Programska knjižica - Hrvatsko filozofsko društvo

CAN IT SURVIVE?
University education was launched in a large number of countries that
had few or no university institutions before 1945. Higher education became
worldwide. This rosy picture came into difficulty after about year 1970. The
story ever since has been that of the two curves going in opposite directions −
less money and increased expenses. There began to be evaluations of whole
universities and of departments within universities in terms of their output for
the money invested.
All the various tensions – economic, cultural, and spiritual – are inevitably
perpetuated and deepened by a system of education founded on the values of
another century, and by a rapidly accelerating unbalance between social structures
and the changes which are currently taking place in the contemporary
world.
A university without conditions does not, in fact, exist, as we know only
too well. Nevertheless, in principle, and in conformity with its declared vocation,
its professed essence, it should remain an ultimate place of critical resistance
– and more than critical – to all the powers of dogmatic and unjust
appropriation. Can this strong Derrida’s believe still survive?
ANTON MLINAR
Science and Research Centre, University of Primorska, Koper, Slovenia /
Znanstveno-istraživački centar, Sveučilište Primorska, Kopar, Slovenija
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN ON A UNIVERSITY:
ACTUALITY OF A 160 YEARS OLD DISCOURSE
Newman’s famous treatise on university, which was originally dedicated
to his plan of founding a new Catholic university in Dublin, is a classic
demonstration of an ideal of liberal education. Newman defended with it his
idea of integrity of education necessary for whichever autonomous development
of scientific knowledge. At first, it was a defense of the position of the
theology among other disciplines within the university’s curricula, but gradually
it became a key footnote to a much more important question regarding
the autonomy of a university’s education and the collegial character of knowledge.
Newman’s original discourse written in 1852 was going back to his
total dedication to the collegiality of education, convinced that the education
was (or should be) the turning point of life much more important than a mere
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