The Crisis of the Idea of the University and Its Origins (original) (raw)

The paper deals with some aspects which occur in contemporary discussions concerning the idea and crisis of the university from the phenomenological perspective. The author holds that this crisis originates in the alienating interpretation of the university, which leads to inappropriate discourse on the function or purpose of the university and, in the end, disrupts its original meaning. In the first part of the article, taking Hannah Arendt’s concept of labour as a basis of reflection, the latent background of the dominant alienating interpretation is discussed. Human activities in this context appear meaningful insofar as they are turned into labour or are evaluated and justified according to the norms prescribed by labour’s structure of meaning. The second part of the paper is devoted to the need to differentiate between mere function (purpose), the end of which is already given, and the idea that embodies the experience of non-givenness. The need to turn attention away from the purpose and towards the idea of the university consists in the fact that in education the experience of personal transformation, of opening towards the non-given, is inherent. Next, the encounter with the world, i.e. the experience of wonder (θαῦμα) as the grounding experience of personal transformation and education, which becomes institutionalized especially in the interpersonal relations of the university, is discussed.