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<p>When the First French Empire re-crystallized a system of higher education in 1806, the highest of the degrees, the doctorate, acquired a specific importance. From the early 1830s onwards the doctorate of letters <i>(doctorat ès lettres)</i>, initially designed as a proof of classical taste, literary talent and rhetorical brilliance, relied progressively more and more on the written word, on specialized scholarship and search for some forms of originality. To address this redefinition of “academic charisma”, of what constitutes academic authority, merit, talent and reason for fame, the minister of public instruction Victor Cousin redesigned the “technology of evaluation” of the doctorate. In 1840 he created the practice of the defense report <i>(rapport de soutenance)</i>, written after the examination by the jury chairman and sent to the ministry administration—it was extended to the faculties of sciences after 1850. As the doctors’ future careers were determined on the basis of these reports, this practice transformed the role of the professors sitting on the jury. From generalist senior debate partners, they became gatekeepers in a bureaucratized system, evaluating the output of scholars working in the same field—scholars that were treated as peers, younger peers but peers, nonetheless. This article intends to study in detail this system of institutionalized evaluation, its genesis, internal mechanics and evolutions, and its impacts on the regime of knowledge production in the humanities. The question is twofold: why and how did the practices of scholar-to-scholar evaluation change over time? How did the evaluation criteria evolved themselves, in a process that was fundamentally linked to this rationalization and bureaucratization?</p>

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From Rhetoricians to Scholars, from Jousts to Assessments: The Doctorat ès Lettres and its Technology of Evaluation (France, 1808–1881)

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年11月13日

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  • Pierre Verschueren

摘要

When the First French Empire re-crystallized a system of higher education in 1806, the highest of the degrees, the doctorate, acquired a specific importance. From the early 1830s onwards the doctorate of letters (doctorat ès lettres), initially designed as a proof of classical taste, literary talent and rhetorical brilliance, relied progressively more and more on the written word, on specialized scholarship and search for some forms of originality. To address this redefinition of “academic charisma”, of what constitutes academic authority, merit, talent and reason for fame, the minister of public instruction Victor Cousin redesigned the “technology of evaluation” of the doctorate. In 1840 he created the practice of the defense report (rapport de soutenance), written after the examination by the jury chairman and sent to the ministry administration—it was extended to the faculties of sciences after 1850. As the doctors’ future careers were determined on the basis of these reports, this practice transformed the role of the professors sitting on the jury. From generalist senior debate partners, they became gatekeepers in a bureaucratized system, evaluating the output of scholars working in the same field—scholars that were treated as peers, younger peers but peers, nonetheless. This article intends to study in detail this system of institutionalized evaluation, its genesis, internal mechanics and evolutions, and its impacts on the regime of knowledge production in the humanities. The question is twofold: why and how did the practices of scholar-to-scholar evaluation change over time? How did the evaluation criteria evolved themselves, in a process that was fundamentally linked to this rationalization and bureaucratization?