Abstract
The current discussion on the role of the (European) universities often starts off with a perspective on the university as a scientific and/or pedagogical institution and consequently runs into a conflict between both logics in which each element is somehow devalued from the other perspective. Therefore, it may be productive to analyse the university from a standpoint in between, a perspective of knowledge as such. In order to conceptualise such a third perspective of knowledge, the history of the European university is reconstructed and interpreted as a process of reflection on the ‘spiral of knowledge’. Before this background the idea of the university is renewed in terms of knowledge and summarised in the idea of a ‘deliberate university’.
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Notes
The problems of the truth of statements as a condition for knowledge—in that sense knowledge is often defined as a justified true belief—has to be excluded; it is quite common that knowledge cannot be understood as an adequate representation of world, especially because there is nobody who can judge on the adequateness of a statement and object. Cf. Foerster 1992 and much earlier Fleck 1980.
For a typological distinction of three phases of the history of universities—as a pre-classical stage from the beginning to just prior to 1800, a classical stage beginning in the early 19th century, and a post-classical stage from the 1960’s and 1970’s on: Moraw 1982 and also Bruch 1999. In my short reconstruction I will restrict my arguments primarily to the German history of the universities.
Although there are important differences between the ‚septem artes liberales’ and the early modern ‘studia humanitatis,’ the self-referential structure and the general orientation of knowledge as a modelling of mind is nearly the same; cf. Schwinges 1999b; Müller 1999; Rüegg 1999. Thus, the humanistic reform of the European university could be interpreted as an intensification (through the use of different source materials and offering new courses like poetry, history and especially Latin, Greek and Hebrew language) as well as an extensification (through the inclusion of more and more people) of the traditional medieval university.
Kant’s argumentation was aimed at a re-foundation of the artists’ faculty as a general and compulsory philosophical faculty; his main argument should be remembered very well: beyond the three higher faculties (medicine, law and theology) there must be one more faculty in which no orders are given but all orders (of the government) and dogmas are reflected and questioned in order to judge only by reason (cf. Kant 1964, 282). The necessity of such a faculty without conditions is not only a demand of reason, but also a requirement of the government for itself (cf. Kant 1964, 290 and 300).
Indeed the Humboldtian ideas of the university are mainly based on a short report of Friedrich Schleiermacher, which he voluntarily wrote in 1808 (cf. Schleiermacher 1956). Schleiermacher’s main idea of the university as an institution of ‘Bildung’ has been twofold: to enter into a scientific and cognitive process by communication and dialogue with others (as Schleiermacher impressingly states: “The first and main statute of endeavour to discovery and of knowledge is communication; and in the impossibility to bring up something scientific by oneself alone, nature itself has formulate this statute” (Schleiermacher 1956, 224, translation by the author)); and to bring out a scientific and reflexive habitus as the capacity to work for possible knowledge by using the philosophical principles of knowledge (cf. Schleiermacher 1956, 238).
In a short remark Humboldt explains this astonishing functionality of teaching for research in an interpretation of teaching as a specific form of research: “If one assigns to the university the tasks of teaching and dissemination of the results of science and scholarship, and assigns to the academy the task of its extension and advancement, an injustice is obviously done to the university. Science and scholarship have been advanced as much—and in Germany, even more—by university teachers as by members of academies. University teachers have made these contributions to the progress of their disciplines by virtue of their teaching appointments. For unconstrained oral communication to an audience, which includes a significant number of intelligences thinking in unison with the lecturer, inspires those who have become used to this mode of study just as surely as does the peaceful solitude of a writer or the less institutionalised activities of the members of an academy. The progress of science and scholarship is obviously more rapid and livelier in a university, where their problems are discussed back and forth by a large number of forceful, vigorous, youthful intelligences. Science and scholarship cannot be presented in a genuinely scientific or scholarly manner without constantly generating independent thought and stimulation; it is inconceivable that discoveries should not be frequently made in such a situation” (Humboldt 1970, 247–248; cf. in German Humboldt 1966a, 262).
Thus, it is very consistent that Schleiermacher characterizes the university’s lecture as an original process of doing research: a lecture is not only the presentation of knowledge, but also the production of this knowledge via explanation—with the result that the research’s activity could be watched by doing (cf. Schleiermacher 1956, 252).
It is quite important to stress that the concept of ‚Persönlichkeitsbildung’ (‘personality formation’) as a task of universities is not a Humboldtian idea, but a result of the re-invention of the Humboldtian reform of the university by Carl Becker in the early 20th century. Cf. Becker 1925, 43–45.
In their preface to the SDS-report the authors substantiate their claim of a university’s reform with a reference to Humboldt: “The reading may be provocative to those who believe themselves to be continuing a great tradition unbroken. But this criticism is so adamant only because it takes its standards from the better spirit of the university. The authors identify themselves with that which the German university once claimed to be” (Nitsch et al. 1965, VI, translation by the author).
At the beginning of the 20th century there was a first re-invention of the so called Humboldtian university; cf. Jaspers 1923, Becker 1925 as well as König 1935. At the latest after the experience with German fascism, the reform of the German university was overdue, but the crisis of the university in the forties and fifties was again answered by recourse to Humboldt; cf. Jaspers 1961. The so-called ‘student-movement’ reform of the universities in the 60’s of the 20th century could be understood as a renewal, and an intensification of Humboldtian ideas (cf. Nitsch et al. 1965).
To cite only one example, nearly 75% of all research funding of the German Research Council (DFG) is given to the natural sciences, the life sciences and the engineering sciences; cf. the statistics of the DFG (of all programmes from 1998 to 2005) in www.dfg.de/dfg_im_profil/zahlen_und_fakten/.
The concept of ‚representative culture’ (German: ‘repräsentative Kultur’), as it has been developed by Tenbruck (cf. Tenbruck 1990, 30–37), means a topical structured order of culture in one time and place; therefore, cultural frameworks and general attitudes or convictions as well as specific cultural elements which are in one time and place more or less dominant, mark the particular ‘representative culture.’ In a certain sense, it is possible to describe the concept in Foucaultian terms as something between a discourse and dispositive.
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Ricken, N. The deliberate university: Remarks on the ‘Idea of the University’ from a perspective of knowledge. Stud Philos Educ 26, 481–498 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-007-9057-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-007-9057-z