ABSTRACT
This article examines Bergson’s popularity during his years teaching at the Collège de France, a period of modernization for the institution. It situates the reception in the press of Bergson’s lectures in relation to the re-organization of higher education during the Second Empire and the Third Republic, and to the role that the Collège and its professors played in this context. Bergson intervened in the 1909–1910 discussions concerning the form which teaching should take, in meetings of which the details are archived at the Collège de France. The interest of the press in the reform of the Collège de France converged with press sarcasm concerning Bergson’s audience, and particularly concerning his female audiences. This chapter allows us to hear Bergson’s voice in the little-known context of the Collège de France faculty meetings.
