883), who was then known for the novelty and boldness of his publishing policy. The publication of Ribot's subsequent work was thus transferred to this new publisher (see Spencer, 1874; Ribot, 1875a), and these books were included in the famous “Bibliothèque de philosophie contemporaine” series that had been created in 1863. Baillière also took control of such journals as the Revue Politique et Littéraire (1864) and the Revue Scientifique (1864) to which Ribot contributed in the 1870s. Consequently, Ribot and Baillière knew each other well, as is also clear from Ribot's correspondence (Lenoir, 1957). In addition, in 1872, Félix Alcan (1841–1925) (a close friend of Ribot's and his classmate at the Ecole Normale Supérieure from 1862 to 1865) had become Germer Baillière's partner in the publishing house. The founding of the new Revue Philosophique must have benefited from Alcan's support: Alcan and Ribot had maintained their very friendly relations.

On August 17, 1875, Paul Janet officially announced the creation of the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger in the daily newspaper Le Temps in a postscript following an analysis of the philosophy of that period:

We have received the program of an important publication that will first come out on January 1, 1876, and we believe that our readers should be informed of it. It is a journal announced by the publisher Germer Baillière under the title Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger. The editor of the journal will be Mr. Ribot, a philosopher honorably known for his works on English philosophy, and for a remarkable book on heredity.

According to Janet, the program of the journal presented a very new feature: it would be an “open” journal; that is, it would not be the work of one school of thought but a meeting place for all. Moreover, responsibility would be individual, and each writer would answer only for the articles he had signed. Another important feature of the new journal was that it would be a genuine, serious philosophical journal. It would exclude politics and literature and would not be afraid of dealing with issues in quite a technical manner, which would promote knowledge. Indeed, according to Janet, “Today, if one has something to say about a special philosophical question and if one does not want to write a book, one cannot find any public outlet to present one's views.” Finally, the new journal promised to be a complete and exact source of information about everything done in France and in foreign countries so that it would keep readers informed about all publications in which philosophers could be interested and about all the developments in ideas that might occur in the various parts of the civilized world. Janet ends by saying this:

The opportuneness of a publication of this type is indicated by the remarkable coincidence with a similar and simultaneous enterprise in England, where a journal of precisely the same type has been announced, which will also be open to all schools of thought, under the direction of Professor Bain from Edinburgh. We can only offer our encouragement to the new journal, in the hope that it will be faithful to the banner of impartiality and high liberalism under which it presents itself to us.

In January 1876, the first issue of the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger did indeed appear. In the preface to his new publication, Ribot (1876, p. 1) wrote: “The Revue Philosophique that we are beginning to publish intends to be open to all schools of thought. Accordingly, there is no rigorous manifesto to set out, and it will suffice to describe briefly the goals pursued and the means for attaining them.” Ribot did not wish to be the exclusive spokesperson of a doctrine, the representative of a single system. He emphasized that in France, there were already publications of that type that accomplished their task with skill and fervor. But it appeared to him that, in addition to them, there was room for work of another type that would also be useful. The new journal intended to present a complete and exact picture of current philosophical trends, without excluding any school of thought. It did not aim to be the official organ of any system and invited foreign as well as French thinkers to contribute. The new journal offered a neutral space for presentation and discussion.

Without wanting to encourage an eclecticism that would have no value and nothing in common with the spirit of the journal, it seems undeniable to us that all philosophies do agree on some questions and consequently that interactions other than attacks are possible. As sharply as the different schools may disagree, the issues that divide them are surely much less numerous that the ones that unite them. (Ribot, 1876, pp. 1–2)

Consequently, pure positivism; the experimental school that had representatives in France, Germany, and England; criticism stemming from Kant; spiritualism, which had lately taken a new form in France, inspired in particular by Maine de Biran—all would find an open forum. The journal would exclude only papers that fell outside the philosophical movement, that is, papers that were devoted to already familiar doctrines and that used mere literary skill to warm over old ideas, would have nothing to teach readers.

The set of questions Ribot (1876) meant to address was vast but could be reduced to five groups. First, there were psychological studies that aimed to acquire theoretical knowledge of human beings. Psychology was one of the oldest components of philosophy. The time when one could claim that psychology was more or less complete had passed.

One would no longer dare to claim that, to do psychology, one only needs to use introspection; in general, one must admit that anatomy, physiology, mental pathology, history, and anthropology are directly and immediately relevant. Thus, there is a wide research field, especially if one adds logic and aesthetics, which are merely branches of psychology, as one studies the mechanism of human reason and the other a form of pleasure—pleasure caused by the beautiful. (Ribot, 1876, p. 2)

Second, moral philosophy and related disciplines formed another group dedicated to the study of human actions. Third, the natural sciences, organic or organized, suggested general theories that Ribot found highly interesting and considered to be a direct part of philosophy: “In this respect, one need only recall the continuous discussions caused by the correlations between mental and behavioral phenomena and the evolution hypothesis, and, to a lesser degree, by the chemical theories and the various conceptions of life” (Ribot, 1876, p. 3). Fourth, beyond the various speculations that relied to different degrees on experience, there was metaphysics. The journal had room for that discipline, as pure empiricism was not its profession of faith, “but it will ask metaphysicians for facts, as we are convinced that nowhere can one do without experience, and that where it is missing, one merely finds logical quibbles, imaginary creations, or mystical effusions” (Ribot, 1876, p. 3). Finally, the journal intended to publish new studies on the history of philosophy, using the method of rigorous criticism that was becoming more and more prevalent in historical work. This was the set of questions to which the journal intended to dedicate original papers, reviews, and analyses. According to Ribot's preface, the journal promised to be open to all schools of thought and to all philosophical questions. Another innovation was that Ribot intended to be in tune with the philosophical trends of the time. Indeed, he underscored the importance of psychological issues, which had to be addressed with empirical bases. Thus, the journal was to remain open to the natural sciences (physiology, evolutionary theory, etc.). However, Ribot was careful to also promise papers on the history of philosophy and classical philosophy (moral philosophy, logic, aesthetics, and metaphysics).

The Reception of the Journal in French Philosophical Circles

Paul Janet and the Expectations of French Spiritualists

As noted by Brooks (1998, p. 268), the French eclectic spiritualists did not have their own journal but they did have exclusive access to several others, such as the Journal des savants, the official publication of the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques; the Revue des deux mondes, the Journal des débats, and the Revue politique et littéraire, which were general publications for the educated elite; and finally to daily newspapers such as Le Temps.

On March 2, 1876, Paul Janet devoted an important and very long article (four columns) to the new journal in the best-known daily newspaper, Le Temps. He presented the journal in the following terms: “Recently, the most important event in the order of ideas we are concerned with (the philosophical movement) has been the publication of the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger, edited by Mr. Ribot.” Janet showed that this publication was an entirely new creation in the philosophical world. Several journals of the same type already existed or had existed, but all of them were devoted to the promotion of a particular doctrine; all were inspired by an exclusive school of thought. He noted that such an enterprise corresponded to the current state of thought, as one could see the same thing happening both in England and in France. Indeed, on the same day, January 1, an English journal edited by Alexander Bain (1818–1903) and called Mind, a Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy and the French Revue Philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger came out on opposite sides of the Channel. Like Ribot's publication, Bain's journal announced itself as open to all schools and opinions. This fact proved that in England, as in France, scholars felt a need to focus the efforts of all philosophers and bring them together so as to make the best use as possible of them. The same reasons that justified calming and conciliatory behavior in politics demanded similar behavior in philosophy. According to Janet, the moderate attitude of the respective schools was one of the elements—one of the applications—of this policy and would undoubtedly help it:

I will not compare the new journal with what is called l'Union des Gauches [in politics, the confederation of the left wing]: it is not really a confederation, but it is about a voluntary and accepted gathering of free, enlightened, and peaceable minds, each seeking the truth along its own path and struggling to be the most convincing with the force of reason, the solidity of method, and the evidence of facts. At least, this is the spirit of the new journal as we understand it, and accordingly we keenly support it.

At this point, Janet drew a portrait of Ribot, whom he considered to be a man capable of conducting this new challenge.

Moreover, the choice of the editor guarantees the goodwill that must inspire it. According to his opinions, Mr. T. Ribot belongs to the so-called independent school; on the other hand, according to his origins, his scientific qualifications and his friendships, he belongs to the university. Thus, he is very well suited to induce philosophy from outside and from inside to live in harmony. He himself is open-minded, honest, without sectarian passion, eminently kindly.

Janet also wanted to explain the role he attributed to Ribot to the readers of Le Temps. And because one always tends to follow one's own inclinations, he also put the editor of the Revue Philosophique on his guard about one stumbling block: positivism. It was the price of the success and of the originality of the journal. The interest would depend on the diversity of points of view; for Janet, this diversity must not only not give rise to conflict but must also not allow the exclusive dominance of one point of view over the others. As well, it would not be fair to predict some sort of exclusiveness for which there seemed to be no evidence. (Ribot agreed to publish Janet's contribution in his first issue.) There was another stumbling block to avoid, in Janet's opinion. In his introduction, Ribot had ruled out work that would present familiar doctrines merely refurbished by literary skill. Suspiciously, Paul Janet cried out:

What do you mean? That you reject declamation and rhetoric? Why do you need to say that? Is it not obvious that you will reject what you do not find to be good? What you forbid in advance is expository skill, but expository skill is the rarest thing even in philosophy. (…) You will be brought quantities of philosophy in which all that will be needed to appear to be a deep thinker is to speak about reflex action and evolution. But you say that it is not the form you prohibit: it is the content, when it lacks novelty. Very well, but do not suppose it is “elevated by the form,” as this is novelty itself.

Then Janet underlined the fundamental contribution of the new journal: the Revue Philosophique presented a good deal of interest and unquestionable utility. Much of it would be a collection of information. It would keep up to date with foreign journals and keep informed about them, and about everything that would appear in Germany, England, Italy, and other countries. With this role, it filled an obvious gap and met the growing need to inquire about everything that was going on elsewhere and to be accurately informed. One of the merits of the new journal would be that it would make foreign scholars better known. One could readily see the variety, the interest, and the practical utility of the important organ that philosophy in France had just acquired. Janet ended: “Now, it is not only up to the editor but also to philosophers themselves to secure its success, by bringing to it their work and the best of their thoughts.”

Icy Reception by the Positivists of La Philosophie Positive (Littré, Wyrouboff)

La Philosophie Positive, a journal founded by Emile Littré and his Russian disciple Grégoire Wyrouboff (1843–1913) and published from 1867 to 1883, “welcomed” the new journal by declaring that it had “no reason to exist” and that it would not “last.” (This year is the 135th year of publication of the Revue Philosophique.). Wyrouboff was one of the main advocates of Comte's positivism at the time and was to occupy the chair in “Histoire Générale des Sciences” at the Collège de France in 1903 (for a biography, see Copaux, 1915; Sarton, 1947). Here is what he had to say (Wyrouboff, 1876, p. 468):

Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger (…) Here is the title of a new journal devoted to philosophical interests that we welcome. It is difficult to discern its tendencies and to determine to which intellectual needs it corresponds. The editor did place a preface that was meant to be a program at the beginning of the first issue, but I find these three pages of explanations much more confusing than enlightening.

For him, the enterprise was illusory, because it did not correspond to any need. Moreover, it would never produce anything serious. He continued: “Philosophical schools of thought have no desire to be reconciled and merged; on the contrary, they are lively and fertile only when they are consistent and remain pure. The time for eclecticism is over, and it has produced too little for us to consider returning to it” (Wyrouboff, 1876, p. 469). Positivists preferred to stay in their own corners and to work, without considering their “neighbors,” toward the triumph of what each of them believed to be the truth. “In what way would Mr. Renouvier, a criticist, be served by appearing next to me, a positivist? We are working in two different directions, we know each other perfectly well, and we know in advance that we will never agree” (Wyrouboff, 1876, p. 469). Ribot's journal reminded him of a building that was made from all possible materials, in all possible styles, and had only the roof in common.

In fact, in his preface to the first issue, Ribot had explicitly rejected “an eclecticism that would have no value and nothing in common with the spirit of the journal.” Consequently, he reacted sharply to the “reproach of eclecticism” from the Philosophie Positive:

The Philosophie Positive “welcomed” us, saying that we had “no reason to exist,” and reproaching us for eclecticism. To this sentence, which is very typical of them, we will answer that our reason to exist is to publish all philosophical works that are serious, specific, and even technical, and that could not have found a place in a closed journal as a consequence of the heterodox opinions of their authors; that we are not eclectic, because eclecticism implies a choice, but the journal proposes and does not choose. In a more tolerant vein, we believe that the Philosophie Positive has a reason to exist, and, thanking it for its brotherly intentions, we wish it the foreign and French audience that it wrongly “does not dare to hope” for us. (Note at the end of the June 1876 issue of the Revue Philosophique, I, p. 632.)

In fact, the icy reception of the journal by positivist philosophers may seem surprising, as Ribot specifically wanted his journal to favor, first, the non-metaphysical approach in philosophy and, second, the scientific approach in psychology. However, one should not forget that, in his early work, Ribot (1870, p. 22) had quoted Comte only to blame him for having rejected introspection:

Certainly, no one believes more than we do in the need for this mode of observation: it is the starting point, the indispensable condition of any psychology, and those who denied it, such as Broussais and Comte, have gone so far against obvious facts and made the task so easy for their opponents that their most loyal disciples have never followed them that far. It is certain that the anatomist and the physiologist could spend centuries studying the brain and the nerves without suspecting that pleasure or pain exist if they had not felt them.

Wyrouboff was not the man to accept this criticism from Ribot and seems to have been resentful.

As well, although both Ribot and the French positivists defended the scientific approach in psychology, it was on different bases. For the latter, following the doctrine of Auguste Comte, psychology could certainly not be considered as a science, as it merely was a specific branch of cerebral physiology, called psychophysiology or psychic physiology by Littré: “I am convinced that the more psychology becomes a part of biology, the more strongly a philosophy with an objective basis will develop” (Littré, 1876, p. XIV). This French positivism based on the study of the organic and inorganic world differed from the English positivism of someone such as Mill, for whom the starting point was the study of psychology. As Wyrouboff wrote several years later in commenting on Ribot's book on diseases of the memory (Wyrouboff, 1881, p. 460): “Psychology as practiced until now in Germany, in England and in France has nothing in common with positivist science; consequently, it has no right to speak out, and even less to stand out.” Indeed, since Comte, positivist philosophy had stated that it was scientifically necessary for physiology to absorb psychology. Orthodox positivists had sensed Ribot's resistance to this absorption, and on top of that his insistence that psychology should constitute a scientific field in itself. Obviously, the positivists' repudiation of psychology as an autonomous field militated against any understanding between the editors of the two philosophical journals.

But contrary to the positivists’ criticisms, the Revue Philosophique was at the heart of the preoccupations of its day and attracted the interest of the younger generation of philosophers and psychologists. This was not the case with Littré's and Wyrouboff's Philosophie Positive, which disappeared a few years later, in 1883, obviously because its audience was too small.

Warm Reception by the Criticists of La Critique Philosophique (Renouvier)

Unlike La Philosophie Positive, the Critique Philosophique journal (founded by Renouvier in 1872) recognized not only the raison d’être of the Revue Philosophique but also its merits. It did not take the lesson of tolerance as being aimed against, although the words used by Ribot—“closed journal” and “heterodox opinions”—were slightly offensive and could be applied more widely, according to the authors of the Critique Philosophique. However, they specified that, when a journal is created to represent a doctrine, it is natural for it to be closed to opposing doctrines. It can be open only to objections, which the Critique Philosophique had never rejected when they were presented clearly and correctly. Indeed, nobody should have to struggle to spread ideas he/she does not share. The authors of the Critique Philosophique also emphasized that it is possible not to share an opinion without calling it heterodox. Their own doctrine implied the acknowledgment of different convictions and of their manifestations, provided they were conscientious.

One year ago, we welcomed the valiant journal of Mr. T. Ribot. With true satisfaction, we note today that it has kept its promises to the philosophical audience as far as impartiality is concerned; it may even exceeded our expectations as to the interest of the papers it has published and the information it has provided concerning the trends in general ideas in France and abroad. (Critique Philosophique, 1877, vol. I, p. 58)

However the criticists noted that some doctrines were nevertheless represented more often than others in this journal. Evolution, transformism, and the physiological approach to psychology were of course dominant but not to the extent of entirely excluding work with a different inspiration. When they looked at the movement of ideas, the criticists were disposed to acknowledge that Ribot's journal, open to all doctrines except to those that had become purely rhetorical, was not “the official organ of any system” and exhibited the signs of a real independence of mind, both in the original studies it published and in the conscientious reviews.

There was no rivalry between the Critique Philosophique and the Revue Philosophique. Basically, the latter proposed to provide facts and documents and to establish a place for communication between all philosophers and those interested in their work, the absence of which was regrettable, given that the same lack had been filled a long time ago in other branches of scientific research. On the contrary, the criticists wrote to explain and spread a clearly formulated doctrine. They acknowledged the usefulness of Ribot's journal not only because the work it published was instructive, varied, and close to theirs but also because its success was a sure sign of the growing interest in serious philosophical studies in France. It must be said that at no previous time would there have been a place for such a journal, which was quite specialized and technical, with no intention of being entertaining, and free of ranting and vain controversy. Following a rapid enumeration of the papers published in 1876 in the Revue Philosophique, the editors of the Critique Philosophique emphasized how solid and varied the papers were and also noted that the interest they exhibited was often independent of the opinions defended by their authors.

The high quality of the journal and the impartiality of its editor were often noted by criticists: “The Critique Philosophique—which is not really a journal—has serious fellow feelings for the Revue Philosophique and acknowledges, on its own account, the services rendered in the field of information and of the everyday analysis of works of psychology and metaphysics” (Critique Philosophique, 1878, p. 123).

Analysis of the Contents of the Revue: The Importance of Psychology

The founding of the Revue Philosophique helped popularize work by foreign scholars, as the indifference of the previous generation was replaced by a strong desire for information.

From the beginning, Ribot struggled to ensure that his journal would succeed despite the troubles he had with eclectic spiritualists who plotted against him. (In the first years, he complained about being alternately shunned by the spiritualists and bombarded with submissions by them.) As we have seen, the breadth of the questions he intended to address was impressive. They can be summarized in five groups: psychology, philosophy (metaphysics, morals, and aesthetics), history of philosophy, sciences (physiology, mathematics), and sociology. Among the questions to which original papers, reviews, and analyses were dedicated, psychology was the best represented. Consistently, in the first 15-year period (1876–1890), about one-third of the papers were devoted to psychology; a quarter to metaphysics, morals, and aesthetics; one-fifth to history of philosophy; and still smaller proportions to the sciences, sociology, and other miscellaneous topics (Thirard, 1976).

The first volume of the Revue Philosophique (1876) addresses virtually all of the topics covered by the journal. For example, papers on psychology, metaphysics, and history of philosophy and physiology can be found (see Table 1). Ribot included a paper by Janet on “final causes,” which demonstrated his open-mindedness toward metaphysics. But he also published his paper on the “duration of psychological acts,” which later constituted a chapter of a book he dedicated to contemporary German psychology (Ribot, 1879). In this first volume, one can also find papers by the stars of contemporary psychology, such as Taine, Wundt, Spencer, Mill, and Lewes.

Table 1. Table of Contents of the First Volume of the Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger (January to July 1876)

Author	Title	Pages
T. Ribot	Introduction	1–4
H. Taine	On the acquisition of language among children and primitives	5–23
P. Janet	On final causes	24–44
H. Spencer	Outline of a comparative psychology of man	45–61
W. Wundt	Mission of philosophy in the present time	113–24
C. Bénard	Contemporary German aesthetics	125–60
G.H. Lewes	The hypothesis of the specific energy of nerves	161–69
P. Tannery	Plato's nuptial number	170–88
J.S. Mill	Berkeley's philosophy	225–47
E. Vacherot	Antecedents of critical philosophy (I)	248–66
T. Ribot	The duration of psychological acts	267–88
H. Taine	Elements and formation of the idea of “me”	289–94
L. Dumont	On habits	321–66
E. Vacherot	Antecedents of critical philosophy (II)	367–80
L. Liard	On the notions of species and gender in natural sciences	381–400
S. Howe	The education of Laura Bridgman	401–04
F. Bouillier	The cause of pain and pleasure	433–45
J. Soury	The history of Lange's materialism	446–67
J. Lachelier	Study of the syllogism theory	468–487
A. Horwicz	History of the development of will	488–502
E. von Hartmann	Schopenhauer and his disciple Frauenstaedt	529–561
M. Lépine	Cerebral localizations. I. Aphasia.	562–567
G.H. Lewes	Spiritualism and materialism	568–600
P. Regnaud	The philosophy of ancient India. I. Sources	601–610

The preeminence of psychology in the Revue was also obvious in its reviews and analyses of psychological journals (Psychologische Studien from 1882; American Journal of Psychology from 1887; Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane from 1890; Psychological Review and L'Année Psychologique from 1895), showing Ribot's interest in the field (Thirard, 1976; Mucchielli, 1998).

As mentioned earlier, Alexander Bain founded a similar journal in England, Mind, a Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy, edited by George Croom Robertson (1842–1891). Without excluding any school of philosophy, it also tried to popularize the new psychology and its trends. However, from the beginning, Ribot made more of an effort both to disseminate this new psychology and to promote experimental studies. He also published reviews of papers that had appeared in Mind.

To begin with, Ribot mainly published translations of English and German papers (by Wundt, Mill, Spencer, Lewes, etc.). But his publication of original work increased after he founded the Société de Psychologie Physiologique in 1885 with Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) to promote French psychology, announcing the official creation of a psychology based on experience. This Society comprised honorary members (Jean-Martin Charcot, president; Théodule Ribot, Hippolyte Taine, and Paul Janet), permanent members (including Alfred Binet, François Franck, Paul Richer, and Henry Beaunis), and associate members (including Helmholtz, Galton, Myers, James, Sully, and Delboeuf). Charles Richet was the general secretary, and Charles Féré and Eugène Gley were secretaries. Meeting reports were published in a special volume, as well as in the Revue Philosophique, which also described the work of the Society. Although the name of the Society indicated the direction it intended to take, it should be noted that questions dealing with hypnotism were quite prevalent, probably reflecting the psychopathological orientation of French psychology. But when the Laboratoire de Psychologie Physiologique was created at the Sorbonne in 1889, the Revue enabled the publication of the work of Beaunis and Binet's teams until the launch of L'Année Psychologique in 1895 (Nicolas, Segui, & Ferrand, 2000).

Conclusion

The Revue Philosophique played a key role in ensuring recognition of the new psychology in France and caused Ribot to be considered as its most eminent figure. From 1876, most of his work was first published in the journal. It can be said that the Revue Philosophique was both an institution that contributed to the structure of French philosophy and the personal creation of someone who wanted to promote psychology in his country. In her study on thought and memory in Théodule Ribot's Revue Philosophique, Maria Meletti Bertolini (1991) observed a permanent dialogue between “scientific” psychology and “philosophical” psychology (Merllié, 1993; Brooks, 1998).

For some time, the Revue Philosophique was almost the only journal in France to contribute to the development and acceptance of the new psychology. As for the other philosophical journals, the Revue Positive disappeared in 1883, two years after Littré's death, and Renouvier's Critique Philosophique ceased to be published in 1889. After the disappearance of Littré's and Renouvier's journals, being left alone in the field caused Ribot some trouble and inconvenience. He was accused of publishing too little metaphysics (X. Léon Archives, Sorbonne Library) but he believed that there was room in France for several philosophical journals. A major event in 1893 was the publication of La Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale by Xavier Léon (1868–1935), a journal that was transcendental, “academic, and Sorbonne-y.” This enterprise was clearly directed against Ribot. The new journal worked because of the growing antiscientific trend among young philosophers. But at the same time, experimental philosophy (psychology) was officially accepted with the appearance of another new journal: L'Année Psychologique (1895). This journal's success left open the possibility for philosophical publications that were freer from psychological research. Thus, the tradition of openness established by the Revue Philosophique continued and is still observed today.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author thanks Amandine Penel for the translation of the first version of this paper.

1. 1

   All translations of French letters and other writings are our own.

Biography

• SERGE NICOLAS is a professor of psychology at the University Paris Descartes, France. He received his PhD in cognitive psychology from the university of Grenoble in 1992 and his PhD in history of philosophy from the university of Paris VIII in 2007. His interests include the history of French psychology and history of French philosophy. He is director of L'Année Psychologique and he is preparing a biography on Alfred Binet. This article is part of a larger project on Ribot's work. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Serge NICOLAS, Institut de Psychologie, Laboratoire Mémoire et Cognition, 71 avenue Edouard Vaillant, 92774 Boulogne Billancourt, France; [e-mail].