“Can science satisfy our need for truth?”, “Does the State owe us something?”… Discover the subjects of the philosophy test

Philosophy has once again opened the ball for the written baccalaureate exams. On Tuesday morning, June 18, more than 540,000 high school students worked on essays or text comments. For the general stream, students have the choice between the questions “Can science satisfy our need for truth?” and “Does the State owe us anything?” and the text explanation of an extract from The working condition by Simone Weil. Students of the technological series must consider the following subjects: “Is nature hostile to man?”, “Is the artist master of his work?” or an explanation of an extract from the Laws of Plato.

The final years of the general and technological tracks (392,145 candidates for the general bac and 151,224 for the technological bac) have been working for 8 hours on one of the three subjects proposed, planned as part of the new bac introduced in 2019. The note from the baccalaureate is based 40% on continuous assessment and 60% on so-called terminal tests (written and oral French, taken in first class, specialty tests, philosophy and grand oral, taken in final year). Philosophy only counts eight coefficients in the general baccalaureate, and four for the technological baccalaureate (out of a total of 100).