Logomachia: The Conflict of the Faculties Today

What the humanities are, what they stand for, and what values they foster or disclaim are no longer cozy academic issues: they are under attack everywhere in legislative assemblies and the national press. The crisis is now especially intense but it is not exactly new.In 1798 Immanuel Kant published __Der Streit der Fakultäten__ (__The Conflict of the Faculties__), a remarkable little book that has been credited with shaping the liberal arts program in modern European universities. Discussing the role and status of the higher faculties (theology, law, and medicine) relative to the lower faculties (philosophy, mathematics, history, philology, geography), Kant established their functions as faculties of freedom on one side and of property on the other. Kant's book, so long neglected by all but the most devoted specialists, can no longer be ignored. It serves as the basis for these essays by distinguished scholars who have themselves been deeply involved in the intellectual conflicts of contemporary education in Europe and America—Timothy Bahti, Alan Bass, Jacques Derrida, Peggy Kamuf, John Llewelyn, Christie McDonald, and Robert Young. This volume will attract a hive of controversy but much honey, too. It confronts issues central to university ideals: the teaching of values, the role of philosophy and literary studies in their sister disciplines (especially history), the precarious balance between research and teaching, the defense of intellectual autonomy, and the public responsibility of the university. What the humanities are, what they stand for, and what values they foster or disclaim are no longer cozy academic issues: they are under attack everywhere in legislative assemblies and the national press. The crisis is now especially intense but it is not exactly new. In 1798 Immanuel Kant published Der Streit der Fakultäten ( The Conflict of the Faculties ), a remarkable little book that has been credited with shaping the liberal arts program in modern European universities. Discussing the role and status of the higher faculties (theology, law, and medicine) relative to the lower faculties (philosophy, mathematics, history, philology, geography), Kant established their functions as faculties of freedom on one side and of property on the other. Kant's book, so long neglected by all but the most devoted specialists, can no longer be ignored. It serves as the basis for these essays by distinguished scholars who have themselves been deeply involved in the intellectual conflicts of contemporary education in Europe and America—Timothy Bahti, Alan Bass, Jacques Derrida, Peggy Kamuf, John Llewelyn, Christie McDonald, and Robert Young. This volume will attract a hive of controversy but much honey, too. It confronts issues central to university ideals: the teaching of values, the role of philosophy and literary studies in their sister disciplines (especially history), the precarious balance between research and teaching, the defense of intellectual autonomy, and the public responsibility of the university. This book provides a collection of papers that address issues central to university ideals: the teaching of values, the role of philosophy and literary studies in their sister disciplines (especially history), the precarious balance between research and teaching, the defense of intellectual autonomy, and the public responsibility of the university. Most of the papers were originally presented at a 1987 symposium and deal either directly or indirectly with the precepts found in Immanuel Kant's long-neglected but seminal book "The Conflict of the Faculties." In this book, written in 1798, Kant presents a schematic proposal for academic freedom and develops a juridical basis for the resolution of intra-university conflicts, and of conflicts between the university and the state, with the state serving at once as the professor's patron and censor. Papers and their authors are as follows: (1) "Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties" (Jacques Derrida); (2) "Institutions of Change: Notes on Education in the Late Eighteenth Century" (Christie McDonald); (3) "The Injured University" (Timothy Bahti); (4) "The University Founders: A Complete Revolution" (Peggy Kamuf); (5) "The Idea of a Chrestomathic University" (Robert Young); (6) "Ancillae (The Concord of the Faculties)" (John Llewelyn); (7) "The Philosophy of Electrical Science" (Alan Bass); and (8) "Canons and Metonymies: An Interview with Jacques Derrida." Notes and references accompany individual papers. (GLR)