Programska knjižica - Hrvatsko filozofsko društvo

tual endeavours contribute the social authority of the universities, the supposed
bastions of sciences, knowledge and humanistic attitudes. But, as noted by Z.
Radman, what is prior to the existence of physicists, philosophers or men of
letters is the existence of human individuals performing all those activities
(Radman, 1995: 80). As a result, our perception of the world is necessarily and
only human, or, in other words, what scientists consider universe is rather to
be labelled as humiverse (ibid.). Nevertheless the Scientist (in Latour’s terms)
sometimes identifies his position with that of God, not only in terms of the
perception of the world, but equally so in terms of his power position as the
social authority figure. This is what happens in one of the best known campus
or academic novels, Disgrace (J. M. Coetzee, 1999), whose protagonist,
David Lurie, a university teacher in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa,
dedicates his life to abstract thought, “the dominant intellectual tradition of
modernity” (P. Armstrong, 2008: 221). But the fact is that intellectual superiority
does not necessarily presume one’s spiritual integrity, either personal or
professional. Lurie invites his students of Romanticism to medidate on Wordsworth’s
lines (from Book 6 of The Prelude) about Mont Blanc as a site representing
the heights of human spiritual endeavour and power of the mind, the
world of “pure ideas” (Coetzee: 21). But this Platonic substratum of his teaching
does not prevent him from sexual predation of his student Melanie Isaacs.
By the end of the story the predator becomes the prey himself, after his own
daughter is brutally raped. Having lost his university position, Lurie decides to
live with his daughter in the countryside, devoting his life to unwanted animals
(waiting for elimination in the so called animal shelter). Lurie is now being
taught by his daughter that “there is no higher life. This is the only life there
is. Which we share with animals” (74). This multi-layered novel is analysed
in this presentation in the first place in the context of the genre of English university
fiction. Campus novels have seen an enormous growth in Britain and
the US since the 1950s but they also enjoy much longer history in the annals
of literary studies (K. Womak, 2005: 326). These novels are focused on private
and professional queries that persons involved in the academic life are usually
being faced with.
AKADEMSKI ROMAN I IDEJA HUMIVERZITETA
Ideja sveučilišta ima dugu tradiciju u ljudskoj povijesti. Sveučilišni nastavnici
poput fizičara, filozofa, literata i drugih, obrazuju neke buduće fizičare,
filozofe i literate. Njihova intelektualna pregnuća doprinose društvenom
ugledu koji uživaju sveučilišta, ti hramovi znanosti, znanja i humanističkog
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