This article focuses on the changes in the teaching of philosophy at the college level between 1967 and the present and the discourses justifying them. The normative character of teaching, that is, the subject's adherence to a current of thought with a view to existential or political transformation, went very much out of favour in the 1980s to the benefit of a more objective and epistemological conception of philosophical paradigms. During the 1980s, the development of "intellectual skills" occupied a central place in teaching while the importance accorded to philosophical contents diminished. The author seeks to determine whether these changes are part of a process of social reproduction or transformation.