HUMANITARIAN KNOWLEDGE AT THE ENTREPRENEURIAL UNIVERSITY: STRATEGIES OF «JUSTIFICATION»

Abstract

Humanitarian knowledge and “liberal education” have been a problem for the modern innovative/entrepreneurial university as a commercial firm for the last fifty years: “impact” as an imperative of the university’s public discourse in liberal democracies and university policy apparently contradicts the statements about the “self-worth” or “uselessness” of humanitarian knowledge. The purpose of the article is to consider the main directions of the “justification” of the “humanitarian component” of the university, the ways of its politicization (the term U. Beck): appeals to values (culture), to the public good, civic education, to the methodological function of philosophy and the humanities, undertaken in this regard. The absence of grounds for the above-mentioned methods of politicization to matter is demonstrated: both in connection with their own inconsistency of such values, and as an argument for the prevailing public discourse of the university. It is concluded that the prevailing liberal interpretation of humanitarian knowledge necessarily provides for its transformation into a product whose price is determined by the market. The actual “problem situation” is not related to the “nature of humanitarian knowledge”, but to the “struggle for status”, that is, it is a question of power and prestige in connection with their redistribution in an entrepreneurial university as a commercial company.