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MUCH ATTENTION HAS BEEN PAID to developments in French philosophy over the past half century, and it has been frequently noted that the recent history of French philosophy differs significantly from its counterparts in England, Germany, and the United States. While many reasons for these differences have been suggested, in what follows I would like to suggest that there is an important and unique French institution-one with no equivalent in the English-speaking or German academic systems-that has had a significant impact on developments in French philosophy throughout the twentieth century. This institution is the Agrégation de Philosophie, and its effects are virtually unknown among philosophers outside France. Even within France, while knowledge of and experience with the agrégation is part of the intellectual formation and career of virtually every academic educated in France, including every philosopher teaching in a university and the majority of philosophers teaching the classe de philosophie in French lycées, French philosophers themselves seem relatively unaware and uninterested in the history of the agrégation and the effects that this history has had on philosophical practices in France. What I hope to do in the following pages is explain how the agrégation de philosophie works, and suggest that its impact on the education of French philosophy students and the teaching corps in both the university and lycée helps explain a number of developments in French philosophy over the past century. I will also explain why the French philosophical tradition differs from its American counterpart in some very significant ways. As will become clear, in referring to the differences between the American and French philosophical traditions, I do not mean to invoke the overworked distinction between "analytic" and "continental" philosophy, and what I will discuss cuts across the analytic-continental split that has so profoundly impacted American and, to a lesser extent, British and Australian philosophy in the past half-century. What I will suggest instead is that the failure to acknowledge the role of the agrégation de philosophie leads to a failure to understand what, at a profound level, distinguishes all French philosophers-whether Derrida or Deleuze or Bouveresse or Descombes-from their German, British, and American counterparts, namely, the thorough grounding in the history of philosophy, especially the history of philosophy prior to 1800, that has...