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

Aleksandra Kunce, Why should we cultivate “the difference” in everyday practices of the university.

Aleksandra Kunce, Why should we cultivate “the difference” in everyday practices of the university. „Higher Education Quarterly” 2022, no. 76, pp. 671– 682., 2022

The paper explores the phenomenon of the local-worldly university. Why should we cultivate “the Difference” in everyday practices of the university? The author refers to the Derridean “différance,” to the idea of wonder (το θαυμα) and the Herderean concept of Heimat. By putting these terms in the university's specific context, the author asks questions about an autonomous space for thinking and experiencing. The university cannot be homeless, unanchored or uncommitted. The more intensively the universalising procedures of the control of universities are implemented, the more we are convinced that the world does not need any global institutions of higher education and research. This is because a human being is more localised than we would be willing to admit. What is important is difference, the untranslatability of knowledge and languages, the contextual grounding of thinking and action, as well as the experience of the fragility of what is “locally human,” which makes us observe closely a local human being, attached to a place, wandering about with the notion of home, and thus dispelling his or her doubts here and now, even when they tend to recur eternally.

L’université en tant qu’environnement de la création académique

Synthesis Philosophica, 2014

The article deals with university as environment of scientific communication and academic creation. According to the author, university as an environment creates a scholar who cre ates in turn his (her) university. These active and passive sides could change their role while searching for certain identity, speaking both about an individual and his (her) community. At the beginning the idea of university covered in paradoxical way both the orientation to different spiritual regions united into one scientific (philosophical) field and the divi sion of scientific body into existential parts with special communication. After removal of philosophical base, it was impossible not only agreement but also any quarrel between the faculties because of different objects to be researched and different scientific ways to be gone. After Humboldt's reformations university becomes a knot of creative communication between an individual to be formed and the society to be created. According to author, the claim for universality is a kind of escape from mortal being speaking about both an individ ual and scientific community at university. Analysing the case of Vilnius University, the au thor states that the attention to regional culture and the aim to awake national creativeness had been inspired by Jesuits' universalistic aspirations since it could be treated as a detour towards universal science and religion. Although science had served religious universalistic aims in the case of Jesuits' activity, namely religion in certain territory had directed science towards regions of sociocultural researches. According to the author, namely religion had served scientific differentiation and demarcation from metaphysical speculations without any cultural regions during Jesuits' activity.

PSYCHOLOGICAL DUTY AT THE UNIVERSITY: Possible approaches between phenomenological-existential psychology and Winnicottian psychoanalysis (Atena Editora)

PSYCHOLOGICAL DUTY AT THE UNIVERSITY: Possible approaches between phenomenological-existential psychology and Winnicottian psychoanalysis (Atena Editora), 2024

To write this article about the experience lived in the Psychological Duty proposal is necessarily linked to our human restlessness. The existential questions that crossed us at each meeting mobilized us, and so as an intern and guiding teacher (supervision) we launched ourselves in search of possible revelations. The Psychological Care Service under the perspective of Psychological Duty carried out in a teaching clinic of a private university through attention and care is configured as a psychological practice that breaks with the traditional clinic model, and is constituted through very brief consultations. It is worth pointing out that this psychological practice is based on two basic attitudes, which are welcoming and listening, aiming to develop critical and reflective thinking about any phenomena shared in the therapeutic setting. It must be considered that the search for possible unveilings, in particular, regarding one of the cases that will be discussed in this article, had as its theoretical foundation contributions coming from both the theoretical assumptions of existentialist-phenomenology and psychoanalytic theoretical assumptions under the bias of the approach winnicottian.

Sveučilište: od spekulacije do krize / University: From speculation to crisis

"SVEUČILIŠTE: OD SPEKULACIJE DO KRIZE U izlaganju ću se usmjeriti na problematiku koju je na četrnaest predavanja posvećenih određenju akademija razmatrao njemački filozof Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854). Inače, ta predavanja objavljena su pod zajedničkim naslovom Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums. U svojem izlaganju ponajprije ću se baviti prvim trima Schellingovim predavanjima, a koja su se odnosila na apsolutni pojam znanosti, na znanstveno i ćudoredno određenje akademija te na prve pretpostavke akademskoga studija. Naime, na sveučilištu je moguće i nužno ostvariti idealno shvaćeno znanje, i to tako što se na njemu, prema Schellingu, odvijaju aktivnosti zahvaljujući kojima se realitet pretvara u idealitet, čime se proizvodi znanje. Izlaganje Schellingova nauka o metodi akademskoga studija poslužit će mi kao orijentir za ocjenu sadašnjega stanja sveučilišta. Dakle, u izlaganju ću se očitovati i o aktualnom stanju na sveučilištu. Pritom smatram da u današnje vrijeme sveučilište ponajviše obilježava kriza. Gubitak koncepta identiteta znanja i djelovanja, a koji identitet karakterizira utemeljenje modernog sveučilišta, danas dovodi do raspršivanja produktivnih snaga u znanosti i, posljedično tome, do ukidanja znanja kao bezuvjetne svrhe znanstveno-istraživačkoga rada. Zbog toga, kao što je zaključio austrijski znanstvenik Konrad Paul Liessmann, znanje gubi svoj društveni značaj i njegovo mjesto zauzima informacija i upravljanje informacijama. UNIVERSITY: FROM SPECULATION TO CRISIS In this presentation I will focus on a problem that German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) explored in his lectures dedicated to academy disposition, which were titled and published as On University Studies (Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums). I will particularly focus on the first three out of fourteen Schelling’s lectures, which dealt with the absolute idea of science, scientific and moral disposition of academy, and with the preconditions for academic studies. Accordingto Schelling, achieving the ideally perceived knowledge at a university is not only possible, but also necessary, due to ongoing activities of transforming reality into ideality, which results in knowledge. Presenting Schelling’s teaching on methods of academic studies will serve as an orientation for evaluating the state in which university finds itself today. Therefore, in my presentation I will also respond to the current state of university for which I argue that is first and foremost marked by crisis. The loss of identity of knowledge and action, which characterizes the foundations of modern university, leads to dispersion of productive strengths of science, and consequently to elimination of knowledge as an unconditional purpose of research and scientific work in general. As a result of that, just as Austrian scientist Konrad Paul Liessmann stated, knowledge loses its meaning in society and its importance is replaced by information and information management. "

L’université doit-elle devenir une entreprise ?

Synthesis Philosophica, 2014

The aim of this paper is to explain that it is not useful to grasp all transformations at the University during last decades under terms of the struggle between evil politics and innocent academy, because universities were involved in formation and promotion of re forming guidelines, and went through inside ideological split and political fight during this process. Also, it is not appropriate to find neoliberalism an enemy which has to be defied and defeated with resources of the critique of ideology, because this leads into the conflict between ideology (presumably, but not really coming from the outside world) and science (presumably belonging to universities themselves). Here too, universities were involved in the process, be it in foundations of neoliberalism, be it in de(con)struction of scientific to tality and autonomy. The parallelism between art and science as two autonomous domains of modernity, and their postmodern turn which left them without solid ground of inherited autonomy, will be exposed to support this thesis. Finally, University used to be the special and autonomous workshop with its own laws of procedure, secluded from market economy, to become educational factory, and now, finally, the enterprise. There is no way back. But is there a way out? Contemporary critique of political economy is where we should look at least for a start, and united appearance of students and teachers could give some power to bring academy back into hands of those to whom it originally belongs.

The becoming of University

The article is devoted to the becoming of the university in the Middle Ages (XII-XIII)-in the epoch of transition from the Mediterranean to the European civilization. From the philosophy of Hugo of St Victor to Bonaventure. The author seeks to show the connection of the doctrine of Augustine, Hugo and Bonaventure in the formation of this new educational institution, which is the University, thus asserting that the university is a sign of European civilization. The problems of the transmission of knowledge (Hugo and Bonaventure) and the transmission of holiness (Jacob de Voragine) are examined. The birth of translation as an intellectual activity.

The Idea of the University: Some Problems of Modern Higher Education

Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (ICCESSH 2019), 2019

The article analyzes the main ideas related to the system of higher education, the Russian philosopher and teacher S. I. Hessen. Being a follower of the Neokantian trend in philosophy, the Russian thinker supports the ideas of continuous education, the connection between learning and science, the joint creativity of the teacher and student, university freedom, the freedom of the teacher in choosing the courses to be read, and the freedom of the student in choosing a teacher. Keywords-education; upbringing; the idea of the university; S.I. Hessen I. *The publication has been prepared with the support of the "RUDN University Program 5-100".

Ethical, political and human education at the university: citizenship or psychoadania ? La formación ética, política y humana en la universidad: ¿ciudadanías o psicoadanías

Revista Boletín Redipe, 2004

When asked about ethics, politics and aesthetics in the formation of new university citizenships, the answer is not to respond with the official discourses of formative teleologies and social ideals, but rather on the basis of what is seen and what is done in some universities. Apparently, this triad is an invocation that clashes with the pedagogized and psychologized reality of the university; a reality that involves the production of a type of person who does not look much like the invocations that are made and the formative promises that are proclaimed to build democratic citizenships. Hypothetically, or rather, we are in an advanced stage of a process of pedagogization and psychologization of the university that produces as a result the constitution of a psychoadania , that is, a subjective territory of psychoadans. The visible effect is a type of person turned in on themselves in a kind of voluntary psychopathologization to be governed by a freedom converted into docility for the liberal market.