The Eclectic Legacy is a well-documented essay about the influence of philosophy on the new psychology and sociology that were institutionalized in the French universities in the late nineteenth century. Numerous studies are available on the birth of these two scientific fields, and on such well-known thinkers as Emile Durkheim and Pierre Janet. But these are mostly written from a disciplinary point of view; and, because the main actors strongly denied any relationship between the new sciences they wanted to promote and traditional metaphysics, the influence of contemporary philosophy on their theories has been largely overlooked. Yet, as John I. Brooks, III, convincingly argues, the first French "social scientists" belonged both institutionally and intellectually to the existing community of academic philosophers. Like these philosophers, they not only held higher degrees in philosophy, but they also followed similar career paths within the state university system, which, at that time, was undergoing much renovation.
The statistics provided in the appendix, and four chapters centered on the work and the early academic life of The Β΄odule Ribot, Alfred Espinas, Pierre Janet, and Emile Durkheim, supply ample proof for this thesis. The philosophers and the first social scientists were educated in the same schools: They attended the philosophy class at the Lyce Β΄e, and most of them entered the Ecole normale supe Β΄rieure. At this time, they followed the same syllabus, the content of which was controlled by prominent academic philosophers such as Victor Cousin and Paul Janet, Pierre Janet's uncle. This syllabus met with little change during the second half of the nineteenth century and summarized the main themes of eclectic philosophy. It advocated a mind/matter dualism, and distinguished the empirical knowledge of objective facts from the knowledge of inner phenomena such as consciousness, which could be attained only through introspection. Since eclecticism was defined as the synthesis of the true ideas contained in different philosophical systems, the syllabus also put emphasis on the history of philosophy. It therefore allowed the philosopher to borrow ideas from different philosophical traditions, while being flexible enough to encompass diverging positions. Consequently, the syllabus could integrate new philosophical trends (such as neokantism), or new approaches such as scientific psychology or sociology.
Philosophers and social scientists not only shared the same scholarly culture, but almost all also began their academic career in a similar manner, becoming first philosophy professors in provincial Lyce Β΄es then undertaking university appointments. Ribot, Espinas, Janet, and Durkheim provide good examples. Although they belonged to different generations and advocated different theories in the two distinct fields of sociology and psychology, they all were agre Β΄ge Β΄s de philosophie, and all obtained chairs as members of philosophy faculties in Paris.
Brooks's main thesis is that similar education and parallel professional strategies created the conditions for a genuine dialogue between philosophers and social scientists. Behind conflicting theories, a shared philosophical culture allowed arguments to be understood. This constituted the "eclectic legacy" that Brooks carefully detects in the works of the four scholars. By comparing their main ideas, he demonstrates the various influences existing between philosophy, sociology and psychology in late nineteenth-century France. Concepts were exchanged between fields and, although the conclusions drawn sometimes differed, the questions often bore analogous formulations. Clearly most philosophers and social scientists of that