The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of its Pupils

Abstract

Today, can we speak of the university? I put my question in the negative, for two reasons. On the one hand, as we all know, it is impossible, now more than ever, to dissociate the work we do, within one discipline or several, from a reflection on the political and institutional conditions of that work. Such a reflection is unavoidable. It is no longer an external complement to teaching and research; it must make its way through the very objects we work with, shaping them as it goes, along our norms, procedures, and aims. We cannot speak of such things. On the other hand, the question how can we not gives notice of the negative, or perhaps we should say preventive, complexion of the preliminary reflections I should like to put to you. Indeed, since I am seeking to initiate discussion, I shall content myself saying one should speak of the university. Some of the typical risks to be avoided, it seems to me, take the form of a bottomless pit, while others take the form of a protectionist barrier. Does the university, today, have is called a raison d' tre? I have chosen to put my question in a phrase-raison d'etre, literally, to be-which is quite idiomatically French. In two or three words, that phrase names everything I shall be talking about: and being, of course, and the essence of the University in its connections to and being; but also the cause, purpose, direction, necessity, justification, meaning and mission of the University; in a word, its destination. To have a raison d'etre, a for being, is to have a justification for existence, to have a meaning, an intended purpose, a destination; but also, to have a cause, to be explainable according to the principle of reason or the law of sufficient reason, as it is sometimes calledin terms of a which is also a cause (a ground, ein Grund), that is to say also a footing and a foundation, ground to stand on. In the phrase raison d' tre, that idea of causality takes on above all the sense of final cause, in the wake of Leibniz, the author of the formulation-and it was much more than a formulation -the Principle of Reason. To ask whether the University has a for being is to wonder there is a University, but the question why verges on with a view to The University a view to what? What is the University's view? What are its views? Or again: do we see from the University, whether for instance, we are simply in it, on board; or whether, puzzling over destinations, we look out from it while in port or, as French has it, au large, on the open sea, at large? As you may have noticed, in asking what is the view from the University? I was echoing the title of the impeccable parable James Siegel published in Diacritics two years ago: Academic Work: