The Priceless Interval: Theory in the Global Interstice
Reingard Nethersole2001, Diacritics
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
AI
AI
The paper examines the tension between theory and praxis in contemporary higher education, particularly within the humanities and its implications for knowledge production and social engagement. Using Goethe's Faust and Kant's Conflict of the Faculties as key references, it critiques the prevailing economic framework that prioritizes practical applications over theoretical discourse, resulting in a diminished role for humanities disciplines. The author argues for the necessity of maintaining theoretical inquiry in education to foster a meaningful engagement with societal complexities.
Related papers
Philosophy
2024
Санкт-Петербург 2024 3.1. Late Ancient and Early Christian philosophy: The Patristic philosophy………………………………………………………... 36 3.2. The Apex of Medieval Philosophy: The Scholastic System of St. Thomas Aquinas…………………………………… 38 3.3. The Renaissance Interlude…………………………………... 55 3.4. Reformation…………………………………………………. 59 3.5. Political thought of Renaissance. Machiavelli………………. 63 3.6. Science………………………………………………………. 65 3.7. Philosophy of Modern Times. Advocates of the Method of Science: Bacon and Hobbes……………………………………… 67 3.8. Rationalism on the Continent: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz………………………………………………………. 72 3.9. Glossary……………………………………………………. 96 3.10. Tests………………………………………………………... 97 TOPIC IV. The Enlightenment. German classical philosophy……………. 4.1. The Enlightenment…………………………………………... 4.2. The critical philosophy of Kant……………………………... 4.3. The Transcendental aesthetic………………………………... 4.4. The antinomies of pure reason………………………………. 4.5. Kant's moral philosophy……………………………………. 4.6. German idealism and materialism…………………………... 4.7. Marx and the young Hegelians……………………………… 4.8. The Utilitarian………………………………………………. 4.9. Mill's logic…………………………………………………... 4.10. Glossary……………………………………………………. 4.11. Tests………………………………………………………... TOPIC V. Modern Western philosophy …………………………………... 5.1. Schopenhauer………………………………………………... 4.11. TESTS 1. «Sensations without concepts are blind, and concepts without sensations are empty»: A. Descartes; B. Schelling; C. Kant; D. Helvetius. 2.The central problem of I. Kant's philosophy is-A. study of the driving forces of the development of history; B. analysis of the self-development of the absolute idea; C. finding universal and necessary foundations of knowledge and humanistic values; D. investigation of the ultimate foundations of being. 3. History becomes the object of philosophical analysis in philosophy: A. Marxism; B. Аntiquity; C. Renaissance. 4. Creator and systematizer of dialectics as a philosophical method of cognition in German philosophy: A. Descartes; B. Spinoza; C. Kant; D. Hegel. 5. According to Kant's theory, time and space: A. are the eternal real attributes of the substance; B. are a priori forms of sensuality; C. arise gradually, as the knowledge of the world improves; D. are the inherent properties of individual things 6. DOES NOT apply to the laws of dialectics: A. unity and struggle of opposites; B. the identities of matter and consciousness; C. mutual transfer of quantity and quality; D. negation of negation. 7. The basic laws of dialectics formulated: A. Hegel B. Kant C. Heraclitus D. Marx 8. Hegel believed that the basis of the world is A. absolute identity B. the absolute unconscious C. an absolute idea D. absolute deity 9. Marxism's philosophical roots were thus commonly explained as derived from three sources:
Conflicts and Crisis in the Faculties: The Humanities in an Age of Identity
Social Research 84.3, 2017
Conflicts and Crisis in the Faculties: The Humanities in an Age of Identity the humanities are in crisis. and this is part of their selfidentity. To say that the Humanities 1 are constitutively in crisis is to imply, via the reading that has come to us from Reinhart Kosseleck, that their fundamental task is historical, in the sense that they entail the transmission of forms and values across time, and in the sense that time is a source of value for that which is transmitted. That relative value underwrites the authority of the statements made within their domain. It also assumes that humanistic knowledge-the forms of knowledge that are generally counterposed to scientific knowledgeis narrative (Lyotard [ ] 1984, 7), 7). The question implicitly posed by the "Future of Scholarly Knowledge" conference at which this paper was presented is whether the crisis afflicting the Humanities in the new millennium is fundamentally different from those that characterized the previous century or, indeed, the period we may designate as Enlightenment modernity: the era of the university modeled on Humboldt's proposal for the University of Berlin. This question is not merely academic, although it pertains to the institution of the university: its status, its function, its role in the shifting organization of social and political authority, and its contributions to culture. As Lyotard stated in 1979, "it is impossible to know what the state of knowledge is … without knowing something of the society within which it is situated" (13). Lyotard describes two main traditions for generating knowledge about society. On one hand is the functionalist school associated
A Theology of Higher Education
2012
By all accounts higher education-including Christian higher education-is in crisis. In A Theology of Higher Education, Mike Higton offers a Christian theological account of higher education, showing that the DNA of the university as a species contains uniquely Christian traits. Higton is Academic Co-Director of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme and Senior Lecturer in Theology at the University of Exeter, so he is well situated to offer this analysis, not least because of the explosive push-back being felt in the Oxbridge context. Instead of turning the book into "a diatribe, or into a melancholy, long withdrawing roar of retreating academic faith" (2), Higton crafts an argument meant to rehabilitate confidence in university education by celebrating what it does well, or could do better. Part I of the volume traces the evolution of the university through the histories of the universities of Paris, Berlin, Oxford, and Dublin. Typically, the tale of these great universities is construed as the shedding of the constraints of religious orthodoxy in favor of the emancipation reason offers, the triumph of reason over tradition and freedom over authority. Higton contests this myth, arguing instead that in genesis of the university, "reason emerges not over against Christian devotion, but as a form of Christian devotion" (13, emphasis original). Practices at the University of Paris, for example, could only make sense in the context of certain theological assumptions. "It was assumed that to discover that harmonious ordering was not simply an intellectual game, but one of the means (or part of the means) for discovering the good ordering of human life before God, including the good ordering of the social life. It was assumed, moreover, that this discovery of good order was possible only through a certain kind of conformity to it: the good ordering of the scholar's life in humility, piety, and peace-and this both as
Arguing for Wisdom in the University: An Intellectual Autobiography
Philosophia, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 663-704, 2012
For forty years I have argued that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in academia so that the basic task becomes to seek and promote wisdom. How did I come to argue for such a preposterously gigantic intellectual revolution? It goes back to my childhood. From an early age, I desired passionately to understand the physical universe. Then, around adolescence, my passion became to understand the heart and soul of people via the novel. But I never discovered how to tell stories in order to tell the truth. So, having failed to become a physicist, and failed to become a novelist, I studied philosophy at Manchester University and then, in six weeks of inspiration, discovered that the riddle of the universe is the riddle of our desires. Philosophy should be about how to live, and should not just do conceptual analysis. I struggled to reconcile the two worlds of my childhood ambitions, the physical universe and the human world. I decided they could be reconciled with one another if one regarded the two accounts of them, physics and common sense, as myths, and not as literal truths. But then I discovered Karl Popper: truth is too important to be discarded. I revised my ideas: physics seeks to depict truly only an aspect of all that there is; in addition, there is the aspect of the experiential features of the world as we experience it. I was immensely impressed with Popper’s view that science makes progress, not by verification, but by ferocious attempted falsification of theories. I was impressed, too, with his generalization of this view to form critical rationalism. Then it dawned on me: Popper’s view of science is untenable because it misrepresents the basic aim of science. This is not truth as such; rather it is explanatory truth – truth presupposed to be unified or physically comprehensible. We need, I realized, a new conception of science, called by me aim-oriented empiricism, which acknowledges the real, problematic aims of science, and seeks to improve them. Then, treading along a path parallel to Popper’s, I realized that aim-oriented empiricism can be generalized to form a new conception of rationality, aim-oriented rationality, with implications for all that we do. This led on to a new conception of academic inquiry. From the Enlightenment we have inherited the view that academia, in order to help promote human welfare, must first acquire knowledge. But this is profoundly and damagingly irrational. If academia really does seek to help promote human welfare, then its primary tasks must be to articulate problems of living, and propose and critically assess possible solutions – possible actions, policies, political programmes, philosophies of life. The pursuit of knowledge is secondary. Academia needs to promote cooperatively rational problem solving in the social world, and needs to help humanity improve individual and institutional aims by exploiting aim-oriented rationality, arrived at by generalizing the real progress-achieving methods of science. We might, as a result, get into life some of the progressive success that is such a marked feature of science. Thus began my campaign to promote awareness of the urgent need for a new kind of academic inquiry rationally devoted to helping humanity create a wiser world.
The Fragmentalization of Knowledge And Other Obstructing issues in Higher Education: Controversies Over Humanities
INTRODUCTION: The unrestrained particularization of the Object of Human Sciences , reducing fields of study of man to overlimited outlook and standpoints ,and decreasing or lessening the subject of enquiry to an alienated qualified individual endanger the ' necessary comprehension ' of man in his whole for existence, life , and experience on the earth.The absolute [or unrestricted] institutionalization of knowledge, especially of its human science branch, in one way or another, challenges, and also negates, the original meaning and the authentic philosophy of Higher Education and of sciences in their fully extended sense. It makes Knowledge ‛schooled' and in a sense ‛orientationalized' and 'indoctrinated' somehow. It would, of course, obstruct the innate, dynamic, and multiplying functiIt puts man's familiaty and on of knowledge, particularly human science branch dealt with in this paper. It interferes with its pluralizing and reproductive characteristics.closeness to the earth at critical risk.The earth requires the whole and true subject to exist and challenge with ,avoiding any disturbing danger and endangering. Knowledge is always expected to be able to provide safeguarding provisions and environments for reproduction and regeneration of man's better understanding and responses against various problems, troubles and impairments of his life materially or immaterially. Human Sciences are like ‛living creatures' who multiply and regenerate. They require oxygen and victuals. Stopping living creatures of their multiplying and regenerating ‚is‚ dangerous and is against life and its necessities. Both the term and the practice of Higher Education are associated with concepts and phrases such as advancement, nobility, promotion, intellectualism, rationalism, reasonableness, improvement, readiness and willingness to upgrade oneself and to serve human kind, elevation, achievement and many other terms that indicate and appeal to positive and ambitious qualities and trends. Higher Education equals higher level of knowledge and definitely masses several expectations and due nesses within and around its permanent temple: knowledge and human experience. Its permanency ensures its everlasting multiplication and regeneration vice versa. Whatever variation and classification may be imposed upon it, its dynamic multiplication guarantees its unceasing perpetuity. Dynamic durability and lasting multiplication have inherent and interdependent relationships to each other indeed. The expectancies that higher education endows graduating people are sometimes very
REASON UNBOUND: TOWARD A RE-GROUNDING THE METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY
Educational Theory, 1998
The analytic direction that I intend to follow hereafter takes its strategic cues from the metareflexive reverberations of a question Jacques Derrida asks during "The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of its Pupils": Is the reason for reason rational?'
Intellectuals, Power, and Knowledge. Studies in the Philosophy of Culture and Education
Frankfurt a/Main and New York: Peter Lang, 2004
It is interesting to try to see the relationship between the concept of postmodernity (as used in the philosophy of culture) and that of globalization or the global age (as used in many non-philosophical areas, but also in the philosophy of education). "Postmodernity" was certainly the catchword at the beginning of the nineties, just as "globalization" was the catchword at the the end of the decade and continues to be until today. To see how the relationship between power and knowledge changes, it is interesting to look at the two magisterial products of modernity discussed in the present volume: the modern (and usually leftist) intellectual engaged in changing the world (Part 1), and the modern nation-state focused, and welfare-state supported, institution of the university (Part 2). The national education system as a universal and public institution first emerged in post-revolutionary Europe as an instrument of state formation. It provided a powerful vehicle for the construction and integration of the new nation-state and became one of its chief institutional supports. Since then, few nations have embarked on independent statehood without recourse to its ideological potential; even the older states, at least in periods of war and crisis, have continued to view education as a valuable source of national cohesion and a key tool for economic development. However, the role of the nation-state is now changing, and with it the place of education". The place of higher education especially, let us add, is changing; which is of greatest interest to us in the second part of the present volume. Two modern achievements, the modem figure of the intellectual and the modern institution of the university, have been undergoing a radical crisis of identity. As we develop this theme in Chapter 12, the decline of the philosophical project of modernity is turning out to be a painful process for modern culture: once again it has to reformulate the aims of its social institutions (for us here, the aims of the university) and the tasks of its cultural heroes (for us here, the tasks of the intellectual). If it is successful, the institutions and cultural heroes in question will regain their cultural vitality; if it is not, they will fall into cultural sterility. The traditional modern figure of the intellectual seems untenable in a more and more postmodern cultural surrounding. The modern institution of the university may face a similar fate in a more and more globalized surrounding: either it is going to accept the rules of bureaucratic, consumer-oriented corporations, or it will have to try once again to find a new regulative idea which would have to be as transformative as the role suggested for the university two hundred years ago by German Idealists and Romantics. The breakthrough in the conception of the university two hundred years ago was an event equal in importance to the vast social and cultural transformations of that time. It is hard to tell whether there will appear new ideas about the university comparable in significance.
Kant #1: Liberal Arts
A study of Kant's third critique (on aesthetics and teleology) and its particular framing of freedom.
Related topics
Related papers
The Analytic and Continental Divide: Teaching Philosophy in an Age of Pluralism
Teaching Philosophy on the Eve of the Twenty-First Century, 1998
The State of the University: Academic Knowledges and the Knowledge of God – By Stanley Hauerwas
Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2008
interferes with) public political discourse by pointing to a proper understanding of Divine Providence. Historical events, and our actions contributing to them, cannot be juxtaposed with the will of God. Even a cursory reading of the Scriptures shows that history does not always (or even often) come out 'right' for the people of God. And it is certainly not the role of God's people to make history come out 'right'. In the cases when it seems as if history does come out right for us, our only response should be 'thanks be to God' (p. 128). And when it seems as if history does not come out right for us, our question should not be 'Where is God in times of trial?' but 'What is God like in times of trial?' and 'Who is the God we worship?' remembering that God is not a God of Europe or a God of America, but is God for the whole world. Perhaps because of the sermon-like quality of Sauter's essays, 'nuance' seems a more appropriate response to this book than 'criticism'. One nuance that Sauter could have introduced was to distinguish between 'regular' dogmatics and 'irregular' dogmatics. Sauter cites both regular dogmatics, such as those of Karl Barth and Jügen Moltmann, and irregular dogmatics, such as those of Hauerwas and Yoder. If he were to use this distinction to further illuminate the manner in which both forms of dogmatics are necessary for the church to faithfully carry out her role in the world, his proposal would have added depth and power. While systematic theologians need not be convinced of their own importance to the future of the church, convincing scholars from other disciplines might take a little more work.
« Luciano Boschiero (edited by), On the Purpose of a University Education » (2013)
Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 2, 2013, pp. 223-230
THE INSTITUTIONAL and PERSONAL NEED for PHILOSOPHY
She has always existed and is more than a citizen of multiverses, most likely the ground of all. In the West she was introduced around C.570 and since then many individuals have searched for her, tried to become familiar with her and created all sorts of, frequently ridiculous, things in her name. Once someone has a passion for her it cannot be extinguished but increases. Objectively this need for her is referred to as ‘love of wisdom’, the need for wisdom, while personally it is a need of some individuals. This passion and need has become institutionalized and it has developed a discourse and became a socio-cultural practice of its own. Fairly recently it has even become a discipline at, mostly higher, institutions of learning. Previously those searching for and attempting to interact with her came from many walks of life and all kinds of professions, while in the last century or so many people began to live off her as they are remunerated for talking about, about the history of searching for and investigating her and saying all sorts of things about her. Many things are done in her name and all sorts of neologisms are fabricated to label them, such as analytic, continental, idealism, rationalism, empiricism, and all these labels are again specified and specified ad infinitum with terms such as materialism, physicalism, weak naturalism, speculative and new realism, etc. Individuals from many other disciplines and areas of life, such as sociology, the arts, humanities, cognitive sciences, sport, etc got on the bandwagon so that we now have a philosophy or love of wisdom, epistemologies, ontologies etc of everything under the sun. Even if you were to write some theses or do some study you will stipulate your epistemology, ontology, methodology, etc. Just as those who live off philosophy become involved in every area of humanity and all its socio-cultural practices produce so-called peer reviewed publications, articles, essays and books on philosophy of art, sport, humanities, cognitive sciences, religion, gods, sex, rock ‘n roll, language, words, ideas, how words and ideas and concepts do their thing, etc, etc. The way these subject-matter are treated will usually consists of some form of reasoning, the use of arguments or argumentation and some kind of logic and a process that resembles the features, steps, stages and processes of theorizing, the construction and development of models, short term, medium or large theories. The latter is often presented in the form of entire ‘metaphysical’ and speculative systems such as those of Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Husserl, Habermas et al. While Socrates and to some extent the later Wittgenstein attempted to be more authentic to the original principles of trying to follow and developed the ideal of identifying, capturing by verbal interaction (be it discourse, or dialogue) and becoming one (like mystics of all religions who are passionate about ‘the one’, the Beloved, the one Real Self, etc and attempt to become one, united with or ‘oned’ with their object or subject of desire) with Sophos – by exploring and investigating or applying and executing practical use of language, and thereby to uncover and capture her. The effects of the institutionalization of the discipline are far-reaching and the professionalization of the role of philosopher as a ‘profession’, an employee of an institution and a representative of the status quo are discussed in a number of articles being cited. The methods of the philosophical discourse vary, first of all between the so-called Continental and Anglophone Analytic philosophies, its movements, schools and institutions, such as research universities, journals, communities and book publishers. It seems as if increasingly philosophizing employs some of the stages and steps of the processes of theorizing. Other aspects of her methods are heuristic devices, the use of metaphors and analogies, philosophical logic, informal and other types of logic, arguments and argumentation. This involves the creation of fallacies in thinking and reasoning and the causing of all sorts of fallacies or crooked thinking. The nature and changes of philosophical subject-matter are discussed as the socio-cultural practice lost most of its traditional ‘objects’ with the social and cultural differentiation of other, specialized disciplines. In turn the discourse attempts to fabricate other subject-matter, for example the development of so-called Experimental Philosophy, inter-disciplinary studies such as cognitive sciences and philosophies or meta-level explorations of and speculations about other disciplines, professions and domains (for example normative, instrumental and subjective aesthetic – this the terminology and distinctions according to the working class obsessive Critical Theory of the so-called Frankfurt Schule. One always wonders what degree of personal experience their educated, middle class academics have of ‘the working class’, whatever that is meant to be?)) of human activity. Such as philosophy of medicine, sport, art, religion, just name it and it is bound to exist. Another ‘extension’ of or interest in ‘philosophy’ is that of certain individuals, schools or movements in other disciplines, for example social ‘sciences’ such as sociology and supporters of the above mentioned ‘Schule’. They frequently use philosophical words such as ontology, epistemology, multi-dimensional, many-levels, contexts assumptions, pre-suppositions, immanent, transcendent, etc. Is this intended to be an extension of philosophy and the doing of philosophizing or merely cognitive bias of the form ‘authority bias’. In this case the authority being ‘the discipline of philosophy’, as well as the ’use of the word philosophy and terms from the philosophical discourse’.
School and Philosophy
Academia Letters, 2022
The contemporary world is marked by an emergency: school and the future of knowledge. The distancing caused by the pandemic is facilitating too sterile and empty mechanisms of schematization of understanding. Simplification cancels the sense of universal demand, typical of philosophy; distance learning has highlighted the full adaptation of educational systems to the fast and concise logic of the computer network. The time of formation has become only the present. Knowledge, but also general education, needs the past to build the future; the managerial drift of educational institutions (from kindergartens to universities) has led to a decline in the dialogue between knowledge and science. It is urgent and necessary to go back to making knowledge communicate in an inter and trans disciplinary sense (Beethoven and quantum, Joyce and Darwin, neuroscience and Dickens, Kant and the climate as some examples of the infinities that can be done). Overcoming the fixities of specialisms while maintaining some particularities but always under the banner of the universality of the gnoseological purpose. In the global sharing society, the greatest risk is not sharing knowledge, problems and research. The indications of the market only impose a culture aimed at the bargaining chip; on the contrary, the use of culture is the crossing of the other as a "world to be known", without reductions. The effort of an interdisciplinary study is long, but the younger generations need a prospective, circular, inter-dynamic. The alienation and the request for attestation of existence induced by various social networks (aggravated by Covid-19) shows us a decisive mission. In every sector the teacher must leave his mark (in-signum), he is, as Husserl recalls, the philosopher as an "officer of humanity". There are no dead languages, for example (Attic Greek and Latin are the common root of different languages); the discoveries of anthropology concern epigenetics, mathematical models must also be studied by linguists, a novel can dialogue with architecture and urban
Barnett 2005 Educational Philosophy and Theory
The idea of 'the university' has stood for universal themes-of knowing, of truthfulness, of learning, of human development, and of critical reason. Through its affirming and sustaining of such themes, the university came itself to stand for universality in at least two senses: the university was neither partial (in its truth criteria) nor local in its significance (at least, the university was an institution of the nation state and even had global significance). Now, this universalism has been shot down: on the one hand, universal themes have been impugned as passé in a postmodern age; in the 'knowledge society', knowledge with a capital 'K' is giving way to multiple and even local knowledges (plural). On the other hand, the very process of globalization has been accused of being a new process of colonization. Global universities, accordingly, may be seen as a vehicle for the imposition of Western modes of reason (often suspected in turn of being no more than Western economic reason at that). Diversity is the new watchword, a term that-we may note-has come to be part of the framing of the contemporary policy agenda for higher education. Accordingly, in such a situation of multiple meanings, both within and across institutions, the university becomes an institutional means for developing the capacities-at both the personal and the societal levels-to live with 'strangeness': perhaps here lies a new universal for the university? But, then, if that is the case, if strangeness is the new universal for the university, some large challenges await those who would claim to lead and manage universities.
History as a Challenge to the Idea of the University
Education as Civic Engagement, 2012
Much of our talk about the university centers on "the idea of the university." The idea of the university has a formidable history in the humanities, from its classical expression in Kant's Conflict of the Faculties (1798) and Cardinal Newman's Idea of a University (1854) up to contemporary revisions such as Bill Readings' University in Ruins (1996) and Jacques Derrida's "The University without Condition" (2002). This lineage-what I'll call "ideadiscourse"-is a quintessential humanistic domain and, especially for those of us in literary studies, it tends to govern our analyses ofthe university. For instance, assessing the state of the university, Hillis Miller adduces: Something drastic is happening to the university. The university is losing its idea, the guiding mission that has sustained it since the early nineteenth century when, in Germany, the modern research university was invented. Newman's The Idea of the University [sic] expounded for English readers both this concept of the university and, among other things, the place of literary study in such a university .... The new university that is coming into being lacks such a supervising concept. In place of the university governed by an idea is rapidly being put what Bill Readings calls the university of "excellence" ... [which] names an empty tautology. (45)
‘The “Contest of the Faculties” and Cultures of Time: Sociological Reflections on the Relation of the Natural and Social Sciences’, contribution to the Science Faculty Public Lecture Series, University College Cork, 3 February 2004.
He who rides on the back of a tiger may wind up inside ' -Chinese proverb In the late 18 th century, the great German Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant, had been embroiled in what he called 'the contest of the faculties' (1979 [1798]) in which he argued for the priority of philosophy over theology, law and medicine as the protector of the critical power of reason in the university. Thereby, he effectively opened the way for the subsequent resurgence of academic inquiry as a political force in the wider context of society, and thus gave the modern university its mission. Today, indeed for some time already, we witness a recurrence of the conflict of the faculties. In the meantime, however, the tables have been turned. The natural sciences have long since established themselves as academic disciplines, representing our most prestigious form of knowledge and, serving as conduit for the entry of capitalism and industry into the university, together with technology took over the role of leading productive force. As a consequence, philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences are left languishing in little more than a marginal position. The late 20 th and early 21 st century 'contest of the faculties' thus takes on a completely different complexion than in the time of the Enlightenment.
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.