13th Bacchus reading group meeting

Griffiths, A. P. [1965] (2010). A deduction of universities. In Philosophical analysis and education (pp. 127-140). Routledge.

• He makes the suggestion that the notion of a university for culture, and one for the principles of advancing knowledge may not be compatible

  • “discover that the emperor is nothing but clothes”

  • There are principles and values that need to be in place for the structure and dynamic of a discipline, and scholars are able to speak on these with confidence

    • They may not be able to speak on wider social issues with the same confidence

• The university has many different functions, and each of these builds upon agreements by people of what is and is not important

  • Their ideal and essence influence action, bringing them into being

    • Education for what

    • Teaching correctly

    • Formation of character/preparation for life

    • Useful arts

• Pursuit of learning is an indulgence, and indulgence that may be useful for wider society, but one that must be granted and has no immediate short-term usage

  • Hence the pursuit can be charactherised as selfish

  • The centre of learning, existing as it must outside Eden, demands a great deal from the community in which it exists. It demands its keep; and (what may be more difficult to give) it demands its indulgence, for it is a place where the most important prejudices, which may be essential for the stability or even the existence of its surrounding community, may have to be questioned, and perhaps destroyed.”

• Learning and the university are like love, the activity is worthwhile for its own regard

  • Hence, asking for reasons and commodification destroys the enchantment and purity of the essence that drives learning forward

  • The playfulness of jousting ideas against each other requires a space to take place and protect is boundary condition, yet needs to remain silent on its content

  • The reciprocity of the participants becomes the force that is sustaining the ideal

  • “this must have something to do with the fact that activities are valuable only as modifications of consciousness, and more valuable as these modifications are richer and capable of indefinite development without mere repetition. They are not those that can be done with half a mind, mechanically, or passively. The objects of valuable activities must possess a quality which we might call reciprocity.”

• The spirit of the university represents a social theory

  • In as much as a teacher encultures a student in the norms and values important for knowledge accumulation, allowing the student to amass their own knowledge and discipline themselves in a style that is conducive for the discipline, becoming a scholar him/herself.             

  • Thereby, the civilised behaviour of how to hash out conflicts is transmitted to the next generation, added on by innovations along the way, yet distinct from the immediate social benefit the participants can draw from it