Prominent Durkheimian and Bergsonian French intellectuals sponsored the Institute’s Paris office despite political disagreements

Evidence

Celestin Bougle, a former student of Durkheim and director of the Ecole Normale Superieure’s Centre de Documentation since 1920, suggested to Horkheimer that some space might be found for the Institut in his offices on the Rue d’Ulm. Although a Proudhonist politically (he was an adherent of the Radical Socialist Party) and thus not sympathetic to the Marxist cast of the Institut’s work, Bougle was willing to forget politics in considering the Institut’s plight. Maurice Halbwachs, another prominent Durkheimian then in Strassbourg, and Georges Scelle, who taught law in Paris when not in the Hague as French advocate at the International Court, joined Bougle as cosponsors of the move. Further support came from Henri Bergson, who had been impressed with the Institut’s work. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 158

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Political rifts among French intellectuals mirrored the Cold War’s polarizing pressure — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 788

Broader Connections

• Political rifts among French intellectuals mirrored the Cold War’s polarizing pressure #complicates (0.72) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 788