The Consequence of Caesar’s Gold

Abstract

In chapters 3 and 4, we discussed how the concept of academic freedom developed in the University of Berlin during the early nineteenth century and was transformed in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has become, to a large extent, a negative freedom: a freedom from external influence rather than a freedom to pursue truth in its fullness. The question to be explored in this chapter is what principle of academic freedom did American Catholic colleges and universities adopt after they liberated themselves from heteronomous church control following the Second Vatican Council? Was it merely a freedom from external authority, resulting in free inquiry within the confines of narrow disciplinary islands, but not beyond, or was it a freedom to search both the depth and extent of Kant’s island and its relation to the vast sea beyond? This chapter examines their choice and its consequences.