Philosophy: On the Distinctiveness of the University

uj_gettyimages-966174124.jpg, default, Collegium Novum, Jagiellonian University, photo: Getty Images

In Axiom LXV of ‘Scienza Nuova’ (The New Science), Giambattista Vico’s 1730 historiosophical work, we read: ‘Things that serve humankind appeared in the following order: first came forests, then huts, then villages, then cities and finally the academies’.

For the honorary historiographer of the King of Naples, the world is permeated with human meaning, and there is a continuity between natural phenomena and cultural works. Vico draws evidence of this continuity from a realistic interpretation of myths and from fanciful etymologies: he treats reading (legere) as the assembly of letters into bundles, linking this activity to the gathering of citizens to establish laws (lex), as well as to the harvesting of vegetables, the gathering of water (aquilex) and the gathering of acorns. In this way, his imagination built a bridge between forests and academies. When I read Vico during my years of philosophy studies, I was accompanied by a cheerful irony: I think I actually believed the Neapolitan, though I joked about his arguments. Apparently, like him, I considered the university to be almost a natural constant – until I experienced a rude awakening.

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‘Giambattista Vico’ by Francesco Solimena, 18th century, photo: http://Wikipedia.org

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The university I knew and with the idea of which I could connect ended for me on 2 July 2021. That day, during a faculty council meeting, I heard that the university senate had relinquished its prerogatives regarding the appointment of deans, thus removing the last obstacle to replacing their election with an appointment by the rector. The concentration of power in the hands of university rectors had been progressing slowly for a long time. It accelerated thanks to a new act on higher education, although a significant portion of these changes was still optional, dependent on the decisions of the universities themselves. And thus I saw the final brushstroke. I also learned that the strengthening of the vertical management structure had occurred everywhere. Some universities and academies were abolishing departments as unnecessary anachronisms. While some complained in the hallways about the university’s transformation into an enterprise, about the corruption-prone grading and ranking systems, these things no longer mattered. The collective dynamic was unstoppable.

This process unfolded over time: it began, if I recall correctly, during Minister Barbara Kudrycka’s term, intensified under Minister Lena Kolarska-Bobińska and received its signature from Minister Jarosław Gowin. A long period of evolution and incubation meant that the community had become accustomed to the constant pressure for change and began to consider it inevitable. What’s more, a new generation had grown up that saw no drama in these changes; rather, it saw greater harmony between the operation of universities and the general rules of social life, greater responsibility and efficiency. New scholars eagerly engaged in discussions about the mechanisms for allocating research grants and other components of the complex construct known as optimization. The university, in the old sense, was increasingly absent and eventually disappeared.

The essence of the university was formulated in various ways, as we can read in Cezary Kościelniak’s monograph Przemiany idei uniwersytetu (Changes in the Idea of the University). Yet one intuition was common to them all: the university’s mission requires separation from the rest of social life. The scope and degree of this separation remained open to debate, but the awareness of its necessity had always existed, dating back to its medieval beginnings.

John Williams’s novel Stoner was published in 1965 and depicted a fictional university milieu in America. The protagonist, William Stoner, comes from an uneducated family and is expected to receive a practical education, but he suddenly becomes fascinated by literary research. He devotes himself to studying early English literature and is hired at the university. He is not a distinguished scholar; he publishes one book and devotes himself to teaching. He is not a distinguished teacher either. However, achievements are of little consequence here. Stoner believes in the university as a way of life, a place that can be occupied between the world and the ideal, between society and human genius. Not everyone is destined to make outstanding contributions, but with hard work and faith, one can earn citizenship in the unique country where these great things happen.

‘Stoner’ by John Williams, cover, photo: Filtry Publishing House

One day, a doctoral student, Charles Walker, appears at a seminar and disturbs Stoner by insisting that he doesn’t want to study literary tradition but rather to indulge his own intelligence, inventiveness and sense of transgression. He has no desire to explore the influence of Latin scholars on Shakespeare but wants to praise Shakespeare’s genius. During a dispute with the dean over Walker’s future, Stoner cites the opinion of his late colleague Dave Masters, who described the university as ‘a refuge, an escape from the world for those unfit for living in the world, the crippled’.

He adds that Dave would consider Charles Walker, with his ambition, lack of enthusiasm and selfless passion, to be ‘the world’. ‘We can’t let him in’, he continues. ‘If we do that, we’ll become like the world, just as unreal’. It’s not the university that must seek justification in the world, proving that it is real, that is, a worthy environment for human life, for anyone who has read Sophocles and Shakespeare has seen themselves in them: as they truly are and as they can be. Rather, it is civilization surrounding the university that must prove that it is worthy of its name, that all our engineering, economics, medicine and all our operational improvements truly serve humanity [fragments translated from the Polish by MP].

Of course, the opinion cited in Stoner about a refuge for the maladjusted and crippled sounds escapist and isn’t a good advertisement for academic life. It’s more of a hyperbole that helps understand the problematic nature of the university’s existence in society. Admittedly, there are some overly literal interpretations of the idea of separating the world of knowledge from the social world. In Hermann Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, knowledge resembles playing a virtual instrument encompassing all the registers of humanity’s achievements. Mastering this game requires complete dedication, which is achieved through isolation – understood quite literally, akin to monastic life. This community is separated from the world by a rigid rule, too rigid, it turns out, to withstand the pressures of life.

The glass bead game is not a good model for a university. A relative and undogmatic isolation based on friendship is closer to it. During his student years, J. R. R. Tolkien and his Oxford friends formed a small society that called itself the Inklings. Like many similar fraternities, it operated under the defiant slogan of contra mundum. The pursuit of excellence in art and knowledge is always in some way opposed to the world – not through artificial exclusivity but through the power of ideals. The principle of academic community can also be expressed as Dorota Korwin-Piotrowska recently did in her address at the annual meeting of the Kolegium Refleksji Humanistycznej (College of Humanistic Reflection) in Łódź on 8 September. Citing the work of Viktor Frankl, she linked the academic community to a need for and a sense of meaning. These connect us more strongly than interests or social goals, and they do not have to operate under the banner of contra mundum.

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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, 1955, photo: Haywood Magee / Getty Images

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Neither the novel’s Stoner nor Tolkien and his friends were naïve, and they knew that universities and pubs where literary lovers could discuss poetry over beers into the night didn’t fall from the sky but required the generosity of patrons, political will and economic common sense. But they didn’t let this bother them, having been born into a world where all this had existed for a long time, was deeply rooted and didn’t require constant justification.

But the world finally poured into modern universities in a broad flood. They have become enterprises with large budgets and complex economic strategies. They are managed by people with the qualifications of corporate CEOs. A few years ago, I took a long walk from downtown Boston to nearby Cambridge to see the home of the great early 20th-century psychologist and philosopher William James. What did I expect? Probably a sense of the dignity of bygone academic life. But that day, there was something else to be experienced. The Harvard University campus was closed, and a long line of trucks carrying parts of gigantic tents, catering equipment, tons of elaborate dishes and stage equipment were entering through the gates.

All of this was set up on tennis courts in preparation for the celebration of Graduation Day. The scale of this event is staggering every year: it’s as much about current alumni as it is about former ones, invited in large numbers as guests. Alumni are the main source of funding for major American universities. They need to feel a connection to their alma mater, to see the connection between their studies and life’s success. However, this leads to a massive expansion of the university’s propaganda façade. In recent years, numerous publications have appeared criticizing the financial drive of universities: it begins with massive investments to create excellent study conditions for students (housing, entertainment, athletic careers), which attracts new students and generates more tuition revenues, which in turn leads to the creation of another generation of wealthy and influential alumni, further multiplying and reinvesting these revenues.

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Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, photo: Scott Eisen / Getty Images

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This mechanism may seem unfamiliar in Europe. But is there a single model, a single idea of a university? Two 19th-century voices stand out in this regard: Wilhelm von Humboldt and John Henry Newman. Humboldt postulated that the university should equally develop knowledge, educate and disseminate knowledge. All this should be done under the tutelage of the state, which not only finances the university but also gives it unity and orientation, integrating it with the rest of society. The university is to educate elites that will build their authority on knowledge, which in turn will arise from research achievements attained most effectively in conditions of freedom within the state and guaranteed by it.

Cardinal John Henry Newman created a different model in England. Above all, he opposed combining research and teaching within the same institution. The university is to be a place for shaping enlightened, understanding individuals who maintain a relationship with knowledge and shape their character through this relationship. Knowledge creation, however, should take place in institutions created for this purpose: today, these would be institutes or research centres; in Newman’s time, primarily scientific societies and academies. Newman also had a different view than Humboldt on the principle unifying the intellectual culture of the university. The German thinker saw this source in the state, Newman in the church. According to him, the university must be completely independent of the state, not free within the state. It must be directed toward man’s higher calling, and theological knowledge is essential for fulfilling this calling. In the Humboldtian model, however, theology is treated like any other science; it has its place in the university only to the extent that it can defend its academic status on an equal footing with other fields of knowledge.

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‘Wilhelm von Humboldt’ by Thomas Lawrence, photo: Royal Collection / Wikimedia.org.; ‘Alexander von Humboldt’ by Joseph Karl Stieler, 1843, photo: Schloss Charlottenhof / http://Wikipedia.org

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An important voice in the matter of the idea of a university comes from the philosopher Karl Jaspers. While he continued Humboldt’s ideas, he distanced himself from the influences of both the state and religion: he emphasized human self-formation through its relation to knowledge. He believed that ‘university education is a process of formation aimed at freedom filled with the content of work – namely, through participation in the intellectual life that prevails there’. He formulated the fundamental principle of a university as follows: ‘To make available all tools and possibilities in the intellectual sphere, to push them to their limits, to ensure that the learner relates all decisions concerning his actions to himself, to his own responsibility, which is awakened precisely through learning’. The mission of the university is realized in each participant’s turning inward, not for the sake of self-gratification, but through the desire to see themselves in the light of the best knowledge and the highest ideals.

We find yet a different emphasis in the work of a Polish philosopher, the rector of the University of Lviv, Kazimierz Twardowski, author of the renowned work O dostojeństwie uniwersytetu (On the Dignity of the University). Many benefits flow from scientific research and education, but they do not, in and of themselves, create a special atmosphere of dignity. Only the connection of all values with truth ensures this. It’s hard not to recall Twardowski’s moving thought, which resonates well with the earlier quote from Williams’s novel:

[The university] must separate itself from everything that does not serve the pursuit of academic truth, must maintain a proper distance between itself and the current that rushes around its walls: the noise of everyday life, of clashing social, economic, political and all other sorts of currents. Amid the struggles and conflicts of these diverse currents, the university must stand firm, like a lighthouse that guides ships through turbulent waters with its light but never immerses its light in the waters themselves. If it did, the light would go out, and ships would be left without a guiding star.

The four aforementioned concepts of the university differ subtly because they are based on the same values but seek the conditions for their coming into being elsewhere. None of these ideas can be completely rejected. I read a text about Newman published several decades ago in which the author strongly criticizes Newman’s separation of research and teaching. But was Newman really so wrong? Today’s academic research, due to its enormous costs, introduces many elements of industry and economics into universities, and these take over, absorb attention and exhaust energy in the constant pursuit of new, spectacular projects. These efforts, or rather struggles, are handled by individuals with traits otherwise valuable in the work of increasing knowledge but ones that do not stem from a relationship to truth, knowledge or self-reflection. Humboldt could not have foreseen this; he could not have imagined what a vast financial and organizational machine the production [sic!] of knowledge would become. He also did not know the limits of state tyranny.

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‘On the Dignity of the University’ by Kazimierz Twardowski, title page & photograph, photo: Polona National Library

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Piotr Nowak’s book Hodowanie troglodytów (Troglodyte Breeding) came out in 2014. It contains the author’s reflections on the transformation of the contemporary university, particularly the position of the humanities. The author and his interlocutors featured in the book’s discussion protest against the introduction into the humanities of evaluation rules completely inappropriate for them. They defend academic freedom, the dignity of collegial bodies and the master–disciple relationship, calling for trust in the academic community and an end to all-powerful planning. However, they refuse to relinquish their position in society. They think in a Humboldtian way, and this gives them the right to make demands on the state. When these demands are systematically ignored, the somewhat desperate idea of practicing the humanities outside the university emerges. The idea is understandable but if truly implemented would leave the university at the mercy of social trends and political will. The boundary separating the university from the world would disappear forever.

Today’s reader of Williams’s novel finds it difficult to understand why the ambitious, passionate Charles Walker belongs not to the university but to the world. Today’s universities are full of people like him: intelligent, causative, critical, working methodically for their success. However, I believe that these socially approved values and attitudes are incapable of generating the principles and rules that govern the university. It must create itself, its own form of life; if it does not, it becomes unreal, completely dissolved in the games of society.

Inspirational readings:

Jaspers, Karl. Idea uniwersytetu (The Idea of the University). Translated by W. Kunicki. Warsaw, 2021.

Kościelniak, Cezary. Przemiany idei uniwersytetu (Changes in the Idea of the University). Warsaw, 2019.

Newman, John Henry. Idea uniwersytetu (The Idea of a University). Translated by P. Mroczkowski. Warsaw, 1990.

Nowak, Piotr. Hodowanie troglodytów. Uwagi o szkolnictwie wyższym i kulturze umysłowej człowieka współczesnego (Troglodyte Breeding: Comments on Higher Education and the Mental Culture of Contemporary Man). Warsaw, 2014.

Twardowski, Kazimierz. O dostojeństwie uniwersytetu (On the Dignity of the University). Poznań, 1933.

Williams, John, Stoner. Translated by M. Stroiński. Warsaw, 2023.

_{Written in Polish by Robert Piłat, 28 September 2023, updated 29 September 2023}

_{Translated by Michał Pelczar}

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