ABSTRACT
Groupe de recherches sur l'enseignement philosophique (GREPH) was not, ultimately, successful in its aim of securing a radical transformation of philosophy teaching in French schools by moving it out of its 'incarceration' in the bygone glory of the terminale year alone. Extending it to run throughout secondary education was not taken up either by the Giscard administration, nor subsequently. For Jacques Derrida, the fact of philosophy teaching in French schools represented 'une chance historique': a curious and singular institutionalization which required further examination. The campaigning work produced by GREPH and by Derrida is significant not in terms of simplistically 'proving' a pre-determined political set of requirements, but in relation to the context of French philosophy more generally. Their demands were not directly met, but the corpus of theoretical work they produced, and their after-life in the work of Derrida with the college, represents an important set of reflections on philosophy's relation to a particular institutionalization.
