Abstract
The current reorganisation of universities is part of a European policy aimed at strengthening Europe’s position with regard to the emerging global knowledge economy. The transformations in view of this overall goal are hardly accompanied by a critical discussion about the function or role of universities within and for society. The common assumption that universities offer a specific ‘general education’ by linking teaching to research, goes back to the modern university idea as conceived by Wilhelm von Humboldt. This article intends to show that philosophical attempts to restore the modern university model as a normative standard for criticising actual developments at European universities, have become problematic for contextual reasons that beg the basic assumptions of this model. Instead of answering the question of the ‘public role of universities’, the article rather attempts to clarify the problems with which this question is connected, from a political–philosophical perspective. It is argued that the difficulties in which the contemporary discourse about universities constantly becomes entangled, reflect more fundamental impasses and even contradictions that the modern democratic project is experiencing today.
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Notes
Any form of education that is intended for a person to become part of this ‘higher’ world is therefore (still) called ‘higher’ education. See, Freitag 1995, p. 28.
Bollenbeck concludes that the German notion of ‘Bildung’ (education) was unthinkable without the Protestant movement in Germany. See: Bollenbeck 1996, p. 107.
The background is a metaphysical ‘preformism’ in which the subject is thought of as a monad with an inner ‘telos’ that can be developed when its surroundings are adequate. See; Bollenbeck 1996, p. 346.
Today the conditions are somehow similar, when European policymakers stress the need to strengthen our knowledge economy in order to keep up with the United States and the former NIC-countries of Asia.
This hypothesis is sustained by the conceptions of Schelling and Fichte. In their view, the university represents Reason, in the same way as the Church of Peter is supposed to represent the Son; i.e., the incarnation of revealed Truth.
This requirement seems to confirm that the transcendence of Reason (as the new source of legitimacy) is meant to symbolically safeguard the difference between political (legitimate) power and socio-economic power.
In the notion of a ‘market society’, the market is not limited to the economic sphere in the strict sense of the word. The market is rather considered as being constitutive for society as such. According to Smith’s theoretical model, all social relations can be approached and analysed in economical terms.
It goes without saying that this prediction and control will succeed all the better, when the ‘environment’ is itself the outcome and product of technical manipulations.
According to Axel Honneth, a desintegration of the social realm can only be countered by the strengthening of a democratic solidarity that has to rely on the common reference to overarching norms and values. See: Honneth 1994, pp. 274–287.
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Haverhals, B. The normative foundations of research-based education: Philosophical notes on the transformation of the modern university idea. Stud Philos Educ 26, 419–432 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-007-9053-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-007-9053-3