ANÁLISIS DE LA EVALUACIÓN MULTICRITERIO 

The Law on Public Instruction of 3 Brumaire, An IV (25 October 1795) contains six para- graphs (titres). In the first four of these, a complete national system of education is laid out, from base to top: 1. Écoles primaires, 2. Écoles centrales, 3. Écoles spéciales, 4. Institut

29 Hegel, Phänomenologie, 436

30 The notion is fairly widespread in the early decades of the 19th century; the journal Geist der Zeit com- plains in 1816 that “Unterdeß Tausende vom Zeitgeist reden”, without knowing what they are talking about ([anon.], “Rückblick auf die Vergangenheit, oder Übersicht der neuesten Begebenheiten in den Europäischen Staaten”, Geist der Zeit August 1816, 95-160: 101).

national des sciences et des arts. The word ‘university’ does not occur in it. Instead, the third paragraph calls for the establishment of ten ‘special schools’ that supply higher education in specific fields: for instance, geometry, medicine, political science, and ‘antiquities’. In the fourth paragraph, the Institut national effectively takes the place of the old academies: it assigns 60, 36, and 48 seats respectively to the classes of Sciences physiques et mathématiques, Sciences morales et politiques, and Littérature et beaux-arts.31

The French universities died slowly between 1790 and 1795. Church property had been disowned, and theology education stalled; university lands had been sold off; the old laws had been declared null; the faculties of medicine had been replaced by medical schools, often in the same buildings; with the abolition of the guilds, the medical and legal professions had lost their privilege; the students had flocked to arms.32 _{A petition ap-}

proved on 15 September 1973 that abolished them all was suspended the day after, leaving them undead for another year and a half; a later decree, preparing the Law of 3 Brumaire, erased their last remains.33 _{When the university was reinstated by Napoleon in 1808, it}

was in a completely different form. The fate of the academies was different. They had been closed by official decree in August 1793, as vestiges of royal patronage; but no matter how old-fashioned they had become even in the eyes of their defenders in the Convention,34

they were still deemed worth reviving. The idea of bringing together leading scholars in a central institute still made sense, if for different reasons after Thermidor than under Louis XIV.

The law of 3 Brumaire was later called the Loi Daunou after its main author, national representative and historian Pierre Daunou, who had also edited Condorcet’s posthumous Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain at the behest of the Convention earlier that year. In terms of what it proposed, Daunou’s Law was not strikingly new. Parts of it had already been proposed before the Reign of Terror and the fall of Robespierre, in plans by Talleyrand and Condorcet. The first two paragraphs literally echoed projects and decrees passed in the past year – including the one that had marked the end of the univer- sities – and the whole had already been outlined in the appendix of the new constitution. Like these earlier projects, it described a centralized base-to-top edifice of lower and higher education under state auspices; and what is more, this law came into effect. By that token, it also drew a distinction between secondary (Écoles centrales) and higher education which had not been separated that sharply before. And on the highest level, that of the Institut national, it turned the idea of a ‘social science’ into an institutional designation, and created the institutional basis for the educational philosophy called Idéologie.

31 In: James Guillaume, Procès-verbaux du Comité d’instruction publique de la Convention nationale, Vol. VI (Paris: Imprimérie Nationale 1907), 793-800

32 R.R. Palmer, The Improvement of Humanity: Education and the French Revolution (Princeton: Prince- ton UP 1985), 105-106; Albert Duruy, L’instruction publique et la Révolution (Paris: Hachette 1888), 55-67

33 Louis Liard, L’enseignement supérieur en France, 1789-1893 (Paris: Colin 1888), Vol. I, 184-189, 217-223

34 Cf. Françoise Waquet, “La Bastille académique”, in J.-C. Bonnet (ed.), La Carmagnole des Muses.

In the Rapport that preceded his law, Daunou indeed mentioned the precedent of Condorcet and Talleyrand. He compares Condorcet’s Tableau to an earlier great overview of learning, d’Alembert’s Discours Préliminaire to the Encyclopédie – and in calling it “un frontispiece aussi vaste, aussi hardi des connoissances humaines”, he implicitly depicts the education plan as a kind of national encyclopaedia, and specifically the Institut as a living one.35 _{In the Tableau, Condorcet had sketched how mankind had been led to enlighten-}

ment through nine stages of development, and how, through general education, equality

35 Guillaume, Procès-verbaux Vol. VI, 789

Image 23: Decree of 3 Brumaire An IV establishing Écoles primaires, Écoles centrales, Écoles speciales, and the Institut National (Archives Nationales, Paris)

and le perfectionnement réel de l’homme could be spread further. Daunou, however, finds that Condorcet’s idea of public instruction is too much bound by respect for old forms, so that it comes down to a plea for a corporatistic, church-like edifice – that is, something like the old universities.36 _{Therefore Daunou, with some changes and additions, recommends}

instead Talleyrand’s earlier proposal for a group of national écoles spéciales consecrated to “l’enseignement exclusive d’une science”: they should lead to a distinct goal or profession, pursue rather than worship the sciences, and reduce the number of “hommes médiocres en tous les genres” in favour of those “supérieurs en un seul”.37

After arguing against worship, corporatism, and church-like edifices, it is odd that Daunou presents the fourth tier, the Institut national, as a sort of ‘national temple’ which emulates the old royal academies, and of which the members form “le corps répresentatif de la République des Lettres”.38 _{In most regards the Institut was the continuation of the old}

academies under a different name; but the hierarchy between its constituent parts was dif- ferent, and the creation of the class of sciences morales et politiques marked a significant shift in the organization of knowledge both in nomenclature and in ideology. The ‘Classes’ were subdivided into ‘Sections’ with six seats each. The antiquarian and philological pursuits of the old Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres were now grouped together in the class of arts and literature; history, on the other hand, became part of the new class of moral and political science, together with sections for geography, political economy, moral science, science sociale et législation, and analyse des sensations et des idées. As things turned out, that novel ordering did not result in a drastically new style of writing history. Nor did it prove long-lasting: the system outlined in the Loi Daunou never functioned fully as a system, and the class of moral and political science was abolished again in 1803. All the same, the French educational reforms of 1794-95 and after were more far-reaching and supported by a much more elaborate ideological programme than the Prussian reforms of 1809-10.

What ‘science sociale’ and ‘analyse des sensations et des idées’ were supposed to mean was an open question in 1795. The first existed only as a desideratum, formulated for the first time at the eve of the Revolution. Abbé Sieyès, in his widely read and impactuous pamphlet Qu’est-ce que le Tiers État of early 1789, had argued for a “veritable science de l’état de société” as part of his plea for a free society on the basis of an equal division of power.39

Two years later, ‘science sociale’ entered the Encyclopédie Méthodique, the gargantuan suc- cessor of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, as part of the article Science.40 _That

article, in fact, was the literal reproduction of a tract De l’établissement des connoissances humaines et de l’instruction publique by the editor of that volume and member of the Na-

36 Ibid., 791. Condorcet had proposed to institute Lycées that could compete with ‘the great universities of England, Italy, and Germany’ (Guillaume, Procès-verbaux Vol. I (1891), 207); the Tableau only talks once about medieval universities, and Daunou does not use the word at all. Cf. Palmer, The Improve-

ment of Humanity, 121-129, 230-236

37 Guillaume, Procès-verbaux Vol. VI, 791

38 Ibid.

39 Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Qu’est-ce que le Tiers État?, ed. Abbé Morellet (Paris: 1821 [1789]), 151

40 Pierre-Louis Lacretelle, “Science”, in id. (ed.) Encyclopédie Methodique. [Section] Logique, Métaphy-

tional Convention, Pierre Louis de Lacretelle. Part of a wave of tracts and pamphlets on public instruction, it argued that national education should also be social education, and that science humaine accordingly is the means to enlighten the nation; the first part of that science humaine should be the study of man in society, “proprement le science sociale, le science par excellence”.41

As for the other new category, ‘analyse des sensations et des idées’, that basically stood for ‘philosophy’ in a restricted sense. The designation refers back to the philosophy of Condillac, whose work became the point of reference for all that was subsequently called Idéologie. Condillac’s Essai sur l’Origine des Connoissances humaines (1746) is a study of the relation between ideas and signs; for him, the basis of human knowledge is not so much in individual ideas as in the relation between them, and these links are brought about by language. As a preceptor to the Prince of Parma, Condillac later elaborated these ideas into a thirteen-volume Cours d’Études that included grammar, logic, and history (discussed in chapter 2). The Institut National posthumously published his Langue des Calculs (1798), in which he envisioned a mathematically clear human language that would make the rela- tions between ideas a matter of calculation. One can see these ideas recur in the first prize essay contest written out by the class of moral and political sciences: its general theme was Déterminer l’influence des signes sur la formation des idées, and the first two questions ran, 1. Est-il bien vrai que les sensations ne puissent se transformer en idées que par le moyen

des signes?

2. L’art de penser seroit-il parfait, si l’art des signes étoit porté à sa perfection?42

It was won by De Gérando, whose prize essay became the four-volume Des Signes (1800), by which he paved his way into the class of moral and political science, and established himself as a younger ally of the Idéologues.

The term Idéologie first appeared in Destutt de Tracy’s Mémoire sur la faculté de penser, read before the class of moral and political sciences and published in its first volume of pro- ceedings (1798). In effect, the term was shorthand for ‘analyse des sensations et des idées’, which according to Destutt now was a field of study on its own. With the work of Locke and Condillac, he stated, the science of ideas was now no longer “une science hypothétique” founded on “suppositions frivoles” (p. 288); it was susceptible of the same degree of certi- tude as the mathematical sciences; it was, moreover, “la première de toutes [les sciences] dans l’ordre généalogique” (p. 286); but it had not yet found its Newton, and it still needed a proper name.

On pourroit lui donner celui de psycologie. Condillac y parroissoit disponé. Mais ce mot, qui veut dire science de l’ame, parroit supposer une connoissance de cet être que sûrement vous ne vous flattez pas de posseder; et il auroit encore l’inconvénient de faire croire que

41 Lacretelle, De l’établissement des connoissances humaines et de l’instruction publique (Paris: Desenne 1791), 4, 50, 54. The other parts of Lacretelle’s science humaine are mechanics and physiology, the study of beaux-arts, and that of language and literature.

42 Mémoires de l'Institut national des Sciences et des Arts pour l’An IV. Sciences morales et politiques, Vol. I

vous vous occupez de la recherche vague des causes premières […] Je préferois donc de beaucoup que l’on adoptât le nom d’idéologie, ou science des idées.43

One could see Idéologie as the French counterpart of Bildung; a notion which was shaped in the same period, which was equally linked to education reforms, and which likewise linked a metaphysical or epistemological account of the human faculties to a moral ideal of self-perfection. There are also differences, not just in content. Idéologie was a much more coherent programme. It was formulated by a group of likeminded people congregated at the class of moral and political sciences, with a five-volume Éléments d’Idéologie (1801-05 / 1815) by Destutt de Tracy to sum it up. His friend Cabanis, who had been trained as a medical doctor, filled several volumes on the integrated physiological, intellectual, and moral study of man; De Gérando wrote an ‘ideological’ history of philosophy and a treatise on ethnology; other prominent Idéologues included the economist Jean-Baptiste Say, the orientalist Volney, and Henri (Abbé) Grégoire, the advocate of language unification and black emancipation. Bildung, on the other hand, was always a notion at the margins of philosophy; it derives part of its meaning from early Romanticism and German Idealism, but it was rarely itself the subject of theory formation. Apart from a five-page unpublished sketch by Wilhelm von Humboldt, there was no work called Theorie der Bildung. More- over, Idéologie was conceived as a subject in the secondary school curriculum, something that actually could be taught as a course: it figures in several educational plans of the late 1790s, and Destutt de Tracy’s Éléments are addressed, in somewhat Cartesian fashion, to ‘les jeunes gens’ whose minds have not yet been corrupted by wrong ideas. Bildung, in contrast, is something acquired through education rather than something taught. Also, the temporal order between ideals and reforms is almost the reverse: Idéologie was first for- mulated as a programme in response to the need for developing a new national system of education, whereas most of the canonical texts from which Bildung derives its meaning date from before the 1809-10 Prussian education reforms. While Bildung remained the creed to which educated Germans were at least paying lip service well into the twentieth century, Idéologie enjoyed a less glorious afterlife. Napoleon, although most Idéologues had welcomed or even helped his coup, perceived their political philosophizing as a nuisance, and accordingly closed the class of moral and political sciences and sidetracked Destutt and Cabanis. Marx, four decades later, would give ‘ideology’ its current meaning by using it as a synonym for false political consciousness.

François Picavet, the first one to write their history, and Georges Gusdorf eighty years later, both deplore that the Idéologues have often been put down as thinkers ‘du deuxième plan’, of little originality, whose main achievement was to re-arrange and reformulate pre- vious ideas.44 _{Destutt de Tracy, in the Éléments, presents himself as doing precisely that:}

he is, after all, writing a textbook. The first three volumes of the Éléments are effectively a

43 Antoine Destutt de Tracy, “Mémoire sur la faculté de penser”, Mémoires de l'Institut Vol. I, 283-450: 323-324

44 François Picavet, Les Idéologues; Essai sur l'histoire des idées et des théories scientifiques, philosophiques, re-

ligieuses, etc. en France depuis 1789 (Paris: Alcant 1891), vii-ix; Georges Gusdorf, Les Sciences humaines et la Pensée occicentale. Vol. VIII: La conscience révolutionnaire. Les Idéologues (Paris: Payot 1978), 21ff

reformulation of the old trivium: idéologie proper as the science of the relations between ideas, grammaire générale as that of the expression of ideas, and logique as the purifica- tion from false ideas. In the first volume, Destutt promises to bring order to the ideas of Condillac; and in the process of filling the gaps, it so turned out that “il y a dans cet écrit beaucoup plus d’idées nouvelles que je n’aurais voulu”.45 _{Likewise, the volume on grammaire}

does not offer a strikingly new analysis of grammatical phenomena in comparison with the general grammars discussed in chapter 2; but still Destutt sets his own grammar apart from that of Du Marsais, “le premier des grammariens”, and even from that of Condillac, by “commencer par le commencement”, that is, by consistently referring back to the relations between ideas.46

When it comes to the more utopian ideas of Condillac, Destutt tempers ambitions. In his posthumous Langue des Calculs, Condillac had argued that “une science bien traitée n’est qu’une langue bien faite”,47 _{and that a purified universal language could result in reasoning}

as clear as mathematics. In the last chapter of the Grammaire, Destutt admits that such a language would indeed be desirable, but that it would be ‘as impossible as perpetual mo- tion’, both as a general language and as a langue savante.48 _{In the Logique, Destutt takes the}

issue of human perfectibility with regard to language and reasoning further. He concludes that human ideas will always be imperfect, because they are based on the comparison of current sensations with remembered ones, and motivated by desires; and that “calculer c’est raisonner, mais raisonner ce n’est pas calculer”.49 _{De Gérando, in Des Signes, arrives at the}

same conclusion: human improvement and self-improvement is to be achieved through the clarification of ideas, but the vernacular will always be a more natural means of expression than an artificial, rationalized language, and even in science there is too much necessary disagreement and elasticity to impose a fixed system.

If Idéologie was essentially a project of reformulation rather than a utopian scheme, it was still an ambitious one. De Gérando’s Histoire comparée des Systèmes de Philosophie, relativement aux principes des connaissances humaines (1804), is the most striking example: it reformulates the whole of Western philosophy in ‘ideological’ terms. De Gérando’s avowed aim is not to offer a narrative history, but rather a histoire inductive ou comparée of the march of the human mind, a work that is in itself un essai de philosophie expérimentale.50 _Al-

though the title may be reminiscent of Condillac’s Traité des Systèmes, De Gérando rather aligns himself with Bacon’s idea of a ‘history of learning’; for while Condillac’s aim was to unmask philosophical systems not rooted in experience, De Gérando rather sees them as contributions to the search for the principles of human knowledge, which has been the motor of progress in philosophy ever since Bacon. The result is a hybrid work, a blend

45 Destutt de Tracy, Éléments d’Idéologie, Vol. I (Paris: Didot An IX [1801]), 5

46 Ibid., Vol. II (An XI [1803]), 9, 12

47 Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, La Langue des Calculs (Paris: Houel An VI [1798]), 7

48 Destutt, Éléments Vol. II, 395, 406-407. Cf. James Knowlson, Universal Language Schemes in England

and France, 1600-1800 (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press 1975), chs. 7-8

49 Éléments Vol. III (An XIII [1805]), 553

50 Joseph-Marie de Gérando, Histoire comparée des Systèmes de Philosophie (Paris: Henrichs An XII