It was co-founded in 1983 by Jacques Derrida, François Châtelet, Jean-Pierre Faye and Dominique Lecourt in an attempt to re-think the teaching of philosophy in France, and to liberate it from any institutional authority (most of all from the university).
Proposals are free and directors are elected after a collegial, peer-assessment of their value for philosophy.
Proposals must respond to this exigency of "intersection" as wished by Jacques Derrida.
According to Derrida, he was inspired by the Cerisy study center to found this new institution, in the midst of governmental threats on the teaching of philosophy in the last class of high school.
Thus was created this College, "from a non-governmental origin, with an international span, an institution which is not destined to oppose itself, but to balance, question, open, occupy margins; where we would privilege infrequent approaches or approaches yet unlegitimized by the university, new objects, new themes, new fields; where we would treat more of intersections than of academic disciplines".