A History of the Humanities in the Modern University: A Productive Crisis 3031465334, 9783031465338

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A History of the Humanities in the Modern University A Productive Crisis Sverre Raffnsøe

A History of the Humanities in the Modern University “This book is a call to all who believe in the transformative power of the humanities. Raffnsøe challenges the prevailing dichotomy of the human and the nonhuman, which was established as crucial for the organization of knowledge with the foundation of the modern university. His analysis is not just a defense but also a welcome reinvigoration of the humanities, urging a reconnection with their radical potential to address the challenges of our times. The book stands as a significant and thorough contribution to the ongoing debate about the role of the humanities in higher education and is an essential text for understanding their enduring importance in the institutional development of the contemporary university. Raffnsøe’s work is a must-read for educators, students, and anyone invested in the future of the humanities.” —Rasmus Johnsen, Associate Professor, Vice Dean for Lifelong Learning, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark “In this tour de force, Raffnsøe boldly counters bleak mainstream predictions to claim that, far from inexorably withering, the humanities will remain vibrant and vital. Beyond dialectical inversion of received opinion, Raffnsøe’s History restores this epistemological discipline to its irrevocable centrality. A science in the organic sense, the humanities render knowledge rational while relentlessly challenging truth-values—including that of science itself. As such, as long as the species to which we belong endures, the human sciences must and will ensure that survival. In that sense, Raffnsøe’s History is a history of the future.” —Robert Harvey, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, State University of New York at Stony Brook, USA “That the humanities in the university are in crisis is not news, but a sadly familiar complaint. That continuing crisis has been an essential, productive part of its history is an interesting hypothesis that calls for study and could provide both light and hope for today’s predicament. This book explores that history and hypothesis with scholarship, patience, and insight.” —Richard Shusterman, Dorothy F. Schmidt Eminent Scholar in the Humanities, Florida Atlantic University, USA

“This is a profoundly generous scholarly work that adds a masterful touch to Raffnsøe’s cutting-edge contributions to key debates in the field of the contemporary humanities and brings the discussion to another dimension. One of the striking aspects of this remarkable volume is the diversity of European languages, as well as philosophical traditions it draws from. This very rigorous and learned, but also accessible, approach sharpens the overall focus of this study, and increases its agenda-setting force and relevance.” —Rosi Braidotti, Distinguished University Professor Emerita, Utrecht University “This book’s career will be great fun to follow and possibly contribute to. It slays any number of holy cows, first and foremost the humanities scholars’ inherent claim to the right of wailing about the decline of their disciplines. Also, it performs what it describes—i.e. the epistemological expertise which characterizes the humanities as the foundation of a new understanding of knowledge far beyond disciplinary boundaries. And most importantly, it does not close off its topic as now being investigated and classified once and for all; instead, it opens up many new avenues of investigation. Fabulous stuff!” —Professor, Dr. Ulrike Landfester and Professor, Dr. Jörg Metelmann, University of St. Gallen “Erudite and brilliant, Raffnsøe’s genealogy of the humanities in the Western academy offers a perspective that is both timely and courageous. Refusing the strategy of justifying the humanities by defending ideas about its noble and ancient inheritances, Raffnsøe recounts how the emergence of new faculties, disciplines, and fields of studies over the last two hundred years have always called the humanities into crisis and challenged it constantly to redefine and reorganize itself in relation—and not simply in opposition—to these emergences. The present ‘crisis’ of the humanities is no exception. This remarkable book is at once an acute diagnosis of our times and a fresh charter of hope and possibilities for humanists.” —Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College, University of Chicago, USA

Sverre Raffnsøe

A History of the Humanities in the Modern University A Productive Crisis

Sverre Raffnsøe Copenhagen Business School Frederiksberg, Denmark

ISBN 978-3-031-46532-1    ISBN 978-3-031-46533-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46533-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Photo by Anders Clausen This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface: Scope, Claims and Ambition of the Book

This study provides a general overview of the crucial and critical stages in the history, organization and production of knowledge in Western societies since the establishment of the modern university around 1800. A recurring subject of examination, forming a guiding and unifying theme, is the momentous influence of the human sciences as well as their decisive, yet also unstable and shifting role and position within this context. The study claims that the position and decisive role of the human sciences within the larger edifice have often been neglected or played down due to their dynamicism, the very instability and fluctuation of their status and influence, making it hard to grasp and describe them. This decisive role and productive influence is often overlooked, or at least decisively misrepresented and downplayed, in current discussions of the human sciences that examine their character, contribution and future prospects. Here it has become habitual not only to emphasize that the human sciences are presently experiencing a severe crisis and recession but also to stress how this calamity is the logical outcome of a prolonged process of recession, decay and decline. To counter this misapprehension and compensate for the oversights and omissions of both present and historical contributions, there is thus no alternative than to form a comprehensive and relatively detailed overview of the ongoing development of human sciences within the historical landscape— while also paying close attention to the shifting positions and the development of the human sciences within their broader context. In order to achieve this, the study aims to write a new and relatively detailed alternative history of the human sciences from the point where they assumed their distinctive v

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modern shape and became recognizable as what can today be perceived as the humanities. A closer, more attentive and thorough investigation of not only the present but also, and in particular, this past is required. Countering received ideas of the humanities and the human sciences as a superfluous pursuit, the account of the human sciences and their historical development given here seeks to accord due recognition to their ongoing significant and decisive influence over more than 200 years. In the introduction, the book starts out by surveying the main historical stages of the alternative history of the human sciences in the modern university that this study is going to outline. Concomitantly, this section of the book also provides an indication of the main characteristics of and the relationship between these main historical stages. Subsequently, Chap. 1 provides a fairly elaborate articulation of the primary analytical, methodological, epistemological or ontological tenets that the book’s approach builds upon. In this manner, this section of the book aims to give an account of the necessary presuppositions that underlie this study of the development of the human sciences and their impact on the modern university and its wider knowledge horizon, thereby enabling the drafting of an alternative history. In keeping with the ambition to write a new history that highlights their productive character and influence, the study follows the traces of agendasetting major events within and contributions to the human sciences. In continuation hereof, the study understands the epistemic tradition of the human sciences as established through an ongoing and open-ended series of prescriptive and normative events permeated by a virtuality that constantly gives rise to dispositions that did not previously exist. The approach applied also implies that the study perceives and articulates cognation and knowledge as activities having decisive normative and performative effects. As articulated in this study, the ongoing productive crisis of the human sciences is to be perceived as an enduring and unending transcending and normsetting undertaking resulting in the establishment of new irreducible modes of science and conceptions of scientificity that continuously create and vindicate new conditions of assertability for knowledge. To follow this continuing establishment of new modes of science and scientificity, the study takes the form of a transversal investigation that aims to trace the transcending and norm-setting activity as it moves across borders, where the baton is picked up from previous inventive activity and passed on to the next generation. The study of cognition and knowledge as normating activities presented here differs decisively from more

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traditional and well-established accounts of the history and contributions of the human sciences, in particular those that portray them either as containing an inherited value in themselves or as a primarily problem-solving cognitive activity. In this manner, the study portrays the tradition of the human sciences as a valuable dynamic heritage that is in need of constant reinterpretation. To be able to follow and cover the normative, unveiling and agenda-­ setting movement fraught with consequences in its full breadth and complexity, the study adheres to a wide and inclusive understanding of the human sciences as the sciences that distinguish themselves by researching and producing knowledge concerning human affairs taken in a very broad sense. By contrast, the study also uses the nomination ‘humanities’ to designate a demarcation that is more exclusive and narrower in scope in so far as it refers to the parts of the human sciences that claim to be devoted to studying and cultivating the particularly, specifically and emphatically human. Whereas A History of the Human Sciences in the Modern University would, therefore, have been the more correct title of the book by suggesting the expanded scope and the driving ambition of this study, the title History of the Humanities in the Modern University has been retained to avoid alienating readers that take an interest in the human sciences but are not familiar with the above distinction and the syntagma ‘the human sciences’. Following the described opening in the preface, the introduction, and Chap. 1, Chap. 2 then further clarifies and elaborates the starting point for the ensuing historical elaboration given in the following four main chapters of the book (Chaps. 3, 4, 5, and 6). Chapter 2 does this by turning towards the present to address the question relatively briefly of what can be regarded as an adequate diagnostics and characteristic of the role of the human sciences in the present moment. Most champions of the traditional humanities who defend what they regard as the worth of their inherited values seem to agree with the detractors of the humanities who accuse them of having outlived their role and become incapable of making significant contributions, at least in so far as both parties converge in a common diagnostic of the present situation. Both parties detect severe symptoms that the humanities today are confronted with in an acute, critical situation or a relatively unambiguous, negative crisis and deterioration, thereby forcing them to face the possibility of becoming an extinct, or at least a very rare, species in the near future. This more or less explicitly formulated diagnostic of the present state of the health of the humanities, which could perhaps more aptly be described as a pathology

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Preface: Scope, Claims and Ambition of the Book

that seeks to determine the character of an already presumed disease, seems to form the backcloth for the ensuing strife between both sides or the framework within which they contend with one another. The common assumption that the defenders of the human sciences share with their opponents can also be described as an eschatological and apocalyptic experience and decoding of the symptoms that the contemporary humanities exhibit. This perception and understanding occasions an impending sense that the end (eschaton) is near and that the world as it has been known throughout most of the history in which the humanities have thrived is nearing its closure and final day. At the end of times, where the hitherto known world is completed and closed off to such an extent that judgement may be passed upon it, the veil may nevertheless also be seen to begin to lift and reveal or partly hint at a new secret (apokalyptô) of what seems to lie in store. While both main opposing parties in the present debate concerning the character and fate of the humanities seem to agree not only that the latter are undergoing a severe, acute and decisive crisis but also that the midwinter is the final result of a longstanding and still ongoing process of decay and decline, leading to the end times, the study presented here begs to differ. Instead, the study argues that if one looks more closely at the history of the human sciences more broadly in the time that has passed since the foundation of the modern university, a different history and present appears. As the disciplines originating at the faculty of arts in the modern university have continually given rise to new branches of science and new knowledge during this entire historical period, the human sciences have continuously managed to reformulate and reassert themselves. Consequently, it would be fair to expect no less of the human sciences today; and a closer look at the most recent developments suggest that such great expectations are indeed justified. Even today, the sciences that distinguish themselves by researching and producing knowledge concerning human affairs in ways that contribute to improving them continue to develop and morph in interesting and productive ways. Continuing to rise and respond to new challenges, the human sciences are presently experiencing the symptoms of a productive crisis in which they are managing to continuously reassert themselves and develop new modes of science and kinds of scientificity. In this manner, the present book provides a counter-history to the received history and diagnosis of the humanities. This counter-history takes the form of a genealogy of the human sciences that highlights the

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ongoing, unstoppable productivity of the human sciences and thus avoids harbouring bitter resentment and giving cause to defeatism. Rather, it is a genealogy that engenders enthusiasm. As will become clear, this genealogy also permits a differing diagnostics as well as a different assessment of the past, present and future position of the human sciences. Having at this point given a very first outline of the scope, claims, ambition and analytical presuppositions of the book, as well as an indication of the contents of the discussion in the preface of the book, the book now moves on. The introduction to the book gives an overview of the four main historical stages in the history of the human sciences since the establishment of the modern university around the turn of the nineteenth century as they will be described in Chaps. 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the book. Readers who take a particular interest in the historical development of the human sciences and the university since the turn of the eighteenth century are most welcome to skip the analytical, methodological, epistemological and ontological considerations in Chap. 1 as well as the discussion on an alleged crisis of the humanities in Chap. 2 and to move directly to the bulk of the book describing an ongoing historical development in Chaps. 3–6 after having read the survey of the historical development in the following introduction. The bulk of the book consists of the four main chapters surveyed by the following introduction. In this way, these readers will be able to skip what may to some seem to be more abstruse issues in Chap. 1, as well as the more intricate discussions of the virtues and vices of the present human sciences discussed in Chap. 2; and they will consequently be able to start by following the development of the human sciences as it unfolds logically over time since the foundation of the modern university. Likewise, readers particularly interested in a specific stage or aspect of the historical journey of the human sciences, as described in the following introduction, should feel free to move directly to the part of the book that seems most relevant to them. Finally, Chap. 7 ends the book by reflecting on crucial implications of the systematic and historical investigation carried out in Chaps. 1 to 6. What appears in the monograph is an enduring productive crisis that has spurred not only an ongoing recovery and repossession of the human sciences but also self-affirmation and fertile self-transgression. The genealogy of the human sciences articulated in the book permits a more complex and favourable, diagnosis, symptomatology and assessment of the present predicament.

Also by Sverre Raffnsøe

Philosophy of the Anthropocene: The Human Turn, Palgrave Macmillan Michel Foucault: A Research Companion (with Marius Gudmand-­ Høyer and Morten Thaning Sørensen), Palgrave Macmillan Foucault: Studienhandbuch (with Marius Gudmand-Høyer and Morten Thaning Sørensen), Wilhelm Fink Verlag Nietzsches ‘Genealogie Der Moral’, Wilhelm Fink Verlag Sameksistens uden common sense. Volume I-III, Akademisk Forlag Aestheticizing Society: A Philosophical History of Sensory Experience and Art, Bloomsbury (forthcoming) The Human Turn in Management Thought, Oxford University Press (forthcoming) Planetary Conversations on the Anthropocene (with Dorthe Staunæs), Aarhus Universitetsforlag (forthcoming) History, Diagnostics and Metaphysics in Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’ (with Stuart Pethick), Palgrave Macmillan (forthcoming)

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Exerga

Alternd im Kinde sich nicht wiederzusehen, ist der Tod. Friedrich Hölderlin: Der Wanderer Il signor Palomar vede spuntare un’onda in lontananza, crescere, avvicinarsi, cambiare di forma e di colore, avvolgersi su se stessa, rompersi, svanire, rifluire. A questo punto potrebbe convincersi d’aver portato a termine l’operazione che s’era proposto e andarsene. Però isolare un’onda separandola dall'onda che immediatamente la segue e pare la sospinga e talora la raggiunge e travolge, è molto difficile; cosí come separarla dall’onda che la precede e che sembra trascinarsela dietro verso la riva, salvo poi magari voltarglisi contro come per fermarla. Italo Calvino: Palomar Alle Übergänge sind Krisen. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Was heisst erkennen. – Non ridere, non lugere, neque destari, sed intelligere! Sagt Spinoza, so schlicht und erhaben, wie es seine Art ist. Indessen: was ist diess intelligere im letzten Grunde anderes, als die Form, in der uns eben jene Drei auf Einmal fühlbar warden? Ein Resultat aus den verschiedenen und sich widerstrebenden Trieben des Verlachen-, Beklagen-, Verwünschen-wollens? xiii

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EXERGA

Friedrich Nietzsche: Die fröhliche Wissenschaft § 333 Gewiss, wir brauchen die Historie aber wir brauchen sie anders, als sie der verwöhnte Müssiggänger im Garten des Wissens braucht, mag derselbe auch vornehm auf unsere derben und anmuthlosen Bedürfnisse und Nöthe herabsehen. Das heisst, wir brauchen sie zum Leben und zur That, nicht zur bequemen Abkehr vom Leben und von der That oder gar zur Beschönigung des selbstsüchtigen Lebens und der feigen und schlechten That. Nur soweit die Historie dem Leben dient, wollen wir ihr dienen. Friedrich Nietzsche: Unzeigemässe Betrachtungen. Zweites Stück: Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben. Vorwort La typologie commence par une topologie. Penser dépend de certains coordonées. Nous avons les vérités que nous méritons d’après le lieux où nous portons nôtre existence, l’heure où nous veillons, l’élément que nous fréquentons. L’idée que la verité sorte du puîts, il n’y a pas de plus fausse idée. Nous ne trouvons les vérités que là où elles sont, à leur heure et dans leur élément. Toute vérité est vérité d’un élément, d’une heure et d’un lieu. Le minotaure ne sort pas du labyrinthe. Gilles Deleuze: Nietzsche et la philosophie I want to question the self-presentation of the Humanities as an ongoing, integral, integrated exercise. Stuart Hall: ‘The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities’ The question is: since what the humanities and the human sciences provide are perspectives from which to debate the issues of our times, can they overcome their hallowed and deeply set human-centrism and learn to look at the human world also from nonhuman points of view? Dipesh Chakrabarty: ‘Humanities in the Anthropocene: The Crisis of an Enduring Kantian Fable’

 EXERGA 

Ja, die Frühlinge brauchten dich wohl. Es muteten manche Sterne dir zu, dass du sie spürest. Es hob sich eine Woge heran im Vergangenen, oder da du vorüberkamst am geöffneten Fenster, gabe eine Geige sich hin. Das alles war Auftrag, Aber bewältigest du’s? [...] denk: es erhält sich der Held, selbst der Untergang war ihm nur ein Vorwand, zu sein: seine letzte Geburt. [...] Ist es nicht Zeit, dass wir liebend uns vom Geliebten befrein, und es bebend bestehn: wie der Pfeil die Sehne besteht, um gesammelt im Absprung mehr zu sein als er selbst. Den bleiben ist nirgends. Rainer Maria Rilke: Duineser Elegien

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Acknowledgements

My special thanks are due to: Henrik Tronier and the Velux Foundation for their generous and agenda-setting funding of research on which this publication is based. The Carlsberg Foundation for granting a Semper Ardens Monograph Fellowship. Professor Michel Lussault at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Lyon Urban School and École Anthropocène de Lyon, and Hervé Joly, director of the Collegium de Lyon, for granting me the pleasure of a ten-month-­ long stay in Lyon in 2020–2021 and for establishing and leading a most welcoming and stimulating research environment. My research has profited greatly from your research as well as from that of other researchers affiliated with the Collegium de Lyon and École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. Medical doctors and nurses at the Department of Hematology, Danish National Hospital, for care and for meting out severe and efficient therapy in the most competent and humane way. Conditio sine qua non … Meagan Simpson, Sam Stoker and Philip Getz at Palgrave Macmillan, as well as Vinoth Kuppan, Pushpalatha Mohan and Eliana Rangel at Springer, for believing patiently in and attending diligently to the book. Hanna Heilman and Sigrún Gudbrandsdóttir for artwork that creatively rejuvenates the proportions of years past and makes them relevant for contemporary readers. Henrik Hermansen, Head of Secretariat, Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, for enthusiastic, active and unflagging support of the research environment and for long-­standing personal friendship. xvii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Stuart Pethick for proficient and prolific language skills and, above all, for committed, generous, vigilant and unselfish contributions despite severe hardship and reaching far beyond what can reasonably be expected. Professor Knut Ove Eliassen at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology for unerring judgement and critique, constructive and most valuable suggestions, as well as unswerving loyalty and dedication not only to the overall purpose of scientific rigour but also to collegiality and friendship. Morten Thaning and Rasmus Johnsen for assiduous and most caring criticism of the manuscript, as well as for ϕιλία, care and concern in general over the years. For espousing the noble value of wanting for someone what one thinks good; for his sake and not for one’s own. For offering most helpful and valuable, affirmative criticism of this book and for suggesting constructive amendments. Dipesh Chakrabarty for warmth, care and intellectual comradeship. And for demonstrating the power of the human sciences in exemplary ways, even in the present challenging context. Nina Lykke for the ability to traverse established divisions between fields of science in original ways and for the capacity to show tender solicitude. Robin Holt, Richard Shusterman and Robert Harvey for friendship and intellectually most inspiring exchanges. Marta Gasparin and Steve Brown for kindness, co-operation and most constructive agenda-setting research contributions. Birgitte Grundtvig, Michael Huber and Dorthe Staunæs for most valuable criticism and inspirational suggestions. Bo Bang and Signe Pilgaard for caring, presence and steadfast affection. Morten Raffnsøe-Møller (1961–2018) for long-standing and passionate commitment to the human sciences, for your loving kindness, appreciation and benevolence. You are sorely missed! Rebecca Raffnsøe, Rachel Raffnsøe, Sofus Bryld Staunæs, David Raffnsøe and Asker Bryld Staunæs for persistent natality and becoming. Dorthe Staunæs for your ability to invite and move, challenge, reinvigorate and reaffirm, for your extraordinary and caring intellectual, moral and sensual courage and curiosity, for your willingness to re-embark and explore.

Contents

1 An Agenda-Setting History  1 1.1 The Level of Prescription and Normation  4 1.2 The Level of the Virtual  7 1.3 The Prescriptive Effects of Dispositional Arrangements  9 1.4 The Dispositional Influence of Performative Effects 10 1.5 Cognation as Normation 12 1.6 The Normative Effects of an Ongoing Productive Crisis 16 1.7 A Transversal Investigation 18 1.8 Different Conceptions of the Human Sciences and Their Contributions 20 1.9 The Sciences of the Human 25 References 29 2 An  Alleged Crisis of the Humanities 35 2.1 A Defence of the Humanities in Dire Times 36 2.2 An Inadequate Defence 38 2.3 The Historical Heritage of the Humanities 39 2.4 A Decisive Turning Point 40 References 45 3 The  Historic Constitution of the Modern University and the Heritage of the Humanities 47 3.1 The Reorganization and Reconstitution of the University and the Organization of Knowledge Around the Turn of the Nineteenth Century 48 xix

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Contents

3.2 An Acute Crisis for the Traditional University of the Middle Ages and Renaissance 48 3.2.1 The Reorganization of the University 50 3.2.2 The Faculty of Philosophy as an Independent Centre of the University 51 3.3 The Study of the Particularly and Emphatically Human as a Precondition for Science 53 3.3.1 The Role of the Human Sciences 54 3.3.2 The Human Subject 55 References 56 4 The  Division Between the Different Sciences on the Singularly and Emphatically Human and New Branches of Science 59 4.1 An Overview of the Development of Knowledge Organization from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to the Mid-Twentieth Century 60 4.2 The Faculty of Philosophy as a Hotbed for the Development of New Kinds of Professional, Specialized and Useful Knowledge in Demand 61 4.3 The Declaration of Independence of Natural Philosophy and Natural History 62 4.4 The Rise of Biology and the Health Sciences 63 4.5 The Expansion and Inclusion of the Technical Sciences 65 4.6 The Fostering of a Diversified Culture of Social Sciences 67 4.6.1 Sociology and the Understanding of Social Human Conduct 67 4.6.2 The Constitution of an Independent Faculty of Social Sciences 69 4.6.3 A Proliferation of New Scientific Cultures 70 4.7 A Decisive Addition to the Culture of the Social Sciences: The Constitution of Economics as an Independent and Self-dependent Scientific Field 71 4.7.1 From Political Economy to Economy as a Specialized and Professionalized Scientific Discipline 73 4.7.2 A Scientific Revolution 74 4.7.3 From Costs of Production and the Labour Theory of Value to Conditions of Consumption and Marginal Utility 77

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4.7.4 Marginal Utility as a Decisive and Irreducible Analytical and Methodological Advance for Economy According to Jevons 79 4.7.5 The Generalization of the Neoclassical Approach to Economics: Market Equilibrium According to Walras 81 4.7.6 A Major Turning Point 83 4.7.7 Economics as a Science of Human Behaviour and Interaction 85 4.7.8 The Limits and Impotence of Politics: A New Relationship Between Politics and Science 90 4.8 The Establishment of the Science of Business Economics and Administration 96 4.8.1 The Adaption of the German Model of the University in the United States and the Professionalization of American Society 99 4.8.2 Educating and Professionalizing the Manager102 4.8.3 A Mutually Benefitting Arrangement107 4.8.4 The Constitution of the Modern University-Based Business School and the Establishment of Business Studies108 4.8.5 The Conception of the Human in Management Science111 4.9 New Fundamental Distinctions and Internal Relations123 4.9.1 The Natural History of Human and Animal Species123 4.9.2 A Clear-cut Distinction Between Letters and Science124 4.9.3 From Moral Science of Man to Social Science and Geisteswissenschaft124 4.9.4 Clefts, Clashes and Competition Between Cultures126 4.10 Scientific Investigations of the Human128 4.10.1 Academic Diversification as a Shift in Relation to the Historical Heritage of the Human Sciences130 4.10.2 The Human and Its Modes of Being as a Decisive Addition and Perpetual Interstitial Point130 References137

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Contents

5 New  Overlaps and Reciprocities Between the Faculties147 5.1 The Development of New Transversal and Interdisciplinary Fields of Knowledge in the Period Following the Second War148 5.2 Knowledge Resituated148 5.2.1 Knowledge Leaving the Ivory Tower149 5.2.2 Knowledge as Performativity150 5.3 New, Transversally Situated Forms of Science152 5.3.1 The Emergence of Area Studies153 5.3.2 The Appearance of Grand-Scale Problem-Solving and Mission-Oriented Research154 5.3.3 Triple-Helix Relations Between Academia-­ Industry-­Governmental Institutions154 5.3.4 The Emergence of a Situated, Transversal Human Science: Cultural Studies155 5.4 Inter- and Transdisciplinarity158 5.5 Trans- and Post-disciplinarity159 References162 6 The Contemporary Turn165 6.1 The Contemporary Turn in the Organization of Knowledge and Studies166 6.2 A Problematization of the Division and Polarity Between Faculties168 6.3 A Problematization of the Modern Division Between the Humane and the Inhumane172 6.4 A Turn Beyond the Dichotomy of the Human and the Inhuman174 6.5 Scientific Humanities178 6.6 A Human Turn in the History of Knowledge182 6.6.1 The Reformation of the Humanities183 6.6.2 A Productive Crisis185 References188 7 Whither  Goest Thou? The Present Predicament191 7.1 A Genealogy of the Human Sciences192 7.2 A Genealogically Based Diagnosis of the Present193 7.3 Establishing, Evaluating and Responding to a Symptomatology196

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7.4 The Will to Know as Play of Forces199 7.5 The Will to Know as a Will to Power201 7.6 The Will to Know as a Determinate Will to Power or Self-Empowerment209 7.7 The Hour of Human Beings?216 References223 References227 Index of Names and Places249 Index of Subjects and Concepts253 Index of Titles257

List of Illustrations

Illustration 3.1 The university of the Middle Ages. In artes liberales (marked in red), human skills are taught as propaedeutic or as a pre-schooling to the education in the subsequently lucrative subjects and professions: medicine, law and theology. As such, studia humanitatis played a fundamental but still minor role as a means to other, higher ends. This kind of organization of the relationship between the forms of knowledge at the different faculties can be found from the thirteenth century up until the end of the eighteenth century. (Drawing by Sigrún Gudbrandsdóttir)51 Illustration 3.2 The Humboldtian university. The human sciences are established as basic research. The previous hierarchy between the faculties is turned on its head in so far as the disciplines at the philosophy-humanities faculty are determined as the sciences that especially incarnate independent basic research. This independent research is now seen as an activity that constitutes the unifying element at the university. The specifically human abilities to sense, cognize, reason and pass judgement, which comprise a central and unifying prerequisite for the possibility of science, are placed centrally, examined and cultivated in the humanities at the faculty of philosophy. The human takes on an overarching, fundamental and unifying role for the university at the same time as the humanities are given their modern form as the sciences in which the human being seeks knowledge of itself. As xxv

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List of Illustrations

Illustration 4.1

Illustration 4.2

Illustration 4.3

Illustration 4.4

Illustration 5.1

human beings begin to play a crucial part, the humanities take on a crucial position for the university and its organization of knowledge. (Drawing by Sigrún Gudbrandsdóttir)53 Scientific management. Human beings and the human resource are conceived as external restraints on productivity, the effect of which is to be minimized by management. (Drawing by Hannah Heilmann) 117 Motivation theory. Understood as the primary source of value creation, the human resource and human beings are conceived as the decisive field of intervention and the condition of possibility of management. (Drawing by Hannah Heilmann) 122 The late 1800s. Throughout the 1800s, a number of faculties are distilled from and marked themselves in relation to the humanities and the human. Studia humanitatis is no longer situated as a pre-study or foundation of the other scientific areas. Rather, the humanities receive the status of a peculiar knowledge reserve that can be distinguished from, but also enter into a competitive relation or an exchange with other forms of knowledge. (Drawing by Sigrún Gudbrandsdóttir)127 The human being of anthropology. The designation of the universally human no longer constitutes the obvious point of departure in the anthropological realm of knowledge. Instead, anthropology is increasingly turned towards and seeks knowledge about the human as it appears and ‘asserts itself’ in relation to the surrounding world—of and to which the former comprises a (or the) decisive addition. (Drawing by Hannah Heilmann) 135 Development since the 1950s. While a number of new independent disciplines and faculties of science were established in the period ranging until the end of the Second World War, university-based and -related science continues to draw on these developments but concurrently enters a new phase from the 1950s onwards. Newly situated but also interdisciplinary and transversal forms of knowledge and new overlaps between the faculties are formed. (Drawing by Sigrún Gudbrandsdóttir)160

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Illustration 6.1 The contemporary turn. With the contemporary turn, human beings re-emerge as existentially diverse fields of investigation. The study of these fields of investigation may elucidate how human beings are affected by, relate to and re-create various parts of the landscape. (Drawing by Hannah Heilmann)

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Introduction: Survey of the main stages in the history of the human sciences in the modern university

Following the the methodological, epistemological and ontological examination in Chap. 1 and the discussion of the alleged crisis of the humanities in Chap. 2, the ensuing investigation of the history of the human sciences in the modern university since the turn of the nineteenth century in Chaps. 3, 4, 5, and 6 falls into four main parts. The first main historical part of this study, ‘Chap. 3: The Historic Constitution of the Modern University and Heritage of the Humanities’, describes the decisive development towards the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth century. While the second historical phase, described in the second historical part, ‘Chap. 4: The Division Between the Different Sciences on the Uniquely Human and New Branches of Science’, begins towards the end of the eighteenth century and ends towards the end of the nineteenth century, the third phase, described in the third historical part, ‘Chap. 5: New Overlaps Between the Faculties’, starts at this point and lasts until the interwar period. Starting around the time of the Second World War, the fourth historical phase, described in the fourth historical part, ‘Chap. 6: The Contemporary Turn’, leads into the present. The following last part, ‘Chap. 7: Whither goest thou? The Present Predicament’, discusses contemporary implications and conjectures that follow from the preceding investigation. In addition, this chapter examines a new context for the reassertion of the human sciences that has been established with the recognition that the existence and effects of human beings have acquired a paramount importance for life on Earth. xxix

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Since the succeeding stages do not erase the preceding phases but add to and graft upon what earlier came to pass, all stages continue to make themselves felt today and to exert a decisive influence on the ways in which knowledge is produced and understood, perceived and organized. The historical examination in the first main historical part, ‘Chap. 3: The Historic Constitution of the Modern University and Heritage of the Humanities’, sets out by describing the major re-establishment and reorganization of Western knowledge institutions and disciplines that laid the foundations of the modern university roughly 200  years ago. With the establishment of the Humboldtian university at the turn of the nineteenth century, the human sciences, for the first time in history, assume their modern shape and become recognizable as what is conceived as humanities today. Concomitantly, the retrieval of knowledge concerning the human and its development, a core and defining issue for the disciplines located at the philosophical faculty or the faculty of arts, is granted a central and unifying role for the university in general, as well as the understanding and organization of knowledge it incorporates. Within this organization, the philosophical faculty and the study and cultivation of the distinctively human is given a decisive and unifying role for science and for the knowledge production of the university as a whole. From this outset, the remaining parts of the study articulate the development of the organization of knowledge and its central disciplines up to the present. Focusing on the development of the human sciences and the establishment of knowledge of the human, the study describes the decisive changes and major phases in the history of the humanities following their modern constitution. Since the point in time where the acquisition of knowledge concerning the essentially human, as well as the latter’s refinement and cultivation, acquired an over-arching role and assumed a crucial position for the organization of the modern university, a decisive and dynamic development of the university has taken place. While being most productive, this development has also decisively questioned the initial organization of the university and the classical heritage of the humanities. The second part, ‘Chap. 4: The Division Between the Different Sciences on the Uniquely Human and New Branches of Science’, examines how the Humboldtian university model and the decisive role of the humanities permitted an ongoing and growing establishment of new specialized disciplines and subject areas which continually challenged the initial organization. During the course of the nineteenth century, a number of new

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disciplines and faculties, such as the natural sciences, the life and health sciences, the social sciences and the sciences of business economy and administration, began to establish themselves and assert their independence from the faculty of arts, also frequently denominated the philosophy faculty. Often originating in the faculty of arts but also establishing alternative faculties, these disciplines began to offer all sorts of specific empirical and pragmatic forms of knowledge and know-how. In so far as they investigate human behaviour and the modes of being of human beings, these emerging disciplines also offer empirical and pragmatic knowledge that add to and may begin to compete with the knowledge and mapping of the human provided by the traditional humanities. A result of this development is the establishment of a new, clear-cut distinction between letters and science and the conception of the humanities as a distinct activity in the shape of ‘Geisteswissenschaft’. The separation and increasing disconnection between forms of knowledge that concern themselves with nature and culture leads to not only subsequent interaction and competition but also confrontation and clashes between scientific cultures and may thus also spur science wars. If the humanities are to assert themselves in this competitive environment, however, they can hardly remain self-centred and ignore and dismiss these ‘new-fangled’, important corpora of knowledge and their implications but are rather forced to study, relate to and interact with them. Relating to this cleft and measuring up to the challenge presented by the corpora of knowledge established by the alternative disciplines has remained a challenge for the humanities since then. As a result of this development from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a relatively clear and widely accepted division between faculties and differing types of knowledge is established. Since the Second World War, however, these divisions have been decisively questioned, as described in the third part, ‘Chap. 5: New Overlaps and Reciprocities Between the Faculties’. While the university institution and the forms of knowledge connected to it expand drastically, the conception of knowledge is concurrently altered. To an increasing extent, knowledge is produced and perceived as a form of know-how of considerable relevance for the surrounding society. Whereas the withdrawal to the purely and emphatically human space of the ivory tower, where human cognition could be intensively developed in isolation from the rest of the (social and lucrative) world, was still highly appreciated and positively connotated in Humboldt’s time, the expression ‘ivory tower’ gains a predominantly

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pejorative connotation during the twentieth century. Concomitantly, knowledge is increasingly understood and evaluated in terms of performativity as know-how that enables to do or to produce something new. Coincidentally with this development, new forms of transversal, situated and interdisciplinary scholarly knowledge are established. Among these emerging transversal disciplines of science are area studies. With cultural studies, however, newly situated and interdisciplinary forms of science equally emerge within the human sciences themselves. Questioning and traversing the divisions between the faculties of science, these new forms of scientific knowledge and a number of similar fields at the same time affirm the fact that they are situated within specific larger contexts and assert themselves as contributions to their environment. In the time that has passed since the Second World War, thus, a number of scientific disciplines emerge that establish and build up a decisively different relationship between not only the scientific faculties but also science and its objects, as well as between human earthlings and their surroundings. Making use of the analysis of the historical backdrop established in the four preceding main parts, the fourth historical part, ‘Chap. 6: The Contemporary Turn’, examines the contemporary organization of knowledge. The fourth part also specifies how all the historical layers previously described do not belong in the distant past but are very much present and still exert a significant influence. At the same time, a new remarkable turn makes itself felt today. Drawing on discussions in contemporary science studies, in particular outlined by Bruno Latour, Chap. 6 describes how the unbridgeable gulf between the human and the non-human, man and nature, established in modernity and acknowledged as crucial for the organization of knowledge with the foundation of the modern university, has become increasingly questioned. In parallel, the divisions between scientific faculties and disciplines are being increasingly questioned. This questioning of the divisions that have so far been taken for granted does not entail a disappearance or dissolution of the human and the human sciences; but neither does it entail that the study of human existence has become irrelevant, a pastime or even a waste of time. Quite the contrary. It leads to the emergence of types of scientific knowledge studying and mapping different forms of situated human existence, even as it leads to the redistribution of the humanities and situated forms of human existence of decisive importance. Reflecting on the outcome of the genealogical and methodological investigation of the history of the human sciences in the modern university

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presented in the monograph, ‘Chap. 7: Whither Goest Thou? The Present Predicament’ articulates important implications of the examination. In addition, the part draws the outline of a decisively new setting for the assertion and reassertion of the human sciences that has been established with the widespread recognition that the existence of human beings and the effects of human existence have acquired a vital importance not only for human beings but for life on Earth in general. The turn towards human beings is a decisive factor on Earth and sets a new agenda, not only for humans but also for the sciences in general and for the human sciences in particular. More specifically, this setting implies that the traditional field of investigation for the human sciences has become crucially important. The human sciences investigate a field that has become a major factor for the world at large. Considered in its contemporary setting and in prolongation of the long-standing historical development that will be described in this study, the presently experienced and emphasized crisis of the humanities is to be considered a decisive turning point. Contrary to common perception, however, it is not to be conceived as a critical and acute experience, as if the humanities and the human sciences have become superfluous and are threatened with extinction. Quite the opposite. The presently experienced predicament is to a large extent the logical outcome of a longstanding and productive crisis that has lasted for more than 200  years and has been continuously unfolding since the modern university was established and the human sciences were constituted in a form still recognizable today. It is an ongoing process of adaption and innovation in which the humanities and the human sciences have played a vital and most productive part. Accordingly, it is reasonable to expect that they will be able to play an active part and make significant contributions as they are presently forced to face and contend with new turning points of vital importance while they are being drawn into an unknown future and helping co-constitute a time that is still to come.

CHAPTER 1

An Agenda-Setting History

Abstract  Following the survey of the book and the main historical stages of the history of the human sciences in the modern university outlined in the preface and the introduction, the chapter articulates the main analytical, methodological, epistemological or ontological tenets that this alternative history builds upon. In keeping with the driving ambition to write a new history that highlights their productive character and influence, the study follows the trace of agenda-setting major contributions to the human sciences. In continuation hereof, the study understands the epistemic tradition of the human sciences as established through an ongoing and open-ended series of prescriptive and normative events permeated by a virtuality that constantly gives rise to dispositions that previously did not exist. The approach applied also implies that the study understands and articulates cognation and knowledge as activities that have decisive normative and performative effects. As articulated in this study, the ongoing productive crisis of the human sciences is to be perceived as an enduring and unending transcending and norm-setting undertaking resulting in the establishment of new, irreducible modes of science and conceptions of scientificity that continuously create and vindicate new conditions of assertability for knowledge. To depict this continuing establishment of new modes of science and scientificity, the study takes the form of a transversal investigation that aims to trace the transcending and norm-setting cognitive activity as it moves across borders, where the baton is picked up from previous

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 S. Raffnsøe, A History of the Humanities in the Modern University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46533-8_1

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inventive activity and passed on to the next generation. The study of cognition and knowledge as normating activities presented here differs decisively from more traditional and well-established accounts of the history and contributions of the human sciences, in particular those that portray them either as containing an inherited value in themselves or as a primarily problem-solving cognitive activity. In this manner, the study depicts the tradition of the human sciences as a precious heritage that is not preceded by any kind of testament and is thus in need of constant reinterpretation. To be able to follow and cover the normative, unveiling and agendasetting movement fraught with consequences in its full breadth and complexity, the study adheres to a wide and inclusive understanding of the human sciences as the sciences that distinguish themselves by researching and producing knowledge concerning human affairs. By contrast, the study also uses the nomination ‘humanities’ to designate a demarcation that is more exclusive and narrow in scope in so far as it refers to the parts of the human sciences that are devoted to studying and cultivating the particularly, specifically and emphatically human. Keywords  Human sciences • Humanities • University • Crisis • Prescription • Normation • The virtual • Dispositions • Performative agency • Heritage • Truth • Cognition • Science • Arendt • Aristotle • Bod • Butler • Char • Clark • Deleuze • Derrida • Descartes • Foucault • Heidegger • Humboldt • Kant • Kuhn • Latour • Leibniz • Massumi • Nietzsche • Nussbaum • Plato In consequence of the driving ambition to write a new and alternative history of the human sciences from the time they assume their modern shape that highlights their productive and agenda-setting character, as well as their profound significance for the university broadly speaking and momentous influence within the larger landscape of the sciences, the present study goes beyond a detailed complete and mere empirical and factual examination of the evolution of a particular branch of the sciences located and confined within a given particular historical and geographical setting. While remaining committed to the investigation and rendering of historical and empirical developments and their implications, this study is something of a reverse kind that differs from those that claim to give an in-depth, full and adequate representation of a limited segment of reality. The present study is a history that follows the lead of a specific kind of tradition: the tradition of agenda-setting behaviour originating within a

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specific context and responding to limiting conditions while also transcending these in normating and agenda-setting ways. The kind of agenda-­ setting behaviour examined here is not understood and examined as constituting events that form outstanding exceptions from custom practice. Rather, agenda-setting and normative behaviour is transmitted or handed over as it, in turn, is followed by similar transcending and agenda-­ setting behaviour. Taking as its starting point a seminal event in history where the university is refounded and the modern university is established in a form that assigns the role of the centrepiece to the human sciences, the monograph aims to search out and articulate similarly decisive events in the history of the university and the sciences that stand out in so far as they pick up, explore and articulate the heritage of this initial decisive event yet add new crucial twists and turns that are fraught with consequences for the role, position and the practice of the human sciences henceforward. In and through this ongoing agenda-setting behaviour, new forms and conceptions of science emerge in response to certain specific contexts in such a manner that they transcend these specific contexts and set the agenda for subsequent scientific interaction and discussions of scientific rationality. In turn, scientific interaction responds actively to these new conditions in new normative ways. Consequently, the focal point of the study is not the rendering or exposition of a reality in the usual sense of the word. The study does not primarily concern itself with what has actually happened at a particular time and with we have actually done, because its object of orientation is quite another. It is not primarily interested in a certain reality but in a far more meaningful and important antecedent level of investigation. In and through an examination of what has happened, the objective is to delineate the coming into being of—or the emergence and the evolution of—a level that always seems already to have had an effect upon, and to have formed, a reality before it has emerged.1 1  In keeping with the overall focus on agenda-setting and norm-setting contributions, references in this study will generally be to path-breaking works in the language in which they were originally published. This will also permit the recording and recognition of the time, place and setting of the initial normative and agenda-setting event. For a number of important publications not originally published in the English language, however, English translations and references will also be provided. This will indicate the works and translations that have become standard. The established translations will be emended in the cases where this seems justified in so far as the translation has a significant bearing on the understanding of the text and the overall bearing of the argument.

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1.1   The Level of Prescription and Normation The study is concerned with and follows the emergence of a level of prescription or normation.2 It articulates a level upon which guidelines are established for how one can emerge, become and inscribe indelible traces, or leave a mark. This prescriptive level is here given precedence over the real, in so far as the real is just understood as that which is simply the case. The prescriptive level is important because it has had and still has a determining effect not only on what exists but also on what one can imagine as possible and, therefore, equally on what may come into being and exist; that is, on being in the broadest sense. Not only is the prescriptive here given precedence over the actual; it is seen as more important than the existing. The prescriptive has already played a guiding or piloting role as soon as the real can be known as an object of knowledge, as soon as one can imagine the possible as something that might happen, as soon as one can point out the potentially realizable as something one can hope for or act in order to bring about, and even—perhaps—as soon as one postulates a way of being for the being (a certain ontology), beyond the known, the projected and the initiated. At the same time, it has a prescriptive effect on how it is that all that is to come into being subsequently will have to emerge.3 In the context of the approach and analysis practised in this book, the refoundation of the university around 1800, and the establishment of the modern university in a form that assigns the role of the centrepiece to the human sciences, is consequently not only to be perceived as a simple and actual historical fact. Instead, it takes the form of a decisive historical and prescriptive event. This decisive prescriptive event is not only historical in the sense that it is an incident or a deed that initiates a break with the past and clears new ground by creating a new opening regrounding historical existence and making it enter a new state.4 Picking up and reinterpreting 2  Cf. Raffnsøe (2002/2020): Sameksistens uden common sense. En elliptisk arabesk. Volume I–III, and of this in particular the part published independently in English as Raffnsøe (2002): ‘English Summary’. 3  Raffnsøe (2002/2020): Sameksistens uden common sense. En elliptisk arabesk. Volume I-III. A full English translation of the dissertation originally defended in 2002 is forthcoming in 2023–24 under the title Co-existence without Common Sense. An elliptical Arabesque. Cf. also Raffnsøe (2003): ‘The Rise of the Network Society’, pp. 8–9. 4  Cf. also Heidegger (1980): ‘Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes’ on the normative event (‘Ereignis’) as an unveilment and effectuation of truth, pp. 48, 70–71.

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already existing traces, this decisive event spins the threads left behind by anterior incidents and weaves them into a new fabric.5 In this manner, the event that will subsequently unfurl lays down normative guidelines for what will subsequently seem feasible and possible. Re-establishing the university and its fabric, this refounding act not only exerts a determining normative influence on what can consequently actually happen at the reorganized university; it equally exerts a far-reaching effect on what can be thought of, imagined and suggested. Even though the level of prescription examined in its emergence in this study does exert a decisive influence, it does not, however, determine subsequent developments completely or entirely. If this were the case, subsequent incidents and advancements would be reducible to and become explicable as mere expressions of an initial and original event. That this does not apply will become more evident as the reader works his or her way through the ensuing chapters describing subsequent historical phases. While the emergence of forms of scientific rationalities that are subsequently developed are evidently conditioned and decisively affected by what has happened before, they remain irreducible offspring that are grafted upon the previously existing in such a manner that they add new previously unforeseeable twists and turns. In the present study, the development of the human sciences and the university is consequently not understood as an unfolding that recognizes and clarifies what has been previously established. Whereas the subsequent events in the wider history of the human sciences can be said to articulate a plot that was to some extent already hatched in the preceding events, subsequent events are to be perceived as repetitions that reiterate and duplicate earlier events, but precisely by taking and reinterpreting them in certain ways, by taking them to the next irreducible level. As Deleuze stresses in Difference and Repetition, even to repeat is not only to behave or to conduct oneself in such a manner that what has happened occurs again. When doing the same thing again, one equally establishes a relation to something singular or unique which has no equal or  According to Plato’s Statesman, a basic political act is performed by the statesman when he proves capable of weaving a coherent fabric out of the complexity of already existing threads and wool, raw material provided by, in particular, shepherds, the practitioners of a kindred but distinct art, shepherding. This kind of politico-historical act seems particularly required and agenda-setting in a context marked by diversity and strife. Cf. Plato (1995): Statesman, 277d-287b & Brondell (2017): ‘The Politics of Weaving in Plato’s Statesman’. 5

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equivalent while concomitantly altering or modifying it. As an external conduct or reperformance, repetition does not echo the preceding event as such. Instead, the former reflects an already existing vibration or internal repetition which animates the latter. To press home this point, Deleuze indicates that it is the apparent paradox of festivals that they repeat what is impossible to begin and do again [‘irrecommençable’], what is unrepeatable and what can only be repeated with a difference. Accordingly, the following celebrations do not just add a second or a third time to the first but rather take the first level to the next levels or ‘carry the first time to the “nth” power’.6 If one follows this lead, this study of the history of the human sciences and the university could also be characterized as the story of an ongoing festival or an organized series of celebrations. During the festival, the participants commemorate and celebrate the historical and prescriptive event that founded the festival and what animated this event, as well as similar decisive subsequent events; but they do so precisely by constantly taking these earlier events to the next new irreducible normative level. If one follows this ongoing repetitive festival closely, it becomes evident that repetition ‘is against the similar form and content of the law’, that it ‘expresses […] an eternity against permanence’, that in every respect, the repetition is transgression’.7 In this sense, the history of the human sciences in the new university is also the story of a reiterated new normative beginning, a recommencement that repeats the previously occurring significant events in new ways. This celebration commemorates initial and initiating events as they proved significant. Thus, the history of the human sciences in its wider context is to be understood and analysed as an ongoing and open-ended series of reiterated normative events. It is a history marked by the historicity of an enduring normation or a persistent prescriptive eventalization. This enduring normating eventalization is also to be perceived as an ongoing prescriptive self-affirmation that is also untimely in the sense that it is oriented against

6  Deleuze (1981): Différence et répétition, p.  8/Deleuze (1994): Difference and Repetition, p. 1. 7  Deleuze (1981): Différence et répétition, p. 9/Deleuze (1994): Difference and Repetition, pp. 2–3.

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the time in which it partakes and acting for the benefit of a time that is yet still to come.8 Thus, the history articulated in this account of the development of the human sciences in the modern university is a history consisting of definite normative ‘somewhens’ bringing about sea changes into something rich and strange. Even when faced with the sling and arrows of outrageous fortune and taking arms against a sea of troubles, the human sciences prove capable to oppose and end them by transcending them and taking them and the human to a new, previously inexistent and unpredictable normative level of existence and cognition, still out of joint with itself as it reaches not only backward towards what has been left behind but also forward towards what is arriving.

1.2   The Level of the Virtual When focusing on, following and articulating the emergence of new-­ fangled binding prescription, the study consequently devotes itself to and focuses on a very real aspect of the world: the virtual.9 The virtual as it is understood by Deleuze and others does not present itself in the form of a certain Heideggerian ‘whatness’10 or exist in a Derridian intimate pure present.11 Instead, ‘the virtual’ refers to that which makes itself felt as something that acts in and through the present considered as a Vorhandenheit, as something at hand.12 Affecting the present at hand in such a manner that it effects a change and a transformation constituting a 8  In the preface to his second untimely meditation, Nietzsche argues the point that if ‘the classical philosophy of his time’ and he as a classical philologist were to have a sense, it would be necessary to work against contemporary conceptions of philology as cognition towering above time and thus precisely work against his time and be untimely. Only in this way, philology and the philologist would be able to act on, have an impact on and effect, and act ‘let us hope, for the benefit of a time to come—’. For Nietzsche, classical philology would only have a sense in his time to the extent that it were ‘untimely [unzeitgemäss]’. Only by ‘working against time [gegen die Zeit] and in this way in and on time [auf die Zeit]’ could classical philology ‘hope to work for a time to come [zu Gunsten einer kommenden Zeit]’ (Nietzsche (1876/1999): Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen. Zweites Stück: Vom Nutzen und Nachtheil der Historie für das Leben, p. 247). 9  Deleuze (1991): Bergsonism, pp. 42–43, 81 & Deleuze (1996): ‘L’actuel et le virtuel’. 10  Heidegger (1947): Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit & Heidegger (1980): ‘Die Zeit des Weltbildes’. 11  Derrida (1967): De la grammatologie & Derrida (1972): ‘Ousia et Grammè’. 12  Heidegger (1927/1979): Sein und Zeit, §43c.

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new state, the virtual ‘is more apparitional than empirical’13 as it exceeds what was previously established and forces a new binding level to materialize. The virtual is not to be conceived of as the possible, but as that which effects and is felt through its effects. The virtual is developed through, and works in, the present as a substance or as a being and a force [virtus] that is operative within it.14 The virtual is a ‘coming into being, registering as becoming’.15 This force constitutes the genetic condition of real experience as it continually modifies the given and forces it to reshape.16 Giving impetus to the present, the virtual not only sets it in motion; the virtual causes the given to unfold itself to the effect that it transcends itself, further developing in certain determinate directions. As an ‘outside coming in’17 the virtual makes itself felt when certain trends are coming into force. The virtual acts and makes itself felt as a normative influence that predisposes social reality to further develop in certain directions. In the history articulated in this study, each event taking the previous to a new normative level is thus also to be understood as the effect of a virtual coming in affecting the previously existing in such a manner that it effects a change, transforms it and makes it reappear at an unpredictable and irreducible normative and prescriptive level that previously did not exist. Most plainly, with the refounding of the modern university more than 200 years ago, the effects of an irreducible and non-controllable outside coming in appeared and made themselves felt as they took historical development to a new normative level. Yet, the effects of arduous working of the virtual equally appear not only at every major twist and turn of the history described here but also in the continuous deferral in the time in-between.18 In this book, the continuously present dynamical and apparitional mode of the virtual is considered as constitutional for reality at hand that  Massumi (2002): Parables for the virtual, p. 135.  Leibniz (1969): Vernunftprinzipien der Natur und der Gnade: Monadologie, pp. 26–27. 15  Massumi (2002): Parables for the virtual, p. 135. 16  Deleuze (1991): Bergsonism. 17  Massumi (2002): Parables for the virtual, p. 135. 18  Concerning an articulation of a continuous but not totally undetermined deferral, please also confer Derrida (1967): De la grammatologie and Derrida (1972): ‘La différance’. On a related ‘essential parasitizing which opens every system to its outside and divides the unity of the line [trait] which purports to mark its edges [qui pretend le border]’ and contain it, cf. Derrida (1972): La vérité en peinture, p. 10. 13 14

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only serves as the starting point of the investigation. Without the existence and the ongoing influence of the virtual, an actual present would not be present and develop. Consequently, it would not be understandable and possible to examine. In this sense, the level of the virtual and its ongoing workings can be said to form a crucial level of investigation of the book. At the same time, however, the continuous workings of the virtual are examined to determine how they effect new levels of dispositions.

1.3   The Prescriptive Effects of Dispositional Arrangements The prescriptive level appearing in and through the actualization of the virtual is important because it establishes dispositions; that is, propensities for doing something or tendencies or liabilities for something to happen.19 The agenda-setting activities examined here generate a level of prescription that has come into being through a series of individual prescriptive actions and occurrences. Subsequently, these prescriptive actions and occurrences establish patterns of conduct that exert a determining influence, yet these orders and regulate conduct without determining it completely.20 Dispositional arrangements exert a structuring that works by virtue of the fact that they have effects on the ways in which one relates to others and oneself. The level of dispositions is not a causally and exhaustively determining plane. Rather, the level of dispositions merely points to a general tendency or trend. Still, the agenda-setting activity that establishes the level of the dispositional has a critical influence in that it outlines the way of relating to that which has been implemented in the concrete  Raffnsøe (2013): ‘Beyond Rule; Trust and Power as Capacities’, pp. 248–249.  Whereas the force and the crucial role of dispositions tend to be overlooked, it is at closer inspection not exceptional to enter, be and operate on the plane of dispositions. When trying to enact and understand interaction, one in fact implicitly resorts to this level of perception and articulation far more than commonly realized. For example, Gilbert Ryle draws attention to the fact that ‘a number of the words that we commonly used to describe and explain people’s behaviour signify dispositions and not episodes’ (Ryle (1966): The Concept of Mind, p. 112). According to Ryle, to say that a person knows something is not to say that he is in a particular state, but that he is able to perform certain things, if need be. Moreover, Ryle argues that we use such terms for characterizing a wide range of objects from atoms and matter to animals and human beings, as we are ‘constantly wanting to talk about what can be relied on to happen as well as to talk about what is actually happening’ (Ryle (1966): The Concept of Mind, p. 112). 19 20

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historical situation; that is, the way the situation has been dealt with, coped with, or assimilated by its being related to prescriptively; and the conduct conducts conduct in the sense that the ways of behaving that have proved possible set an example for how one can conduct oneself in the future. It makes a certain range of not fully predefined outcomes more likely than others.21 With the historic constitution of the modern university a new set of dispositions are established that exert a normative influence not only on what can receive consideration as valid knowledge but also on the relationship between the faculties and various kinds of knowledge at the university. The same goes for each subsequent major transition as they are described in this study. By and through the number of individual actions that collectively end up constituting the modern university a new dispositional arrangement is established that exerts a decisive influence on subsequent acts, developments and arrangements, yet without determining them completely. In and through the number of subsequent actions something new and partially deviant is grafted upon the earlier construction that articulates a previously unarticulated virtuality and makes the dispositional arrangement develop in new directions.

1.4   The Dispositional Influence of Performative Effects Since the agenda-setting activities examined here generate a level of prescription that is established through a series of individual prescriptive actions and subsequently has a determining dispositional influence that orders without determining completely, these activities have performative effects in the form highlighted by Judith Butler in the context of her analysis of performative agency and performative effects.22 To the extent that agency and action have performative effects, they make certain things 21  Cf. also the elucidation of dispositional analysis as an examination of normative influence coming into being as actors act upon the action of others, as an investigation of the exercise of power analysed as a mode of action upon actions (‘power through’ rather than ‘power over’), and as an exploration of the conduct of conduct in Raffnsøe et al. (2016): ‘Foucault’s dispositive: The perspicacity of dispositive analytics in organizational research’. Concerning the conception of power as ‘power to’ and ‘power through’, and in contradistinction to ‘power over’ and control, cf. also Raffnsøe (2013): ‘Beyond Rule; Trust and Power as Capacities’, as well as Raffnsøe et al. (2019): ‘The Foucault Effect in Organization Studies’. 22  Butler (2010): ‘Performative Agency’, p. 152.

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happen beyond their initial scope. The fact that something or somebody manages to do or perform something with what they do does not imply that performativity actually ‘works’ in the sense that actions and agency fully achieve their effects or that they in and by themselves actually manage to efficiently construct reality. In so far as performative agency and the possibility of having performative effects depend on an irreducible external reality, the ‘assumption of the ‘sovereign’ speaker is lost’ and ‘agency itself is dispersed’.23 The possibility of disruption, failure and even breakdown of the initial intention, act or construction is constitutive to all performative or reperformative events since their very performativity depends on the way in which they affect consecutive occurrences, while they only have a chance of succeeding if they are consecutively taken up in not necessarily foreseeable ways. As a consequence, performative effects are only produced on the condition that the earlier operation of performativity may fail in so far as it never fully achieves its effect and is thus inefficacious. Since performativity never fully achieves a direct effect due to this inefficacy and deviation in the transference of bodily acts and speech acts,24 a reiteration of performative effects is constantly necessitated. The performative agency of the prescriptive activity analysed here is not one where the initial actors remain in control, but one in which agency is dispersed. This agency only achieves an effect if its performative agency is constantly established anew through an active reiteration, which also entails the possibility of a constant ­deviation. An unavoidable condition for performative agency and producing an effect is thus the surplus and irreducibility of performative effects.25 As this book articulates, the heritage of the human sciences that has unfolded since the beginning of the nineteenth century is established in and through an ongoing normating activity in which agenda-setting events continually appear and graft themselves onto preceding already-­ existing events in such a manner that these are refracted and new unforeseen effects appear. Due to the interplay between the agenda-setting events, they lead above and beyond the intentions of the individual contributors and establish new dispositional arrangements that in turn have a  Butler (2010): ‘Performative Agency’, p. 151.  Butler (2004): Undoing Gender, pp. 198–99. 25  Concerning the ideas of ‘performative agency’, ‘immanent causes’ and ‘performative effects’, as well as the conception of effects as waves, cf. also Raffnsøe et al. (2019): ‘The Foucault Effect in Organization Studies’, in particular pp. 157–158. 23 24

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determining influence on what can subsequently be suggested as possible knowledge. In retrospect, these seem to articulate and make explicit what can, in the first instance, only be said to be virtually rather than actually present. In and through a continuous reinterpretation of the foregoing development, new and irreducible forms of scientificity appear that can then distend and spread as waves over a wider surface.26

1.5  Cognation as Normation In prolongation hereof, the present study can also be said to examine the history of knowledge to find that there is also something altogether different behind its products of cognition, its perceptions and representations, viz. a historicity of knowledge behind its metaphysics that precedes and acts in and through the latter. This historicity of knowledge is so loaded, foreign, opaque and irreducible to the metaphysics and the result of the production of knowledge that knowledge must be understood as the result of a complex operation of performative agency. As an outcome of performative agency, knowledge appears, is vindicated and accepted in an interplay where something different from cognition and knowledge in a limited intellectual sense is also decisively involved.27 When in §333 of The Gay Science Nietzsche seeks to examine the question concerning what it means to know or cognate,28 he initially takes refuge in Spinoza’s adage ‘non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere (not to mock, lament, or execrate, but to understand)!’ While at once appreciatingly and teasingly commenting here that Spinoza is expressing himself ‘as simply and sublimely as is his wont’, Nietzsche also immediately counters: ‘What else is this intelligere in the last analysis than the form in which we come to feel the other three at once?’, or ‘a certain relation of these impulses to one another [ein gewisses Verhalten der Triebe zu einander]’ in which they ‘struggle with one another’ and ‘understand rightly how to make themselves felt by one another’. In consequence, Nietzsche suggests that when we seek to understand, know or cognate, there is ‘perhaps in our 26  Cf. Raffnsøe et al. (2019): ‘The Foucault Effect in Organization Studies’, in particular p. 157. 27  Foucault (2013): Lectures on the Will to Know. Lectures at the College de France 1970–1971, p. 203. Concerning further articulation of this kind of history, see also Foucault (1977): ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’, and Raffnsøe (2007): Nietzsches ‘Genealogie der Moral’. 28  The headline of the paragraph is ‘Was heisst erkennen’ (Nietzsche 1882–1887/1999): Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, p. 558 (§333).

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struggling interior’ much concealed heroism but certainly nothing divine, or eternally-reposing-in-itself, as Spinoza supposed’.29 In accordance with this comprehensive understanding of knowledge, the account of the development of the sciences and the human sciences since the establishment of the modern university given here runs counter to an understanding of knowledge and cognition that has played a major and even dominating role in occidental civilization since classical Greco-­ Roman Antiquity. This is a conception of cognition as an intuition or a beholding of what is the case. The outcome of an unconditioned curiosity or desire to know in itself, this cognition is supposed to be unrelated to and take us over and above the level of action and interaction, sometimes to the extent that the state of knowledge may even run counter to and inhibit action. The conception of knowledge is markedly present in Aristotle, a philosopher whose work not only had a decisive influence in Antiquity but also, from the Middle Ages, Renaissance and onwards, played a leading role in Western civilization. An early and agenda-setting instantiation of this conception of knowledge is the opening paragraph of Aristotle’s book on metaphysics. Here, the writer who already during the European Middle Ages came to be characterized as ‘the philosopher’ asserts that ‘all men according to their nature [physis] have a desire to know. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use, we esteem them for their own sake, and most of all the sense of sight. Not only with a view to action, but even when no action is contemplated, we prefer sight, generally speaking, to all the other senses. The reason of this is that of all the senses sights best helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions.’30 In On Interpretation, Aristotle seems to subscribe to a conception of knowledge and understanding as an intuition of representation or likeness in so far as he claims that ‘the mental affections themselves, of which […] words are primarily signs, are the same for the whole of mankind, as are also the objects [pragmata] of which those affections are ‘representations or likenesses [homoiomata], images, copies’.31 Aristotle himself has also been regarded as the founder of modern philosophy and knowledge production. In Leçons sur La volonté de savoir. Cours au Collège de France. 1970–1971, Foucault underlines how this seemingly liminal passage in Aristotle’s text came to form a ‘philosophical operator’ occupying a crucial and performative 29  Nietzsche (1882–1887/1999): Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, pp. 558–559 (§333) (italicization in Nietsche’s original text). 30  Aristotle (1933): Metaphysics. Books I–IX, 980 a 22, p. 3 (translation modified by me). 31  Aristotle (2002): On Interpretation, 16a3, pp. 114–115.

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position for an entire ensuing system. Forming the point of origin for an entire system of philosophical and epistemological discourse in the Western societies, Aristotle’s text concerns the possibility and justification for the entire ensuing system of cognition. According to Foucault, the passage forms a central episode ‘of a certain will to know peculiar to our civilization’.32 This conception of knowledge still plays an overriding role in Descartes’ thought, of course, in so far as the idea of knowledge as evidence and intuition that should be given to conscience without any reasonable doubt here exerts a determining and overarching normative influence. In an early, posthumously published, treatise on scientific method, Descartes subscribes to the conception of knowledge as intuition when he states that ‘truth or falsity in the true sense of the terms can only be given in the intellect [veritatem proprie vel falsifitatem non nisi in solo intellectu esse posse]’.33 However, the conversion to knowledge in this form is already detectable in Plato’s work.34

32  Foucault (2011): Leçons sur la volonté de savoir, pp. 5–6/Foucault (2013): Lectures on the Will to Know. Lectures at the Collège de France 1970–1971 and Oedipal Knowledge, p. 4. 33  Descartes (1637/1976): Discours de la méthode & Descartes (1647/1979): Méditations métaphysiques. Descartes (1628/1966): Regulae ad directionem ingenii, p. 396 (Regula VIII). The dominating influence of the idea of cognition as intuition and self-evidence, the establishment of a theoretical relationship to the world as constitutive for the modern subject and the idea of philosophy and knowledge as a primary intellectual activity aiming at the discovery of propositional and systematic knowledge are further developed in Raffnsøe et  al. (2018): ‘Philosophical Practice as Self-modification: An Essay on Michel Foucault’s Critical Engagement with Philosophy’, in particular pp. 42–43. However, in so far as this theoretical conception of knowledge competes and interacts with an idea of knowledge as meditation and self-modification, it is far from hegemonic in Descartes’ text, as I also make sure to stress elsewhere in the article. 34  In Heidegger (1947/1976): Platons Lehre von der Wahrkeit, the German philosopher detects a decisive ‘turn [Wendung] in the determination of the essence or mode of being of truth [Bestimmung des Wesens der Wahrheit]’ (p. 5) that conditions what will subsequently be regarded as scientific and propositional knowledge. Even though it, according to Heidegger, remains unsaid in what Plato’s thought directly says, this turn or transition can be clarified through an interpretation of his ‘allegory of the cave’ (Plato (2013): Republic, 514a–520a). While truth in accordance with the etymology of the Greek word for truth ‘aletheia’ is at first conceived as ‘unhiddenness’ and ‘unveilment’, and truth in this manner is thus as understood as a fundamental trait of beings in themselves in the sense that they can shine forth and unveil themselves while also partly hide themselves and affect human beings in this capacity, the nature and conception increasingly changes during the journey of formation and education [paidaia or Bildung] described in the allegory of the cave. As human beings are invited to raise and turned around in order for them to be lead beyond the initial perception of mere shadows and appearances in the cave and towards the contemplation of ideas in pure daylight, truth comes to be understood as the correct observation or intuition of something already present, as adequate representation or rendering homoiosis (Heidegger (1947/1976): Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, pp. 43–44).

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While the conception of knowledge as adequate representation of what is the case has remained influential to this day, it is also present and detectable in the conception of the beginning and end of thought and cognition. This idea links the start of cognition and thought to an elimination of all kinds of presuppositions that would permit one to arrive at what everyone should, in conclusion, be able to agree upon and could not deny; and this to such an extent that it ends up appearing as if everyone should have known it from the very beginning.35 As will become clear in the following part of the present chapter ‘Different Conceptions of the Human Sciences and Their Contributions’ and ‘Chap. 2: An Alleged Crisis of the Humanities’, this idea of a pure and unmediated will or desire to know, as well as the connected idea of knowledge as a primary intellectual activity aiming at the discovery and intuition of undeniable propositional and systematic knowledge, are still present and dominating to such an extent that they determine how the historical development of the university and its knowledge production is commonly perceived and understood. Establishing a ‘factual’ and representational relationship between truth and falsity, on the one hand, and what is or proves to be the case, on the other hand, this inherited and limiting conception of the will to know as a will committed directly to knowledge for the sake of knowing eschews the notion of truth and truth-telling as existential ventures and irreducible life-changing events. According to this different notion of truth, the search for and utterance of truth is to be understood as an essentially risky and dramatic venture to which the truth-teller binds him/herself and in which she/he invests him/herself to such an extent that the very character, role and being of the truth-teller, including his/her authenticity and

35  According to Deleuze, this image of thought and cognition gives them a strong and natural affinity with the truth in so far as they want, possess and express the truth. Yet, it is also a moral image, in so far as the affinity with truth is established ‘under the double aspect of a good will on the part of the thinker [bonne volonté du penseur] and an upright nature on the part of thought [nature droite de la pensée] (Deleuze (1981): Différence et répétition, p.  171/Deleuze (1994): Difference and Repetition, p.  131; italicized in Deleuze’s original text).

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responsibility, as well as his/her politico-cosmological world is at stake.36 In this vein, the present study articulates a history of the production of knowledge as an ongoing series of normating events in and through which the world is unveiled and transformed in irreducible ways.37

1.6   The Normative Effects of an Ongoing Productive Crisis To properly understand the dynamic and continuously critical tradition of the human sciences and its contribution to the understanding of the human, it will thus not suffice to focus on the intellectual products or results in isolation. Rather, this heritage must be understood as an ongoing productive crisis in which contributors seeking understanding and knowledge of the human laugh and mock, weep, cry and lament, detest and curse, but also doubt, deny, disintegrate, collect and assemble,38 as well as fear, hate and hope, recognize and correct, add, appropriate and augment, compromise, collaborate and compete for resources, distinction

36  In addition to outlining this kind of alternative notion of truth in his initial lecture series at the Collège de France Leçons sur La volonté de savoir. Cours au College de France. 1970–1971, as it was indicated above, Foucault further elaborates the alternative conception of the notion of truth and truth-telling in his lectures at the Collège de France towards the end of his life. Under the general headline of The Government of the Self and Others, Foucault not only devotes his lectures in 1983 and 1984, as well as the contemporaneous lectures at Berkeley and Grenoble, to highlighting how ‘in posing the question of the government of the self and others’, the ‘obligation and the possibility of telling the truth in procedures of government’ permits to illuminate how ‘the individual constitutes itself as a subject in its relationship to itself and to others’ (Foucault (2008): Le gouvernement de soi et des autres. Cours au Collège de France. 1982–1983, p. 42/Foucault (2010): The Government of the Self and Others. Lectures at the Collège de France 1982–1983, p. 42). Other crucial contributions to the lecture series on truth and truth-telling are: Foucault (2001): L’hermenéutique du sujet. Cours au Collège de France. 1981–1982/Foucault (2005): The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982; Foucault (2009): Le courage de la vérité. Le gouvernement de soi et des autres. Cours au Collège de France. 1984/Foucault (2011): The Courage of Truth. The Government of the Self and Others II. Lectures at the Collège de France 1983–1984. 37  Concerning the notions of truth and truth-telling as life-changing events, confer equally Raffnsøe et  al. (2018): ‘Philosophical Practice as Self-modification: An Essay on Michel Foucault’s Critical Engagement with Philosophy’, in particular p. 20ff. 38  Nietzsche (1882–1887/1999): Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, pp. 473–474 (§133).

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and recognition.39 Knowledge and understanding of the human appears in a field where cognition in a narrow sense does not rule, and where it is not all about cognition since all these drives, incitements and motivations here come together on a stage to battle and blend with one another to such an extent that it results in an ongoing, revived critical agenda-setting undertaking taken to ever new levels. In a similar vein, Latour emphasizes that if one wants to think about and understand not only technologies but also scientific humanities, it is necessary to follow the lead of Darwin when he decisively changed and turned around the perception and understanding of a series of living beings or species in comparison with how it was conceived in earlier natural history. When one visits a museum of natural history to contemplate a series of horses, one has, after the Darwinian biological turn to natural selection, become keenly aware that one should not focus on and stay with any particular exhibit of the successive species put on display, since their ‘very essence if I may speak so freely [leur veritable essence, si j’ose dire]’ is conveyed in ‘their gemmiparous line of predecessors and successors’ that ‘establishes a vertiginous discontinuity’ ‘between every being and its successor’ and that ‘presupposes a unique and singular invention’ ‘in every generation’.40 Correspondingly, if one seeks to shed light on the establishment of what Latour terms ‘scientific humanities [les humanités scientifiques], he recommends that you ‘learn to transform what usually serves as explanation into that which must be explained’, and in this manner permit yourself to follow the ‘continuous discontinuities of a practice’ that ‘find itself concealed below a continuity that only exists in thought (or should I  say in imagined world of ideas of a thought itself rendered artificially continuous)’.41 More generally, this has been Latour’s approach to the examination of scientificity since his early examination of Pasteur’s 39  Nietzsche (1881–1887/1999): Morgenröthe. Gedanken über die Moralischen Vorurteile, pp.102–103 (§113). Clark (2006): Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University examines how academic products and academics are exposed to and make use of increasing market-oriented commodification in the period after 1800 marked by the appearance of the German research university (cf. especially pp. 373–397). This is not to say that the auricular, fama, Ruhm and Gerücht, rumour, gossip, reputation and credit did not play an essential role before the nineteenth century (Clark (2006): Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, pp. 367–368). 40  Latour (2010): Cogitamus. Six lettres sur les humanités scientifiques, pp. 55, 197–198; italicization in Latour’s original text. 41  Latour (2010): Cogitamus. Six lettres sur les humanités scientifiques, pp. 205, 35, 17.

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scientific breakthrough.42 As also stressed consistently by Latour, also in the reissue of the book, this approach does not lead to reductionism but to irreductionism. An essential outcome of science as a transcending and norm-setting undertaking is the establishment of new modes of science and conceptions of scientificity that not only differentiate themselves from one another and vindicate new conditions of assertability for knowledge, but also supplement, interact and compete with one another to form a complex rendering and manifestation of the human.43

1.7  A Transversal Investigation The described approach entails that the present study must assume the shape of a transversal investigation moving across the confines of specific settings as it aims to track and monitor an equally transverse normating and agenda-setting movement that displaces itself across borders. While the examination starts out with a focus on the articulation of the crucial role allotted to the human sciences in the reorganized and refounded German university at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the study does not remain here. Acknowledging how the German research university and its organization came to serve as an admired, envied and copied model not only in central, eastern, and northern Europe, but also in a number of other countries and regions, such as Russia, Greece and, to some extent also, France and even Britain,44 the study subsequently follows the succeeding development in Germanic lands while also expanding the scope of its survey to include later developments in the wider European area, where the model is adopted and productively modulated in ways that lead to the establishment of new agenda-setting forms of knowledge and monitor the ongoing productiveness of the human sciences. 42  Latour (2001): Pasteur: Guerre et paix des microbes/Latour (1988): The Pasteurization of France. Originally published in 1984 as Latour (1984): Les microbes: guerre et paix. 43  In this manner, the history of the history of science depicted here also corroborates Arendt’s assertion that ‘in this world which we enter, appearing from nowhere, and from which we disappear into nowhere, Being and Appearing coincide’ to such an extent ‘that I can flee appearance only into appearance’, and that ‘not what something is but how it “appears” is the research problem’ (Arendt, 1971/1978): The Life of the Mind, pp. 19, 23, 28; italicization in Arendt’s original text. 44  Clark (2006): Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, p.  435. Cf. also Rüegg (2004): ‘Themes’, in particular pp. 4–13.

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In the last half and increasingly in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the new institution of the American research university is founded in a form that is largely inspired by and modelled on the European and, in particular, German research university.45 Consequently, the study follows track and pays a visit to North America; yet without entirely emigrating and leaving the old continent behind. In so far as the baton is increasingly passed on to and held by the American research university, it becomes indispensable to include decisive new developments here that enter into the picture and become of consequence; so much the more since the American university in turn increasingly gains a decisive influence on the production of knowledge and at times even becomes a model that some feel warranted to speak of as an ‘Americanization of academia, even in Germany’.46 Tracking an agenda-setting movement as it transverses borders is, of course, not identical to articulating an effort located totally out of place and out of time but rather of an event that is agenda-setting for a time and a space. The presented study of the productive development of the human sciences in their larger context is at first a German- and subsequently 45  Khurana (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession, p. 75. Shils and John (2004): ‘The Diffusion of European Models Outside Europe’, pp. 167–175. 46  Clark (2006): Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, p. 435. As the following citations make clear, the transformation is complex: ‘At the end of the nineteenth century and in the inter-war period, when the German model was being copied throughout the whole of Europe and beyond, it entered into a crisis in Germany, which brought to light some of the problems neglected by those who framed the original concept. These related to the difficulty of integrating modern technology into the university and the tendency of the teaching body to form a hierarchy. The crisis affected not only the growth but also the aims of the universities’ (Charle (2004): ‘Patterns’, p. 57). ‘By 1914, the attendance of America students for study in Germany had waned. Graduate studies were by then well established in the leading private and state universities and there was no longer such a widespread and shared belief among American university teachers and graduate students that German universities had much to offer which could not be obtained in the United States. […] The profound and distinctive imprint of the German university model on graduate studies in American universities did not fade, but after the First World War, American universities drew their inspiration almost wholly from traditions already assimilated. German influences had become so much a part of American tradition that they had ceased to be German and had become American, and the driving forces were now the intellectual aspirations and motives of American scientists and scholars. Nonetheless, direct influence of German universities on American universities by no means disappeared’ (Shils and Roberts (2004): ‘The diffusion of European models’, p. 174).

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Euro-centred examination and only later enlarges its scope to include North America and become a story that describes the development of the human sciences and their agenda-setting character in the Western world. Obviously, this initial Eurocentrism is not a principled one but rather occasioned by the fact that the study takes its outset in a reinception and a reconception of the university and the role of the human sciences within the university that happened to occur at a certain point in history in Europe. This is not to say that non-European states of affairs and knowledge production do not come into play and affect this reinception and reconception.47 Neither is this to say that the effects of the norm-­ establishing and -setting development of the human sciences within the larger scientific field developed here are simply confined within and to the scope of the examined field, as the adoption and modulation of university models and scientific disciplines described in this book in other part of the world makes clear, even though they may not be included in the picture or at least remain outside the focus of this study.48

1.8  Different Conceptions of the Human Sciences and Their Contributions Since the study follows and emphasizes a continuing and irreducible addition of new disciplines and fields of knowledge leading to the accretion of new knowledge as well as to an ongoing interaction between those disciplines and fields of knowledge, it differs from a range of approaches that seek to defend and legitimize the humanities by reaching back in time to resuscitate crucial values and core contributions that are threatened with oblivion or obliteration. Whereas these kinds of approaches take great 47  While Shils and Roberts (2004): ‘The Diffusion of European Models Outside Europe’ underlines that ‘the world’s idea of the university as it was shaped in the nineteenth century is […] a European one’, the authors also describe how this model of a university spreads other continents around the world where universities ‘were formed in accordance with an image of the European university in the midst of their founders, at first or second remove’ (p. 164). 48  While the study cannot possibly, of course, in detail even cover the various dislocations across the primary areas outlined above and does not, for example, discuss developments in Spain or Russia, it would an even more onerous and too formidable task also to discuss the spread and adoptions, the impact and the modulations of the models within other areas of the world, for example, Japan. Cf. Shils and Roberts (2004): ‘The Diffusion of European Models Outside Europe’, pp. 223–226.

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pains to polish handed down silver heirlooms to make the heritage shine brightly, as it will be demonstrated in the following chapter of the book in a discussion with a central and outstanding representative of this approach, the American philosopher and classical scholar Martha Nussbaum,49 the examination of the history of the human sciences pursued in this study instead accentuates how the scientificity of the human sciences are characterized by an irreducible and indelibly differentiating forward movement in and through which the present stand aloof from and distances itself from the past. The approach pursued in this monograph distinguishes itself from another different but equally conspicuous defence of the humanities and its associated conceptualization of the history of the humanities. When attempting to develop ‘the first history of the humanities from Antiquity to the present’ in a situation where he believes that ‘the humanities are under pressure all over the world’,50 Rens Bod urges the reader to acknowledge what both critics and defendants of the humanities tend to overlook, namely that ‘a quick glance at the history of the humanities shows’ that ‘not only did humanistic insights change the world, many of these insights dealt with concrete problems and resulted in applications in entirely unexpected fields’.51 Bod’s ambition to write a comparative and continuous history demonstrating the contribution of the humanities is not just a personal endeavour but has been turned into an impressive and honourable collective project.52  This trait is most clearly instantiated in Nussbaum (2003): Cultivating Humanity.  Bod (2013): A New History of the Humanities. The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present, pp. I & XIII. 51  Bod (2013): A New History of the Humanities. The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present, p. XIII. 52  The collective ambition is evidenced in a series of conferences starting in 2008 and in volumes forthcoming since 2010. Cf. the series of edited volumes originating in the conferences and repeatedly referring back to the formative character of the conferences: Bod, Maat, Weststeijn (eds.) (2010): The Making of the Humanities. Volume I: Early Modern Europe; Bod, Maat, Weststeijn (eds.) (2014): The Making of the Humanities. Volume II: From Early Modern to Modern Disciplines; Bod, Maat, Weststeijn (eds.) (2013): The Making of the Humanities. Volume III: The Modern Humanities. Every individual author contributing to this project aiming to highlight the significance of the humanities does not necessarily, of course, share Bod’s basic assumptions and conception of the core contribution of the humanities. Cf. in this regard, for example, Daston (2013): ‘Objectivity and Impartiality: Epistemic Virtues in the Humanities, in Bod, Maat, Weststeijn (eds.) (2013): The Making of the Humanities. Volume III: The Modern Humanities, pp. 27–43. 49 50

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When Bod seeks to determine the core continuous contribution of the humanities more specifically, he finds ‘the apparently unbroken strand in the humanities that can be identified as the quest for patterns in humanistic material on the basis of methodological principles’; and, accordingly, he resorts to a history that is basically a simple enumeration of ‘the methodological principles that have been developed and the patterns that have been found in the study of material (texts, languages, literature, music, art theatre and the past) with these principles’ in order to render and make graphic the specific and lasting contribution of the humanities.53 In this manner, Bod reduces the contribution of the humanities and the essential outcome of their history a constructive ‘problem-solving capacity’ and the solutions it produces. According to Bod, this capacity and its outcome is a success that has been blatantly disregarded. The capacity is depicted as a naturalized and universal ability to respond to problems that are taken as primitively given in or with the material of investigation and stretch across time and space, conceived as a uniformly neutral backdrop. In the final analysis, the historicity of the humanities is thus reduced to a series of systematic cognitive happenings.54 The author himself underlines how the ‘concept of problem-solving capacity as a yardstick for the success of a theory’ is inspired by and borrowed from the notion of progress in cognition in normal science as it is described in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.55 Yet, the problem is that according to Kuhn it is only possible to speak of a problem-solving as a progressive and systematic puzzle-solving from within an established and specific scientific discipline; and it is thus only possible to do so after the presentation of a paradigm and the constitution of a disciplinary matrix has permitted to establish and designate the kinds

53  Bod (2013): A New History of the Humanities. The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present, pp. 7, 9 (italicizations in Bod’s original text). Allegedly, this is so since ‘seeking and finding patterns is timeless and ubiquitous, not only when observing nature but also when examining texts, art, poetry, theatre, languages, and music’ (Bod (2013): A New History of the Humanities, p. 11). In this manner, Bod is able overall to assert ‘a continuous humanistic tradition from Antiquity to the present day that focuses on the quest for patterns and rules’ (p. 348). 54  Bod (2013): A New History of the Humanities, p. 244. 55  Bod (2013): A New History of the Humanities, p. 244.

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of problems that are to be solved.56 In his eagerness to rehabilitate the humanities and seek out inspiration for categories that permit him to do so, Bod ends up drawing on Kuhn in order to resort to a pre-Kuhnian conception of scientificity and uniform or general scientific progress across the disciplines. In the last chapter of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, entitled ‘Progress Through Revolutions’, Kuhn makes it clear that his overall notion of progress in the sciences is a lot more complex than Bod seems to be aware of. Here Kuhn speaks of progress as a ‘selection by conflict within the scientific community of the fittest way to practice future science’ that is seen as ‘the net result of a sequence of […] revolutionary selections, separated by periods of normal research’.57 With his reconception of scientific progress, Kuhn can thus be said to suggest a Darwinian turn within the theory of science. Obliterating the ongoing and complex discontinuous gemmation of scientific rationalities in the history of science, Bod can, by contrast, be said to confess to and profess allegiance to a pre-Darwinian concept of progress in science. In this manner, Bod comes to write a simplified natural history of the human sciences. Whether one seeks to rehabilitate the humanities by harking back to their lost heritage to be resuscitated or by drawing a picture of an ongoing systematic problem-solving activity presenting solutions that are ubiquitously usable, a genuine sense for true historical difference seems to be lacking. Time and place and space seem to recede into the background to 56  Kuhn (1962/2012): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 24. Consistently, Kuhn in the introduction of his book highlights that his aim in the book is to give a ‘sketch of the quite different concept of science that can emerge from the historical record of the research activity itself’, which is opposed to the ‘unhistorical stereotype drawn from science texts’ according to which ‘scientific development becomes the piecemeal process by which these items have been added, singly and in combination, to the ever growing stockpile that constitutes scientific technique and knowledge’, and according to which ‘history of science becomes the discipline that chronicles both these successive increments and the obstacles that have inhibited their accumulation’. After highlighting how ‘historians of science have been finding it more and more difficult to fulfil the functions that the concept of development-­ by-­accumulation assigns to them’, Kuhn suggests that ‘perhaps science does not develop by the accumulation of individual discoveries and inventions’ (Kuhn (1962/2012): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 1–2). Cf. also Kuhn (1957/1987): The Copernican Revolution. Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought for further description of the anatomy of scientific revolution and its ground-breaking character of conversion for science as well as general cosmology. 57  Kuhn (1962/2012): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 171.

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become a neutral, unimportant backdrop for continuity, lost and/or found. In this monograph, by contrast, time, place and space have a constitutive role and play an active part in so far as the study presents a multistringed, gemmiparous irreversibility in history entirely different from what ideas of the resurrection of the past or unified and unequivocal progress allow us to conceive of. Due to their stress on relatively timeless continuity in the tradition of the humanities, whether it is conceived as already and unproblematically existing or to be rehabilitated and re-established, the described approaches firstly come to disregard the decisiveness in the reorientation around the beginning of the nineteenth century; and, secondly, they also tend to underplay the following ongoing irreducible productivity, also highlighted in this study, that manifests itself in the establishment of ever-new disciplines and faculties that establish new kinds of research and knowledge to such an extent that new-fangled forms of exchange or interplay result between the established disciplines and faculties. Borrowing an aphorism by the French poet René Char, one can voice the heritage of the human sciences that is articulated in this monograph as a ‘heritage’ that ‘is not preceded by any kind of testament’.58 For anyone who would aim to make a claim and put him or herself forward as a legitimate heir59 of the human sciences, either in general or within any particular field of study, it is evident that she or he would concomitantly need to pick up the gauntlet thrown by the tradition to overtly face the predicament that ‘our heritage was left to us without a testament’, as Hannah Arendt more freely renders the aphorism.60 In so far as a testament, according to Arendt, not only indicates ‘where the treasures are and what their worth is’, but also by ‘telling the heir what will rightfully be his, wills past possessions for a future’, the circumstance that the inheritance is unwilled implies that ‘there seems to be no willed continuity in time’, appointing and entitling the rightful heir and commanding and securing an orderly succession.61 In so far as the dynamic tradition described in this monograph has left no simple will and testament to be implemented and to ensure an orderly 58  ‘Notre héritage n’est précédé d’aucun testament’ (Char (1962): Fureur et mystère, p. 106). Cf. also Veyne (1990): René Char en ses poèmes, pp. 208–19. 59  Cf. also Lear (2011): A Case for Irony, p. 10, for a discussion of what it implies to pretend to be, or to put oneself up as, the legitimate heir of a dynasty or a tradition. 60  Arendt (1990): On Revolution. Arendt (1968): Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought. 61  Arendt (1968): Between Past and Future. Eight Exercises in Political Thought, p. 5.

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succession, the idea of receiving and claiming a crucial authentic heritage is rejected. The initial treasure may thus seem to be lost to such an extent that is left to be found and reclaimed by future generations. The fact that there is no original protocol of succession and no patrimonial estate that can be settled creates an open space for reappropriation and prolific dissemination of the heritage.62 The lack of an original protocol of submission or testament, settling the transferal of a patrimonial estate, does not imply that the heritage can be reclaimed by anyone to be spent and used at will for any purpose one might wish. The conclusions to be drawn are not simply that any use will do, that anything goes, or that any effect is equally good or efficient. Rather, the fact that one is thus left a specific gift in the form of a particular kind of legacy forces one to ponder how one can face and live up to the particularly accentuated predicament that a tradition ‘left without a testament’ raises.

1.9   The Sciences of the Human Tracking and monitoring a transverse agenda-setting movement that displaces itself across borders and hands down a heritage without a testament, the investigation traverses and encounters designations of the field of human sciences that differ from area to area and from language to language. In addition to the English ‘human sciences’ and ‘humanities’ so far used here, as well as the singular ‘human science’, one comes across German designations such as ‘Humanwissenschaften’ and ‘Geisteswissenschaften’, and French, Spanish and Italian terms such as ‘sciences humaines’, ‘humanidades’ and ‘scienze umanistische’. In the Dutch and Flemish language, the terms ‘geesteswetenschappen’, ‘studia humanitatis’, ‘letteren’ and ‘alfawetenschappen’ all exist,63 while designations such as ‘humaniora’, ‘humanvidenskaber’ and ‘menneskevidenskaber’ are 62  Please also confer the anterior section ‘The level of prescription and normation’, and in particular the discussion of difference and repetition, for a first development of the heritage and the historicity of the human sciences. 63  The latter in distinction to ‘bètawetenschappen’ (also termed ‘exacte wetenschappen’) and gammawetenschappen (also characterized as the sciences that deal with society and behaviour), and ‘geneeskunde’ (health sciences) (cf., among others, Hoiveling, 2021): ‘Wat hebben de letteren nog te betekenen?’ https://www.feico-houweling.nl/wat-hebben-de-­ letteren-nog-te-betekenen/Bos, Jap (2021) (ed.) ‘Wetenschapsfilosofie’. Available at: https://www.uu.nl/wetfilos/bijsluiter/alphabetagamma.html

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used in Danish, just to mention the considerable number of terms in a few ‘minor’ northern-European languages. Equally, related designations such as ‘liberal arts’ and ‘studium generale’ are common in English as well as in a number of other languages. As is to be expected from the kind of history outlined in this monograph, these designations differ decisively from one another in signification and denotation, sense and reference.64 The designations vary with regard to the number and the sort of disciplines that they would include in the scope of the denotation or reference of the human sciences. Whereas, for example, disciplines such as psychology, anthropology and theology in some regions would be considered as belonging to the human sciences and would accordingly be situated at the faculty of arts or humanities, this would certainly not be the case in a number of other countries and at a number of other universities. The terms also differ decisively regarding the traits or distinguishing characteristics that disciplines would have to exhibit in order to be included in the different terms referring to human sciences; and they would therefore also diverge with regards to sense and meaning of the terms, or with regards to what the terms would highlight as essential distinguishing features of the human sciences. What is more, different ideas concerning the ambition and the raison d’être of the human sciences would commonly be associated with different terms. In addition, the relationship between the faculty of the humanities and the neighbouring (and at times partly overlapping) scientific faculties, such as the social sciences, business studies, education and technical sciences, would also be understood differently from one national tradition to another by users of the cited terms. Finally, differences like the ones just mentioned would even make themselves felt regarding the same term when used by different speakers within different areas and contexts. When moving through this complex and changing semantic and institutional landscape, the study makes use of and adheres to a preliminary definition of the human sciences as a point of reference in order to find its 64  Since I take the liberty to draw upon and make use of Frege’s distinction between ‘Sinn’ and ‘Bedeutung’ and Dummett’s related differentiation between the ‘meaning’, ‘sense’ and ‘reference’ of a term or an expression, primarily for pragmatically clarifying reasons in the context of the present discussion, I do not want to enter into the intricate and longstanding discussion concerning the relationship between Frege’s position in Frege (1892/2019): Über Sinn und Bedeutung and Dummett’s interpretation in Dummett (1973): Frege. Philosophy of Language. However, I would like to subscribe to Dummett’s general assertion that meaning is use and that terms and expressions only have reference in a sentence.

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bearings. This is an understanding of the designation of the human sciences as referring to the sciences that distinguish themselves by researching and producing knowledge concerning a particular field, that is, human affairs. The human sciences are the sciences that make a contribution to what is known by studying and cultivating the human as it appears in human beings, their being and modes of being, including their existence and subsistence, utterances and expressions, languages, arts, culture and civilization, lifestyle and relations, intentional and non-intentional creations, volitional and non-volitional patterns, their governance of themselves and others, their development, evolution, education, decline and devolution. In and through this self-revisional, reflexive and sometimes self-critical examination of the human, the human sciences also contribute to forming, cultivating, educating and humanizing the human as well as the human power of judgement and assessment: making the human more than merely human or rather emphatically human. The human sciences founded in their modern form as humanities with the refoundation of the university around 1800 may at first glance seem to perpetuate and conserve the ancestral and venerable tradition of the studia humanitatis and the artes liberales if one considers some of the fields of study investigated by various disciplines before and after the turn of the century. Yet, the break and the rupture is far more predominant and prevailing when one looks more closely at the role, self-perception and self-­ articulation of the humanities after 1800. Whereas the artes liberales were traditionally largely understood as a ‘pre-school’ that handed over established knowledge and skills that permitted students to pass on to the study of higher matters and had the status of a programme of preliminary studies serving as ancillae theologicae or domestic servants not only of, at first in particular, theology, but also of other higher matters of academic study such as law and medicine, within a larger, predominantly stable theo-­ ontological framework, the sciences of the human in their modern form as humanities were ‘emancipated’65 and understood as an end in themselves

65  Around the same time, a similar, and similarly decisive, reconception of the arts and aesthetic experience took place. The implications of the declaration of independence of the arts and aesthetic experienced is described in Raffnsøe (2019): ‘The Aesthetic Turn: The Cultivation and Propagation of Aesthetic Experience after its Declaration of Independence’ and Raffnsøe (2024): Aestheticizing Society: A Philosophical History of Sensory Experience and Art, forthcoming.

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for the first time as they came to be conceived as research into the singularly and emphatically human.66 However, since the unification of the universitas literarum in and through independent research in its modern form at the beginning of the nineteenth century ascribed a central role to the humanities, this reorganization has been continuously challenged by the establishment of new and different forms of science.67 In so far as a predominant part of this range of new branches, primarily originating in but also to some extent incorporated within the university, procure knowledge concerning the human, they can also be regarded as human sciences in a wider sense. The incessant appearance of a range of new disciplines providing knowledge concerning and mapping the human has implied that existing demarcations of the sciences of the human have constantly been challenged.68 While I have so far used and will continue to use the nomination ‘humanities’ to designate a demarcation of the human sciences that is more exclusive and narrow in scope, I will more generally use the syntagm ‘the human sciences’ to designate the much broader definition that includes all sciences that examine, shed light on and contribute to the understanding and development of human affairs. Whereas the traditional aim and contribution of the humanities has been to study and cultivate the human, the development described in this book show that they are now challenged to assume responsibility for this historical legacy within the wider context of the human sciences, a wider framework whose establishment will be outlined in this book. In and through a turn that came to have its full impact and form a modern constitution around the end of the eighteenth and the beginning 66  Centred around the rendering and cultivation of the singularly, particularly and emphatically human, the sciences of the human in their early modern form tended to focus on and prioritize man, and in practice even tended to put white male masculinity at the centre. Anthropocentrism is thus an essential part of the heritage of the human sciences as it has been handed down to the heirs without a testament. Consequently, it is also a heritage that the heirs must constantly be prepared to face. 67  This development unfolding during the nineteenth century will be described in detail in Chap. 4: ‘The Division Between the Sciences of the Emphatically Human and New Branches of Science’. 68  Despite their outset in Anthropocentric thought with a focus on a conception of a common and supposedly disinterested and non-situated humanity, and with the aim of providing for the latter’s cultivation, the historic trajectory also shows how the human sciences have managed to problematize Anthropocentrism and pave the way for a conception of humans as situated beings, as it will become clear in the following exposition.

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of the nineteenth century, human beings and the humanities began to appear in a manner that let them occupy centre stage. Yet, as the ensuing story will make clear: As humans and the human sciences took up this position at the centre, human beings at the same time in an emphatic sense became beings that had to find themselves on the verge of themselves and with regards to something else. The human has continuously appeared as a relationship that relates to the non-human and transcends its present existence to such an extent that, as Nietzsche highlights in On the Genealogy of Morality, ‘we are unknown to ourselves, we knowing ones’ and that ‘we are always on the way to’ ‘the beehives of our knowledge’ where ‘our treasure’ lies and ‘our heart’ is—and this to such an extent that we, ‘like someone divinely distracted in himself’ who has just had ‘his ears rung by the full force of the bells twelve strokes of noon, suddenly wakes up’ and must ask ‘quite disconcerted’: Who are we really?’69 Since the human sciences, understood very broadly, have for two centuries continuously asked and provided answers to this open-ended, pertinent but also embarrassing question in new fruitful ways, it would be fair to expect them to continue to do so. It also requires them to assume new forms in order to be on a par with the human as it reappears in a wider landscape. According to some of the most outstanding contemporary proponents of the cause of the humanities, however, the human sciences may in the process run the risk of losing core human values and leave an essential part of their proud shared heritage behind.

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69  Nietzsche (1888/1999): Zur Genealogie der Moral, p. 247/Nietzsche (1999): On the Genealogy of Morality, p. 207. Cf. also Raffnsøe (2007): Nietzsches ‘Genealogie der Moral’.

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Raffnsøe, Sverre (2013): ‘Beyond Rule; Trust and Power as Capacities, Journal of Political Power 6(2): 241–260. Raffnsøe, Sverre (2019): ‘The Aesthetic Turn: The Cultivation and Propagation of Aesthetic Experience after its Declaration of Independence’, MPP Working Paper 1/2019. Frederiksberg: Copenhagen Business School: pp.  1–31. Available at: https://research.cbs.dk/en/publications/the-­aesthetic-­turn-­ the-­cultivation-­and-­propagation-­of-­aesthetic-­e & https://www.researchgate. net/publication/333895079_THE_AESTHETIC_TURN_The_Cultivation_ and_Propagation_of_Aesthetic_Experience_after_its_Declaration_of_ Independence_Copenhagen_Business_School Raffnsøe, Sverre (2024): Aestheticizing Society: A Philosophical History of Sensory Experience and Art. London, New  York, New Delhi, Oxford & Sydney: Bloomsbury, forthcoming. Raffnsøe, Sverre; Gudmand-Høyer, Marius; Thaning, Morten (2016): Michel Foucault. Research Companion. Philosophy as Diagnosis of the Present. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Raffnsøe, Sverre; Gudmand-Høyer, Marius; Thaning, Morten S. (2017): ‘Foucault’s Dispositive: The Perspicacity of Dispositive Analytics in Organizational Research’, Organization 23(2): 272–298. Raffnsøe, Sverre; Thaning, Morten S.; Gudmand-Høyer, Marius (2018): ‘Philosophical Practice as Self-modification: An Essay on Michel Foucault’s Critical Engagement with Philosophy’, Foucault Studies 25: 8–54. https://doi. org/10.22439/fs.v25i2.5573. Raffnsøe, Sverre; Mennicken, Andrea; Miller, Peter (2019): ‘The Foucault Effect in Organization Studies’, Organization Studies 40(2): 155–217. Rilke, Rainer Maria (1912/1996): Duineser Elegien. In Rilke, Rainer Maria (1996): Werke. Kommentierte Ausgabe in vier Bänden. Band 2. Herausgegeben von Manfred Engel, Ulrich Fülleborn, Horst Nalwwski, Augist Stahl. Darmstadt: wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 199–234. Rüegg, Walter (2004): ‘Themes’. In Rüegg, Walter (2004): A History of the University in Europe, Volume III, Universities in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth centuries (1899–1945). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–31. Ryle, Gilbert (1966): The Concept of Mind. Middlesex: Penguin Books. Shils, Edward; Roberts, John (2004): ‘The Diffusion of European Models Outside Europe’. In Rüegg, Walter (ed.) (2004): A History of the University in Europe: Universities in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945), volume III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 163–203. Veyne, Paul (1990): René Char en ses poèmes. Paris: Gallimard.

CHAPTER 2

An Alleged Crisis of the Humanities

Abstract  It has become commonplace to highlight that the humanities are undergoing a severe, acute and decisive crisis. The claim is that the crisis is the outcome of a longstanding process of decay and decline. Consequently, the humanities are facing a period of intense difficulty and danger threatening their very existence. This perception is voiced by various defenders of the traditional values of the humanities. If the human sciences seek to hold onto what is deemed essential to the human and particular to the humanities, they risk missing out on the knowledge gains, dynamism and societal relevance that an exchange with other sciences can provide. With the withdrawal to the humanities’ ‘essential’ identity, the humanities cut themselves off from participating in and contributing towards the vast majority of current university activities. This is all the more pertinent because the legacy of the humanities is not quite the carefully handed-down ‘silver heirlooms’ that the proponents of the ‘traditional’ humanities claim to polish. Since the foundation of the university and the humanities in an anthropocentric structure of knowledge that gathers around the human, the inception has been persistently contested. The initial centripetal foundation of the university has been followed by a continued opposing centrifugal movement experienced as an ongoing but productive crisis. As the disciplines at the faculty of arts have continually given rise to new branches of science and knowledge, the human sciences have had to continually reformulate and reassert themselves. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 S. Raffnsøe, A History of the Humanities in the Modern University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46533-8_2

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Keywords  Humanities • Liberal education • Antiquity • Education • Crisis • Heritage • Tradition • Seneca • Nussbaum • Koselleck

2.1   A Defence of the Humanities in Dire Times In recent times, it has become commonplace to highlight how the humanities are undergoing a severe, acute and decisive crisis. Generally, the claim is not only that the human sciences are facing a decisive transitional phase in the form of a severe midwinter, but also that the crisis is the final result of a longstanding and still ongoing process of decay and decline. Moreover, the perception is that this long-lasting development is presently coming to a head. Presently, the humanities are facing a period of intense difficulty and danger that threatens their very existence and affects their very subsistence. In prolongation of a long and continuous development, the sciences examining and developing the particularly human have come to constitute an educational ‘time-out’ beyond the real world that is of only limited value since it seems to add only marginal value to the real world. Whereas some of the contributors to the human sciences may still conceive of themselves as critical midfield actors, so to speak, the human sciences are presently considered as players that necessarily find themselves on the sideline. Since this transition has been completed to such an extent that the humanities risk being considered a mere superfluous pastime, the proponents of the humanities are forced to consider and flesh out the essence of the humanities as well as their core contribution. This perception is presently voiced by several proponents and defenders of the traditional values of the humanities, among others philosopher and classical scholar Martha Nussbaum. As ‘surrounding society’ as well as theoretical models and approaches to policymaking come to focus, to an increasing extent, ‘on profit and success’1 and other forms of societal and economic value creation, the humanities have, according to Nussbaum, been pushed to the margin. Faced with such experienced challenges, contributors and partisans of the humanities often try to reassert the significance of the humanities by returning to and examining a bygone past in which they enjoyed a more 1  Nussbaum (2010): Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, p. xiv. Cf. also Nussbaum (2011): Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach.

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central position in order to resuscitate the classical virtues of the humanities.2 Nussbaum thus argues that education and research within the humanities should respond to present challenges by returning to, reviving and cultivating a ‘noble ideal’ that has played a guiding role as an ‘idea of “liberal education”’ in modernity and in modern knowledge institutions. ‘Taken up most fully in the United States’, though never ‘fully realized in […] colleges and universities’, this noble ideal lists an ancestry that reaches back to Antiquity. Starting in Antiquity with Seneca in particular and further expressed in European Enlightenment thought as it was developed by Hume, Smith and Kant, this conception of research and education has traditionally had a ‘formative influence’ on ‘Thomas Paine and other Founding Fathers in the American tradition’. It ‘is liberal, in so far as it liberates the mind from the bondage to habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world’. According to Nussbaum, this ‘idea of “liberal education”’ as ‘a higher education’ is of utmost importance in so far as it implies and involves ‘a cultivation of the whole human being for the functions of citizenship and life generally’.3 In this manner, humanistic education formed on the basis of the humanities is conceived as a form of development that cultivates citizenship; not only in the local community but also globally, in so far as it leads the individual to recognize ‘the value of human life’ in all its forms and interconnectedness with human abilities and problems, even if they are far away from us. Furthermore, such a higher form of education is also considered to empower the learner to live and contribute to a better life.4 While this kind of education is thought of as being centred on the human (or even the particularly humane in the human) and as being particularly inclusive of different human life forms, it ends up being highly exclusive. The education of the human defines itself as a privileged space or an outstanding sphere where, in stark contrast to ‘a surrounding society that focuses on profit and success’,5 as is also evident in its dominant theoretical models and policies, higher values are placed at the centre that, at first, are ‘not for profit’ but which we can profit from later and in the long

 Said (2004): Humanism and Democratic Criticism.  Nussbaum (2003): Cultivating Humanity, p. 9. 4  Nussbaum (2003): Cultivating Humanity, pp. 9, 112. 5  Nussbaum (2010): Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, p. xiv. 2 3

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run in so far as it cultivates a higher humanity and prepares the educated for meaningful lives and work in a broader sense.6

2.2   An Inadequate Defence A defence of the human sciences through a withdrawal to and reactive repetition of what has been determined historically as the humanities’ traditional virtues or values in a new situation that challenges the humanities is, however, problematic, and it may appear inadequate for several reasons. Because such a ‘retraditionalizing’ reactualization claims the supremacy of the humanities in certain respects, such a basis for the human sciences merely affirms a historically well-established division of labour; and such an affirmation risks contributing towards deepening precisely the claimed ‘clefts’ between cultures that make it difficult for the human sciences to validate themselves—not only in relation to other fields of knowledge but also in relation to society. Insofar as the human sciences thus seek, in an isolated fashion, to hold onto what is deemed essential to the humanities and that which is particular to the human, they thereby risk missing out on the knowledge gains, dynamism and societal relevance that an exchange with other sciences, with their forms of knowledge and methodologies, can provide. This becomes all the more apparent as other fields contribute to the above-mentioned field of ‘the human’ in their own right and to such an extent that it becomes a powerless gesture to affirm privileged and exclusive access. In addition, with the withdrawal to the humanities’ ‘essential’ identity, the human sciences cut themselves off from participating in and contributing towards that which currently represents the vast majority of university activity and, on top of that, diverse scientific activity which, to varying degrees and with different agendas, actually often acknowledges both the relevance and the value of the human in scientific practice. A crucial challenge in the present turn is that this turn precisely problematizes emphatic notions of a special and privileged field for the consecrated in what is considered as extra-ordinarily, exceptionally or augustly humane (or more human than everything else). Moreover, the turn questions the assumptions of relatively clear divisions between the particularly human and the non-human that such emphatic notions of the human explicitly or implicitly rest upon, even as the transformation problematizes 6

 Nussbaum (2011): Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach.

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that such divisions can form the obvious starting point for a discussion of both the role of the humanities more specifically and the wider field of knowledge more generally. Hence the present turn also problematizes the humanities’ ‘heritage’ or the assumptions that the human sciences have so far been able to take for granted as self-evident since they were established when the humanities emerged in a form we can recognize today, namely with the establishment of the university in its modern form around 200 years ago.

2.3  The Historical Heritage of the Humanities Through a long movement, the human sciences appear to have reached a watershed. They are in the process of leaving behind the relatively familiar landscape where prevailing notions of the human have emerged in their modern form and are moving into and orientating themselves in landscapes that have different and even more unknown contours. In a situation where the human sciences are at a crucial turning point, it is imperative to take a look back at the journey that has brought the human sciences to such a critical juncture. In this way, one can get a sense of the historical ballast that the humanities bring to the present situation. On closer inspection, this ‘baggage’ not only takes the form of extra weight or strain that the human sciences must carry with them and which hold them back and weigh them down; it is also extra weight that the human sciences have built up and which researchers within the human sciences can draw upon, if they leave behind the unequivocal affirmation and continuation of the humanities’ lofty or privileged legacy that some proponents of the humanities tend to cling to. This is all the more pertinent in so far as the legacy of the humanities, upon closer inspection, is not quite the carefully handed-down ‘silver heirlooms’ that it may first appear to be and that is often marked by the proponents of the ‘traditional’ humanities. Instead, the legacy and what it hands over prove to be much more ambiguous. While the humanities can appear to be constituted in this manner, the human sciences have shown themselves, from the very beginning until now, as breaking away from and continually pointing beyond their original constitution. In fact, since the foundation of the university and the humanities in an anthropocentric structure of knowledge that gathers around the human and places it at the centre, they have shown themselves as challenging this condition just as

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persistently—the fundamental centripetal movement has been challenged by an opposing centrifugal one that is as at least as strong. A history of knowledge thus shows that faith in the continuous core legacy of the humanities as it is commemorated and celebrated by some of its proponents is not only inadequate in the wider context of knowledge; a more thorough examination of the history of the human sciences also bears witness to an internal perfidiousness in human sciences and the way they have been handed down and attained their current status. The following sections will clarify this by showing how the surviving historical legacy of the human sciences has been established and further developed, and what this legacy implies.

2.4   A Decisive Turning Point Discussion of a crisis in the human sciences can take place as long as this is not simply understood as a problematic situation in which it is difficult to survive and find validation. Instead, we can talk about a crisis in an older and more fundamental sense of the word, where it indicates a ‘critical turning point’ (krisis) in which a longer course culminates and introduces a dividing line or a division [krinein], meaning that there is a decision and a judgement to be made on this course.7 As a result of a lengthy chain of events, the sciences of the humanities faculties have arrived at a critical turning point. Presently, they are facing the challenge of going through a transition as they cross a dividing line and enter into a new and still uncharted context in which they must stand the test of asserting themselves anew. They are subject to rigorous review, which means that one must turn back on them and re-examine them anew.8 The human sciences are at a turning point in so far as their environment and their relationships with this environment have changed; and they are confronted with the task of getting up to speed with the situation and dealing with it. In so far as the crisis first of all relates to the human sciences’ relationships with their environment and the forms of their acceptability and effect, it is at first a crisis regarding how they can assert themselves and 7  Koselleck (1973): Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt. Brunner, et al. (ed.) (1982): Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Bd. 3, entry ‘Krise’, pp. 617–75. 8  For a more developed discussion of the related notions of critique and crisis, see Röttgers (1975): Kritik und Praxis: Zur Geschichte des Kritikbegriffs von Kant bis Marx, as well as Koselleck (1973): Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt and Raffnsøe (2017): ‘What is Critique? The Critical State of Critique in the Age of Criticism’.

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hold their ground in wider society and its knowledge in such a way that they are positively received and judged (krinein). However, this is also a crisis within the human sciences in so far as they are looking for the right criteria for how they should understand, conceptualize, legitimize and justify themselves anew in such a situation. It is both a crisis for and within the human sciences in that they can no longer rely on and find their purpose in the traditional notion that the human has a fundamental, intrinsic value. Instead, the human sciences must increasingly ground and conceptualize themselves in a situation where the human is in continuous exchange with—and is continually constituted in an ongoing exchange with—the non-human. The turn towards and the valorization of the human within forms of knowledge and praxis thus alters the environment of the human sciences and entails new conditions for how they can give an account of themselves. These new conditions of validity provide them with new opportunities to assert themselves alongside new demands and challenges to be met. They involve a crisis and a process of transformation for the human sciences that provoke them into asserting and affirming themselves in this new context. If researchers contributing to the human sciences fail to reinterpret and reposition this body of knowledge that has been of crucial importance hitherto, the sciences of the human risk losing their significance in so far as their knowledge will appear to be of secondary importance and relatively irrelevant in the bigger picture. However, one can also witness this challenge in a broader context of knowledge. If the human sciences fail to assert themselves and appear as contributory, society’s knowledge will be at a loss in a number of crucially deep and broad dimensions precisely because a large number of the key phenomena being investigated are fundamentally human-driven and thus cannot be articulated without an account of their crucial human component. As a new ground-breaking reform of the university was being initiated and the cornerstones to the ensuing, ongoing productive crises of the human sciences and their offspring were being laid, Goethe, in 1795–1796, published his novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, a work that in the years to come served as an oddly atypical blueprint for the often somewhat antagonistic genres of the Bildungsroman and the Gesellschaftsroman. In this novel, a crucial midpoint and turning point is reached when the protagonist is not only told by his friend and mentor the abbot that his ‘apprenticeship [Lehrjahre] is done [vorüber]’ and that ‘nature has pronounced

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thee free [losgesprochen]’; he is also handed over a ‘Lehrbrief’, an indenture certifying completed apprenticeship.9 As Wilhelm subsequently begins reflecting on his years of apprenticeship on the basis of this document of indenture drafted by his friends and leaders of the company he is entering, the narrator mulls over ‘the feeling of awe and fear [schauderhafte Empfindung]’ which seizes on ‘a man of noble mind [ein edler Mann]’ when he is utterly ‘conscious and alert that he has reached a point where he should be or is to become enlightened concerning himself [mit Bewuβtsein auf dem Punkte steht, wo er über sich selbst aufgeklärt werden soll]’.10 A daunting challenge in this process of self-enlightenment is not only the experience that ‘every transition is a crisis [Alle Übergänge sind Krisen]’, but also the fact that each and every crisis seems to include an element of sickness or ill-health, and this to such an extent that one may begin to wonder whether a crisis is also basically a state of disorder and affliction.11 In the novel, this challenge leads the protagonist to an immediate and deeply felt animosity against the very action of looking into the mirror and reflecting upon oneself. For what one is confronted with in the mirror is ‘the effect of the past evil [die Wirkung des vergangenen Übels]’ rather than ‘the improvement [die Besserung] that one feels’.12 At this point, since Wilhelm had already ‘been sufficiently prepared [vorbereited genug]’ by going through and learning from a long range of challenging and successful experiences; and he is sufficiently self-confident to overcome the challenge and face his own reflected image and reflect upon it not only as an outcome of the deteriorating effect of past evils, but also as a testimony of experienced development and aptitude, as well as a promise of potential improvement still to come: ‘Events had already spoken loudly to him, and his friends had not spared him. If he opened the roll of parchment with some hurry, he grew calmer and calmer the farther he read. He found his life delineated with large sharp strokes [die unständliche Geschichte seines Lebens in groβen scharfen Zügen geschildert]; neither unconnected incidents [einzelne Begebenheiten], nor narrow sentiments [beschränkte Empfindungen] perplexed (verwirrten) his view; the  Goethe (1795–96/1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, p. 534.  Goethe (1795–96/1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, p. 542. 11   ‘Ist eine Krise nicht Krankheit?’ Goethe (1795–96/1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, p. 542. 12  Goethe (1795–96/ 1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, p. 542. 9

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most bland and general reflections (allgemeine liebevolle Betrachtungen) gave him hints and warning signs [gaben ihm Fingerzeige] without shaming him; and for the first time, he saw his own image or picture beside himself [er sah zum erstenmal sein Bild auβer sich], not indeed, as in a mirror (Spiegel), a second self (ein zweites Selbst), but as in a portrait another self (wie im Portrait ein anderes Selbst): One does not, it is true, recognize oneself in every feature (man bekennt sich zwar nicht zu allen Zügen) but one is delighted that a thinking spirit [ein denkender Geist] has so seized or apprehended us, that a very talented person (ein groβes Talent) has rendered us in such a way and to such an extent that an image [ein Bild] of what we were [von dem, was wir waren] still survives and consists [noch besteht], and that it may endure when we ourselves are gone [dass es länger als wir selbst dauern kann].’13 Like Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, the present study of the development of the human sciences is intended as an account of as the testimony of an ongoing crisis. While this development, of course, may include phases and elements of frail or ill health, the rendering of the history of the human sciences presented here will not understand it as a trajectory essentially marked by or conditioned by disorder and affliction. Rather, it is a trajectory that exhibits the characteristics of what Nietzsche’s calls the great health, as it will be suggested in Chap. 7 of this book. While the present history will permit contributors to or discussants of the human sciences to observe an image or picture of these sciences besides themselves, the study will not facilitate a mirroring of a second self in which the effects of past evils or afflictions are drawn into relief or emphasized. Though not obliterating evils or afflictions, the present study will rather highlight the improvement that one feels when asserting the ability to overcome evils and afflictions by establishing a new and improved state of health.14 The study intends to draw a picture of the human sciences and their history that does not conceive of itself as a simple alienating reduplication or a representation of the past in a mirror. Rather, the rendering of the human sciences and their past development attempted here strives to live  Goethe (1795–96/ 1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, pp. 542–43.  According to Canguilhem (1943/1966/1972/1992): Le normal et le pathologique, health is to be understood as the ability to overcome and reassert existence in a new form in the face of pathologies and other challenges. If one follows this lead, the history of the modern university and the human sciences is to be understood not only as an ongoing productive crisis, but also as an ongoing reassertion of health. Cf. also Raffnsøe (2013): ‘Pathology and Human Existence’. 13 14

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up to the ideal of a portrait of another self, as articulated by Goethe in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. In so far as the present study can be said to seek to draw a portrait of the human sciences, the objective is thus also in keeping with Deleuze’s aim when he writes a philosophical portrait of Foucault’s thought. While the lines and strokes of the portrait of the human sciences are of course as they are rendered in this book, the traits are only felicitous to the extent that readers find that the human sciences come to expression in the picture presented here in a new and thought-­provoking way, which also implies that they come to haunt it.15 Of course, the present study presents a somewhat simplified image of what the human sciences were and what they did. However, it is the hope that the human sciences have been portrayed in such a manner that it becomes clear how they may endure and continue to set the agenda even when individual acts and traits are long gone and seem relegated to the distant past. Among other things, the history articulated here may show how it has been possible to ‘develop the unknown from the already known’;16 and, in showing this, the past may also inspire us to do so again in the present and the future.

15  When discussing his own book Foucault, Deleuze also takes refuge in the notion of portraiture to specify the ambition of the monograph. Deleuze stresses how he ‘felt a real need’ to write this philosophical portrait of Foucault’s thought after his death: ‘When someone that you like and admire dies, you sometimes need to draw their picture. Not to glorify them, still less to defend them, not to remember, but rather to produce a final likeness you can find only in death that makes you realize “that’s who they were.” A mask or what he himself called a double, an overlay [une doublure]. Different people will find different likenesses or overlays. But in the end, he is most like himself [c’est lui qui se ressemble enfin] in becoming so different from the rest of us [en devenant tellement dissemblable de nous]. It is not a question of points I thought we had in common, or on which we differed. What we shared was bound to be rather indefinite [informe], a sort of background [un fond] that allowed me to talk with him. I still think he is the greatest thinker of our time [le plus grand penseur actuel]. You can do the portrait of a thought [le portrait d’une pensée] just as you can do the portrait of a man [portrait d’un homme]. I have tried to do a portrait of his philosophy. The lines or touches [traits] are of course mine [viennent forcément de moi], but they succeed [ils ne sont réussis] only if he himself comes to haunt the picture [que si c’est lui qui vient hanter le dessin]’ (Deleuze (1990): Pourparlers, p.  139/ Deleuze (1995): Negotiations, p. 102). 16  ‘Der echte Schüler lehrt aus dem Bekannten das unbekannte zu entwickeln’ (Goethe (1795–96/ 1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, p. 533).

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References Brunner, Otto, et al. (ed.) (1982): Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Band 3. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Canguilhem, Georges (1943/1966/1972/1992). Le normal et le pathologique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Clark, William (2006): Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Deleuze, Gilles (1990): Pourparlers. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. Deleuze, Gilles (1995): Negotiations. New York: Colombia University Press. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1795–96/1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Koselleck, Reinhart (1973): Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Khurana, Rakesh (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Lear, Jonathan (2011): A Case for Irony. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press Nussbaum, Martha C. (2003): Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. (2010): Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Nussbaum, Martha C. (2011): Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Raffnsøe, Sverre (2013): ‘Pathology and Human Existence’, paper presented at Conference in Normativity and Pathology, Centre for Subjectivity Research, Copenhagen 2013. Available at: http://raffnsøe.com/wp-content/uploads/ Sverre_Raffnsoe_Pathologyand-HumanExistence_2011.pdf & https://www. researchgate.net/publication/326489490_Pathology_and_Human_ Existence_Foucault’s_The_Birth_of_the_Clinic_and_Canguilhem’s_The_ Normal_and_the_Pathological/related#fullTextFileContent. Raffnsøe, Sverre (2017): ‘What is Critique? The Critical State of Critique in the Age of Criticism’, Outlines. Critical Practice Studies 18(2) 2017: 28–50. Also available at: https://www.academia.edu/12623781/What_Is_Critique_The_ Critical_State_of_Critique_In_The_Age_Of_Criticism. Röttgers, Kurt (1975): Kritik und Praxis: Zur Geschichte des Kritikbegriffs von Kant bis Marx. Berlin; New York: W. de Gruyter. Said, Edward Wadie (2004): Humanism and Democratic Criticism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 3

The Historic Constitution of the Modern University and the Heritage of the Humanities

Abstract  The historical examination sets out by describing the major reorganization of Western knowledge institutions and disciplines that laid the foundation of the modern university roughly 200 years ago. With the establishment of the Humboldtian university, the human sciences, for the first time in history, assume their modern shape and become recognizable as what is perceived as humanities today. Concomitantly, the retrieval of knowledge concerning the human and its development, a core and defining issue for the disciplines located at the philosophical faculty or the faculty of arts, is granted a central and unifying role for the organization of the university. The study and development of the distinctively human becomes crucial for science and its knowledge production in general. From this outset, the study articulates the development of the organization of knowledge and its central disciplines up to the present. Focusing on the development of the human sciences and the establishment of knowledge concerning the human, the study describes the major phases in the history of the sciences following their modern constitution. Since the acquisition of knowledge concerning the essentially human, as well as the latter’s refinement and cultivation, acquired an overarching role and assumed a crucial position for the organization of the modern university, a dynamic development has taken place. This creative development has decisively questioned the initial organization of the university and the classical heritage of the humanities.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 S. Raffnsøe, A History of the Humanities in the Modern University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46533-8_3

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Keywords  Humboldtian university • Artes liberales • Faculty of the arts • Faculty of philosophy • Fichte • Humboldt • Kant • Schelling • Schleiermacher • Steffens

3.1   The Reorganization and Reconstitution of the University and the Organization of Knowledge Around the Turn of the Nineteenth Century The human sciences have, in their classical, handed-down form known as humanities, distinguished and understood themselves as an investigation and forming of the essentially and emphatically human that already in itself is of exceptional and obvious universal value. Despite the fact that such a declaration by the human sciences is sometimes projected further back in history, such a determination has only seriously been with us as something self-evident and as a challenge since, roughly 200 years ago, the human sciences stepped forward for the first time as humanities in their modern and now well-known sense. Not until then did they become separated out as a particular set of sciences distinguishing themselves from the other primary scientific areas by examining and cultivating a particular field through independent research, namely the topic that stands out from its surroundings by being particularly or emphatically human. In so far as they studied ‘the more or particularly human things’ and furthered what was particularly human, the humanities gained a unique value and made a distinctive and exclusive contribution.1

3.2  An Acute Crisis for the Traditional University of the Middle Ages and Renaissance The human sciences did not seriously begin to establish themselves as humanities in the modern form that we know today until the turn of the nineteenth century. This happened after the university of the Middle Ages and Renaissance had run into an acute crisis that came to a head around the end of the eighteenth century. In fact, the crisis around the turn of the century radically raised the question of the meaning and justification of 1  Kjørup (1996): Menneskevidenskaberne: Problemer og traditioner i humanioras videnskabsteori (The Human Sciences).

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the universities and their production of knowledge in a broad sense. Actually, it even raised the question of whether or not the university as an institution could survive at all. Of the 143 universities that existed in Europe around 1789, approximately 60 had disappeared in 1815.2 Of these, 24 were French, 18 German and 10 Spanish, so the number of universities had been reduced to 83.3 However, already in the mid-1800s, Europe had 98 universities, and by the beginning of the Second World War, this number had been doubled.4 In some ways, thus, this through-­ going crisis can be said to correspond to the contemporary crisis that is said to be unfolding. The crisis of that time not only more than matches the contemporary crisis in breath and scope; due to its all-decisive and conclusive character, it undoubtedly even surpasses the present crisis in radicality. As this mid-winter placed the university itself and the production of its existing knowledge on the agenda, it opened up the possibility of a radical re-establishment of the university and the organization of existing knowledge, which significantly altered the relationship between contemporary forms of knowledge and gave the human sciences a new foundational role and purpose. Until the end of the 1700s, studia humanitatis (history and languages, literature, poetics and ethics) was part of the more comprehensive studies at the ‘lower’ faculty of the liberal arts. The task here was to ensure that students would come to possess a certain basic general education which prepared them for their further studies. In continuation of this role, artes liberales, which was the general term for the studies at this lower faculty, were, in the Middle Ages, still known as ancillae theologicae and could thereby be understood as servants for theology, which was, in the end, the highest-ranking branch of science among the ‘upper’ faculties.5 The study and education of human proficiencies thus formed a subordinate part of a well-established hierarchy that provided meaning and (use)value as a means to something else and as a part of a higher, unified purpose.6 Overall, the aim was to communicate established knowledge and skils7 that enabled the students to occupy an office in a responsible fashion, granted that they had appropriated a fundamentally scholastic  Cf. Rüegg (2011): ‘Themes’, p. 10.  Cf. Rüegg (2004): ‘Themes’, p. 3. 4  Cf. Rüegg (2004): ‘Themes’, p. 3. 5  Rüegg (2004): ‘Theology and the Arts’, p. 393. 6  Schmidt-Biggeman (2003): ‘New Structures of Knowledge’. 7  Kjørup (1996): Menneskevidenskaberne, pp. 32–33. 2 3

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familiarity with the universe in which they were to operate. In this context, the study of the merely human relations gained meaning and value as a means to other higher and, in the last instance, transcendent purposes (Illustration 3.1).8 3.2.1   The Reorganization of the University At the end of the 1700s, in a situation where the university was contested by critique from the outside and threatened by critique from the inside, this organization of knowledge and the position of studia humanitatis changed fundamentally in a relatively short amount of time. A number of central writings on university policy by major thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Heinrich Steffens, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm von Humboldt seek to reconsider, reformulate and resubstantialize the main justification of the university and the humanities.9 When Humboldt succeeds in obtaining acceptance of the first modern university in Berlin in 1809–1810, he stipulates, in his organizational plan, that the university is not to be founded on and organized in relation to external purposes but rather ‘on the pure idea of science itself’, dealt with as ‘an as of yet not fully solved or answered problem [ein noch nicht aufgelöstes Problem]’.10

8  Schmidt-Biggeman (2003): ‘New Structures of Knowledge’, p. 489. Even though theology naturally plays a leading role at the university of the Middle Ages (Schmidt-Biggeman (2003): ‘New Structures of Knowledge’, pp.  500–09), there is a tendency during the 200 years leading up to the radical change around 1800 for law to gain importance and begin to provide its own independent response for a definition of the higher purposes with the development of the discussions of natural law, theory of sovereignty and, finally, with the study of human rights (pp. 509–17). 9  Among the central writings are: Kant (1798/1978): Der Streit der Fakultäten in drei Abschnitten (The Conflict of the Faculties). Schelling (1802–03/1956): Studium generale: Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums (Studium Generale: Lectures on the Method of Academic Studies). Steffens (1809/1956): Vorlesungen über die Idee der Universitäten (Lectures on the Idea of the University). Fichte (1807–17/1956): Deduzierter Plan einer zu Berlin zu errichtenden höheren Lehranstalt (Deduced Plan for an Institution of Higher Education to be Established in Berlin). Schleiermacher (1808/1956): Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn (Occasional Thoughts on the Universities in a German Sense). Humboldt (1810/1956): Über die innere und äussere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten in Berlin (On the Inner and Outer Organisation of the Higher Scientific Institutions in Berlin). 10  Humboldt (1810/2010): ‘Entlassungsgesuch (Request to be dismissed)’, pp. 255–56.

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Illustration 3.1  The university of the Middle Ages. In artes liberales (marked in red), human skills are taught as propaedeutic or as a pre-schooling to the education in the subsequently lucrative subjects and professions: medicine, law and theology. As such, studia humanitatis played a fundamental but still minor role as a means to other, higher ends. This kind of organization of the relationship between the forms of knowledge at the different faculties can be found from the thirteenth century up until the end of the eighteenth century. (Drawing by Sigrún Gudbrandsdóttir)

3.2.2   The Faculty of Philosophy as an Independent Centre of the University With this refoundation, the previously existing ranks between the faculties are turned around since the lowest arts faculty, from then on known as the philosophical faculty, now takes on an extremely central role. In his text Der Streit der Fakultäten (The Conflict of the Faculties) from 1798, Kant sought to conceive the university as the central, gathering educational institution (universitas litterarum). Here, the upper faculties adopt their position according to their overall, immediate interest to or usefulness for

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the state.11 If one considers the university purely in terms of utility, however, this results in it being divided in a series of separated, specialized educations, and if the university is reduced to purely utilitarian purposes, it ceases to be a unified whole or a university as such, according to Kant (Illustration 3.2). The philosophical faculty can exert a unifying influence on the higher faculties and on the university as a whole. This is possible precisely due to its greater distancing to the question of use-value in relation to the surrounding society and to the commands of the state and its corresponding offices. The independent ‘faculty of philosophy (philosophische Fakultät)’ can become the centre of the modern university since it ‘is only concerned with the kind of doctrine that is not to be adopted as a guideline ordered by a higher authority’.12 In continuation thereof, the faculty of philosophy may interfere with the general education since, to the general advantage of the sciences, it makes every aspect of human knowledge ‘into an object of trial and critique for the sciences’.13 Setting out from the faculty of philosophy, the university institutionalizes critical human reason and independent scientific knowledge. The previously subordinate faculty is thereby liberated from its former role as a servant and begins to assume a superior role in so far as it incarnates an ideal which the other faculties must live up to.14 In so far as the university institutionalizes a form of science that continuously subsumes itself to critical scrutiny, it may be said to rest on an idea; and this idea and this spirit is most explicitly accentuated at the faculty of philosophy. Since the faculty of philosophy is granted such a central role in the organization of knowledge and the institutions of knowledge, what is human comes to occupy a central, albeit often unpronounced, role.

11  Kant (1798/1978): Der Streit der Fakultäten in drei Abschnitten (The Conflict of the Faculties), pp. 280–81. 12  Kant (1798/1978): Der Streit der Fakultäten in drei Abschnitten (The Conflict of the Faculties), pp. 289–90. 13  Kant (1798/1978): Der Streit der Fakultäten in drei Abschnitten, p. 291. 14  The reorganisation therefore also implies the declaration of independence of studia humanitatis. The study of human affairs hereby begins to appear as having its proper purpose detached from the studia divinitatis, that is, from the studies of the divine affairs, such as these could occur under the auspices of theology; cf. Kjørup (1996): Menneskevidenskaberne.

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Illustration 3.2  The Humboldtian university. The human sciences are established as basic research. The previous hierarchy between the faculties is turned on its head in so far as the disciplines at the philosophy-humanities faculty are determined as the sciences that especially incarnate independent basic research. This independent research is now seen as an activity that constitutes the unifying element at the university. The specifically human abilities to sense, cognize, reason and pass judgement, which comprise a central and unifying prerequisite for the possibility of science, are placed centrally, examined and cultivated in the humanities at the faculty of philosophy. The human takes on an overarching, fundamental and unifying role for the university at the same time as the humanities are given their modern form as the sciences in which the human being seeks knowledge of itself. As human beings begin to play a crucial part, the humanities take on a crucial position for the university and its organization of knowledge. (Drawing by Sigrún Gudbrandsdóttir)

3.3   The Study of the Particularly and Emphatically Human as a Precondition for Science The humane, and more specifically the study and the development of the particularly and emphatically human (as incarnated in the humanities), becomes central and necessary in that the specifically and emphatically human constitutes a sometimes implicit and at other times explicitly

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pronounced condition for science more generally.15 Hence, ‘a cultivation of the human enlivened powers [Kultur der Gemütskräfte] through the prior knowledge known as humanities [durch diejenigen Vorkenntnisse, welche man humaniora nennt]’16 becomes an unavoidable and, in the first instance, central purpose in and of itself since the specifically human and the specifically human abilities to sense, cognize, reason and pass critical judgement seem to constitute a central and unifying prerequisite for the possibility of practising science at all. According to Schleiermacher, the university’s central task is to teach so that it sets ‘in motion the beginning of a process’ which leads to ‘the idea’ that ‘cognition [die Idee des Erkennens], the highest consciousness of reason [das höchste Bewußtsein der Vernunft] will be awoken as a guiding principle in Man [als ein leitendes Prinzip in dem Menschen aufwacht]’.17 In reality, all cognition that one finds at the university is therefore also, according to Humboldt, ‘reserved for what only the human being can find in and by itself; insight into the pure science’,18 wherefore all cognition, to a deeper contemplation, also bears witness to the human being and its limitations while concomitantly contributing to its development and perfection.19 3.3.1   The Role of the Human Sciences Despite the fact that the human sciences at a first glance may appear to be a surplus activity of limited and subordinate significance, they are  Foucault (1966): Les mots et les choses (The Order of Things), pp. 318–51.  Kant (1790/1978): Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of the Faculty of Judgment), p. 300. 17  Schleiermacher (1808/1956): Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn, pp. 238–39. 18  Humboldt (1809/2010): ‘Der königsberger und der litauische Schulplan (Curriculum for Königsberg and Lithuania)’, p. 191. 19  How the main areas of cognition all fundamentally stand in a close relationship to the human is emblematically expressed in a passage from Kant’s Logik (1800/1978). Here he notes that generally one operates with different fundamental questions: the question posed in knowledge, science, theory and metaphysics, namely, ‘what can I know?’; the question posed in moral and practical thought, namely, ‘what should I do?’ and, finally, the question posed in religion and in aesthetics, ‘what can I hope for?’ These are the questions Kant himself usually considers as the fundamental ones and which he seeks to answer in his three critiques respectively. In a deeper inquiry, according to Kant, these three fundamental questions, however, are related to one another as are they contribute to, are clarified through, fold up in and are related to [sich beziehen auf] a fourth and decisive fundamental question: ‘what is the human being?’ Thereby, it is possible to consider them all as fundamentally ‘belonging to’ ‘anthropology’ (Kant (1800/1978): Logik, p. 448). 15 16

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nonetheless ascribed a vital role in and to the organization of the modern university. The human and the development of the human plays the central role to the idea of the university, to the organization of the university in its modern form and to the modern organization of knowledge. The development of the human realm does not only amount to the central presupposition for having, acquiring and developing knowledge at all; it is also that same knowledge which must contribute to improving the conditions for its further development. With this prioritization, the human being clearly moves to the forefront not just in general terms but especially in relation to the university and its organization of knowledge. 3.3.2   The Human Subject Here, the human being is established as ‘the first and actual subject [dem ersten und genuinen Subjectum]’ or as the ‘foundational’ in the shape of a kind of presupposed ‘connecting middle [Bezugsmitte]’ to which all else is related and against which it must be measured.20 In so far as the human is insufficient in its current form, it is not thereby necessarily always the highest purpose or being, but it does point beyond itself towards values which it must pre-empt and realize. In order to do so, the human being must develop itself; in principle infinitely.21 In any case, the human now becomes the central place where such values, knowledge and orientation must manifest themselves and be produced if they are to have any binding status. In the organization of the modern university and the relation between the forms of knowledge established with it, a consistent anthropocentrism becomes manifest. Hereby, humanities are also implicitly assigned a central role as the study of the distinctively and emphatically human. What we understand by humanities today does not properly take its point of departure until the establishment of an organization of knowledge that is generally understood as anthropocentric, in so far as it places the mundane human being at the centre of the world, as a sometimes explicit but oftentimes implicit foundational presupposition. A particular and primary scientific area is established that distinguishes itself from other areas by virtue of its close connection to this centre, since the human being (as subject) is here  Heidegger (1935/1980): Holzwege (Off the Beaten Track), p. 81.  Heidegger (1947): Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit: Mit einem Brief über den ‘Humanismus (Plato’s Doctrine of Truth)’, p. 49. 20 21

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studying itself (as object).22 With this, humanities are ascribed a concomitantly central significance since one here studies ‘the more human things’ or the human ‘more-than’ which makes up the prerequisite for having knowledge at all.23 In the human sciences, one can examine and contribute to the development of the human more-than or its human nature, which is more than just nature because it, by its nature, distinguishes itself in its ability to relate to its own nature and change it. The human more-­ than distinguishes itself through the possibility of self-transgression, which causes the human to become equipped with a history and a culture whose character is both studied and further developed in the human sciences.

References Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1807–17/1956): ‘Deduzierter Plan einer zu Berlin zu errichtenden höheren Lehranstalt, die in gehöriger Verbindung mit einer Akademie der Wissenschaften stehe’. In Anrich, Ernst (ed.) (1956): Die Idee der deutschen Universität. Die fünf Grundschriften aus der Zeit ihrer Neubegründung durch klassischen Idealismus und romantischen Realismus. Darmstadt: Hermann Gentner Verlag, pp. 125–217. Foucault, Michel (1966): Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard. Heidegger, Martin (1935/1980): Holzwege. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann. Heidegger, Martin (1947/1976): Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit: Mit einem Brief über den ‘Humanismus’. Bern: Francke. Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1809/2010): ‘Der königsberger und der litauische Schulplan’. In Humboldt, Wilhelm von (2010): Werke in fünf Bänden. Band IV, edited by Andreas Flitner & Klaus Giel. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 168–95. Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1810/2010): ‘Über die innere und äußere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten in Berlin’. In Humboldt, Wilhelm von (2010): Werke in fünf Bänden. Band IV, edited by Andreas Flitner & Klaus Giel. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 255–266. Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1810/2010): ‘Entlassungsgesuch’. In Humboldt, Wilhelm von (2010): Werke in fünf Bänden. Band IV, edited by Andreas Flitner & Klaus Giel. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 247–254. Kant, Immanuel (1790/1978): Kritik der Urteilskraft.  In  Kant, Immanuel (1978): Werkausgabe, Band IX. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

 Foucault (1966): Les mots et les choses, pp. 318–51.  Kjørup (1996): Menneskevidenskaberne.

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Kant, Immanuel (1798/1978): Der Streit der Fakultäten in drei Abschnitten. In Kant, Immanuel (1978): Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik und Pädagogik. 1, Werkausgabe, Band XI. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 261–393. Kant, Immanuel (1800/1978): Logik. In Kant, Immanuel (1978): Werkausgabe, Band VI. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 417–582. Kjørup, Søren (1996): Menneskevidenskaberne: Problemer og traditioner i humanioras videnskabsteori. Frederiksberg: Roskilde Universitetsforlag. Rüegg, Walter (2004): ‘Themes’. In Rüegg, Walter (ed.) (2004): A History of the University in Europe: Universities in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945), volume III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–31. Rüegg, Walter (2004): ‘Theology and the Arts’. In Rüegg, Walter (ed.) (2004): A History of the University in Europe: Universities in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945), volume III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 393–458. Rüegg, Walter (2011): ‘Themes’. In Rüegg, Walter (ed.) (2011): A History of the University in Europe. Universities since 1945, volume IV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–30. Schelling, Friedrich W. J. v. (1902–03/1956): Studium generale: Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums. In Anrich, Ernst (ed.) (1956): Die Idee der deutschen Universität. Die fünf Grundschriften aus der Zeit ihrer Neubegründung durch klassischen Idealismus und romantischen Realismus. Darmstadt: Hermann Gentner Verlag, pp. 1–123. Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1808/1956): Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn. In Anrich, Ernst (ed.) (1956): Die Idee der deutschen Universität. Die fünf Grundschriften aus der Zeit ihrer Neubegründung durch klassischen Idealismus und romantischen Realismus. Darmstadt: Hermann Gentner Verlag, pp. 221–308. Schmidt-Biggeman, Wilhelm (2003): ‘New Structures of Knowledge’. In Rüegg, Walter (ed.) (2003): A History of the University in Europe: Universities in Early Modern Europe (1500–1800), volume II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 489–530. Steffens, Henrich (1809/1956): Vorlesungen über die Idee der Universitäten. Berlin’. In Anrich, Ernst (ed.) (1956): Die Idee der deutschen Universität. Die fünf Grundschriften aus der Zeit ihrer Neubegründung durch klassischen Idealismus und romantischen Realismus. Darmstadt: Hermann Gentner Verlag, pp. 309–374.

CHAPTER 4

The Division Between the Different Sciences on the Singularly and Emphatically Human and New Branches of Science

Abstract  The establishment of the Humboldtian university model and the decisive role allotted to the humanities within it permitted an ongoing formation of new specialized disciplines and subject areas which continually challenged the initial organization. During the nineteenth century, a number of new disciplines and faculties, such as the natural sciences, the life and health sciences, the social sciences, economics and the sciences of business economy and administration, began to establish themselves and assert their independence from the faculty of arts. Often originating in this faculty but also establishing alternative faculties, these disciplines began to offer all sorts of specific empirical and pragmatic forms of knowledge and know-how. In so far as they investigate human modes of being, these disciplines also offer empirical and pragmatic knowledge that add to and may begin to compete with the understanding of the human provided by the traditional humanities. This development establishes not only a new, clear-cut distinction between letters and science, but also the conception of the humanities as a distinct activity in the shape of ‘Geisteswissenschaft’. The separation between forms of knowledge that concern themselves with nature and culture leads not only to subsequent interaction, but also to competition, clashes and science wars. If the humanities are to assert themselves in this context, they can hardly remain self-centred but are forced to study and interact with the ‘new-fangled’ important corpora of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 S. Raffnsøe, A History of the Humanities in the Modern University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46533-8_4

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knowledge. Measuring up to the challenge constituted by competing knowledge has remained a task ever since. Keywords  Natural history • Natural philosophy • Moral science, biology • Health sciences • Technical sciences • Social science • Science of business economics • Letters & sciences • Geisteswissenschaft • Aristotle • Balzac • Buffon • Boissier • Bonald • Broussais • Chandler • Collini • Comte • Diderot • Dilthey • Hume • Kant • Mill • Nussbaum • Snow

4.1   An Overview of the Development of Knowledge Organization from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to the Mid-Twentieth Century The fact that the human being, via the humanities, investigates the uniquely human and human-made in its development is accentuated further at a later stage. This happens by virtue of the fact that other forms of knowledge from the beginning of the nineteenth century are separated out from and mark a difference to those studies of the particularly human that take place in the humanities. In continuation of this separation, a conception arises of the particularly human as a specific or special area that can be studied in or by itself. This conception of the particularly and specifically human as a field separated or isolated from the rest of the world constitutes a novelty that is foreign to the founding fathers of the Humboldtian university. Ever since the universitas litterarum was re-established at the beginning of the nineteenth century, due to the unification of the university in and through independent research in its modern form, and the ascription of the decisive task of incarnating this central role to the sciences of the human at the faculty of philosophy, this re-establishment has thus been continuously challenged. Continuous and strong antagonistic tendencies have pulled in the opposite direction and established a tension and an indeterminate stride in relation to this initial unification. The centripetal striving to establish a unification around ‘the liberal arts’ and the cultivation of the human has been challenged by an at least equally strong antagonistic centrifugal movement.

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With this centrifugal challenge to the former centre, a first step is taken towards a repositioning of the human. Later, alongside subsequent developments, this facilitates a possible turn towards the human in a new way.

4.2  The Faculty of Philosophy as a Hotbed for the Development of New Kinds of Professional, Specialized and Useful Knowledge in Demand A decisive reason why the Humboldtian university model not only is founded but also increases and expands throughout the entire modern world as the most prominent institutional locus for the production of knowledge1 is the increasing demand for precise knowledge that can ground decisions, and for professionals that are capable of functioning as well-educated administrators, technicians and teachers in a world undergoing development.2 A more differentiated system of employment requires a higher and more differentiated scientific education to a wider range of academic positions. In extension of this, the university institutions not only increase radically in size but are, at the same time, influenced by a growing differentiation of new and specialized scientific disciplines or subject areas, especially those with a point of departure in the faculty of philosophy. While the faculties of theology and law had previously been the leading ones, the faculty of philosophy now takes up that position3 and becomes an area of innovation within which ‘the modern structures of knowledge ‘first and foremost’ ‘were to be built up’.4 While professional research autonomy is maintained through specialization, the previously mentioned demand of utility is likewise met. The development in the 1800s is marked by a professionalization of knowledge through specialization based on the ­conception that systematic professional research presupposes a specific and intense focus on the different areas and levels of reality.5

1  Wallerstein et al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences, p. 6. 2  Høyrup (1997): From Hesiod to Saussure, from Hippocrates to Jevons: An Introduction to the History of Scientific Thought, p. 609. 3  Schmidt-Biggeman (2003): ‘New Structures of Knowledge’, pp. 527–30. 4  Wallerstein et al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences, p. 7. 5  Wallerstein et al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences, p. 7.

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The attempt to live up to specialized applicability and the appearance of new kinds of professionalism involve, in the long run, a division within the faculties and their reorganization. This development is particularly relevant to the faculty of philosophy, which, throughout the following 200 years, becomes a hotbed for the formation of new types of knowledge and professionalism.

4.3  The Declaration of Independence of Natural Philosophy and Natural History A first decisive change is effected when natural philosophy and natural history gradually become emancipated from philosophy to such an extent that they finally leave the faculty of philosophy around the middle of the nineteenth century. As natural philosophy merges with mathematics, experimental physics and chemistry, which already before 1800 had developed from assisting sciences to fundamental research outside of the traditional university,6 the natural sciences begin to constitute themselves institutionally as markedly independent disciplines and primary research areas.7 In continuation of this difference becoming more pronounced, the significance of the term ‘science’ is narrowed down during that same period of time. Coined in analogy with the already existing ‘artist’,8 the term ‘scientist’, which finds its first serious expression in a work from 1840, is no longer intended to simply refer to any kind of generic scientist but more specifically to determine a ‘mathematician, physicist, or naturalist’9 and thereby a researcher within the natural sciences who excels as a ‘cultivator of science’ to such an extent that he, on that count alone, distinguishes himself from devotees of other disciplinary areas.10

6  Concerning mathematics and chemistry, this is also the case in their relation to the faculties of philosophy and medicine respectively, see Bockstaele (2004): ‘The Mathematical and the Exact Sciences’. 7  Bockstaele (2004): ‘The Mathematical and the Exact Sciences’. 8  Holmes (2011): The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science. 9  Whewell (2001): The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences 1, p. cxii. 10  See also Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966), p. 797 – ‘science’, and Holmes (2011): The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science.

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Until then, it had been possible to consider the study of human affairs in continuation of the efforts to examine the natural world to such a degree that it seemed artificial to distinguish sharply between the two activities, which did not immediately have a professional orientation and were, as such, in the first instance useless.11 Since they seemed to be but elements of a collective project, it had, for example, not even been deemed expedient in the central manifesto of the Enlightenment, The French Encyclopedia (1751–1778), to organize the exposition of existing knowledge according to a division between a science of nature and a human science. Such a division only begins to assert itself as a central and unsurmountable cleft with subsequent developments.12

4.4  The Rise of Biology and the Health Sciences Alongside the aforementioned forms of natural sciences, biology arises in the beginning of the 1800s, and over time an expansive bio-scientific area in a wider sense arises in which one is concerned with different forms of life13 and, thereby, also with health.14 Whereas the predecessor of biology, natural history, had established knowledge concerning nature through a classification that divided its immediate similarities into the identities and differences of the various species, as was the case in Carl von Linné’s taxonomic systems,15 the emergent science of biology was constituted as it adopted a different approach to nature. Biology began to examine how the apparent forms or characteristics among living beings relate to their internal hierarchical organization and the function of the individual parts within that being. In extension, the independence of each organ was increasingly annulled and their form perceived as the result of the overall functions that define living organisms, such as breathing, digestion, circulation and movement.16 Ultimately, these functions were seen to suggest an antecedent dynamic principle  Collini (1993): ‘Introduction’, pp. vii-lxxiii.  Collini (1993): ‘Introduction’, pp. vii-lxxiii. Diderot and D’Alembert (eds.) (1751–1778/2008): L’encyclopédie de Diderot et D’Alembert ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers. La première encyclopédie française. 13  Rose (2007): Politics of Life Itself, pp. 41–42. Canguilhem (1943/1966/1972/1992): Le normal et le pathologique. Leikola (2004): ‘Biology and the Earth Sciences’. 14  Canguilhem (1943/1966/1972/1992). Le normal et le pathologique. 15  Foucault (1966): Les mots et les choses, pp. 137–176. 16  Foucault (1966): Les mots et les choses, pp. 238–245, 275–293. 11 12

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which applied to all living beings. This transcendental and inscrutable being, which is expressed everywhere but without ever appearing in its pure form, was life itself. In biology, life appeared as an ongoing, common dynamics of difference, which formed the basis for every living being and its functioning, be it human or non-human. This very feature ensured the exchange between beings in nature through creation and demise. With the emergence of biology, a new science on living beings studying a new non-representative and yet uniting dynamic with its own regularities was constituted. In prolongation of this shift, the science of biology could also begin to map the inherent developmental or dynamic of life in a way that came to a heightened expression with Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, published in 1859.17 In this process, medicine as the science and practice of caring for human patients is reformulated as a field that still has its relatively independent areas in relation to the determination of illnesses and cures but now finds itself under the sway of an increasing and decisive influence of disciplines such as biology, chemistry and physics.18 This involves a disruption of the medical field’s previous focus on a classification of illnesses (nosology)19 in which it was sought to establish the nature of the disease and its consequences; to a large extent still with a point of departure in the obviously differentiating and identifying signs described by the patient in conversation with the doctor.20 Contrary to this, medicine increasingly becomes a physiology of the human being21 and a pathology that reveals and treats sufferings and dysfunctions of life processes that may be objectively ­established.22 From this time onwards, then, traces of central importance  Darwin (1859/2008): On the Origin of Species.  Bynum (1994): Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century. 19   Examples of such nosological approaches are: Boissier de Sauvages de Lacroix (1771/2015): Nosologie methodique, dans laquelle les maladies sont rangées par classe suivant le systême de Sydenham, & l’ordre des botanistes, and Cullen (1777–84/2015): First Lines of the Practice of Physic. 20  Foucault (1963): Naissance de la clinique: Une archéologie du regard médical. Raffnsøe (2013): ‘Pathology and Human Existence’. 21  In 1833 and 1937–40, Professor Johannes Müller published the monumental Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen in two volumes which contributed to make Berlin a European centre in the discipline (Leikola (2004): ‘Biology and the earth sciences’, p. 523–524). 22  Prominent examples of this kind of turn towards a pathology are: Broussais (1821/2015): Examen des doctrines médicales et des systèmes de nosologie; Bernard (1865/1966): Introduction à l’étude de la médicine experimentale; Virchow (1871): Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebelehre. 17 18

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are laid out to establish the sciences of life and health in new forms, distancing themselves decisively from natural history and nosology and permitting a detailed investigation and large-scale mapping of human life forms as forms of existence and ways of life that express themselves as dynamic states of health reasserting themselves to cope with the challenges presented by the environment but also constantly marked by morbidity, dissolution and the possibility of death. In so far as the forms of sciences of life and health developed here still exert a decisive influence, they are fraught with consequences for how human beings approach and relate to their own existence.23

4.5  The Expansion and Inclusion of the Technical Sciences At the threshold to the nineteenth century, technical subjects and applied sciences were generally regarded as fields of human activity that were largely inappropriate for institutions of higher learning such as universities. When the Bauakademie was established in Prussian Berlin in 1799 as part of the general reorganization of the educational system, which culminated in the establishment of the University of Berlin in 1810, this academy was quite distinct from the university in style and level. Whereas the instruction offered by the technical institute was first and foremost applied, professional and technical in character, the instruction of the university was devoted to cultivating basic science; and while the Bauakademie was conceived as independent of the system of university institutions, it also ranked clearly below them.24 Equally, the middle-level technical and applied schools that were opened under the name of Gewerbeschulen in the German lands in the 1820 and 1830, in the wake of the establishment of a Gewerbeinstitute in Berlin in 1921, were still unequivocally vocational. Administered by the ministries of commerce, their explicit aim was to train technical personnel for industry and to foster economic development.25 23  See also Raffnsøe (2013): ‘Pathology and Human Existence’ for an exposition of how the new conception of sickness in medicine is tied to a notion of health as the ability to overcome and reassert existence in a new form when confronted with challenges but also to the notion of a morbid human existence that finds its particular expression in relating to and mirroring its own decomposition and death as ever-present challenges. 24  Guagnini (2004): ‘Technology’, p. 603. 25  Guagnini (2004): ‘Technology’, p. 608.

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While most of the students attending Gewerbeschulen in the first half of the century ended up occupying positions in the public services, the number of students finding positions in the private sector began to grow from the 1840s.26 Already before the beginning of the nineteenth century, a number of technical academies teaching applied sciences at a relative high level, but equally located outside the university system, were in existence around Europe, especially within areas where strong state interests created a pressing need to train future civil servants knowledgeable within the field. In France, state run schools devoted to the training of higher-ranked military and civil officers had been in place under the supervision of the Ministry of War since the opening of the École in 1748, to be renamed as the École Royale du Génie Militaire in 1775. At the turn of the century, ‘schools for the preparation of technically trained military officers existed in most European countries’.27 Equally, mining schools had been founded in a number of countries in the later eighteenth century at a time where natural underground resources were generally regarded as the property of the state. In 1770, the Prussian government founded a Bergakademie in Berlin; and in France the Ministry of Public Works created a school devoted to the training of mining engineers under the name of École des Mines in 1783. Furthermore, schools had been founded for the training of recruits that could later be responsible for public works. While special courses were set up in Paris in 1748 for the training of employees of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées, these courses were later further institutionalized with the creation of the École des Ponts et Chausses, run under the auspices of the Ministry of Commerce.28 From the 1860s, however, the status of the schools devoted to these disciplines began to change decisively. While the level of competencies and general knowledge required for entry to the schools was heightened and the number of students rose to new heights, the content of their syllabuses changed to also include subjects, theoretical approaches, research areas, experimental methods and laboratory instruction as it was taught by the natural philosophers and the natural scientists at the universities. The transition took place particularly early and in an especially marked way in the German lands. Here, the Gewerbeschulen were muted to become  Guagnini (2004): ‘Technology’, p. 608.  Guagnini (2004): ‘Technology’, p. 597. 28  Guagnini (2004): ‘Technology’, p. 599. 26 27

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polytechnische Schulen in the 1860 only to be renamed technische Hochschulen and transferred from the Ministry of Commerce to the Ministry of Education during the late 1870s. Yet, since the expansion and transformation of technical education was perceived as a decisive contribution to Germany’s marked economic growth and military success in the same period by observers in the neighbouring countries, the development in Germany also led to the introduction of similar changes in the educational systems of a number of other European countries. From the last quarter of the century, the technical schools increasingly became diversified research institutions with the right to award academic degrees of the highest level closely affiliated with or part of the larger university system as it was re-established at the beginning of the nineteenth century.29

4.6  The Fostering of a Diversified Culture of Social Sciences The continuous centripetal emancipation of different disciplines from the faculty of philosophy in the 1800s is further accentuated by a slightly later, prominent separation. During the course of the century, a number of disciplinary areas are formed in relation to the faculty of philosophy that gain an increasingly independent character. Among these, particularly economy, economic history and history, sociology, political science, psychology and anthropology are formed during the nineteenth century. Especially in the latter half of the 19th and at the beginning of the twentieth century, they begin to differentiate themselves and take on more accentuated characteristic forms that distinguish them clearly from other adjoining research areas and disciplines.30 In the present survey of scientific development, only highlights of this complex differentiation of these new independent but interdependent forms of science can be provided. 4.6.1   Sociology and the Understanding of Social Human Conduct Already in 1838, Auguste Comte had coined the term ‘sociology’ to designate a new positive and empirical scientific discipline devoted to  Guagnini (2004): ‘Technology’, pp. 611–631.  Wallerstein (1999): The End of the World as We Know it: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century, p. 14. 29 30

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uncovering what Comte had earlier described as ‘la physique sociale’, or the laws of the social in their entirety. Stipulated to be the last of the sciences to come into being, but also to be the encompassing ruler of all previous sciences, sociology was intended to integrate their findings within its own new coherent whole.31 Under the Comtean heading of ‘sociology’, a scientific discipline devoted to the empirical practical study of human society broadly, and with the aim of establishing positive knowledge concerning human social relationships, human social interaction and social processes, developed and gained increasing importance in the latter half of the nineteenth century. According to one of its principal contributors, Emile Durkheim, the ‘main goal [principal objectif]’ of this new encompassing discipline was ‘to extend scientific rationalism’ to permit a positive understanding of ‘human conduct [la conduite humaine]’ in a very broad sense. Since the extension became possible through an empirical examination of positive human behaviour, ‘what has been called our positivism is but a consequence of this rationalism’.32

31  Still, Comte also aired the possibility that sociology might, at the end of the day, be relocated and incorporated within what might prove to be ‘the last gradation in the grand hierarchy of sciences’, ‘Anthropology’, as the true and final science of the human being. This happened when Comte, towards the end of his life in his Systéme de politique positive, tried to follow through a ‘path (voie)’ ‘finally’ opened by his ‘eminent predecessor, Gall’ but ‘which had been previously prepared by Cabanis and Leroy’. ‘Definitively combining [combinant irrévocablement] our positive knowledge [connaissance] of the soul [l’âme] with that of the body [corps]’, the theoretical approach opened by these physiologists would seem to ‘lead to [aboutir à]’ and make it possible to ‘ultimately systematize the true study of man (la véritable étude de l’homme)’. According to Comte, the implications or bearings [la portée]’ of this ‘scientific revolution [révolution scientifique]’ had hitherto ‘hardly been sufficiently understood by physicians or priests’ since it had been inappreciable until he himself, by founding sociology, ‘had finalized the encyclopedic preparation [la preparation encyclopédique] which the systematic arrival of anthropology in the true sense of the word [l’avénement systématique de la véritable anthropologie], for which one should also retain the sacred name of morals, required’. ‘Only when this final condition [condition finale] was effected’ and had led him ‘to construct a sound cerebral theory on subjective conditions’, ‘the seventh and last gradation in the grand hierarchy of abstract sciences could be characterized as distinctly as all the others’ (Comte (1852/1970): Système de politique positive ou Traité de sociologie. Deuxième volume, p. 437). 32  Durkheim (1894/1981): Les règles de la méthode sociologique, p. ix.

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4.6.2   The Constitution of an Independent Faculty of Social Sciences Over time, several of these new research areas or disciplines are further differentiated to such a degree that they begin to comprise what was later conceived of and characterized as ‘a third culture’.33 This expression highlights the result of a decisive turn that takes place when different kinds of positive social sciences increasingly liberate themselves to such an extent from the sciences at the faculty of philosophy that they end up leaving the faculty during the latter half of the nineteenth century to finally form and unite in an independent faculty of social science.34 During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the term Staatswissenchaften became broadly used by German speakers to designate and demarcate a coherent area of adjoining disciplines, among others economics and economic history, statistics and sociology, which were able to provide knowledge that could be valuable for the activity of building and governing the states and thus also be of service in the ongoing competition between the states.35 By the early twentieth century, the designation Sozialwissenschaften, or ‘social sciences’, replaced this term.36 The activities of the different fields at the emerging faculty of the social sciences distinguished themselves from both the philosophical and the natural science faculties and finally started to conjoin into a third, independent and primary area that situated itself between ‘literature and science’37 without being reducible to either. While these new forms of science are being constituted as they critically relate to artes liberales, they establish the social as their field of research and offer an alternative mapping out of the characteristics of modern society. In particular, the social sciences can be said to shed light on human behaviour in the modern society. Such a contribution becomes possible

33  Lepenies (1985): Die drei Kulturen: Soziologie zwischen Literatur und Wissenschaft. Plumb (1964): Crisis in the Humanities. Collini (1993): ‘Introduction’, pp. vii-lxxiii. 34  Wallerstein (1999): The End of the World as We Know it. 35  For the articulation of a prehistory leading up to this stage, cf. also Foucault (2009): Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978, pp. 101–110. Cf. equally Raffnsøe and Eliassen (2020): ‘The Appearance of an Interminable Natural History and its Ends: Foucault’s Lectures on The Birth of Biopolitics at the Collège de France 1979’, pp. 35–39. 36  Wallerstein et al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences, p. 18. 37  Lepenies (1992): Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology.

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through the establishment of ‘objective’ or ‘positive’ knowledge about reality38 based on empirical investigation as opposed to mere ‘speculation’.39 In the wake of the indicated differentiation and sedimentation of sociology, as well as the social sciences more broadly, a new kind of mutually challenging competitive relationship is fostered between the disciplines located at the faculty of the social sciences and the faculties of arts: What set of scientific disciplines are able to provide the most fitting description of human interaction and its shortcomings in the concurrently developing industrial society? And what set of scientific disciplines are capable of establishing and articulating the most fruitful understanding of human aspirations as they are emerging here? Is it preferable to turn to sociology and the social sciences as they seek to establish a rational and positive knowledge concerning the ‘structures and laws of motion’ of contemporary human society and exchange? Or should one turn to literature and the novel, to men of letters, literary science and the humanities broadly speaking, and their capacity to express the ‘poetry of the heart’?40 4.6.3   A Proliferation of New Scientific Cultures The notion of a third culture may be appropriate in so far as the disciplines in this primary area of social science mainly relate to, and mostly seem to situate themselves in, a non-specific place between the field of humanities and that of the natural sciences. In light of the differentiations described in this study, one might, however, also want to consider the characterization ‘a fourth scientific culture’ in so far as the field of the social sciences joins the three existing fields of the natural, human and bio sciences, the emancipation and constitution of which has been described above. One might even want to speak of the social sciences as ‘a fifth scientific culture’ added to the four previously established scientific cultures at the modern university; if one notes and includes the preceding expansion of the technical sciences. However, in an even longer historical perspective, it is possible to understand the emergence of the faculty of social science as yet another primary area that arises in continuation of an ongoing emergence of a number of independent primary areas of research. From this perspective, 38  Comte (1869/2005): Cours de philosophie positive. Durkheim (1894/1981): Les règles de la méthode sociologique. 39  Wallerstein et al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences, p. 13. 40  Lepenies (1992): Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology, pp. 13–15.

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it becomes clear how, in its becoming, the field of social science also situates itself and its positive knowledge in relation to an extensive line of formerly established disciplines whose history goes all the way back to the university of the Middle Ages. Consequently, the emerging ‘third’ culture of positive social science also forms an addition to time-honoured fields of knowledge such as theology and law, even as the emerging field of social science situates itself in relation to and affects medicine as knowledge and treatment of individual and social health.

4.7   A Decisive Addition to the Culture of the Social Sciences: The Constitution of Economics as an Independent and Self-dependent Scientific Field An important and irreducible contribution to the independent culture of the social sciences was made when, in the second half of the nineteenth century and most markedly from around 1870, the study of economy took a new, decisive scientific turn. This reorientation that formed a new beginning for economics was the result of an intentional break with the study of political economy in its previously familiar form. As a result of this scientific revolution staged by new paradigmatic contributions, the study of economy became constituted as an independent, specialized and professionalized scientific discipline with new specific criteria of scientificity specifying what could be taken into consideration as possible scientific contributions. Where classical political economy would seek to explain how prices for economic goods were determined by the costs of production and the amount of labour necessitated to produce the marketable commodities, the proponents of the new mainstream of economic discipline, subsequently known as neoclassical economics, would claim that one needed to examine the conditions of consumption of commodities. More specifically, the neoclassical economists adhering to the emerging school of ‘marginalists’ would claim that if one wished to explain how prices of economic goods were agreed on, one needed to recur to the marginal utility of the commodities, or the additional satisfaction that possible buyers and users would derive from acquiring yet another item of the goods. To the neoclassical and marginalist economists, there was no doubt that the detection of marginal utility and its decisive role for the determination of value formed a substantial analytic and methodological advance of

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wide-ranging importance for the constitution of economics as a scientific discipline in a more rigorous sense. According to the new approach, individuals would enter into an exchange of goods if and only if the marginal ratios of exchange were different; and the exchange would continue until the marginal ratios no longer differed. In this manner, the value of goods would, under the assumption of an absolutely free and unrestricted competition, tend to stabilize around and be determined in terms of a relative equilibrium established as an outcome of the process of exchange and consumption. Understood in terms of an equilibrium, the mechanism of the economy of exchange of scarce resources could thus not only be perceived as a moving towards a balance; the workings of this pure economy could also be understood and rendered in terms of an unending number of quantifiable and interrelated equations. With the neoclassical revolution, the science of economics that emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century and constituted itself as a new and independent scientific discipline came together in a new and remarkable way as a branch of science characterized by the feature that it studied the forms that human behaviour assumes when it deals with, relates to and makes decisions concerning the allocation of scarce means or resources. Concurrently, a new complex and antagonistic but also privileged relationship between the science of economics and politics emerged. Exposing the rationality and the irreducibility of economic exchange, neoclassical and marginalist economics would divulge a tightly knit and not easily penetrable network of interactions that politics would have to face since this interface formed a condition of possibility for political action that had a decisive effect on the impact of political initiatives. In so far as the emerging science of economics made the effort to point out that political initiatives would have to start with, face and enter into an overriding logic of economic transactions that emerged when human beings continuously made relatively short-sighted decisions concerning the optimal marginal use of their scarce resources, marginalist and neoclassical economics would argue for the prospective inefficacy and the impotence of political action, intention and intervention.

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4.7.1   From Political Economy to Economy as a Specialized and Professionalized Scientific Discipline As it had been practised at its most successful point a hundred years earlier by Adam Smith and subsequently by his partners in discussion Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo, classical political economy had been characterized by its deep embeddedness in and close ties to crucial contemporaneous matters of state and issues of economic policy.41 While this meant that its practitioners still formed part of and considered themselves as contributors to the same intellectual community as politicians, leaders of state, writers and journalists, it also implied that political economy had maintained a close affinity to political philosophy and the study of politics. In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, by contrast, the science of economy, or economics, along with a number of other scientific disciplines, became a professionalized and specialized trade, examining a specific field and characterized by its own developing specific criteria of scientificity. To an increasing extent, economy concurrently became a specialized discipline dominated by scholars who were mostly academics employed at the university and as a consequence able to devote themselves fully to examining this specific subject and respecting the standards of the emerging discipline. The decisive move towards a more specialized and professionalized science made itself felt in new patterns of publication. Increasingly, economic research now came to be published primarily as articles in specialized economic journals. While the Quarterly Journal of Economics was founded in 1886, The Economic Journal began publication in 1890 and the Journal of Political Economy in 1892. In the German world, new platforms for the publication of specialized academic contributions to the field of economics began to be established somewhat earlier. In 1844, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, which focused on economic issues and was consequently finally renamed Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics in 1987, was founded, while Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik was founded in 1863.42 As will soon become clear, however, the publication of agenda-setting monographs also continued. 41  Backhouse (2002): The Penguin History of Economics, p. 164. Cf. also the discussion on the status of political economy in Foucault (2004): Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France, 1978–1979, pp. 15–25/Foucault (2008): The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, pp. 13–21. 42  Backhouse (2002): The Penguin History of Economics, p. 166.

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Another indication that a specialized and professional scientific discipline was being established was a shift of concept or denomination. As a result of the transition, the so far preferred syntagma political economy, suggesting the study’s embeddedness in and relevance to a wider political context, was beginning to be displaced around 1900 by the simple designation economy or economics as the preferred denomination for a scientific discipline with its own specific field of investigation that had come to appear more independent, self-dependent and ‘pure’; even when economic analysis was applied in specific contexts.43 Concomitantly, ‘economics moved, or at least claimed to move, away from its origins in political philosophy’.44 Whereas an affinity to the philosophical faculty and its disciplines, among others philosophy and history, as well as a familiarity with shared fields of investigation and discussion still seemed self-evident for the study of political economy at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the nineteenth century, the emerging new and independent discipline of economics took great pains to dissociate itself from the faculty of arts and highlight an independence from its approaches and concerns towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the twentieth century. 4.7.2   A Scientific Revolution The establishment of a purified and specialized yet abstract and generalizable economic calculus and the professionalization of economic trade was closely related to a major revolution of economic science and thought. While a new community of professionalized experts was created,45 new exemplars for economic analysis were concomitantly elaborated and

43  ‘It was the French, apparently, who first made a practice of speaking of l’économie politique, and even they normally meant by it politics rather than economics until about 1750. By then a large body of writing had grown up on trade, money, national income and economic policy, and in the second half of the eighteenth century “political economy” at last acquired its familiar specialized sense, the science of the wealth of nations. The shorter “economics” is a late nineteenth-century innovation that did not capture the field until Marshall’s Principles of Economics in 1890’ (Finley (1979): The Ancient Economy, p.  21; italics in Finley’s text). 44  Backhouse (2002): The Penguin History of Economics, p. 167. 45  Fleck (1935/1980): Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache, pp. 146–165.

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presented.46 Not only did they distinguish themselves from and stand out with regard to the existing exemplars of political economy; alongside this, they concurred in presenting a new paradigm, or new patterns of methodology and approaches, for solving scientific problems47 that could be perceived as a scientific revolution.48 According to a number of the proponents of the new approach to economics, it was only after the scientific revolution had overthrown the old regime that economics crossed the threshold to scientificity and attained scientific status in the proper sense. This major transformation constituting economics as an independent, specialized and professional science with new criteria of scientificity was the outcome of the concerted yet unplanned actions of a number of scientists in the German lands, as well as in other leading European countries such as France and the United Kingdom. While contributors to the scientific upheaval were thus spread throughout Europe, it also came to include scientists living and working in the United States. An early indication of what was to come was provided when Hermann Heinrich Gossen published his Entwicklung der Gesetze des Menschlichen Verkehrs und der daraus fließenden Regeln für menschliches Handel (The Laws of Human Relations and the Rules of Human Action Derived Therefrom) in 1854.49 Despite the author’s assertion that his monograph made a contribution to the enlightenment of human interaction that was 46  ‘In its established usage, a paradigm is an accepted model or pattern. […] In grammar, for example, “amo, amas, amat” is a paradigm because it displays the pattern to be used in conjugating a large number of other Latin verbs […]’ (Kuhn (1962/2012): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 23). 47  ‘In a science, […] paradigms gain their status because they are more successful than their competitors in solving a few problems that the group of practitioners has come to regard as acute. To be more successful is not, however, to be either completely successful with a single problem or notably successful with any large number. The success of a paradigm – whether Aristotle’s analysis of motion, Ptolemy’s computations of planetary position, Lavoisier’s application of the balance, or Maxwell’s mathematization of the electromagnetic field – is at the start largely a promise of success discoverable in selected and still incomplete examples’ (Kuhn (1962/2012): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 24). 48  According to Thomas Kuhn, the modern scientific ‘Copernican Revolution’ formed the blueprint for a scientific revolution in so far at it was ‘a revolution in ideas, a transformation in man’s conception of the universe and of his own relation to it’ (Kuhn (1957/1987): The Copernican Revolution, p. 1). Something similar can be said concerning the later upheaval in economic thought described here. 49  Gossen (1854): Die Entwickelung der Gesetze des menschlichen Verkehrs, und der daraus fließenden Regeln für menschliches Handeln/Gossen (1983): The Laws of Human Relations and the Rules of Human Action Derived Therefrom.

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comparable to Newton’s and Copernicus’ clarification of the laws of nature, the book was nevertheless widely ignored; and Gossen finally withdrew it from the market shortly before his death in 1858.50 For these reasons, this precursor only subsequently and in retrospect came to serve as an exemplar or a paradigm presenting an ideal for subsequent research when the work was rediscovered after the publication of other agenda-­ setting works in the 1870s that attained paradigmatic status more swiftly.51 In 1871, the Austrian Carl Menger published his Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftlslehre, later translated into English under the title Principles of Economics52; and in the same year, the English scientist William Stanley Jevons brought out his The Theory of Political Economy.53 These works were followed by Leon Walras’ Éléments d’économie politique pure. Théorie de la richesse sociale (Elements of Pure Economics. Or the Theory of Social Wealth), published in revised editions in 1874–1877 and 1899.54 Finally, Alfred Marshall published the first edition of his most outstanding work Principles of Economics in 1890. Concomitantly, the new approach to economics also gathered devotees among economists at American universities with an educational background in Europe, as became evident with John Bates Clark’s monographs The Philosophy of Wealth, published in 1886, and The Distribution of Wealth, published in 1899.55 Even though major divergences were also notable between these works, together they nevertheless made a major contribution to economic science and succeeded in effecting a scientific revolution that established a new set  Estrup et al. (2004): Den økonomiske teoris historie – en introduktion, p. 65.  Gossen’s early, only belatedly recognized, work serves as a counterexample to the general rule that contributions to the emerging independent discipline of economics were published by professionalized and specialized scientists since its author worked in the Prussian Civil Service until he retired in 1847 to work on the book and sell insurance until his death. Cf. also Walras (1874/1926): Éléments d’économie pure, p. vii. 52  Backhouse (2002): The Penguin History of Economics, p. 166. 53  Like Gossen’s Entwicklung der Gesetze des Menschlichen Verkehrs, Jevons’ paper ‘Brief Account of a General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy’, published in 1862, foreshadowed analytical approaches and insights that were later to become crucial, but raised limited interest when it was presented. The impact of the latter paper, however, was enhanced decisively when it was included as Appendix III to Jevons’ monograph The Theory of Political Economy, pp. 303–314. 54  Walras (1874/1926): Éléments d’économie pure. Ou théorie de la richesse sociale. The monograph was published in consecutive editions revised by Walras. While the first edition was published in 1874 and 1877, the second, third and fourth came out in 1889, 1896 and 1900. The fifth and final edition was published in 1926. The English edition Walras (2014): Elements of Theoretical Economics. Or the Theory of Social Wealth follows the third edition. 55  Cf. ‘Chapter 9: The Rise of American Economics, 1870–1939’ in Backhouse (2002): The Penguin History of Economics, pp. 185–210. 50 51

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of basic principles for how scientists would come to perceive observations and develop and evaluate hypotheses and theories. Moreover, while a number of the crucial defining problems of the field of economics would be altered with this transition, it would likewise affect what would be taken into consideration as acceptable proposals for their solution.56 4.7.3   From Costs of Production and the Labour Theory of Value to Conditions of Consumption and Marginal Utility When seeking to understand or explain how prices for goods were determined and their values were assessed, classical economic theory would focus on the costs of production. In a market characterized by unimpeded competition and the absence of monopolies, the actual price of a commodity would tend to equal the cost of production; or it would approximate what would be termed its natural or real price. A more specific or precise analysis of economic price would consequently need to focus on distinctive elements that entered into the production process as costs and thus determined the price of the goods. According to the classical economists, a decisive determining element was the amount of labour, or the hours and the quality of work, that was necessary to produce a marketable commodity, including the labour necessary to develop any real capital used in the production. Not only did ‘the annual labour of every nation’, according to Adam Smith, form the ‘fund’ which originally supplied it ‘with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes’;57 the effective price of the commodity that the buyer would be willing to pay would be determined by the amount of labour and capital that he or she would be able to save by purchasing the article of trade.58 On the whole, the classical economists could thus be described as proponents of the labour theory of value.59  Kuhn (1962/2012): The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 1. 58  ‘Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command’ (Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 26). 59  ‘Labour alone […] is the ultimate and real standard by which the value of all commodities can at all times and places be estimated and compared’ (Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 29). 56 57

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By contrast, the proponents of the new mainstream of the economic discipline, subsequently known as neoclassical economics,60 would claim that their predecessors had got hold of the wrong end of the stick when they developed a theory of value claiming that one did not need to examine value ‘in the terms of what seemed to be the objective conditions of production that would be established in a competitive environment. Instead, they would argue that a more precise calculus of economic value could only be developed if one was willing to examine the “subjective conditions of consumption” under perfectly competitive conditions.’61 To prove their point, neoclassical economists such as Jevons and Walras returned to a well-known paradoxical water-diamond example concerning the relationship between value in use and value in exchange that had been presented by Adam Smith in his classical monograph The Wealth of Nations. Frequently, it was the case that things that have the greatest value in use have little or no value in exchange. On the contrary, things that have the greatest value in exchange often have little or no value in use. Whereas water is most useful, its value in exchange is usually very low or close to non-existent. By contrast, a diamond that has very little use value can usually be exchanged for a large amount of other goods.62 Smith had offered the example to discredit the natural assumption that exchange value and the price of goods could depend on value in use and thus to argue for his alternative theory that the value of commodities must instead depend on the costs of production. By contrast, the new generation of neoclassical economists claimed that Smith had only managed to discard utility as relevant to the determination of exchangeable value and turn to what his followers would later term ‘the difficulty or facility of production’63 for the explanation because he had failed to distinguish total utility from marginal utility and thus conflated two radically different kinds of utility.

60  The term is commonly assumed to have been introduced by Thorstein Veblen. Cf. Veblen (1899): ‘The Preconceptions of Economic Science’. Cf. also Lawson (2013): ‘What is this “school” called neoclassical economics?’ 61  Milgate and Stimson (2009): After Adam Smith. A Century of Transformation in Politics and Political Economy, p. 264; italics in original text. 62  Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 25. 63  Ricardo (1817/1977): On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, p. 377.

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For the economists adhering to the emerging school of ‘marginalists’,64 Smith’s apparent paradox that diamonds with little use value were expensive while water with a high value of use was cheap would dissolve as soon as one were able to clarify the notion of use and distinguish between the satisfaction that the purchase of a given commodity provides the buyer with, on the one hand, and the additional satisfaction that the buyer would derive from yet another item of the good, on the other hand. If the buyer is very thirsty, he or she will derive much pleasure from acquiring and consuming a glass of water; but when the thirst is quenched, the pleasure and satisfaction from obtaining and drinking yet another glass of water is more limited. Consequently, the preparedness to pay a high price for water will diminish as needs are met. When discussing the satisfaction of needs and wants, advantage and use, it is therefore essential to be able to distinguish between utility, period, and marginal utility; and in order to explain the market value or price of a given commodity, say diamonds or water, the school of marginalists claimed that only the notion of marginal utility was of relevance. 4.7.4   Marginal Utility as a Decisive and Irreducible Analytical and Methodological Advance for Economy According to Jevons To the neoclassical economists, there was no doubt that the detection of marginal utility and its decisive role for market value formed a substantial analytic and methodological advance of wide-ranging importance for economic science. They argued that the application of the notion of marginal utility to the understanding of market exchange would render obsolete all the problems in the theory of value that had occupied the classical economists. While upholding that it was ‘impossible to have a correct idea of the science of Economics without a perfect comprehension of the Theory of Exchange’, Jevons, in The Theory of Political Economy, for example, consequently equally maintained that he ‘found it both possible and desirable to 64  For a more nuanced picture of the complex relationship between the contributors to the school of marginalism situated in different parts of Europe than can be provided in this overview, please confer: Groenewegen (2007): ‘English marginalism: Jevons, Marshall and Pigou’; Horwitz (2007): ‘The Austrian Marginalists: Menger, Böhm-Bauwerk, and Wieser; Walker (2007): ‘Early General Equilibrium Economics: Walras, Pareto, and Cassel’. Inter alia, contributors and adherents to the new neoclassical paradigm differed with regard to the role attributed to history and mathematics in economics.

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consider this subject before introducing any notions concerning labour or the production of commodities’.65 When developing his theory of exchange, Jevons did not content himself with declaring in general that ‘a true theory of economy’ could ‘only be attained by going back to the great springs of human action—the feelings of pleasure and pain’,66 and thus to the resultant human individual enterprise in general to maximize pleasure and utility in proportion to pain and distaste by acquiring ‘useful objects or utilities by which pleasurable feeling is increased or pain removed’; rather, Jevons also made sure to highlight that that this kind of explanation was only possible on the condition that one made sure to understand and analyse the amount of pleasure and utility in terms of what he termed the ‘coefficient of utility’, understood as ‘the ratio’, or the quantitative relation ‘between the last increment or infinitely small supply of the object, and the increment of pleasure which it occasions’.67 The specific determination of this ratio ‘peculiar to each kind of object, and more or less to each individual’ would enable the deduction of the range of the market exchange, as well as the extent of the willingness to engage in labour to produce the commodity and bring it to the market from the general ‘laws of utility’. The determination of marginal utility, or the benefit a buyer received from the last unit consumed, would override the consideration of the costs of production that the classical political economists deemed were essential for the correct calculation of price.68 According to Jevons’ theory of exchange, two individuals will enter into an exchange of two kinds of goods if and only if the marginal ratios of exchange are different’69; and the exchange will continue until the  Jevons (1871/1911): The Theory of Political Economy, pp. 75–76.  Jevons (1871/1911): The Theory of Political Economy, p. 304; italics in citation. 67  Jevons (1871/1911): The Theory of Political Economy, pp. 305–306. 68  The marginalists also claimed that the general laws of marginal utility would apply to the productive sphere in so far as Jevons claimed that ‘labour will be exerted both in intensity and duration until a further increment will be more painful than the increment of produce thereby obtained is pleasurable. Here labour will stop, but up to this point it will always be accompanied by an excess of pleasure’ (Jevons (1871/1911): The Theory of Political Economy, p. 307). 69  ‘If a person has any useful object, but an object belonging to another person would have greater utility, he will be glad to give the one in return for the other. But it is a necessary condition that the other person will likewise gain, or at least not lose by the exchange. Whether the exchange will take place or not can only be ascertained by estimating the utility of the objects on either side, which is done by integrating the appropriate functions of utility up to the quantity of each object as limits. A balance of utility on both sides will lead to an exchange’ (Jevons (1871/1911): Theory of Political Economy, p. 308). 65 66

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marginal ratio is the same for both kinds of goods. If, for example, the coefficient of utility of oranges for one individual is three times as large as the ratio of utility for bananas, whereas it is only two times as large for another individual, both will be interested in making an exchange; and they will be motivated to continue to exchange for as long as there is a difference between the two ratios. In the course of the exchange, the value of each good is bound to change for each of the participants as they satisfy their needs; and the exchange will stop when the coefficient of utility, or the satisfaction that they receive is equal for both involved parties. At this point the ratio or proportion of exchange will be determined in terms of marginal utility as a relative price for the two goods. According to the marginalist approach, exchange was thus essentially to be explained as a process of reallocation of privately owned scarce commodities according to the wants of the individuals at an established technical level of production.70 4.7.5   The Generalization of the Neoclassical Approach to Economics: Market Equilibrium According to Walras Whereas Jevons can thus in this manner be regarded as aiming to elucidate marginal utility and consequently exchange value in terms of a relative equilibrium between two kinds of goods established in the swap between two participants, Walras can be said generalize this kind of explanation. The Franco-Swiss economist took this account to the next level as he extended the range of the concept of equilibrium beyond its application to a simple mutual exchange of a given commodity and suggested that the model might cover multiple related exchanges and shed light on the price mechanism at work here. In his Élements d’économie politique pure, Walras started out by claiming that the ‘rareté’ or scarcity of a given commodity for a consumer would depend upon the quantity of the commodity possessed by the him or her and the related marginal utility of the commodity.71 This starting point would permit Walras to specify how the different quantities of commodities possessed and the related different intensities of the last want satisfied by the commodities would motivate consumers to enter into a two-­ commodity exchange. This exchange would continue until an equilibrium was established when the participants ended up with the quantities of the 70  Milgate and Stimson (2009): After Adam Smith. A Century of Transformation in Politics and Political Economy, p. 265. 71  Walras (1874/1926): Éléments d’économie pure.

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two commodities they favoured, given the comparative price of the two commodities. Having established this basis, Walras would then move on to indicate how prices for many different kinds of commodities are established in a large number of complex and interrelated markets involving multiple participants simultaneously in terms of an infinite number of interrelated equilibria established according to the model already developed in order to emulate the case of a two-commodity exchange. The pattern of exchanges could also be generally represented in terms of intersecting demand and supply curves. When prices increased, demand would tend to fall, and supply would tend to rise, in response to the increase in price. When prices decreased, demand would tend to rise, and supply would tend to fall. When demand and supply equalled one another, the market would be in equilibrium. Even though the market, understood as an infinite set of interrelated exchanges, may start out with an arbitrary set of prices, the economy would, according to Walras, under the assumption of an absolutely free and unrestricted competition, tend to concur and stabilize around an equilibrium, in general as well as in individual cases. If the demand for a commodity exceeded the supply, the price would tend to rise; and this would in turn motivate market participants to make an effort to bring more goods of the same kind to the market. If supply of a commodity exceeded the demand, the price of the commodity would tend to fall; and this would in turn minimize the production of the good and the motivation to bring it to the market. In and through a process of ‘tâtonnement’, the market modelled as a pure and undisturbed economy would, in this manner, through trial and error enacted by its participants, ‘grope’, ‘fumble’ and ‘feel’ its way forward towards and tend to settle around an equilibrium or a mediating, relatively stable state of normalcy.72 In accordance with Walras’ perception of the equilibrium, the mechanism of the pure economy could thus not only be perceived as a ‘groping’ towards a balance through trial and error; the workings of this pure 72  To Walras, ‘the pure and perfect political economy [l’économie politique pure]’ that he aimed at establishing in his monograph was essentially to be understood as the theory of how prices are established or determined [‘la théorie de determination des prix’], but under the hypothetical assumption that a system of absolutely free competition existed [‘sous un regime hypothétique de libre concurrence absolue’] (Walras (1874/1926): Éléments d’économie pure, p. xi). Whereas Walras considered his pure economy to be an idealized model, he nevertheless regarded it as an abstract interpretation or modelling of the real existing economy.

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economy could also be understood and rendered in terms of an unending number of quantifiable interrelated equations; and Walras was confident that economics would reach the same solution as the real-world economy’s experimentation to the extent that economists were able to solve the simultaneous mathematical equations.73 In general, Walras understood pure economic theory as essentially ‘the theory of the determination of prices in a hypothetical regime of perfectly free competition’. This theory of the determination of prices concerned ‘the ensemble of all things, material or immaterial, on which a price can be said because they are scarce [rares], that is to say, are both useful [utile] and limited in quantity [limité en quantité]’. Since the ensemble of resources on which a price can be set because they are limited in quantity and useful is also what constitutes social wealth [richesses sociales], Walras also characterizes his pure economic theory as a theory of social wealth or a theory of the value of social possessions.74 4.7.6   A Major Turning Point As described above, the scientific revolution drew an outline of a new professionalized and specialized economic science possessing its own specific criteria of rationality. On closer inspection, however, not only the character of the science, its facts and findings, but also its mode and power of explanation were transformed as a result of the conversion. Concurrently, the relationship of the science of economics to its environments was decisively altered, as was the way in which economics and the economy would come to exert an influence on its surroundings. Also inspired by and seeking to emulate the conspicuous success of the new independent natural sciences, the biology and health sciences, as well as that of the technical and other social sciences, that were emerging during the nineteenth century, economics in its new purified state was, according to a number of crucial contributors, now characterized by the fact that the expert knowledge it produced was to be built upon quantitative or quantifiable evidence rather than qualia. Relationships between these  Walras (1874/1926): Éléments d’économie pure.  Walras (1874/1926): Éléments d’économie pure, p. xi, italicized by Walras. Since goods would in and through the process of exchange be distributed in society, the theory of price and the theory of distribution could according to Walras be said to form two sides of the same coin. 73 74

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quantitative data were preferably to be made demonstrable through mathematical modelling. They could and should, to the widest extent possible, be expressed in the form of formalizable and mathematical ratios or correlations between variables. With this transition, economics thus aimed to become a pure, independent and formalized science that took recourse to and was based on mathematical abstraction and formal relations to a degree previously unheard of. The driving ambition and the challenging difficulty of ‘reducing the main problem’ of the theory of economy ‘to a mathematical form’ was already outlined by Jevons as early as 1862 when he read the paper ‘A Brief Account of a General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy’ at a section meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Cambridge in the same year.75 In so far as it was concerned with quantities, economy had, according to Jevons, ‘always of necessity been mathematical in it subject’. Nevertheless, ‘the strict and general statement, and the easy comprehension of its quantitative laws’ had hitherto ‘been prevented by a neglect of those powerful methods of expression’ which had been applied to most other sciences with so much success’.76 As Jevons also made sure to stress in the paper, however, the fact that economy was on the road to becoming mathematical in form did not necessarily imply that economy would become ‘a matter of rigorous calculation’. Though economy’s ‘mathematical principles’ might become ‘formal and certain’, its ‘individual data’ might ‘remain as inexact as ever’.77 The lack of exactitude concerning individual data and the resulting inaccuracy with regard to calculation was due to the fact that the neoclassicist paradigm, within its abstract and formalized model of perfect competition, took the individual agent and its endeavour to make the most of its own limited resources through the deliberation of and comparison between alternative ways of proceeding as both a starting and an end point. Within neoclassical analytics, the individual agents’ problem of decision making could be understood as a problematic of optimization. In turn, this problem of optimization could be described in mathematical form as a task of maximation. It could be rendered mathematically in the 75  After first being printed in the Journal of the Statistical Society of London, Vol. xxix, in 1866, the paper was later reissued as ‘Appendix III’ to Jevons (1871/1911): The Theory of Political Economy, pp. 303–314. 76  Jevons (1871/1911): The Theory of Political Economy, pp. 303–304. 77  Jevons (1871/1911): The Theory of Political Economy, pp. 303–304.

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form of a mathematical function presuming to express the agents’ intent and where the task is to determine the largest possible value of the function. In this manner, neoclassical economics developed a mathematical modelling aiming to express the deliberations economic agents must make in order to come to a decision. In particular, while the assumption that individual agents could chose to spend their possessions or income on various alternative forms of consumption formed a basic presupposition of the new, pure economic theory, it was also a basic assumption that they would have to choose among them according to the ways that would provide the agents with the largest amount of satisfaction available within the constraints of the given limited resources and possessions. 4.7.7   Economics as a Science of Human Behaviour and Interaction With the neoclassical revolution, economics came together in a new and remarkable way as a branch of science characterized by the feature that it studied the forms that human behaviour assumes when it deals with, relates to and makes decisions concerning the allocation of scarce means or resources. In prolongation hereof, the science of economics that emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century as a particular division of, a specific addition and contribution to, the third culture of the social sciences should also be understood as a newly minted pure and independent science of the human. In the long run, the science of economics, as it became increasingly independent and professionalized in the period described, did not content itself with studying certain particular kinds and patterns of human behaviour determined or particularly influenced by scarcity. Rather than being a study of a specific subset of human behaviour, economics formed a generalizable human science in so far as it studied human behaviour in general as it was influenced and shaped by the circumstance of only having access to, having to depend upon and having to relate to the use of scarce resources. Since human earthlings in most circumstances and to a large extent tend to depend upon the availability and use of scarce resources, this aspect of human behaviour is a very generalizable trait of the human condition that affects and shapes human behaviour. In keeping with the neoclassical scientific revolution, the English economist Lionel Robbins could, thirty years into the twentieth century,

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provide a still widely recognized and used definition of the discipline of economics as a generalizable human science. He was able to do so at a point in history where he experienced that the science had reached a stage of maturity and unification that permitted the synthesis of previous attempts at a determination into a broad and yet precise and fitting characterization. This happened in 1932 when Robbins, in An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economics, claimed that ‘the economist studies the disposal of scarce means’. In the same vein, Robbins asserted that the economist ‘is interested in the way different degrees of scarcity of different goods give rise to different ratios of valuation between them’ and ‘in the way in which changes in conditions of scarcity, whether coming from changes in ends or changes in means—from the demand side or the supply side—affect these ratios. Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.’ Similarly, Robbins highlighted that what formed ‘the unity of the subject of Economic Science’ was ‘the forms assumed by human behaviour in disposing of scarce means’.78 It is also worth noticing how Robbins made sure to emphasize that his definition was not to be understood as classificatory in the sense that it ‘picks out certain kinds of behaviour’ in distinction from other types or classes of behaviour that are supposed to be of a given non-economic kind or nature. Instead, the definition was to be regarded as ‘analytical’ in so far as it ‘focuses attention on a particular aspect of behaviour, the form imposed by the influence of scarcity’.79 Since the bounds of this particular feature or mode of appearance of human behaviour cannot be given beforehand but must be put to the test, the range of application of the syntagma ‘economic behaviour’ at the end of the day becomes an analytic issue. What is to be understood in terms of economic behaviour cannot be decided a priory but can only be examined and determined a posteriori or post hoc as the actual range of the economic approach to human behaviour is tried out or tested. Put in a slightly different way: In so far as the conception of economic behaviour provided by Robbins in the wake of the neoclassical turn is non-­ classificatory and analytical, no kinds of human behaviour per definition lie 78  Robbins (1932/2007): An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, p. 15. 79  Robbins (1932/2007): An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, p. 16; italics in original text.

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outside the range of application of the syntagma ‘economic behaviour’. Rather, the scope of application of the syntagma is only to be decided as the range of what can be determined and understood as economic behaviour is examined in practical economic analysis. Consequently, the issue of the range of the conception of economic behaviour becomes a question of the generalizability of the economic approach; and, in the long run, the ability to generalize the economic approach proves to be quite extraordinary. Already, Robbins emphasized the point that the economic approach to human behaviour seems relevant in order to shed light on many or even most kinds of human behaviour since ‘scarcity of means to satisfy given ends is an almost ubiquitous condition of human behaviour’.80 In this sense, human earthlings have according to Robbins already ‘been turned out of Paradise’. They ‘have neither eternal life’ and thus unlimited time at their disposal; nor have they ‘unlimited means of gratification’ since ‘the services’ which others put at their disposal is limited’; and consequently, if they choose one thing, they ‘must relinquish others’ which they would wish not to have ‘relinquished’.81 Initially, Robbins only cites very few exceptions proving the general rule that economic analysis applies to and is able to shed light on human behaviour in general. One exception cited is the circumstance that human beings need air to survive. The reason is that this requirement has ‘no significance for conduct’ since air is not a scarce or limited resource but is instead provided to humans as a ‘free’ good in such a manner that the circumstance that human beings ‘need air imposes no sacrifice of time or resources’.82 Due to important historical developments that have increasingly affected the relationship of human earthlings to the resources of the planet Earth and in particular its atmosphere, however, it has become evident since the time of Robbins that even this single exception to the general rule no longer applies.83 Clean, drinkable water and even clean, breathable air are in the process of becoming scarce resources to such an extent that 80  Robbins (1932/2007): An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, pp. 14–15. 81  Idem. 82  Robbins (1932/2007): An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, p. 14. 83   Cf. Raffnsøe and Staunæs (2024): Planetary Conversations on the Anthropocene, forthcoming.

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the need to ensure access to even these kinds of resources begin to have a decisively determining effect on human behaviour. In parallel with this change, the scope of economics has increasingly widened as economic methods of analysis have increasingly been applied to problems of human behaviour more generally. This includes forms of human behaviour initially considered to be located outside the sphere of economic behaviour in general and, in particular, human behaviour traditionally within the realm of and illuminated by other social sciences, especially sociology and social science.84 In the wake of the neoclassical scientific revolution and the resulting constitution of economics as a pure and formalized science, economics has consequently emerged and stood out as an independent and very wide-­ ranging human science. It appeared as a science of the human that focuses on and clarifies the characteristics of human behaviour and the logic of human interaction that emerge when human individual agents must face and rise to the challenge of relating to and making the best of scarce means which have alternative uses. In addition, economics came to distinguish itself as the scientific discipline that aims to elucidate the consequences of this aspect or dimension of human action and interaction. Put in a slightly different way, economics was differentiated as the specific human science that studies the conduct of human conduct that emerges as a result of human beings having to relate to limited resources that can only be used once but which have alternative uses. Part of this study is the examination of the human dispositions and the consequences of human conduct that emerge as a result of this aspect or dimension of human action and interaction. In so far as human earthlings living after the Fall have been turned out of Paradise, their life and survival in almost every circumstance tend to depend upon the use of scarce and not easily available resources; and, consequently, the aspect of human existence analysed by economics, namely, 84  Especially contributors to human capital theory and related areas, among others Theodore William Schultz, Gary Stanley Becker and Richard Posner, have played a leading role in the application of economic analysis to map and explain patterns of human behaviour in a very broad sense. Cf. in particular Schultz (1971): Investment in Human Capital: The Role of Education and Research; Becker (1964/1993): Human Capital. A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis with Special Reference to Education; Becker (1976/1990): The Economic Approach to Human Behavior; Becker (1993): A Treatise on the Family; Becker (1996): Accounting for Tastes; Becker and Murphy (2000): Social Economics. Market Behavior in a Social Environment; Posner (1973): Economic Analysis of Law. For the development of and the discussion concerning the relationship between economics and economic sociology, cf. also Swedberg (2002): Principles of Economic Sociology.

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that human beings need to relate to the disposal of limited means, proves to be a dimension that has a very profound and wide-ranging influence on the conduct of human conduct and on human dispositions.85 Whereas the economic aspect of human existence seems to be ubiquitously present and to have a decisive influence on human conduct and its dispositions in almost every situation, on how human beings relate to one another and interact, this dimension may still order and deploy without determining completely. Though omnipresent, the influence of the need to ‘economize’ on human conduct is not necessarily omnipotent and all-­ determining.86 While exercising a determining influence on human conduct, this aspect of human existence does not fully determine human behaviour. Neither does this aspect solely determine human behaviour in so far as human conduct is overdetermined by a number of interacting competing concerns.

85  Becker in particular takes pains to stress the generalizability of the economic approach: ‘Indeed, I have come to the conclusion that the economic approach is a comprehensive one that is applicable to all human behavior, be it behavior involving money prices or imputed shadow prices, repeated or infrequent decisions, large or minor decisions, emotional or mechanical ends, rich or poor persons, men or women, adults or children, brilliant or stupid persons, patients or therapists, businessmen or politicians, teachers or students. The applications of the economic approach so conceived are as extensive as the scope of economics in the definition given earlier that emphasizes scarce means and competing ends’ (Becker (1976/1990): The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, p. 8. Becker also stresses that the economic approach is generalizable to the point that ‘even irrational decision units must accept reality and could not, for example, maintain a choice that was no longer within their opportunity set’ (Becker (1976/1990): The Economic Approach to Human Behavior, p. 167). The generalization of the economic approach and its application to aspects of human life and behaviour that had at an earlier stage seemed to lie outside the field of economics and to be inscrutable to economic analysis has also been termed ‘economics imperialism’. Already in 1933, Ralph William Souter predicted that the ‘salvation of Economic Science’ could be sought ‘in an enlightened and democratic ‘economic imperialism’, which invades the territories of its neighbours, not to enslave them or to swallow them up, but to aid and enrich them and promote their autonomous growth in the very process of aiding and enriching itself’ (Souter (1933): Prolegomena to Relativity Economics, p.  94). The remarkable enlightened imperialist expansion of economic sciences has allowed the subjection of a wide array of human behaviour to economic analysis, inter alia the fields of crime and law, tastes, morals and religion, science and research, culture and the family, and politics and sociology. 86  For further discussion of the notion of dispositional influence, cf. Raffnsøe (2002): ‘English Summary’, in particular p. 396. Cf. also Raffnsøe et al. (2017): ‘Foucault’s dispositive: The Perspicacity of Dispositive Analytics in Organizational Research’ & Raffnsøe (2013): ‘Beyond Rule; Trust and Power as Capacities’.

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4.7.8   The Limits and Impotence of Politics: A New Relationship Between Politics and Science As signalled in the title of Adam Smith’s magistral work An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, it had been a central concern for classical political economy to offer good counsel to the governing bodies by advising them on how to achieve long-term economic development, growth and welfare in such a manner that it would strengthen the nation and that the state would be able to hold its ground in its competition with other nations. In accordance with this task, political economy would tend to focus on the decisive role of the productive forces. To political economy, augmenting the productive force of the nation would seem an obvious way to improve the force and health of the public household of the state and assert the estate in comparison with other similar public and political bodies.87 By contrast, neoclassical economic theory would aim at giving an exact and formalizable but also abstract scientific account of the operation of the market forces and the distribution of riches or wealth. To provide this account, the new school of economics would focus on consumption and marginal utility. The explanatory force of marginalist economy would garner around the exchange between individual agents optimizing their behaviour to make the most of the limited resources available and the social distribution of wealth created in and through this exchange.88 When criticizing classical political economy and making a pledge for a fresh start for economics, the advocates of the marginalist revolution thus not only launched a new and different conception of economics. Simultaneously, they drew the outline of another role for economics, an altered relationship between politics and economics and thus, in the long run, also a new relationship between politics and science. Where classical political economy in Smith had affirmed a close affinity towards and aimed to empower the men of the state in charge of politics, the neoclassical economists would begin to dissociate themselves and their science from the leaders of state in a much more marked way. The marginalists would suggest that the understanding of the mechanisms of exchange 87  For Adam Smith, ‘political economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supple the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign’ (Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 375). 88  Estrup et al. (2004): Den økonomiske teoris historie – en introduktion, p. 75.

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and wealth distribution imposed constraints on politics and political action that were much more severe than the proponents of political economy were aware of. When advising the leaders of the state how to regulate ‘the importation of such goods from foreign countries as can be produced at home’ in such a way that it would be beneficial to the productivity and wealth of their home countries, Smith would, certainly in The Wealth of Nations, indicate that these leaders should be aware that the motivations, intentions and goals of the home producers did not immediately overlap with the intentions and goals of the heads of state. Above all, the men of state should be cognizant that the individual producer ‘intends only his own gain’ and ‘his own security’, even as he first and foremost pursues ‘his own interest’, instead of intending ‘to promote the public interest’.89 Moreover, they should be aware that ‘every individual’ ‘in his local situation’ can ‘judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him’ ‘what is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ and of which the produce is to be of the greatest value’. Consequently, the statesmen and lawgivers should exercise ‘some measure’ when they sought to ‘direct private persons in what manner they ought to employ their capitals’ in general; but the former would also, and in particular, need to take caution when they directed private production by imposing restraints on importation of goods and in this manner gave the producers of ‘domestic industry’ the ‘monopoly of the home market’.90 Like any other head of a family or household, the men of state and lawgivers of the commonwealth are thus by the nascent political economy admonished to show some degree of restraint or moderation in the ‘regulation’ or the ‘direction’ of the members of the state’s household: ‘It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker. The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own clothes, but employs a tailor. […] All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours, and to purchase with a part of its produce […] whatever else they have occasion 89  Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, pp. 397, 400. 90  Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, pp. 400–401.

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for. What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.’91 If the masters of the household of the family or the state, aiming to attain the traditional goal of autarky or self-sufficiency for the oikos resting on its independence from any means of subsistence located outside the oikos,92 were to impose severe restrictions on the conduct of their subjects and the exchange between households, the result would be a loss of productivity and thus a reduction of the wealth acquired by the household. If the masters, by contrast, proved willing to let their subjects pursue their own interest and further their own gain to the best of their abilities, the heads of the household could, according to political economy, in return rest assured that their subjects would simultaneously contribute to the common wealth of the community of which they were part in the best way possible. Political economy could thus advise the political leaders to restrict restriction of and suspend intervention in the conduct of their subjects, but only to ensure them that this provisional arm’s-length approach would soon be to the benefit of society and the political governance of the estate or the country. The masters of the household could confidently restrain direction since it was the best way to promote individual and societal productivity unanimously. Seeking to further his own advantage, the individual agent would necessarily augment the total collective pool of wealth to the best of his abilities.93 Simultaneously, the individual would tend to direct his productivity towards the kind of goods most sought after.94 ‘Without any intervention of law, therefore, the private interests and passions of men naturally lead them to divide and distribute the stock of every society, among the different employments carried on in it, as nearly as possible in the  Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 401. 92  Arendt (1958/1998): The Human Condition, pp. 28–37; Finley (1979): The Ancient Economy. 93  ‘As every individual […] endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can […]’ (Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 400). 94  As every individual is ‘continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command’ in order to promote his own advantage, ‘the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer the employment which is most advantageous to society’ (Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 398). 91

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proportion which is most agreeable to the interest of the whole society.’95 In this manner, the individual agent intending ‘his own gain’, according to Smith, not only directs ‘industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value’; ‘he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention’.96 Already in his previous work Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith made a similar point when he emphasized how the rich are forced to ‘divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements’ and thus end up providing for everyone around them as if they were led by Providence: Since ‘the rich’ ‘consume little more than the poor’, the wealthy are ‘in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity’ and ‘though they mean only their own convenience’ ‘obliged to distribute’ ‘the rest’, or the great majority of resources ‘among those, who prepare, in the nicest manner, ‘that little’ which the wealthy man ‘himself makes use of’, ‘among those who fit up the palace in which this little is to be consumed, among those who provide and keep in order all the different baubles and trinkets which are employed in the economy of greatness’. In this way, the affluent and wealthy ‘are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society’.97 95  Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, volume II, p. 126. 96  Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, p. 400. 97  Smith (1759/1982): The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pp. 184–185. In this connection, Smith not only points out how individuals’ persistent effort to further their own gain and attain wealth and greatness, as well as the interaction between these efforts, forms an important condition of possibility for the (re)distributive intervention of the invisible hand. Smith equally emphasizes that constant struggle is not simply a natural drive that can be taken for granted and at face value. Instead, it is an endeavour that calls for further illumination. According to Smith, the individual’s effort to obtain ‘the magnificence of wealth and greatness’ is on closer inspection predominantly motivated by its ‘vanity’ and its ‘love or distinction’, or its wish to stand out in ways that compel the admiration of the spectators, rather than by the need or the want to acquire the commodities in themselves: ‘To one who was to live alone in a desolate island it might be a matter of doubt, perhaps, whether a palace or a collections of such small conveniences as are commonly contained in a tweezer-case would contribute most to his happiness and enjoyment. If he is to live in society, indeed, there can be no comparison, because in this, as in all other cases, we constantly pay more regard to the sentiments of the spectator, than to those of the person principally concerned, and consider rather how his situation will appear to other people, than how it will appear to himself’ (Smith (1759/1982): Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 182). Moreover, the reason why individuals admire and seek to emulate the condition of the rich and the great is not even that

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Overall, the political economists would thus be able to understand and present themselves as counsellors of the men of state. They would begin to establish and present a body of knowledge that gave advice to the governing bodies concerning the traditional and age-old question of how to govern in the right way and in the best way possible. The study of political economy would advise the leaders of the state that if one wanted to govern they imagine that the possession of wealth in itself provides the rich more pleasure and that ‘they are really happier than other people’. Instead, the individual agents picture to themselves only that the wealthy ‘possess more means of happiness’; and this possession of the means to happiness rather than the possession of happiness is the ‘principal source’ of ‘admiration’. In so far as this kind of ‘love of distinction’ and search for admiration in the eyes of the spectators is what drives the ongoing ambition to acquire wealth that calls for the intervention of the invisible hand, deception, self-deception and a certain tragic irony also come to form an important condition of possibility for the activation of the mechanism of the invisible hand: ‘Through the whole of his life’, the individual pursues the idea of a certain artificial and elegant repose which he may never arrive at, for which he sacrifices a real tranquillity that is at all times in his power, and which, if in the extremity of old age he should at last attain it, he will find it to be in no respect preferable to that humble security and contentment which he had abandoned for it’ (p. 181). ‘But in the languor of disease and the weariness of old age, the pleasures of vain and empty distinction of greatness disappear. […] To one, in this situation, they are no longer capable of recommending those toilsome pursuits in which they had formerly engaged him. In his heart he curses ambition, and vainly regrets the ease and indolence of youth, pleasures which are fled for ever, and which he has foolishly sacrificed for what […] can afford him no real satisfaction’. In this light, ‘power and riches’ begin to appear ‘to be, what they are, enormous and operose machines contrived to produce a few trifling conveniences to the body, […] immense fabrics, which it requires the labour of a life to raise, which threaten every moment to overwhelm the person that dwells in them, and which […] can protect him from none of the severer inclemencies […]. They keep of the summer shower, not the winter storm, but leave him always as much and sometime more exposed that before, to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow, to diseases, to danger and to death’ (pp. 182–183). Despite these important drawbacks for the individuals and the tragic irony that they end up experiencing, it is nevertheless, according to Smith, at the end of the day ‘well that nature imposes upon us in this manner’ in so far as the progress of human civilization originates in the described mechanism. Deceiving itself by imagining that it toils in its own best interest, the individual human being ends up working to the benefit of the human species, and the cultivation of the earth: ‘It is this deception which rouses and keeps in continual motion the industry of mankind. It is this which first prompted them to cultivate the ground, to build houses, to found cities and commonwealths, and to invent and improve all the sciences and arts, which ennoble and embellish human life; which have entirely changed the whole face of the globe, have turned rude forests of nature into agreeable and fertile plains, and made the trackless and barren ocean a new fund, and the great high road of communication to the different nations of the earth. The earth by the labours of mankind has been obliged to redouble her natural fertility and to maintain a greater multitude of inhabitants’ (Smith (1759/1982): The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pp. 183–184).

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optimally and strengthen the state of which they were in charge, it was essential to ensure the prosperity of the nation. Concomitantly, the new body of knowledge would claim to show that if one wanted to ensure the prosperity of the nation and strengthen the state maximally, it would, somewhat paradoxically, necessitate that the heads of the household and the governing bodies showed self-restraint with regard to governance and governed minimally.98 Only if the heads of the household of the state were prepared to reduce their intervention in the political body they were heading, would they permit the unfolding of the natural economic processes that would produce value and distribute wealth in the nation to the benefit of all.99 To be willing and able to restrain itself and respect these processes, government thus needed to become intimately acquainted with the nature of these natural and spontaneous processes. It had to base its politics on an awareness of and intimate familiarity with the not easily manageable processes of value creation that took place in the wider society. In this manner, political economy argued that the reason of state needed to ground the limitations of its exercise of governance and power on the evidential knowledge provided by the study of political economy if they were to govern and exercise power optimally.100 To the extent that governmental reason was prepared to listen to the counsel offered by the study of political economy and let policy be guided by this body of knowledge, however, political economists such as Adam Smith would still be able to ensure the men of state that the economic processes would in the long run work in the interest of the reason of state. If the men of state were willing to keep their hands off and avoid interfering in the economic processes resulting from the interaction between agents acting with their own self-interest in view, Smith was confident that a hand invisible to the participants would intervene in the right manner and make sure to handle or manage the interaction in such way that it would advance the interest of the society in general and the household 98  Foucault (2004): Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France, 1978–1979. pp.  16–23/Foucault (2008): The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, pp. 13–22. 99  Foucault (2004): Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France, 1978–1979. pp.  62–63/Foucault (2008): The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France 1978–1979, p. 61. 100  Foucault (2004): Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France, 1978–1979, p. 63/Foucault (2008): The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, pp. 61–62.

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that the men of state were heading. In this manner, the self-limitation of governance could still paradoxically be seen to strengthen the outreach and effect of politics. Conversely, neoclassical economics would establish a body of knowledge that produced a much more decisive gap between the findings of the science of economics, on the one hand, and practical political life, its policies, governance and institutions, on the other hand. At times the relationship between science and politics might even turn into a strong antagonism. With Adam Smith, political economy still delineated the possibility of an augmented and mediated potency of political intervention and governmental action. If potency can be understood as the capacity to bring about results by an act of will, be it directly or indirectly,101 political economy could hold out prospects to the men of state intervening in the body politics of a power that was no longer simply to be conceived as a direct power of the will. Rather, it was an indirect and mediated potency. Depending on direct and indirect responses to interventions and complex relationships, this kind of power brought about results exceeding the immediate scope of the will of the governing bodies. Intervening less, the men of state could achieve more. Providing an abstract scientific account of an economy emerging as a result of the exchange between individual agents seeking to make the most of limited resources, the marginalist revolution would conversely not only reveal the rationality and the irreducibility of economic interaction. Demonstrating the impenetrability of the economy, neoclassical economics would equally argue for the inefficacy and the impotence of political action, intention and intervention as they would have to face and enter into an overriding logic of economic transactions that emerged when human beings continuously made decisions concerning the optimal marginal use of their scarce resources.

4.8  The Establishment of the Science of Business Economics and Administration The continuous centripetal movement during the nineteenth century that resulted in an ongoing emancipation and constitution of branches of knowledge differing from the disciplines located at the faculty of philosophy is further accentuated towards the end of the century by the  Raffnsøe (2013): ‘Beyond Rule; Trust and Power as Capacities’, p. 256.

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constitution of yet another prominent field of study and research. With the establishment of the modern business school in the United States, the field of business economics and administration (also broadly conceived as the field of business education and science) came to fruition as an at once independent, diversified and particular field of investigation and teaching in its own right.102 Revivified through the influence and adoption of core elements of the German academic research university, American university-based research and teaching came to assume a decisive role for the revival and professionalization of the traditional ‘learned’ professions of medicine and law in the United States during the latter half of the nineteenth century. With the development of large-scale business enterprises in America during the nineteenth century, a new kind of decisive function was allotted within the enterprise to the organizer of the productive processes and caretaker of the most efficient use of staff in the emerging grand corporations, and the idea was being conceived of professionalizing the emergent and important role of the manager in similar ways; an ambition that gained traction both inside and outside the university. Through the association with university research and education, the practitioners of the emerging profession of managers could acquire qualifications, and the profession could gain legitimacy and earn recognition. By demonstrating an ability to improve the abilities, skills and thoughtfulness of the practitioners of the new, important profession of the manager, by contrast, the emerging research university was able to demonstrate its usefulness for the business world and display its aptitude in contributing to the greater good of the surrounding society. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, this mutually benefitting arrangement initiated a new departure of the American research university that led to the creation of one of the most influential institutions in twentieth century America, the modern university based-business school. Subsequently, the American business

102  While, on the one hand, emerging as an important new specialized and independent discipline and subject area at the university towards the end of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the 20th, the science of business economics and administration, on the other hand, constituted itself by amalgamating approaches from various disciplines described in Chap. 4. In this way, the development that will be described in the present part also anticipates new overlaps between existing disciplines and faculties. This is an evolution that will become predominant from the beginning of the twentieth century and that will be described in Chap. 5.

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school came to form an outstanding example for universities around the world and exerted a normative influence on the business schools established during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as the model spread around the world. With the establishment of the American business school and the subsequent dissemination of the model, a new, independent and to some extent self-dependent and generalizable academic field of business economics and administration appeared. The study of business economics and administration emerged and came to be identified as the specific but wide-ranging branch of economics that contributed to ameliorating the distribution and use of scarce resources in and of relevance to the corporation and the application of economic methods to support and qualify managerial decision-making processes. The disciplines contributing to the field of business studies hosted at the university-based business school all studied human conduct and aimed to serve human decision makers as they had to deal with and relate to the allocation of the aforementioned resources when they were managing corporations and enterprises. Devoted to examining human interaction as a value-creating activity, this specific and diversified scientific field of research and teaching has remained in existence ever since as an important and ever-expanding branch of university studies and research. Whereas business education and research were intended to provide students with the various necessary skills to boost efficiency and ensure value creation, the business school also aimed to shape new, highly educated people of affairs that were aware of the increasingly decisive role of business within the wider society for whom the public welfare and the improvement of society served as a guiding moral purpose. In so far as it was an important ambition for business education and research to nurture an understanding of business as a profession and a calling that needed to assume responsibility for making a contribution to the greater good of humanity, it became a crucial concern to articulate and cultivate a common idea of humanity and install a sense of humanity in business managers. In the long run, however, the aim to develop a scientific and objective basis for professionalizing managerial practice also led towards different, more openly situated investments in and understandings of the human. Over time, this more factual investigation of situated human behaviour, which led to an ongoing articulation of a situated humanity, increasingly came to overshadow and replace the initial devotion to an edifying cultivation of common humanity as a normative point of reference. This important transition becomes evident if one examines the development of scientific management theory and practice from the end of the nineteenth century and through the first three quarters of the twentieth century.

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4.8.1   The Adaption of the German Model of the University in the United States and the Professionalization of American Society At first, the colleges founded in the British North American colonies prior to The American Revolutionary War were conceived as appropriate accommodations of the forms of university colleges developed in various parts of the United Kingdom103; and, in conformity with these institutions, they were often closely related to religious bodies.104 During the nineteenth century, however, American colleges began to look towards Germany to an increasing extent. While American academics had begun to take serious notice of the organization of the university and its research in the German lands as early as the 1850s, the German model began to take a firm hold in the United States during the 1870s; and it became institutionalized when the University of Johns Hopkins was founded in 1876 as an American reincarnation of the German model of the university. After the German educational and research experience had become a core element of the educational programmes of the University of Chicago, Harvard University and Columbia University during 1880s, the graduate school became a widely diffused way to organize teaching and research at American universities during the following decade.105 In the wake of the revivified American university that emerged also largely as a result of the influence of the German academic model, university-­based science and education came to assume a decisive role for the revival of the traditional ‘learned’ or ‘high’ professions of divinity, medicine and law in the United States.  Roberts et al. (2004): ‘Exporting Models’, p. 256.  Shils and Roberts (2004): ‘The Diffusion of European Models Outside Europe’, p. 164. 105  Clark (2006): Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, pp.  462–464. Cf. also Khurana (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession. Khurana stresses that ‘what emerged was not a simple transplant of the German system to American soil but rather a uniquely American hybrid. In one institution, a series of unanticipated combinations now coexisted: undergraduate education along with graduate education; teaching with research; the pursuit of ‘pure’ science with technical and vocational training; and service to society with the provision of opportunities for individual cultivation and economic advancement. The result constituted much more than an academic revolution, for it generated implications for virtually the entire American population and almost all of the nation’s major social institutions’ (p. 75). The description of the emergence of the American business school in this subchapter (Chap. 4.8.1) and the following two subchapters (Chap. 4.8.2 and 4.8.3) is indebted to Khurana’s comprehensive study. Of course, Khurana’s monograph provides a more detailed and satisfactory articulation of the development than the description in this and the following two subchapters. 103 104

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Whereas these old and noble professions had been exerted in America since the early European colonization and the professionals practising these trades along with landlords and merchants had formed the ruling classes of the new nation, these professions were, to a large extent, practised here without any notable academic base. While only part of the ministers of religion were given some training at sectarian or denominal divinity schools, physicians and lawyers were, still in the nineteenth century in the United States, predominantly educated according to the craft’s apprentice model, implying that practitioners of the profession learned their trade by entering into a state of dependence to and into collaboration with an already practising master of the trade.106 To the extent that schools existed at all, they were predominantly private for-­profit undertakings admitting and granting ‘degrees’ to anyone willing and able to pay.107 The liberal egalitarianism concerning the conferral of degrees and titles indicating a privileged knowledge of a field also extended to and affected the general usage of the term and title of professorship in nineteenth century American society. While the professorship had come to play the crucial structuring part in the German ‘professorial’ research university established after the refounding of the university at the threshold to the nineteenth century and the protected title of professor in the German Lands accordingly was to be used exclusively by individuals to whom the ministry and the state conferred professorial chairs based on advice of relevant academic specialists,108 the term ‘professor’ was in nineteenth-­ century American usage a rather unprotected honorific title. According to a standard work on specific linguistic practice in US English, ‘the misuse of professor began in America at an early date, and still prevails. The DAE [Dictionary of American English] records a professor of book-auctioneering in 1774, and Bartlett, in 1859, noted the use of the term to designate 106  ‘Well past 1850, the chief method of legal education was the apprenticeship: The student read law in an older lawyer’s office; he did much of the hand copying of legal instruments that had to be done before the day of the typewriter; and he did many small services in and about office, including service of process. Sometimes the older man might take these incidental services as his pay for his preceptorship’ (Hurst (1950): The Growth of American Law, p. 256). 107  Medical schools ‘were essentially private ventures, money-making in spirit and object. […] No applicant for instruction who could pay his fees or sign his note was turned down. […] the man who had settled his tuition bill was thus practically assured of his degree whether he had regularly attended lectures or not’ (Flexner (1910): Medical Education in the United States and Canada, p. 7). 108  Clark (2006): Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University, pp. 16–17.

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“dancing-masters, conjurors, banjo-players, etc.” It has been applied, first and last, to a really immense range of virtuosi, mainly frauds.’109 In the late nineteenth century, however, the traditional professions, such as theology, law and medicine, were revived. The number of practitioners of these trades grew as the demand for the skills of lawyers and medical doctors in particular began to grow in the increasingly industrialized American society. In response to this change and in prolongation of the development of an increasingly research based academic university sector, some of the leading American universities, such as Harvard, began to raise the standards of admission, education and examination within the fields of law and medicine; and a number of other universities and schools followed suit. The authority and self-assertion of the revivified traditional professions became, by the 1890s to an increasingly large extent, based on reference to the professionalism and professionalization provided by the education at the emerging university institutions and their research-based science, gaining legitimacy through claims to scientific rigour and objectivity.110 In parallel, the emerging American research university was able to grow decisively in its formative years as the numbers of students, teachers and researchers rose. Perhaps even more importantly, the university was able to assume an important role as it made a decisive contribution to the professionalization that reorganized American society and its value creation towards the end of the nineteenth century. Its contribution was not limited to the revival of the traditional ‘learned’ or ‘high’ professions. Over time, a number of university schools devoted to the professionalization and amelioration of trades that appeared to be of public utility, such as pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and nursing, were added to the educational programmes offered by universities. In this manner, the emerging American research university was able to legitimize itself in an even broader context in so far as it could claim to make good its general usefulness and to prove its contribution to the public good.111

109  Mencken (1966): Supplement I.  The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, p. 529; italics by Mencken. 110  Khurana (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, pp. 67–68. 111  Khurana (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, pp. 51–85.

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4.8.2   Educating and Professionalizing the Manager With the development of large-scale business enterprises in America during the nineteenth century, yet another kind of potential profession was being formed and came to play a major role, that is, the profession of the manager. Previously virtually non-existent, the manager gradually but decisively not only began to play a major role as the organizer of the productive processes and the caretaker of the most efficient use of the staff in the emerging grand corporations such as railway companies or industrial plants; relatedly, the manager also came to assume the position of an ordering factor in American society at large.112 When the modern multiunit enterprise progressively supplanted the traditional small company, the manager began to take over from the owner, merchant and entrepreneur; and he came to assume an ever more decisive (and deciding) role within the company. With this transition, the visible hand of the manager concomitantly and increasingly replaced what Adam Smith had earlier described as the invisible hand of market forces.113 The neoclassical economists could still be seen as primarily aiming to shed light on the workings of an invisible (re)distributive hand that was at work even though it remained hidden from the consciousness of the individual economic actor, albeit a more illuminating light than the elucidation offered by Adam Smith himself. In so far as the science of business economics and administration worked in the service of and to qualify the profession of the manager, this no longer seemed to be the case for this emerging science. Rather, the science of business economics and administration worked to qualify the operations of the manager’s most visible and tangible hand when it interfered in the allocation of scarce resources in organizations and institutions to optimize value creation here. In order to 112  Chandler (1977/1993): The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. 113  ‘Modern business enterprise took the place of market mechanism in coordinating the activities of the economy and allocating its resources. In many sectors of the economy, the visible hand of management replaced what Adam Smith referred to as the invisible hand of the market forces. The market remained the generator of demand for goods and services, but modern business enterprise took over the functions of coordinating flows of goods through existing processes of production and distribution, and of allocating funds and personnel for future production and distribution. As the modern business enterprise acquired functions hitherto carried out by the market, it became the most powerful institution in the American economy and its managers the most influential group of economic decision makers. The rise of modern business enterprise in the United States, therefore, brought with it managerial capitalism’ (Chandler (1977/1993): The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business, p.  1).  Cf. also Chandler (1994): Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism.

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achieve this, the science of business economics and administration also offered a mapping of human behaviour in and relevant for an organizational context even as the new scientific field came to serve the ordering of human behaviour in organizations. In response to a new increasingly connected large-scale political economy in the United States where complex large corporations, organized through the interventions of managers, played a pivotal role, a number of individuals had become wealthy as founders or top executives of large business concerns began to make generous donations to American universities on the condition that they would adapt and develop educational programmes qualifying their candidates to take part in and contribute to the new industrial economy; and over time, the managers, executives and employees of the universities concomitantly to took an increasing interest in developing educational programmes and research in the area.114 Already in 1869, the year he became president of Harvard University, Charles Eliot penned an article in which he voiced an urgent need: ‘I want to give [my boy] a practical education; one that will prepare him, better than I was prepared, to follow my business or any other active calling.’ Concomitantly, he voiced a pressing concern: ‘The classical schools and the colleges do not offer what I want. […] Here is a real need and a very serious problem.’115 An important initial step was taken, when the Wharton School was founded at the University of Pennsylvania in 1881 through a donation from the American industrialist Joseph Warton. Teaching business, finance, and management, and soon after also disciplines from the still emerging disciplines of the social sciences, Wharton was the first school dedicated specifically to the formation of business managers and leaders, who had hitherto mainly been educated through apprenticeship on the job.116 114  While 80% of the gifts to universities exceeding 50,000 dollars in the period from 1869 to 1900 were given by individuals who had become wealthy as founders or top executives of large business concerns, a large part of these donations was specifically given to technical and practical education of relevance for functioning of the large corporations (Khurana (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, p. 47). 115  Charles Eliot, The Atlantic Monthly (February 1869), quoted in Cited in Cruikshank (1986): A Delicate Experiment: The Harvard Business School, 1908–1945, p. 17. 116  Wharton’s ‘aim was to replace the ad hoc nature of on-the-job business training with systematic cultivation of a perspective that would combine courses in the knowledge and arts of “modern finance and economy” with the broadening effect of the liberal arts, including a special focus on the then-new social sciences of economics and politics’ (Colby et al. (2011): Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education. Liberal Learning for the Profession, p. 15).

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In the following twenty years, the idea to fund and create teaching and research environments devoted to the field of business studies spread throughout the United States; and the objective left a decisive mark on the American University in so far as a number of new colleges and educational initiatives devoted to this field were founded towards the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century. After having made a major endowment to Dartmouth College in 1899, the railroad magnate and merchant banker Edward Tuck, who had formerly graduated from the same school, addressed his former classmate William Jewett Tucker, who was then president of the same institution, to inquire into how the school was preparing its graduates for the new industrial world with a more specialized demanding education. Concerned with ‘the practical outcome’ of the college, Tuck wondered what ‘would become of its graduates’. Whereas ‘a few might find a place in the civil or diplomatic service’, ‘more might be so qualified for the responsible positions in business’.117 In reply, Tucker remarked that he had already mooted the idea of a new kind of separate graduate school at Dartmouth to key professors at the college in response to a perceived recent shift in the career trajectories of the graduates: ‘I have noticed the growth in numbers of our graduates who go into business. Can we give them a better training, commensurate with the larger meaning of business as it is now understood? Can we enlarge our constituency in this direction?’118 The exchange led to a donation from Edward Tuck that enabled the foundation of the Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance towards the end of 1899. Named in honour of Tuck’s father, this school was the first university institution in the world to offer a master’s degree in business administration.119 While the idea of establishing an academic study of business in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had been discussed as early as 1895, it was not before 1908 that the decision was taken by President Charles W. Eliot to lay the foundation stone for a Graduate School of Business Administration, also at the venerable University of Harvard, which boasted to be ‘the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States’ and harking back to

117  Broehl (1999): Tuck and Tucker: The Origin of the Graduate Business School, pp. 32–33; italics in original text. 118  Broehl (1999): Tuck and Tucker: The Origin of the Graduate Business School, p. 33. 119  Broehl (1999): Tuck and Tucker: The Origin of the Graduate Business School, pp. 35–45.

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the establishment of Harvard College in 1636.120 Whereas Columbia University had established a School of Political Science in 1880, offering courses in history, political science and political economy, the number of courses on business related subjects, such as applied economics, corporation finance, money and banking, proliferated in the following years, until the university finally decided to formally establish Columbia Business School in 1916. In the thirty-five years ranging from the foundation of the Warton Business School to the establishment of the Columbia Business School, a major transition in American university education and research thus took place, as business schools at the instigation of business leaders and through donations from owners of major corporations were founded at many universities across the United States, even at some of the most prestigious and traditional universities chartered before the American Revolution. In an address to the Harvard Club of Connecticut in the year of 1908, where a Graduate School of Business Administration was founded at Harvard, Dean Charles W. Eliot presented the reasons that motivated university senior management to crave for grants that permitted to open business schools. After having highlighted the growing national and international service of American Universities, he suggested that these institutions all would like ‘to serve in a high degree all the learned and scientific professions. […] The future in our country is for those professions, gentlemen. They are to be the leaders of the people, the controllers of our industries, the directors of our finances and our commerce, the managers of the great public services. The professional men are to have a great future in our country. So all the American Universities that look forward desire to serve all the professions, divinity, law and medicine, but also the new one: engineering in its various specialties, architecture, landscape architecture, forestry and business administration.’ In prolongation hereof, Eliot also gave what seems to be the first public announcement and motivation of the decision to create Harvard Business School: ‘Our newest effort is to establish a graduate school of business administration. […] What leads to this new undertaking? In the first place, the prodigious development of many corporate businesses in our country; in the next place, the fact that more than half of the recent graduates of Harvard College have gone immediately into business […]. The explanation of that 120  Cf. https://college.harvard.edu/resources/faq/what-difference-between-harvardcollege-and-harvard-university.

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new phenomenon is that business in its upper walks has become a highly intellectual calling, requiring knowledge of languages, economics, industrial organization and commercial law, and a wide reading concerning the resources and habits of the different nations. In all these directions we propose to give professional graduate education.’121 In a speech given in 1926 at Stanford Graduate School of Business shortly after its foundation in 1925, the successor of Dean Eliot, Wallace B. Bonham, further elaborated on the motives for wanting to continue to establish business schools further develop business education and research across the US still twenty years later: ‘The development, strengthening, and multiplication of socially minded businessmen is the central problem of business. Moreover, it is one of the great problems of civilization, for such men can do more than any other type to rehabilitate the ethical and social forces of the community and to create the background which is essential to a more idealistic working philosophy in the community. Unless more of our business leaders learn to exercise their powers and responsibilities with a definitely increased sense of responsibility toward other groups in the community, unless without great lapse of time there is through the initiative of such men an important socializing of business, our civilization may well head for one of its periods of decline. Certainly, unless such a development takes place, community problems arising out of business activities will present great and increasing difficulties.’122 While the number and size of schools devoted to the study of business-­ related issues rose decisively around the turn of the century, the number of students enrolled in the schools concomitantly grew rampantly. Whereas Harvard Business School enlisted a mere 59 MBA candidates at its opening in 1908, it enrolled 300-first-year students in 1922. The U.S. Bureau of Education statistics indicates that the limited number of 97 students were admitted to programs in business studies in higher education in 1885, but that there were 1100 in 1903, 4321 in 1910, 11,643 in 1916, 37,885 in 1920 and 47,552 in 1924.123

121  Cited in Cruikshank (1986): A Delicate Experiment: The Harvard Business School, 1908–1945, p. 35. 122  Donham (1926/1927): ‘The Social Significance of Business’, p. 406. 123  Khurana (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, p. 137.

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4.8.3   A Mutually Benefitting Arrangement In so far as the American research university was itself a relatively recent and still not fully established institution, it could not only increase its scope and its intake of students, but also gain support and increase its legitimacy by extending its mission beyond that of the sparsely distributed liberal arts colleges that had existed in America since the seventeenth century. Decisive steps were taken when the university made a contribution to the professionalization of not only the traditional ‘learned’ or ‘high’ professions but also a number of other professions of public utility from the last decades of the nineteenth century on.124 Yet, the university made an equally decisive move when it asserted its ability to improve and professionalize the practice of the business manager.125 As it is also evident in the motivations cited here for the founding of new business schools, the case for developing university-based teaching and research within the field of business economics and administration to a large extent drew on the decisive role that university-based science had come to assume for the revival of the traditional ‘learned’ or ‘high’ professions of medicine and law in the United States a little earlier.126 Conversely, the emerging profession of managers and its members could gain decisively from the association with university research and education. When hired managers first appeared and began to proliferate, it was not initially self-evident to the public, the workers and the owners what they did, how they contributed to value creation and why they should be entrusted with the decisive task of running the corporations. The professionalization of the title that university education and research 124  ‘The rise of modern educational systems brings an ideological resolution to the tension between universalistic principles and exclusive privilege embodied in the notion of expertise. Mass access to the lower echelons of the public school system allows the higher levels of de educational system to claim meritocratic legitimations for their selection of entrants. […] The unification of training and research in the modern university is a particularly significant development. As graduate and professional schools emerged at the top of the educational hierarchy, the professions acquired not only an institutional basis on which to develop and standardize knowledge and technologies; they also received, in university training, a most powerful legitimation for their claims to cognitive and technical superiority and to social and economic benefits’ (Larson (1977): The Rise of Professionalism. A Sociological Analysis, p. 136). 125  Khurana (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, p. 7. 126  ‘The analogy business education was implicitly drawing upon here was to clinical training in medicine or to learning legal judgement. Indeed, the famous case method introduced into graduate business education at Harvard Business School by Dean Donham was adopted from the Harvard Law Schools famous case-dialogue pedagogy’ (Colby et  al. (2011): Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education. Liberal Learning for the Profession, p. 20).

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conveyed would permit them to legitimize their authority and prove their economic and social worth to others as well as to themselves.127 4.8.4   The Constitution of the Modern University-Based Business School and the Establishment of Business Studies The described new departure of the American research university led to the constitution of what has been characterized as ‘one of the most influential institutions in twentieth century America: the modern university-­ based business school’.128 The impact of the university-located business school and of university-based teaching and research in business economics and administration was not limited to the United States, however. In the time that has passed since its constitution, the model of the American university-based business school has reached far beyond the organizational and national context in which it was developed. The American business school has come to form an outstanding example for universities around the world and has exerted a normative influence on the business schools established during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.129 127  A report issued in 1959 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic foundation established in 1911 by Andrew Carnegie for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding, stresses how business schools in the early phase from 1881–1914 in a number of cases developed in conjunction with already existing academic programmes. The business school of Chicago, for example, was established in prolongation of existing courses in railway transportation, finance, banking and money and practical economics (Pierson et al. (1959): The Education of American Businessmen. A Study of University-College Programs in Business Administration. The Carnegie Series in American Education, pp. 35–26). A more recent report issued in 2011 by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching highlights that ‘business education began as an effort to establish university training as a way to instill in the then-new occupation of manager an understanding of purpose that was explicitly public in orientation’ (Colby et  al. (2011): Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education. Liberal Learning for the Profession, p.  16). The 1959 report recommends that ‘American higher education should continue to strive for balance between’ ‘two traditions’: a tradition that pursues knowledge ‘for its own sake’ and a tradition that ‘would leave ample room for students desiring to prepare for particular careers’. ‘Clearly, they can be made to complement one another […]. Just as clearly, they can be carried to a point where each negates the other’ (Pierson et al. (1959): The Education of American Businessmen, pp. 17–18). 128  Khurana (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, p. 48. 129  ‘As business education in an academic setting becomes an increasingly global phenomenon, the university-based business school in America remains a unique institution. This holds true despite the fact that the American business school, as it evolved in the post-World War era, has become the dominant model for business schools in Europe and elsewhere in the world’ (Khurana and Penrice (2011): ‘Business Education: The American Trajectory’, p. 3).

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With the establishment of the American business school and the subsequent dissemination of the model, a new, independent and to some extent self-dependent and generalizable academic field of business economics and administration appeared. Business economics came together as a particular but broad field of applied economics characterized not only by the trait that it studied the forms human behaviour assumes when it deals with, relates to and makes decisions concerning the allocation of scarce means or resources more generally, as was the case for the science of economics.130 Rather, business economics distinguished itself as the specific branch of economics that studied human conduct as it had to deal with, relate to, and make decisions concerning the allocation of scarce resources in relation to a specific subfield, that is, in relation to the field of issues that become of relevance when corporations, and especially managers of corporations, must make decisions concerning the best and most efficient use and distribution of scarce resources. The study of business economics and administration emerged and came to be identified as the specific but wide-­ ranging branch of economics that studied and contributed to ameliorate the distribution and use of scarce resources in and of relevance to the corporation, and that applied economical methods to support and qualify managerial decision-making processes. To study and illuminate different aspects of the world that corporations and their managers had to deal with, be they market- or resource-related, financial or organizational, business economics and administration drew pragmatically on a number of disciplines that were still emerging in the latter half of the nineteenth century as scientific disciplines, even though their roots went further back into history. Among the disciplines that business economics and administration drew upon to the extent that they might seem to be of service to illuminate its field of exploration were economics,131 accountancy, statistics, finance, marketing or advertising, as well as newly developed social sciences such as political science and sociology. Added to these disciplines were coincidentally emerging sciences such as psychology, organizational theory and the science of management. Devoted to examining human interaction as a value-creating activity, this diversified and specific scientific field of research and teaching has remained in existence as an expanding and influential branch of university studies 130  For an examination of the establishment of economics as an independent and self-­ dependent discipline, cf. the previous Chap. 4.7 in this study. 131  Cf. also the previous chapter (Chap. 4.7) in this study on the emergence of the science of economics as well as the chapter ‘The Professionalization of Economics’ in Backhouse (2002): The Penguin History of Economics, pp. 166–167.

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and research ever since its initial establishment at the turn of the twentieth century. In so far as this new branch of knowledge was liberated from other disciplines and was constituted as an autonomous field of investigation and research, the transition that established the modern business school is in line with and prolongs the evolution previously described in Chap. 4. Since the newly minted field of investigation established towards the end of the 19h and at the beginning of the twentieth century was not simply formed through a constitution and a cleansing of a new form of scientific rationality but rather emerged through the intersection of, and through the interaction and overlap between a number of scientific disciplines and approaches, the emergence of business studies and administration anticipates and illustrates developments that would be accentuated during the twentieth century and that will be further described in the following Chap. 5 of this monograph. Ever since the time it came together as a field of related disciplines, business studies have been not only an overdetermined area of investigation characterized by a number of intersecting and competing approaches but also a branch of the sciences marked by different but related antagonisms. An important polarity is the tension between specificity and commonality. Another polarity is between antagonistic tendencies towards specialization and generalization. Yet another polarity is between the emphasis on instrumental utility and public responsibility and contributions to society and the greater good. Whereas an important motivation for the creation of the business school listed by founders was the ambition to educate socially and ethically conscient businessmen with a breadth in outlook and a sense of responsibility towards the greater community, another important reason was the ambition to heighten specialized professionalism and particular, relevant skills of specific relevance. While these ambitions went relatively well together, at least to some extent, they also proved to clash in some cases. Likewise, while the different disciplines entering into the field of business studies proved to supplement one another to some extent, they could also begin to compete and quarrel with one another as they entered into dispute concerning the correct mapping of the field. The disciplines contributing to the field of business studies hosted at the university-based business school all studied human conduct and served the activity of human decision makers as they had to deal with and relate to the allocation of scarce resources of relevance to corporations and

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enterprises. Devoted to examining human interaction as a value-creating activity, this diversified, specific scientific field of research and teaching has remained in existence ever since as an expanding and influential branch of university studies and research. Ever since the constitution of the business school, business studies have also remained a contested multidisciplinary field where the disciplines have also differed decisively in the approach to and the understanding of the field. 4.8.5   The Conception of the Human in Management Science As it has been described here, the field of business studies and the modern university-based business school thus came together and was ordered around a dual sense of purpose. An openly declared objective for the new creation cited by the founders was its utility. The business school was to provide its students with a wide array of qualifications that they would need as they entered and took part in the practice of business and its value creation. The utility of these skills could often border on the instrumental. Another important goal was to facilitate an awareness of the role of business within the wider society and to install a sense of moral purpose. Ideally, the business-college-educated students were to become conscient of the possible larger meaning of business within society and the possible constructive role that business, and in particular business leaders, could come to play in service of a common greater good. On the one hand, professionalized business education was intended to provide students with the various necessary skills to boost efficiency and ensure money-making; on the other hand, the business school aimed to ‘shape a new kind of highly educated man of affairs’ for whom the public welfare and the improvement of society served as a guiding purpose.132 As it has already been suggested, these centripetal and centrifugal ambitions could coalesce and supplement one another; but they could also become disjoined and enter into conflict. Among the motives for establishing a pluridimensional business school education was a sense that the American society was entering a new phase characterized by the erosion of traditional values, large-scale economization and the instrumentalization of human relations. While academic education was intended to form a counterweight to such ill-boding 132  Colby et al. (2011): Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education. Liberal Learning for the Profession, pp. 15–16.

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developments, the establishment of a number of isolated and often rather instrumental scientific disciplines could also be experienced as both contributing towards and further accentuating this problem. For this reason, the development of aspects of education that could accentuate a sense of the significance of business for the common good and for the wider humanity was regarded as important. When the chairman of General Electrics, Owen D.  Young, gave a speech in 1927 to inaugurate the new campus of Harvard Business School, he stressed similarities between business and the traditional learned professions and concurrently highlighted that the driving ambition of the business school was to nurture an understanding of business as a profession and a calling that needed to assume responsibility for itself as a discipline devoted to its own ideals and to making a contribution to the greater good of human society: ‘Today the profession of business at Harvard formally makes its bow to its older brothers and holds its head high with the faith of youth. […] Today we light the fires in the temple which it is the trust of Harvard to maintain and from which may be renewed through generation after generation the high ideals, the sound principles, the glorious traditions, which make a profession. Today and here, business formally assumes the obligations of a profession, which means responsible action as a group, devotion to its own ideals, the creation of its own codes, the capacity for its honors, and the responsibility for its own discipline, the awards of its own service’.133 While indicating how ‘the advance of human relations has begun’ as soon as one enters the sphere of trade and business, Young also stressed that ‘Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration will do its utmost to guard against an illiterate ministry of business’.134 When it came to founding and legitimization of the academization of the particular discipline of management studies as a way to professionalize the activity of business management, the analogy with the role academization had played for the traditional learned profession was often particularly accentuated. When it came to educating businesspeople to take on and live up to the important role of manager in the contemporary large corporations, the necessity to educate them in ways that cultivated their sense of 133  Owen D. Young (1927) ‘Dedication addresses’, p. 12, cited in Khurana (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, p. 118. 134  Cited on the web page ‘The Dedication’, Harvard Business School, Baker Library Historical Collections (https://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/buildinghbs/the-­dedication.html).

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humanity, give them a sense of moral purpose and condition them to consider their possible contribution to the greater community was likewise often particularly stressed. For example, the importance of providing the corporation manager with a wider horizon that centred not only on the corporation but also on contributing to the progress of wider human society was highlighted by Dean Dunham of Harvard Business School in a speech given at Stanford University’s school of business in 1926: ‘The corporation manager […] is entirely entitled to conduct his business affairs with reference not only to the present but to the future, just as the trustee is always charged with considering both the life tenant and the remainderman. He is entitled, therefore, to consider not only the permanency and good standing of his institution but the sound stability and development of his community.’135 In the long run, however, the aim to develop an objective and scientific background for the specific but important part of business studies and provide a solid foundation for professionalizing managerial practice also led towards different investments in and understandings of the human. With management studies, an important successor to the commemoration and celebration of a dwindling common humanity and its moral purpose appeared. This heir took the shape of an assiduous scientific examination of the human as it appeared in the production processes of the emerging grand corporations that systematically probed how the human factor could be managed best and most efficiently. Over time, this factual investigation of a situated humanity and human behaviour increasingly came to overshadow and replace an edifying cultivation of a common humanity as a normative point of reference for management theory and practice. Crucial stages in this development came with ‘scientific management’ by Frederick W. Taylor, ‘human relations’ by Elton Mayo and ‘motivation theory’ by Douglas McGregor and Abraham Maslow. Eventually, the new turn towards a situated and specific human marked not only a turn in the conception of and relationship to the human but also a turning of the human in new directions. As it will be described here, the new specific investment in and mapping of the being of situated human beings proved 135  Donham (1926/1927): ‘The Social Significance of Business’, p.  415. Khurana also stresses how ‘educators such as Charles W.  Eliot, Daniel Coit Gilman, Andrew Dickson White, and others’ ‘saw the university as nothing less than society’s best hope for achieving a humane and progressive social order in the modern world’ (Khurana (2007): From Higher Aims to Hired Hands, p. 367).

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to be generalizable; and in the course of events, the concrete rearticulation of human nature in scientifically based management theory and practice radically changed the understanding of the make-up of the human being.136 4.8.5.1 Scientific Management With scientific management and Frederick W.  Taylor, management was initially founded around 1900 as a rational theory and practice, conceived as ‘a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules and principles as a foundation’.137 This gave rise to a specific scientifically based conception of human beings and the role to be played by human beings in management theory and practice. The ‘time and motion’ studies found in Taylorism examined the rational organization of the most efficient process of production through a systematic exploration of the time used for each part to achieve maximum of efficiency and ease of imitation, and to establish what constitutes ‘a proper day’s work’.138 In this manner, the ‘art of management’ was established as an objective professionalized skill, consisting in ‘knowing exactly what you want men to do, and seeing that they do it do it in the best and cheapest way’.139 When the production process was modulated in this way, it appeared essential ‘to train and to make’ a ‘competent man’; not an outstanding and unique man but ‘a number of ordinary men’ that fit into ‘the system’. Whereas ‘in the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first’.140 The implementation of a professionalized managerial practice based on a systematic scientific examination of the best and most efficient way to organize the production processes within the given constraints aimed at establishing and legitimizing the managerial right to lead. Given that managers were the possessors of a systematically acquired and privileged knowledge informing them how to proceed, they should also be in charge. Since following the lead of scientifically informed managerialism would also increase the productivity and thus the total income of the company, the introduction of scientific management could also, in the long run, be  Raffnsøe et al. (2014): ‘Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)’.  Taylor (1911/2007): The Principles of Scientific Management, p. 8. 138  Taylor (1911/2007): The Principles of Scientific Management, pp. 49, 125. 139  Taylor (1911): Shop Management; p.  21; cf. also: Copley (1923/2007): Frederick W. Taylor. Father of Scientific Management, pp. 225–226. 140  Taylor (1911/2007): The Principles of Scientific Management, p. 7. 136 137

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expected to be beneficial for all involved parties. According to Taylor, ‘the principal object of management should be to secure the maximum prosperity for the employer, coupled with the maximum prosperity for each employee’.141 The introduction of scientific management was also intended as a decisive contribution to solve the misuse and waste of human resources that Taylor considered to be the most pressing but largely ignored contemporary problem: ‘We can see our forests vanishing, our waterpowers going to waste, our soil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal and iron is in sight. But our larger waste of human effort which goes on every day through such of our acts as are blundering and ill-directed, or inefficient, […] are less visible, less tangible, and are but vaguely appreciated.’142 Luckily, not only were the challenges and the problems that Taylor indicated overarching; he was also able to suggest effective solutions. In so far as the principles of scientifically informed managerialism were not just applicable to the corporation and its production processes but could also according to Taylor be transferred to every other context in which human beings led, directed and managed other people, the solution to the problem of the misuse of the human factor proposed by scientific management was equally generalizable. According to Taylor, ‘the same principles can be applied with equal force to all social activities: to the management of our homes; to the management of our farms; the management of the business of our tradesmen, large and small; of our churches, our philanthropic institutions, our universities, our governmental departments’.143 Within this context, thus, human beings and the human resource appear as issues of importance, yet within a particular conception of humanity. Situated at the boundary of production processes that are machine-oriented,144 and organized according to principles from engineering and the technical sciences,145 the human appeared as a scarce, 141  Taylor (1911/2007): The Principles of Scientific Management, p. 9. Taylor also made it clear that ‘the words “maximum prosperity” are used, in their broadest sense, to mean not only large dividends for the company or owner, but the development of every branch of the business to its highest state of excellence, so that the prosperity may be permanent’ (p. 9). 142  Taylor (1911/1919): The Principles of Scientific Management, p. 5. 143  Taylor (1911/1919): The Principles of Scientific Management, p. 5. 144  Rabinbach (1990): The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity. 145  Please cf. the part ‘The Expansion and Inclusion of the Technical Sciences’ earlier in this chapter.

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feeble resource for, and problematic limitation on, these processes. ‘Man’ appeared as a peculiar kind of material labour with a limited amount of energy that it was vitally important to care for to avoid damage or wear in order to use it most efficiently. Man appeared first and foremost as a ‘human animal’ that was easy to wear out. Sadly, ‘a manpower’ was not only just a mere ‘fraction of a horse-power’; it was also evident that ‘work’ had a ‘tiring effect’ on ‘a human animal’ of limited strength and ‘endurance’ (Illustration 4.1).146 In scientific management, thus, the human factor is primarily found as exhaustion, boredom or laziness that one must minimize and organize one’s way out of. More complex aspects of the human, such as self-­ dependent ‘initiative’ and ‘responsibility’ are explicitly considered elements that ought to be restricted in the labour force as they are taken over and assumed by management. 4.8.5.2 Human Relations and Public Relations To further advance scientifically based management,147 Hawthorne Studies and Elton Mayo in the late 1920s and 1930s argued for a new turn, as they realized that management theory and practice needed to examine the human factor more closely in order to take it actively into account.148 Management theory and organization studies became aware that human sentiments and desires might have a decisive effect on productivity. Unless human sentiments are used constructively and civilly by management in ways that cultivate them, desire and emotions risk deteriorating or degenerating to the extent that they begin causing trouble as irrational and destructive forces. With Human Relations management theory, the ‘attitude’ of human beings towards their colleagues and the workplace began to be taken into account as the key factor for production and thus becomes a primary field of intervention for professionalized and scientifically based management.149 From this point, it became evident that management was obliged to handle the daunting and delicate task of administering human behaviour,  Taylor (1911/2007): The Principles of Scientific Management, pp. 49, 51.  Mayo (1922): Psychology and Religion, p. 63. 148  Barley and Kunda (1992): ‘Design and Devotion: Surges of Rational and Normative Ideologies of Control in Managerial Discourse’. Donaldson (1995): American Anti-­ Management Theories of Organization: A Critique of a Paradigm Proliferation; Whyte (1955): Money and Motivation: An Analysis of Incentives in Industry. 149  Mayo (1933): The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, pp. 73, 177. 146 147

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Illustration 4.1  Scientific management. Human beings and the human resource are conceived as external restraints on productivity, the effect of which is to be minimized by management. (Drawing by Hannah Heilmann)

interpersonal relations and the working conditions so as to contrive the employees establishing a positive relationship with management and their colleagues at the workplace. When discovering and examining the significance of human nature, passions and relations, Mayo drew upon insights from the human and social sciences.150 This reorientation was not confined to the enterprise and the organization. Concomitantly, a corresponding transition occurred when it came to management and the conditioning of the public sphere and public opinion. In many respects, Edward Bernays’ management of public opinion,151 first under the headline ‘propaganda’152 and then under the headline ‘Public Relations’ formed an outstandingly clear example of this change and its implications.153

 Mayo (1951): The Psychology of Pierre Janet. Mayo (1922): Psychology and Religion.  Bernays (1923/1961) Crystallizing Public Opinion. 152  Bernays (1928/2005): Propaganda. 153  Bernays (1952): Public Relations. 150 151

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4.8.5.3 The Human Side of Enterprise From the late 1950s onwards, Douglas McGregor and Motivation Theory drew further upon ‘a growing body of knowledge in the social sciences’, as well as the human sciences, which provided ‘an improved basis’ for and permitted a professionalization of the art of management that increasingly emphasized the Human Side of Enterprise as decisive for productivity and the entire enterprise.154 Even though it remained ‘one of the major tasks of management’ ‘to organize human effort in the service of the economic objectives of the enterprise’,155 the scales had tipped to such an extent that it now seemed essential for management to turn towards the human factor to be able to do so. According to McGregor, ‘many managers would agree that the effectiveness of their organizations would at least be doubled if they could discover how to tap the unrealized potential present in their human resources’.156 The human side of enterprise no longer only mattered but was considered of the utmost importance for efficiency, productivity and the creation of value in general. Human motivation in particular was considered the decisive parameter for performance and now formed ‘the core of any theory of human resources’.157 According to McGregor, traditional management theory and practice presuppose that ‘the average human being has an inherent dislike of work’ and ‘wishes to avoid responsibility’, and accordingly must ‘be coerced, controlled, directed, threatened with punishment’ ‘to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement of organizational objectives’.158 Yet, organizational behaviour corroborating such assumptions should not be taken as forming the naturally given and unavoidable conditions for management but must, on the contrary, be considered ‘resultant passivity’, ‘hostivity’ or ‘refusal’, or ‘symptoms of illness’ that are produced precisely as an ‘adequate’ response to an existing management theory and practice generally informed by such assumptions.159 In consequence, ‘this behaviour is’ ‘not a cause’ but ‘a consequence’ of the prevailing management

 McGregor (1960): The Human Side of Enterprise, pp. 5, 7, 47.  McGregor (1960): The Human Side of Enterprise, pp. 5–6. 156  McGregor (1960): The Human Side of Enterprise, pp. 5–6. 157  McGregor (1960): The Human Side of Enterprise, p. 47. 158  McGregor (1960): The Human Side of Enterprise, pp. 45–46. 159  McGregor (1960): The Human Side of Enterprise, p. 52. 154 155

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theory and practice in general and of scientific management in particular.160 As also would become evident if one took care to study human behaviour in the private and the public sphere more closely, management theory and practice needed to recognize the ever-presence of motivation.161 According to motivation theory, the decisive issue was no longer human nature and the restraints it imposes on management and productivity. The decisive plane to be managed by management was rather what humans endeavoured to be or may become. Thus, human nature was no longer given. Instead, it is supposed to enfold and develop depending on how human beings are treated. From this time onwards, human capacities and dispositions became the decisive field of intervention for management, as it sought to shape the organization as an enterprise. Human potential and the techniques that permit the actualization of human potential are now considered crucial. This development paved the way for what became modern Human Resource Management. 4.8.5.4 An Enlarged Human Laboratory: The Impact of Human Psychology on Management and Modern Work Life The development described above was deeply affected by the impact of various branches of science. While there was a discernible impact from a range of sciences, a number of relatively recent human sciences, such as psychology, social psychology and human psychology, were particularly important. With motivational psychology and human psychology, modern work life began to be reconsidered as a generalized laboratory. Within this artificial setting, one could focus on, experiment with and further develop human existence and life forms: examinations that pre-engage future activity. One of the founding fathers that motivational psychology drew upon, Abraham Maslow, put it in this way: ‘Only recently has it dawned on me that as important as education perhaps even more important is the work  McGregor (1960): The Human Side of Enterprise, pp. 50–51.  ‘Motivation, the potential for development, the capacity for assuming responsibility, the readiness to direct behaviour towards organizational goals are all present in people. Management does not put them there. It is a responsibility for management to make it possible for people to recognize and develop these human characteristics themselves’ (McGregor (1960): The Human Side of Enterprise, p.  15).  Giving his assent to the assertion that the problem of motivation is the only important one in human life, Leonard T.  Troland had earlier attempted to draft a ‘systematic treatment of the facts and problems of human motivation’ in order to explain human behaviour (Troland (1928/1967): The Fundamentals of Human Motivation, p. v). 160 161

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life of the individual since everybody works […] If the lessons of psychology, of individual psychotherapy, of social psychology, etc., can be applied to man’s economic life, then my hope is that this too can be given an enlightened direction, thereby tending to influence in principle all human beings. […] It is quite clear that this is possible. My first contact with the management literature and with enlightened management policy indicates that management has already in its most advanced forms taken an enlightened, as well as a synergic, direction. […] This is very different from my own mistake, which I fell into automatically, of regarding industrial psychology as the unthinking application of scientific psychological knowledge, but it is nothing of the sort. It is a source of knowledge, replacing the laboratory often far more useful than the laboratory.’ As a consequence, Maslow cherished the hope ‘that the industrial situation may serve as the new laboratory for the study of psychodynamics of high human development, of the ideal ecology for the human being’.162 It is important to note that over time the impact of the human sciences has become so self-evident and ever-present that it has become easy to overlook and difficult to point out. It has passed under the skin and affects management science and practice subcutaneously and ‘subconsciously’. One could claim that the human sciences have become second nature. They have deeply affected modern work life and in particular how the human is conceived in this context and perceived by management. In the wake of the transition described here, the role, character and impact of psychology in particular has thus changed drastically. In its early beginnings as a self-conscious and self-denominating empirical and experimental study, the investigative practice of psychology had primarily remained within the confinements of the closed space of a limited and carefully arranged experimental laboratory163 with a particular focus on psycho-pathology and aberrant behaviour.164 In the aftermath, however, psychological research increasingly exceeded this limited space and discovered its own forthright relevance for ‘the better understanding of’ ordinary human personality and ‘social and industrial situations’ in general.165 As a consequence, psychology not only gained an immediate relevance for 162  Maslow (1998): Maslow on Management, p. 2. Cf. also Maslow (1970): Motivation and Personality; Maslow (1943): ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’, pp. 370–396. 163  Wundt (1883): Methodenlehre. Wundt (1885): Essays. 164  Janet (1931): L’état mental des hystériques. 165  Mayo (1951): The Psychology of Pierre Janet, p. v.

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modern work life, but also came to consider it as a generalized psychological laboratory and a privileged field for experimenting with and investigating new and agenda-setting forms of human behaviour that are investigated as they are developed. 4.8.5.5 The Importance of Mobilizing, Modulating and Managing Motivation With the transition described above, human existence became an unavoidable and essential condition for management, organizational activity and the creation of value in a new sense. Concomitantly, modern work life also came to be perceived and organized as a generalized motivational laboratory dedicated to the development and examination of advanced human forms of life. En route, the understanding of the role, make-up and character of the human was profoundly altered. Whereas human beings were initially considered primarily an external restraint upon productivity, the effect of which was to be minimized, they have come to be regarded and treated as the primary source of value creation and the decisive field of intervention (Illustration 4.2). Alongside the described development, the conception of the character and the make-up of the human being changed. The crucial starting point was no longer common man and basic human nature but, instead, ‘the unrealized potential present in human resources’: in human (self-)motivation and the drive towards human self-realization. The human drive towards responsibility, self-directedness, self-esteem and self-actualization became a key issue for management science and practice.166 What appeared was the human neither as a means nor as an end in itself but the human as a distinct and irreducible key dimension of the wider enterprise and as the condition of possibility for management and organizational life.167 An investigation of classical works in management and leadership thought thus indicates an important turn towards the human during the first three quarters of the twentieth century, in so far as the human here became the primary source of value creation and the primary target of management intervention. In the wake of this turn or transition, human motivation began to become a privileged centre of attention that gained recognition as a privileged concept and subject of investigation and  Bandura (1994): Self-efficacy.  Raffnsøe et al. (2014): ‘Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)’.

166 167

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Illustration 4.2  Motivation theory. Understood as the primary source of value creation, the human resource and human beings are conceived as the decisive field of intervention and the condition of possibility of management. (Drawing by Hannah Heilmann)

modulation in management theory and practice, as well as in HRM and management psychology. In prolongation hereof, the task of attending to, mobilizing and modulating human motivation became an issue of first-­ rate importance in modern work life in a Western context and in contexts influenced by Western management thought. As the drive that stimulates people to act in certain ways, motivation becomes both a decisive problem and solution in practices such as management, work and education. Whereas strong motivation is perceived as an all-decisive criterion for value-creation and success, lack of motivation is likely to ruin everything.168

168  The constitution, development and influence of the science of management studies and management thought will be further examined in Raffnsøe (2024): The Human Turn in Management Thought, forthcoming.

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4.9  New Fundamental Distinctions and Internal Relations In continuation of the ongoing, reciprocal differentiation and liberation of different forms of knowledge described in Chap. 4 of the study, relations between the primary areas of research, which differ substantially from earlier ones, are likewise established over time. Whereas these were earlier considered areas that were relatively closely related, the differentiation during the 1800s amounts, towards the end of the century, to a situation in which they immediately appear as defined in obvious separation from one another. Only on the basis of this differentiation do the disciplines in the different areas seem capable of entering into an exchange with each other. 4.9.1   The Natural History of Human and Animal Species In 1694, for example, in its first general dictionary, L’Académie française still did not distinguish between literature (lettres) and sciences, since it defined ‘literature [lettres au pluriel]’ as ‘any kind of science or teaching [toute sorte de sciences et de doctrine]’ and let the headings literature and science refer to each other.169 As late as 1842, it was still possible for the novelist Balzac, in the introduction to his collected work of novels La comedie humaine, to perceive the latter as an attempt to create a counterpart to the older zoologist Buffon’s Histoire naturelle that had been published some one hundred years earlier. Balzac’s sequel The Human Comedy  could only continue and complete Buffon’s project by being a natural history that was not directed towards the ‘animal kingdom [L’animalité]’ but towards ‘humanity [L’humanité]’, since it provided a botanizing gaze into ‘the infinite variety of human nature [l’infinie variété de la nature humaine]’, which showed that ‘depending on the environment [suivant les milieux]’ there existed ‘social species [des espèces Sociales]’ ‘in the same way as there existed zoological species [comme il y a des espèces Zoologiques]’.170 At the same time, Balzac’s work of novels, which he himself originally launched under the title of Études sociales, was still able to serve as 169  Académie française (1694/2015): Le dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise, dédié au Roy, p. 639. 170  Balzac (2013): La Comédie humaine, p. 8.

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inspiration for the dawning social sciences to such an extent that Marx and Engels were later able to claim that they, in their social-scientific analysis, were far more indebted to Balzac than to the prevalent sciences of their time.171 4.9.2   A Clear-cut Distinction Between Letters and Science However, already at the beginning of the 1800s, the difference between the practitioners and scholars of sciences on the one hand and the practitioners and scholars of letters/lettres on the other hand may begin to appear more pronounced than the similarities and the connections between them. In 1807, it is thus possible for Bonald to gradually recognize a ‘distinction’ between ‘sciences’ determined as ‘systems of knowledge [système de conoissances]’ and ‘lettres’ understood as an investigation and cultivation of the formation of (human) expression and expressivity; a difference that is already accentuated to such an extent that it has the character of an ‘opposition’ and threatens to terminate in a ‘divorce’.172 While Buffon’s 36 volumes of Histoire naturelle, published between 1749 and 1788, gain wide recognition and are widely revered for their stylistic advances, the scientist’s and author’s work is already at risk, towards the end of that same century, of losing its status. Due to the emerging distinction between science and literature, Buffon is now criticized for writing ‘scientific novels’ that do not show sufficient respect for this decisive divide. Directed towards women and laymen, Buffon’s scientific novels are deemed to be of no interest to the professional scientist.173 4.9.3   From Moral Science of Man to Social Science and Geisteswissenschaft Following this divorce between ‘science’ and ‘literature’, the path is opened for the arts (Geisteswissenschaft) to appear with a self-­understanding of being a much more distinct activity than the moral science of the 1700s.

 Lepenies (1992): Between Literature and Science, p. 5.  Bonald (1819): Mélanges littéraires, politiques et philosophiques, pp. 108–15. 173  Lepenies (1992): Between Literature and Science, p. 3. 171 172

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This kind of earlier ‘moral science of man’174 could still, with relative ease, contain within it and connect the study of the human mind, its functioning and ways of relating to the world with what was subsequently classified as natural scientific analysis on the one hand and what was understood as economic and social scientific observations on the other.175 Parallel to and in continuation of a long line of other main scientific areas that become differentiated and independent during the 1800s, a particularly humanistic area thus also appears whose contributors can gradually begin to consider themselves in rather strong opposition to other main areas. Hereby, they also distance themselves significantly from the intentions of the founders of the Humboldtian university. Their thinking, research and praxis becomes directed towards, and concerns and contributes to, the development of the distinctively human but no longer primarily as a contribution to the unification of the knowledge of its time. Rather, it becomes a question of forming and developing knowledge of the singularly human, which also means in distinction to, and oftentimes even opposition to, its surroundings. Only then is the specifically or particularly human conceived of as belonging to a distinct sanctuary that can be studied in and of itself, granted that this field of knowledge has a different character or ‘nature’ than what surrounds it. At the same time, only then are the humanities really separated out as a particular set of sciences that distinguish themselves from other scientific areas in that the former, through independent research, examine a distinct field, namely specifically and outstandingly human affairs, and that gain their proper value in so doing. Here, the distinction between nature and spirit, between natural sciences and the arts, manifests itself as a sharp and penetrating divide.176 In opposition to the natural sciences’ exploration of the regularities and technical applicability of nature, the humanities mark themselves as something other and more than the study of nature’s actual conditions (realia).177

174  Hume (1738/1978): A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume (1777/1992): Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals. 175  Smith (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith (1759/1982): The Theory of Moral Sentiments. 176  Riedel (1978): Verstehen oder Erklären? Zur Theorie und Geschichte der hermeneutischen Wissenschaften, pp. 19–27. 177  Kjørup (1996): Menneskevidenskaberne, p. 13.

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This is expressed in what Mill determines a ‘moral science’.178 In opposition to the previous, encompassing moral science of the 1700s, such as it was expressed, among others, by Hume, the moral science of the 1800s distinguishes itself, such as Dilthey articulates it in discussion with Mill, as a ‘Geisteswissenschaft’. Herein, the human being studies ‘the totality of human nature [die Totalität der Menschennatur]’ with a point of departure in its own ‘self-consciousness [Selbstbewusstsein]’; and, thereby, ‘finds’ for ‘itself’ ‘an imperium in the imperium [imperium in imperio]’.179 In opposition to the social sciences’ uncovering of precise knowledge about modern society and its conditions of life, the humanities may claim to provide a constructive or critical view in relation to, or expression of, something more or particularly human that in its transgression gives direction to what Hegel, at the beginning of the 1800s, determined ‘the prose of reality’,180 pointing beyond the mere reproduction of this other reality (Illustration 4.3).181 4.9.4   Clefts, Clashes and Competition Between Cultures The distance between a science that concerns itself with culture and one that concerns itself with nature—a science that attempts to understand and one that tries to explain—can in time develop and expand until it appears as an unsurmountable cleft between two sharply divided cultures in the middle of the 1900s.182 From the middle of the 1800s, the contours likewise exhibit competition between two divided societies in terms of  Mill (1843/2011): A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. 179  Dilthey (1883): Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften: Versuch einer Grundlegung für das Studium der Gesellschaft und der Geschichte, p. 7. As Gadamer points out in Wahrheit und Methode (1972), the human sciences are thereby ‘far removed from [weit davon entfernt] merely feeling inferior to the natural sciences [sich lediglich den naturwissenschaften unterlegen zu fühlen]. In spiritual imitation of the German classism [Klassik], they rather developed a proud auto-esteem as being the true guardians of humanism [Sachwalter des Humanismus]. […] The concept of formation [Bildung] […] was probably the greatest thought in the 1700s, and exactly this concept describes the element in which the science of the 1800s lives’ (Gadamer (1972): Wahrheit und Methode, pp. 6–7). 180  Hegel (1817–29/1970): Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik I, pp. 198–199/Hegel (1975): Philosophy of Fine Art. Vol. I, pp. 204–205. 181  Lepenies (1992): Between Literature and Science. Cf. also the critique of the social sciences (as well as their self-affirmation) in Adorno (1972): Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie. 182  Snow (1956/2013): ‘The Two Cultures’. Collini (1993): ‘Introduction’, pp. vii-lxxiii. 178

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Illustration 4.3  The late 1800s. Throughout the 1800s, a number of faculties are distilled from and marked themselves in relation to the humanities and the human. Studia humanitatis is no longer situated as a pre-study or foundation of the other scientific areas. Rather, the humanities receive the status of a peculiar knowledge reserve that can be distinguished from, but also enter into a competitive relation or an exchange with other forms of knowledge. (Drawing by Sigrún Gudbrandsdóttir)

how one in the best and most valuable fashion justifies a ‘social hope’183 and contributes to the development of human culture and human society: Does the preferred road to be taken lead through scientific cognition that attempts to understand and give the human being power over ‘the natural world’184 and thereby also contribute to improved human living conditions? Or is the preferred road literature, art, as well as critical and cultural

 Snow (1956/1998): The Two Cultures: And a Second Look, p. 9.  Collini (1993): ‘Introduction’, pp. vii-lxxiii. Snow (1956/1998): The Two Cultures: And a Second Look, p. 67. 183 184

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sciences that permit us to understand and illuminate the human being’s modern conditions of life and responses to it?185 It is a question of a difference and a competition that could develop into a fundamental schism and pave the way for mutual disrespect or even animosity.186 The difference between a science that concerns itself with culture and a social science can, as anticipated, in time likewise result in a mutually challenging competition as to what kind of science is more apt to account for both the conditions of everyday life and the foundations of society: Is it a precise social scientific measurement or the humanities’ scrutiny of the human, human sentiment, understanding and forms of expression?187 Is it an exposition of the social praxis or an examination of its meaning?

4.10  Scientific Investigations of the Human As the description of the ongoing differentiations of faculties and research areas in this Chap. 4 implies, a countermovement has taken effect since the university was re-established as the modern Humboldtian university with its focus on the human, and since the human sciences at the same time took on their modern, recognizable form. In this countermovement, the centrality of the human—understood as an explicit theme—has been abandoned in favour of investing science of the human in an exploration and shift of areas or ‘positivities’ that immediately seem foreign, or at least not present, to the human mind but which can, nonetheless, assert themselves and make themselves felt through it as they assert a decisive influence upon and affect the ways human beings behave, perceive and think.188 In the long run, it has become clear that such a centrifugal movement has probably broken with a conception of knowledge in which other conceptual contributions are fundamentally folded back on and illuminate an underlying basic humanity. This movement has distanced itself from and problematized the idea of a human who can occupy a self-evident and central position without thereby creating a distance to the human, since the human, its character, logic and  Lepenies (1992): Between Literature and Science.  Collini (1993): ‘Introduction’, pp. vii-lxxiii. Snow (1956/1998): The Two Cultures: And a Second Look, pp. 61, 1–17. 187  Lepenies (1992): Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology. 188  Foucault (1966): Les mots et les choses. 185 186

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responsiveness, remains a decisive factor and a central area of investigation for the emerging positivities of science.189 In continuation of the movement described above, the approaches within the aforementioned differentiations of the scientific faculties can also be folded back upon, and become applicable to, the human self. It is characteristic of the new scientific faculties, which appear and are established during the 1800s, that the human can be taken up and made a subject of investigation, but understood as part of a more widespread logic or connection that asserts itself through the human. The human can here be investigated in so far as it partakes in and is clarified as part of the investigation of the (more general) patterns or regularities of nature, life, and the social or the economic, among other things. In so far as the human being is, for example, a biological creature or a homo oeconomicus, deliberating on how to make the most of scarce and limited resources, it can be examined and its behaviour elucidated. Precisely in virtue of the aforementioned main research areas having moved beyond the human in the narrow sense as it is illuminated by research pursued at the philosophical faculty, it has been possible to contribute with other and alternative ways of understanding the human and its position at large; and these at first alternative ways have subsequently gained increasing currency and recognition to such an extent that they have become prominent contributions. Simultaneously, such investigations of the human and its conditions have gained recognition in so far as they have been able to contribute decisively to an improvement of human life and its conditions. As an independent form of knowledge devoted to the study of a privileged field of investigation, the humanities have thus been challenged internally in the academic world with the appearance of new foundational forms of knowledge which, at first, constituted themselves as they gained independence from the established knowledge at the faculty of philosophy but which, subsequently, have continued to contribute with fundamentally alternative descriptions or mappings of the human. These alternative descriptions may even, at times, lay claim to a kind of objectivity that the humanities traditionally struggle to live up to. In a wider sense, as noted above, the humanities are likewise challenged by the requirement to show 189  For a description of a parallel development within the aesthetic field, see Raffnsøe (2024): Aestheticizing Society: A Philosophical History of Sensory Experience and Art (forthcoming).

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their relevance in relation to their surroundings, including their relevance to related disciplines and the new human reality the latter establish. 4.10.1   Academic Diversification as a Shift in Relation to the Historical Heritage of the Human Sciences In hindsight, the humanities are thus granted a central role in the modern organization of knowledge by the establishment of the modern university at the beginning of the 1800s. Initially, the humanities appear as the new-­ fangled centre of the modern university in so far as this area is instigated as the location of independent research as well as the study and development of human spirit to such a degree that the humanities in these respects can serve as a model for other areas of research. In continuation of this development, the humanities and the faculty of philosophy also become, as already described, a hotbed for new and independent disciplines and new forms of research to proliferate. However, precisely due to this productivity and the resulting diversification of independent areas of research, it nonetheless becomes clear that the faculty of philosophy and the humanities cannot, in the long run, be maintained as a gathering focal point of a general realm of knowledge. In this broader realm of knowledge, the fundamental anthropocentrism is also contested; that is, the positioning of the human being at the centre of the perceived universe, which formed the point of departure for the reorganization of the university. On the other hand, the possibility of other disciplines from the various and differentiated main research areas to fold back on and contribute with competing mappings of the human and the human world arises. In this sense, the human being and the human can still preserve a decisive significance. Across the different areas of knowledge, the human being can preserve a central role as a cognizing or knowledge-seeking being who drives forward the process of understanding and concomitantly articulates itself. At the same time, human beings and their modes of being can also, transversally, be made the object of investigation and analysis. 4.10.2   The Human and Its Modes of Being as a Decisive Addition and Perpetual Interstitial Point The conjuncture between disciplines opens up the possibility of recurrent discussions between the humanities and other scientific areas concerning how one can best understand and describe the character and status of the human. In any case, the human plays a consistent role as an entity of vital importance: as a modifiable interstitial being that is already being

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developed and whose aim is to contribute to the further understanding and development of itself. 4.10.2.1 From Anthropocentric Study of Humankind to Anthropological Study of Human Modes of Being In Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature190 and later in Kant’s epistemology, metaphysics of morals, critique and logic,191 as well as in Humboldt’s university reform,192 the human still played the central and pivoting role. Humankind and obtainable forms of knowledge concerning its modes of being were thematized as a unifying reference point to and in the known world. Even though this is no longer the case towards the end of the nineteenth century, human beings continue to assert themselves as important beings who step forward and are present in the world in different ways.193 In the new conjuncture of knowledge, the human and its modes of being assume the role of a decisive addendum to the world whose different aspects it becomes crucial to examine and contribute towards for the different areas of knowledge since this addendum continues to labour and unfold itself in ways that are still incomplete and open-ended.194 The possibility of what is no longer merely an anthropocentric but rather an anthropological turn and the role it allots to human beings is already outlined towards the end of Kant’s authorship in his Anthropologie  Hume (1738/1978): A Treatise of Human Nature.  Kant (1781/1976): Kritik der reinen Vernunft 1. Kant (1781/1976): Kritik der reinen Vernunft 2. Kant (1785–1786/1978): Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Kant (1788/1976): Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. Kant (1800/1978): Logik. 192  Humboldt (1809/2010): ‘Antrag auf Errichtung der Universität Berlin’, p.  116. Humboldt (1810/1956): ‘Über die innere und äußere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen anstalten in Berlin’. 193  Foucault (1966): Les mots et les choses, pp. 314–354. Blanc (2005): L’esprit des sciences humaines. 194  According to Foucault, ‘anthropology as an analytic of man [l’homme] has certainly played a constituting role in modern thought since to a large extent we are not free [detachés] from it. It became necessary at the moment when representation [la representation] lost the power to determine on itself and in a single movement the interplay [jeu] of its syntheses and analyses. It was necessary for empirical syntheses to be performed and ensured [assures] elsewhere than within the sovereignty of “I think”. They had to be required at precisely the point at which that sovereignty reached its limit, that is in man’s finitude [la finitude de l’homme]—a finitude that is as much that of conscience as that of the living, speaking, labouring individual. This had already been formulated by Kant in his Logic, when to his traditional trilogy of questions he added an ultimate one: The three critical questions (What can I know? What should I do? What am I permitted to hope?) then found themselves referred to a fourth, and inscribed, as it were, “to its account [son compte]”: Was ist der Mensch?’ (Foucault (1966): Les mots et les choses, pp. 351–352). 190 191

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in pragmatischer Hinsicht.195 While antique authors such as Aristotle use the term anthropologos in a pejorative sense to determine the kind of speech that is mere ‘gossip’ or ‘folk talk’,196 the term ‘anthropology’ only much later begins to refer to an interesting scientific field of research. In connection with the natural and bio-scientific reformulation of medicine and the health sciences described above, the term comes to play a role for a medical science that strives to comprehend the transformations it is itself undergoing.197 It does so by articulating the ‘doctrine’ or the different mappings of the human—beyond the hitherto metaphysical and ethical determinations—which emerge with the new bio-physiological ­approaches.198 In this context, medical anthropology comes to designate both the medical sciences’ contributions to knowledge about the human and the knowledge about the human and its behaviour that is necessary to acquire for those that practise the medical sciences if the knowledge that they possess is to have the desired effect. As such, anthropology can generally begin to be understood as a doctrine of human nature that maps out the latter situated in its context.199 Leading on from this, a new anthropological-psychological field of knowledge opens up to a pragmatic investigation of the human being as it appears and is experienced in relation to something else. Such ‘anthropology’ (or ‘systematically drafted’ ‘teaching about our knowledge of the human’) already appears in Kant as a two-sided activity or relationship.200 Whereas the skill of knowing ‘human physiology’ explores ‘what nature makes of man (was die Natur aus dem Menschen macht)’, the ‘pragmatic’ investigation examines what the human being ‘as a freely acting being does or can or should make of itself (aus sich selber macht, oder machen kann und soll)’.201 For both sides of anthropology, it is true that it is a question of an investigation and experience of the human as it appears and 195  Kant (1798/1978): Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Hinsicht. Wilson (2006): Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology: Its Origin, Meaning, and Critical Significance. Foucault (1961/2008): ‘Introduction à L’Anthropologie’. Raffnsøe (2017): ‘What is Critique? The Critical State of Critique in the Age of Criticism’. 196  Aristotle (circa 350 B.C./1994): Nicomachean Ethics/Ethikon nikomacheion, 1125a5. 197  Luyendijk-Elshout (2004): ‘Medicine’. 198  Calian (2008): Die Erfindung des Menschen: Kants Vorlesungen über die Pragmatische Anthropologie, 1772–1795. 199  Linden (1976): Untersuchungen zum Anthropologiebegriff des 18. Jahrhunderts, p. 1. 200  Kant (1798/1978): Anthropologie, p. 399. 201  Kant (1798/1978): Anthropologie, p. 399.

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unfolds in relation to the surrounding world and the latter’s ‘geography’, and thereby in time and space, with all the difficulties and possibilities of investigation that that entails.202 The opening of this field of knowledge implies that during the 1800s the human being is made into an object of continuous empirical and pragmatic study of how it comes into being and is shaped by and unfolds in different contexts.203 The initial demarcation in Kant and Herder of the fact that philosophy, to a greater or lesser extent, can and should be transformed into anthropology is,204 from the latter part of the 1800s, sedimented and institutionalized with the constitution of two empirical disciplines of knowledge, namely anthropology and psychology.205 In these disciplines, one studies human forms of existence and manifestations not in isolation and independently from their extended contexts and connections of life but precisely in them, in order to examine the contributions of the human and its modes of being to the broader context.206 From this intellectual universe, the human being appears as a—and in many ways the—decisive addition to the world. The human being becomes a decisive factor also to the wider context that is investigated; or, in the words of Kant, it becomes ‘the most important object in the world’.207 For the same reason, it hereby becomes decisive to examine the human as it appears and becomes in its context. Here, knowledge about the human appears neither first and foremost as a purpose in and of itself nor as the highest purpose but, rather, as a decisive intervention in and contribution to a greater connectivity that the human participates in, contributes to and at the same time significantly displaces.  Kant (1798/1978): Anthropologie, pp. 399–402.  Foucault (1961/2008): ‘Introduction à L’Anthropologie’. Raffnsøe (2017): ‘What is Critique? The Critical State of Critique in the Age of Criticism’. 204  Zammito (2002): Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Sturm (2009): Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen 205  Wallerstein et al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences, pp. 21–28. 206  According to Hegel, the ideality of the spirit [die Idealität des Geistes] ‘is in the beginning necessarily given in a still unmediated [unvermittelt] form’. Consequently, the ideality of the spirit initially appears ‘through nature [durch die Natur]’ and in a form that is ‘extrinsic [äuβerlich] to the spirit’. ‘Therefore, we must start from the spirit as it exists captured or detained [befangen] in nature, related to its corporeality [Leiblichkeit], not yet existing by or close to itself [bei sich selbst seienden], not yet released [frei]. This basis for the human being (Grundlage des Menschen) is the object of anthropology [Gegenstand der Anthropologie]’ (Hegel (1830/1970): Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften III, p. 40). 207  Kant (1798/1978): Anthropologie, p. 399. 202 203

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In this sense, it is not just the sciences at the faculty of humanities that can lay claim to investigating the human being and that can contribute to its development. If by human sciences one understands those sciences that preoccupy themselves with the human being and contributes with knowledge that maps and changes the human while they may also contribute to its improvement, then one must recognize that the scope of the human sciences far exceeds those sciences that are traditionally located at the faculty of humanities. At this point, the humanities must make themselves relevant in competition and exchange with other faculties’ forms of knowledge to the extent that the latter productively contribute to the understanding of the human (Illustration 4.4). 4.10.2.2 The Reassertion of the Virtues of the Humanities Within a New Context Within this context, it is consistently understood as crucial to contribute with knowledge of the human that is capable of establishing a pragmatic-­ practical point of view and shed light on what human beings both already are and what they can become; yet, here, it is also perceived as problematic if researchers withdraw and claim a special prerogative and a privileged access to the human and its modes of being as they continue to occupy themselves with the peculiarly human and place it at the centre of the world. Nonetheless, this is what central scholars contributing to the humanities chose to do at the time. It has also been possible to observe such self-­ assertion pointing to the exclusive particularity of the humanities among its central scholars and champions up to this day. As previously demonstrated, this is the case when, for example, Nussbaum emphasizes that the arts, and among these literary studies in particular, have a very special task that marks them out, namely to train or cultivate humanity;208 to emphatically render and imagine humanity until an acute perception and awareness of the human and its moral orientation appear that can provide a unifying orientation to our way of life.209 An effort to return to and reactualize the inheritance of the humanities is noticeable both in the more limited emphasis on the humanities as a particularly privileged resort in relation to the surrounding society and in Nussbaum’s more insistent and active plaidoyer for a far-reaching significance for the humanities’ praxis. In an attempt to return to the virtues that  Nussbaum (2003): Cultivating Humanity.  Nussbaum (2010): Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities.

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Illustration 4.4  The human being of anthropology. The designation of the universally human no longer constitutes the obvious point of departure in the anthropological realm of knowledge. Instead, anthropology is increasingly turned towards and seeks knowledge about the human as it appears and ‘asserts itself’ in relation to the surrounding world—of and to which the former comprises a (or the) decisive addition. (Drawing by Hannah Heilmann)

one associates with artes liberales and in order to reapply them to current conditions, a dream emerges of reactualizing the central and fundamental significance of the studia humanitatis, a form of knowledge of human conditions that existed prior to the emergence of the modern university, in the hope that one can distil their normative core. At the same time, the supposed core of the studia humanitatis is reactualized and reaffirmed is in a modern world where such knowledge of the human is no longer

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fundamentally perceived as subordinate to other and higher purposes but, rather, immediately appears as a noble, unifying goal in and of itself, such as was the case for the founding fathers of the modern university. As a consequence, this kind of assertion of the humanities’ particular value within the disciplines of the human sciences in the broader sense becomes possible from the time when one determines the humanities as a Geisteswissenschaft or a specific branch and kind of science that distinguishes itself clearly in relation to other areas of knowledge by virtue of its particular subject matter, that is, the human, which has its particular existence, namely the human spiritual life, thus distinguishing it from the rest of reality.210 At the same time, this kind of assertion of the humanities’ privileged access to the ‘more than human’ after the anthropological turn risks becoming a relatively impotent reassertion of the prerogatives of the Geisteswissenschaften at a more recent historical stage where such self-­ assertive behaviour is hardly possible any more. In the wider conception of knowledge that has since come into being, such a claim is no longer perceived as being contemporaneous with multiple and manifold suggestions in the field that chart the human and contribute to its understanding. The recurring actualization of the inheritance of the humanities thereby risks being perceived as an arrogant and reactive attempt to position the humanities and the scholars plying this trade over and above the rest of society by withdrawing to a special, centrally autonomous sphere or province, namely the human in itself. Furthermore, by claiming to possess a privileged monopoly of knowledge concerning the distinctively or particularly human, contributors to the humanities may seek to assert a position of superiority with regard to and in conjunction with a number of other forms of knowledge that present themselves as human sciences and contribute to the mapping of human beings and their modes of being. A repeated attempt to reactualize the dwindling core of the humanities in a conjecture experienced as an acute crisis thereby risks appearing as a nostalgic and powerless gesture in so far as it risks reaffirming not only traditional humanism but also anthropocentrism in unmediated ways where such a conception of the world has already been left behind in and through a long and sustained historical development. Since this kind of well-intentioned attempt to make a case for the humanities in dire times may often fail to resonate with others in so far as  Dilthey (1883): Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften.

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it may be perceived as unfoundedly arrogant or even as an expression of impotent megalomania, it may risk producing responses that take the form of mixed emotions or even counterattacks. In this manner, trying to make a case for the humanities in this way risks reinforcing the disappointment over the inability of others to recognize the importance of the humanities and in particular the necessity of seeking such a renaissance of the humanities.211 Thereby, this ambition may contribute to provoking its own disappointment and result in resentment. The dated inability to renew the perceived role of the humanities in the described manner becomes even more pronounced through the subsequent development of new forms and fields of knowledge in the period that, since the turn of the twentieth century, have led to our time. This subsequent development will be described in the following Chap. 5.

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Schultz, Theodore William (1971): Investment in Human Capital: The Role of Education and Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shils, Edward; Roberts, John (2004): ‘The Diffusion of European Models Outside Europe’. In Rüegg, Walter (ed.) (2004): A History of the University in Europe: Universities in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries (1800–1945), volume III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 163–203. Smith, Adam (1759/1982): The Theory of Moral Sentiments, edited by D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Books. Smith, Adam (1776/1991): An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. London: Everyman’s library. Snow, Charles P. (1956/2013): ‘The Two Cultures”, New Statesman, 6/10 1956: 413. Available at: http://www.newstatesman.com/cultural-­capital/2013/01/ c-­p-­snow-­two-­cultures. Snow, Charles P. (1956/1998): The Two Cultures: And a Second Look. Cambridge: University Press. Souter, Ralph William (1933): Prolegomena to Relativity Economics. An Elementary Study in the Mechanics and Organics of An Expanding Economic Universe. New York: Columbia University Press; London: P. S. King & Son, Ltd. Sturm, Thomas (2009): Kant und die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Paderborn: Mentis Verlag. Swedberg, Richard (2002): Principles of Economic Sociology. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Taylor, Frederick W. (1911/2007): The Principles of Scientific Management. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Filiquarian Publishing. Taylor, Frederick W. (1911): Shop Management. New  York; London: Harper and Bros. Troland Leonard T. (1928/1967): The Fundamentals of Human Motivation. Facsimile of the 1928 Edition. New York: Harper. Vebeln, Thorstein (1899): ‘The Preconceptions of Economic Science’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 13(4): 396–426. Virchow, Rudolf (1871): Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebelehre. Berlin: Hirschwald. Walker, Donald A. (2007): ‘Early General Equilibrium Economics: Walras, Pareto, and Cassel’. In Samuels, Warren J.; Biddle, Jeff E.; Davis, John B. (2007): A Companion to the History of Economic Thought. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 278–293. Wallerstein, Immanuel M., et  al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel M. (1999): The End of the World as We Know it: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Walras, Léo (1874/1926): Éléments d’économie politique ou théorie de la richesse sociale. Édition définitive revue et augmentée par l’auteur. Paris/Lausanne: R. Pichon & R. Durand-Auzias, éditeurs/F, Rouge, libraire-éditeur. Walras, Leon (2014): Elements of Theoretical Economics. Or the Theory of Social Wealth. Translation of third edition. Translated and edited by Donald A Walker and Jan van Daal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whewell, William (2001): The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 1. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. Whyte, William F. (1955): Money and Motivation: An Analysis of Incentives in Industry. New York: Harper. Wilson, Holly L. (2006): Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology: Its Origin, Meaning, and Critical Significance. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wundt, Wilhelm M. (1883): Methodenlehre. Stuttgart: Enke. Wundt, Wilhelm M. (1885): Essays. Leipzig: Engelmann. Zammito, John H. (2002): Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.

CHAPTER 5

New Overlaps and Reciprocities Between the Faculties

Abstract  The ongoing establishment of new specialized disciplines and subject areas from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century leads to a relatively clear and widely accepted division between faculties and types of knowledge. Since the Second World War, however, these divisions have been decisively questioned. While the university institution and its forms of knowledge expand drastically, the conception of knowledge is altered. To an increasing extent, knowledge is produced and perceived as a form of know-how of considerable relevance for the surrounding society. Whereas the withdrawal to the purely and emphatically human space, where human understanding could be intensively developed in isolation from the rest of the (social and lucrative) world, was still positively connotated and highly appreciated in Humboldt’s time, the expression ‘ivory tower’ gains a predominantly pejorative connotation during the twentieth century. Knowledge is increasingly understood and evaluated in terms of performativity as know-­ how that enables people to do or produce something new. Coincidentally, new forms of transversal, situated and interdisciplinary scholarly knowledge are established. Among these emerging disciplines of science are area studies. With cultural studies, interdisciplinary forms of science equally emerge within the human sciences. Traversing the divisions between the faculties of science, these new forms of scientific knowledge affirm their situatedness and assert themselves as contributions to specific larger contexts. Since the beginning of the Second World War, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 S. Raffnsøe, A History of the Humanities in the Modern University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46533-8_5

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thus, disciplines emerge that build up a decisively different relationship not only between the scientific faculties but also between science and its objects, human earthlings and their surroundings. Keywords  Ivory tower, knowledge society • Performativity • Area studies • Cultural studies • Interdisciplinarity • Transdisciplinarity • Braidotti • Descola • Etzkowitz • Hart • Hebdige • Hoggart • Lykke • Nowotny • Serres • Snow

5.1   The Development of New Transversal and Interdisciplinary Fields of Knowledge in the Period Following the Second War As a result of the ongoing and growing establishment of new specialized disciplines and subject areas which continually challenged the initial organization of the modern university from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, a relatively clear and widely accepted division between faculties and differing types of knowledge is established. Since the Second World War, however, these divisions have been decisively questioned, as is described in this fourth part. While the university institution and the forms of knowledge connected to it expand drastically, the conception of knowledge is altered.

5.2   Knowledge Resituated In the first half of the twentieth century, one can see a reinforcement of the described development and division between the main research areas, resulting in the fact that different, mutually challenging forms of knowledge of the human become possible.1 During the period following the Second World War, a further expansion of the entire university system and the associated forms of knowledge takes place that is unprecedented, even in relation to the earlier dissemination of the Humboldt model.2 Not only does the number of students and staff increase tremendously in Europe and the Western world, but at the same time, the resources for

1 2

 Wallerstein et al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences, pp. 1–32.  Wallerstein et al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences, pp. 33–70.

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research increase and new universities are founded.3 Already at the beginning of the Second World War, the number of students at the universities in Europe had increased by 700% compared to 1840 (from 80,000 to 600,000), while the number of professors had increased by 500% (from 5000 to 32,000). This development was further intensified in the post-­ war period, especially from the appearance of the modern mass university as a part of the modern mass education from 1960 onwards. While there were 200 European universities in 1930, this number had increased to 800 in 1995.4 5.2.1   Knowledge Leaving the Ivory Tower While such an expansion makes continued specialization possible, it also raises the question of the immediate relevance or value of the knowledge produced at the university to the world outside—in an economic or social sense—both inside and outside the disciplines of knowledge. In the Middle Ages, the expression ‘ivory tower’ is still used as a positive expression of an elevated, pure and protected location to which one could withdraw and grow in order to establish a new agenda for the surrounding world.5 In his 1810 description of ‘the inner and outer organisation of higher scientific institutions’, Humboldt was still able to emphasize the isolated ‘loneliness and freedom [Einsamkeit und Freiheit]’ in ‘the spiritual human life [das geistige Leben der Menschen]’ around which the singular human or humans can gather, ‘free [losgemacht]’ from the surroundings and their demands and pressures, as the ‘founding principles [vorwaltenden Prinzipien]’ of science which the individual researchers have to share,

 Rüegg (2011): ‘Themes’, p. 14.  Cf. Rüegg (2011): ‘Themes’, p. 21. 5  The use of the term ‘ivory tower’ goes back to and draws upon a passage in the Song of Songs or the Song of Solomon 7:4: ‘Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim. Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon, which looks toward Damascus. Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel. Your hair is like royal tapestry; the king is held captive by its tresses.’ In prolongation of this passage, which is often read as a lover’s attempt to render his admiration for the long and beautiful white neck of his bellowed, ‘the ivory tower’ is often in later Christianity somewhat creatively used as a recurring epithet for Virgin Mary. She was characterized as ‘the ivory tower’ since she had protected and nourished the saviour in her bosom in secluded purity from the rest of the world until he was able to go out into and enter the surrounding world. See Bergmann (1964): ‘Der Elfenbeinerne Turm in der deutschen Literatur (The Ivory Tower in German Literature).’ 3 4

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dedicate themselves to and work towards.6 It is this pure and cleansed human space which Humboldt himself expresses a longing to return to in his request to be relieved from the position of head of the ‘educational and cultural department’.7 In the 1900s, however, the expression ‘ivory tower’ gained a predominantly pejorative connotation in relation to the reality it is applied to. The purity and chastity connected with an existence in a special, isolated human space centred around the search for scientific or artistic truth is no longer strongly associated with higher insight. Rather, it is associated with life in another world that is likely to lead to naivety and stupidity exactly because it, in its specialization, protects against and isolates itself from worldly concerns. With this transition, the isolation of the ivory tower from the rest of society is no longer perceived as a positive location that can have a value in and of itself. Instead of being recognized in positive terms as an opportunity to purify and articulate oneself, the withdrawal to the ivory tower is first and foremost understood in terms of lack as a flight and an absence from that which surrounds it and from what should be faced. The ivory tower is not a place that the poet or the researcher should seek but something that they must abandon or take leave from, such as the German student organization emphatically proclaimed with the title of its annual meeting of 1960: ‘Abschied vom Elfenbeinturm’.8 5.2.2   Knowledge as Performativity The above-mentioned shifts may be understood as a sign of how the conception of knowledge itself and the ideas of how knowledge gains importance and relevance overall is seen as being in the process of changing.9 This occurs at the same time as the university system, as well as the significance of the different forms of knowledge associated with it, grew immensely in size. If the knowledge that was communicated at the 6  Humboldt (1810/1956): ‘Über die innere und äußere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten in Berlin  (On the Inner and Outer Organisation of the Higher Scientific Institutions in Berlin)’, pp. 255–56. 7  Humboldt (1910/2010): ‘Entlassungsgesuch (Request to be discharged)’. 8  Cf. Kalischer (1960): Abschied vom Elfenbeinturm: Einheit der Bildungswege. Bergmann (1964): ‘Der elfenbeinerne Turm in der deutschen Literatur’. 9  Cf. Lyotard (1979): La condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir. Johnsen; Raffnsøe (2008): ‘Om viden, socialitet og immaterialitet’ (On Knowledge, Sociality and Immateriality).

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university of the Middle Ages had a relatively direct applicability as a relevance of purpose to relatively specific professions, then the use of knowledge in the modern refounded university is understood as fundamental—but now in a more indirect fashion. Hereby, research is institutionalized with relative autonomy as a fundamental search for truth. This may immediately seem completely useless, but it can, at a second glance, show itself to be quite the opposite in so far as it makes it possible to base the practice of different professions, as well as societal leadership and stewardship, on the truth and reality of how things fundamentally are.10 Knowledge achieved in this relative autonomy thereby resembles an absolute value that may subsequently show itself as having a relative value through its relevance to the surroundings. However, in the new forms of knowledge and the new context of knowledge that have subsequently been established, knowledge is increasingly perceived as something that gains support based on the extent to which it makes a difference and enables us to make a difference, as it appears in a new context and changes it. Knowledge is increasingly understood and evaluated as a know-how11 and as something that is produced and shows what it is as it is being applied in a given context.12 It is increasingly understood and gains recognition and support as information that can enable us to do or produce something new.13 Knowledge is thereby also gradually conceived of as a relative value that gains importance in virtue of the difference it makes to the surroundings. As information, knowledge is ascribed value as knowledge for something rather than ­simply as knowledge of something. An example of knowledge understood as a supplement to the world, which first and foremost allows something to be done, is the simulation of dynamic, complex and open systems of molecular biology, which combines heterogeneous elements in order to be able

10  For a further development of the notion of relative autonomy that takes its point of departure in the field of aesthetics, see Raffnsøe (2024): Aestheticizing Society: A Philosophical History of Sensory Experience and Art, forthcoming. 11  Johnsen and Raffnsøe (2008): ‘Om viden, socialitet og immaterialitet’. 12  Gibbons (1994): The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies, pp. 3–4. 13  Lyotard (1979): La condition postmoderne. Bell (1974): The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. Bell (2006): ‘Performative knowledge’. Hansen (2011): Adapting in the Knowledge Economy: Lateral Strategies for Scientists and those who Study Them. Drucker (1993): Post-Capitalist Society.

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to foresee future vital conditions.14 Big data is also a striking example of knowledge that, above all, appears to be informative. In extension, one can also detect a tendency of decreasing patience from the scientific community and others in relation to the autonomous quest for knowledge. Even where a scientific search for the truth is respected as being valuable in and of itself, a more or less immediate relevance or applicability is generally expected in a societal or economic context, while an awareness of the performative aspects of science is expected of those who seek the truth. The exploration of what the cognizing subject does with what he or she does, both in relation to the object of investigation and in relation to the context from which he or she departs and into which he or she speaks, is increasingly understood as a part of the process of research. For the same reason, reflections on the ethical aspects of the research process or its consequences are likewise expected to be an active part of the research process. The increased demand for relevance cannot, therefore, be reduced to a question of a narrow instrumentalization of the sciences; rather, it may in certain respects also be interpreted as the expression of a heightened focus on the social context and self-­ understanding of the sciences. This too indicates that the knowledge-­ society, and especially the humanities, find themselves in a critical phase of transition.

5.3  New, Transversally Situated Forms of Science In a context where research-based knowledge has gained increasing importance while the conception of knowledge and its role has been reconfigured as information, the entire configuration of knowledge is likewise fundamentally changed. This change involves both the relationship between faculties and the individual disciplines. While the period from the founding of the modern university is initially characterized by a continuous differentiation of forms of knowledge that are subsequently sedimented as disciplines belonging to relatively sharply divided faculties, the development after 1945 may be said to move in the opposite direction.15 Whereas the number of names of disciplines within, for example, the social sciences was significantly reduced in the period 14  Johnsen and Raffnsøe (2008): ‘Om viden, socialitet og immaterialitet’. Rose (2007): The Politics of Life Itself. 15  Wallerstein (1996): Open the Social Science, pp. 33–48.

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from 1850 to 1945 and amounted to a relatively short list of established disciplines—first and foremost, economics, business economics and administration, political science, politology, sociology and, in some cases, psychology and anthropology as well as law—new names constantly appear in the period following the Second World War of disciplines that find new institutional bases in the shape of new institutes and new programmes.16 5.3.1   The Emergence of Area Studies This movement is already felt with the emergence of various area studies in the late 1930s.17 Seeking to provide a coherent and diverse knowledge of specific, often alien geographical areas, such studies draw on approaches from different, specialized disciplines in order to shed light on a given field. From the 1950s onwards, such studies gain an increased prevalence and institutionalization, and increased financial support from both state and private funds, until finally they are not just a Western but a global phenomenon. These area studies can also be seen as an example of a more far-reaching trend towards research based on investigation or being problem-­oriented rather than research driven by a discipline. This kind of research often connects science relatively directly to technology and industry, as well as to political, economic and social agendas. An important testimony to the recognition of the importance of science and research in this new setting was Science - The Endless Frontier: A Report to the President on a Program for Postwar Scientific Research, a governmental report published in 1945 by Vannevar Bush at the request of US President Franklin D.  Roosevelt and Vice-President Henry Wallace. Drawing on his war-time experience as the director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, Vannevar Bush argued that scientific advances in collaboration with technology, industry and political agendas were essential to national security, prosperity and welfare.18

 Wallerstein (1996): Open the Social Science, p. 48.  Klein (1990): Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice, p.  25. Wallerstein (1996): Open the Social Sciences, p. 36. 18  Bush (1945/2021): Science: The Endless Frontier. 16 17

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5.3.2   The Appearance of Grand-Scale Problem-Solving and Mission-Oriented Research Such actively problem-orientated and -solving research also becomes particularly evident with the appearance of various forms of grand-scale mission-­oriented research. Perspicuous examples of this kind of research are the Manhattan Project, directed towards the development of the nuclear bomb, and the American and Russian space programmes.19 In a comment to this kind of development, Michael Serres remarks how the explosion of the nuclear bomb in Hiroshima ‘in one blow detonated’ a whole new set of ‘problems concerning the relationship between science, technology, research, society, politics, violence, morality and even religion’; problems that ‘were so global that they announced a new period and called for a new vision of the world [une vision neuve]’.20 With the nuclear bomb and big science as a prerequisite for this and other technological advances, scientific research began to appear as ‘a power of worldwide dimensions’.21 Since the 1970s, such large-scale problem-­ oriented and technological research collaborations have also directed themselves towards social and societal problems.22 5.3.3   Triple-Helix Relations Between Academia-­Industry-Governmental Institutions Furthermore, emerging ‘triple-helix relations’ like these between ‘academia-­industry-governmental institutions’23 bear witness not only to new relationships between the disciplines and the faculties but also to a new and more directly relevant relationship between research and the surrounding world, as indicated above. The close relations between academia, industry and government give rise to the idea that they affect each other to such an extent that they engage in a mutually reinforcing trilateral spiral or thread that brings them all to another level.24 From the second half of  Klein (1990): Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice, p. 34.  Serres (1994): ‘Nous entrons dans une période où la morale devient objective’, p. 37. 21  Idem. 22  Klein (1990): Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice. 23  Etzkowitz; Leydesdorff (2001): Universities and the Global Knowledge Economy: A Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government Relations, p. 3. 24  Etzkowitz (2008): The Triple Helix: University-Industry-Government Innovation in Action. 19 20

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the twentieth century, such relations have ‘questioned the traditional “ivory tower role” of the universities’. Instead, universities have been ascribed a central role as an important hub in the new web of connections that arises between the different research areas and between research and practice.25 5.3.4   The Emergence of a Situated, Transversal Human Science: Cultural Studies While a human turn thus takes place in relation to the tasks and problems with which the sciences are broadly faced with by the society around them, new interdisciplinary areas likewise arise within the humanities themselves. As a critical development of, and addition to, disciplines and institutes within the primarily human sciences, the field cultural studies springs forth from the beginning of the 1960s; first, primarily in England, before later gaining global dissemination and becoming institutionalized in a number of different contexts.26 From the outset, these studies and approaches constitute themselves in programmatic opposition to the limitations and narrow-­mindedness of existing disciplines. This is already indicated when the director Richard Hoggart, in his inaugural address ‘Schools of English and Contemporary Society’ for the opening of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, delivers an outline of what he ‘provisionally’ determines ‘Literature and Contemporary Cultural Studies’.27 ‘Literature and contemporary cultural studies’ is here understood as a research agenda that ‘has something in common with several existing approaches’ but ‘is not identical with any of them’. It distinguishes itself by moving ‘beyond the relatively closed areas’ which the common ‘schools of English’ usually remain within, in that it ‘engages critically in the surrounding world’.

25  Etzkowitz; Leydesdorff (2001): Universities and the Global Knowledge Economy: A Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government Relations, p.  2. Stehr (1994): Knowledge Societies. 26  Grossberg (2010): Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Grossberg, et al. (eds.) (1992): Cultural Studies. 27  Hoggart (1964): ‘Schools of English and Contemporary Society’, p. 248.

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In so doing, cultural studies involves both historical and philosophical as well as ‘literary-sociological’ work.28 Similarly, another founding figure of cultural studies, Stuart Hall, retrospectively affirms how it is a matter of a ‘becoming’ that springs from what supporters understand as a deep-­ seated ‘crisis’ in the humanities29 that is not limited to individual disciplines but more generally challenges the disciplines at the faculty of humanities. It seemed inevitable to create a distance to ‘the still existing traditions of the humanities’,30 namely the obligation to cherish and uphold a handed-down conception of a common humanity and provide for its cultivation, including times when it seemed threatened; and in close connection to this, it seemed necessary to dissociate oneself from and to ‘de-mask’ the self-understanding of the humanities as a ‘disinterested knowledge’ about the particularly human.31 In this case, the intention is not to plead for the alternative advantages of the natural sciences, such as occurs in the conflict between two cultures of knowledge.32 Nor is the intention to submerge into the disciplines at the faculty of social sciences. Just as it is a question of ‘fending off the defenders of the humanities tradition’, the endeavour here is ‘fending off what sociologists regarded sociology to be’ in order to penetrate and disrupt sociology.33 All of this is done to make it possible to examine and conceive contemporary culture—and especially the decisive displacements of contemporary mass-culture that break with the ‘high culture’ inherited from the past—as ‘a general reaction to the general and major change in the condition of our common life’34 and thereby to ‘identify and articulate the relations between culture and society’.35 28  Hoggart (1964): ‘Schools of English and Contemporary Society’, pp.  246, 249–51, 254. Schulman (1993): ‘Conditions of their own making: An intellectual history of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham’. 29  Hall (1990): ‘The emergence of cultural studies and the crisis of the humanities’, p. 11. 30  Hall (1990): ‘The emergence of cultural studies and the crisis of the humanities’, p. 15. 31  Hall (1990): ‘The emergence of cultural studies and the crisis of the humanities’, p. 15. 32  Snow (1956/1998): The Two Cultures: And a Second Look, p. 413. 33  Hall (1990): ‘The emergence of cultural studies and the crisis of the humanities’, p. 16. 34  Williams (1958): Culture and Society, 1780–1950, p. xvi. 35  Nelson, et al. (1992): ‘Cultural Studies: An Introduction’, p. 4. Accordingly, Grossberg is able to determine cultural studies in Cultural Studies in the Future Tense (2010) as being ‘concerned with describing and intervening in the ways cultural practices are produced within, inserted into, and operate in the everyday life of human beings and social formations, so as to produce, struggle against, and perhaps transform the existing structures of power’, p. 8

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When, in 1979, Dick Hebdige, for example, examines contemporaneous, marginal groups such as teddy boys, mods and rockers, skinheads and punks in Subculture: The Meaning of Style, he thereby analyses a conditioned and situated humanity and its efforts to make sense of its current conditions. Hebdige demonstrates how such subcultures can constitute themselves in opposition to the ruling conceptions of the human through a subversive utilization of style in order to deny, all at once, that which rules and thereby establish an alternative and distinct form of self-­ expression; an expression of both powerlessness and an alternative form of power. This new field, thus, expresses what Stuart Hall determines ‘the “dirtiness” of the semiotic game’ and a “worldliness” in the scientific; something that perhaps, upon closer examination, turns out to characterize the humanities but which cultural studies explicitly appropriates and relates to as an opportunity for knowledge’.36 This stands in opposition to a number of traditional scientific disciplines and in pointed opposition to the traditional humanities. The fact that cultural studies thereby distances itself from ‘the clear air of meaning and textuality and theory’ while turning towards ‘something nasty below’37 means that this field of knowledge from the outset considers itself, and science more generally, not as a theory about something but as a situated activity that takes its point of departure in and becomes possible by way of a certain conjuncture. In the same way, this field’s perspective contributes to a theoretical practice that intervenes and asserts itself in a wider political practice, which it staggers the prevalent understanding of and tries to change.38 In extension of this form of affirmed situatedness, proponents of cultural studies also understand themselves as contributing to a post-­ disciplinary scientific activity. It is not only possible to determine cultural studies as an ‘interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary’ field in that these studies draw on approaches of already existing disciplines; it is also a question of a ‘sometimes counter-disciplinary field’.39 Cultural studies appropriates different parts of already existing disciplines, precisely with the intention of letting them participate in a scientific practice that is ‘pragmatic, strategic  Hart (1992): ‘Cultural studies and its theoretical legacies’, p. 278.  Hart (1992): ‘Cultural studies and its theoretical legacies’, p. 278. 38  Grossberg (2010): Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. 39  Nelson, et al. (1992): ‘Cultural Studies: An Introduction’, p. 4. 36 37

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and self-reflective’,40 also with regard to its methodology, limitations, exclusions and effects. As a result, it is also not an interdisciplinarity that comes about ‘through a kind of coalition of colleagues from different departments, each of whom brings his or her own specialisation to a kind academic smorgasbord from which students can sample each of these riches in turn’.41 Instead, it is a matter of interdisciplinary work that indicates what the incoming disciplines should become in order to contribute to the new field under construction and development.

5.4   Inter- and Transdisciplinarity The development of the field of knowledge from the latter half of the twentieth century is, thereby, no longer to be understood as an increase in differentiations of separate, closed and autonomous systems that continuously define themselves in opposition to others, such as it could seem to be the case with the changes of the previous 150 years.42 The well-defined boundaries or divisions are challenged, rather, not only between the individual disciplines but also between faculties. New areas and fields of study arise as researchers in already existing disciplines, with a point of departure in the tremendous expansion of knowledge, seek to live up to perceptions of relevance as they penetrate the adjacent areas and disciplines and demonstrate the significance of their own approaches, also to those disciplines. At the same time, entirely new areas arise that place themselves between and across the hitherto existing divisions between disciplines and faculties. Together, the appearance of new forms of knowledge demonstrates the ‘eventementality’ or fulminate character of science. Contrary to received perceptions of science as an adequate, unobtrusive and self-effacing, representation of the world, research and teaching not only demonstrate a remarkable and sometimes uncanny ability to break with the existing organization of the knowledge field, but also possess a capacity to radically rethink and substantially influence the surrounding world more generally.43 In and through the development described, the traditional divisions between disciplines and faculties are challenged.  Nelson, et al. (1992): ‘Cultural Studies: An Introduction’, p. 2.  Hall (1990): ‘The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities’, p. 16. 42  Especially if one analyses the changes through a Luhmanian approach; cf. Luhmann (1990): Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft, pp. 271–361. 43  Please also confer Chap. 1 ‘An agenda-setting history’ and in particular 1.6 ‘The Normative Effects of an Ongoing Productive Crisis’ for a more elaborate articulation of this point. 40 41

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Such a volatile state of affairs concerning the boundaries between the traditional faculties of the university also becomes manifest in the different discussions concerning what faculty the different disciplines and fields of investigation actually belong to, an ongoing discussion that concerns, for example, psychology, philosophy, anthropology and ethnology. This undecidability is also reflected in recurrent, more or less radical reorganizations of faculties, institutes and subject areas as well as in the boundaries between them. Finally, the new forms of knowledge indicate a close and reciprocal relationship between knowledge and its surroundings. Research appears, on the one hand, as a situated activity whose knowledge becomes and shows its character in its applicability, while, on the other hand, the knowledge that research produces has a transgressive character which appears in its ability to penetrate and change the surroundings (Illustration 5.1).44

5.5   Trans- and Post-disciplinarity Throughout the past 50 years, such tendencies have been reinforced. The shift may be found in the appearance of scientific disciplines or modalities that are openly understood as trans- or post-disciplinary. Herein, researchers often motivate the shift beyond traditional university disciplines by referring to the transboundary nature of the field that is being examined or to the productivity of new forms of knowledge production.45 Such post-disciplinary disciplines, which often move across the established faculties, are numerous. Among the disciplines and studies that have become institutionalized are: feminist, gender and queer studies, culturaland language-encounter studies, minority studies, post-colonial studies, ANT and STS studies, socio- and data linguistics, textile research, technology history, digital aesthetics and culture, cognitive neuroscience, health studies and health strategies. The change does not imply that hitherto established boundaries are annulled within the new themes and post-disciplinary disciplines. On the contrary, these boundaries participate in and play a role within new contexts while they, at the same time, change status and character. 44  Gibbons (1994): The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. Nowotny, et al. (2010): Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. 45  Lykke (2010): Feminist Studies, p. 15.

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Illustration 5.1  Development since the 1950s. While a number of new independent disciplines and faculties of science were established in the period ranging until the end of the Second World War, university-based and -related science continues to draw on these developments but concurrently enters a new phase from the 1950s onwards. Newly situated but also interdisciplinary and transversal forms of knowledge and new overlaps between the faculties are formed. (Drawing by Sigrún Gudbrandsdóttir)

Rather than keeping the status of a framework that creates gulfs between, or amounts to unsurpassable distances between different or distinct subjects or faculties, the pre-existing boundaries within the new themes and disciplines become like zones where contiguities are felt and become fruitful and productive differences. It becomes possible to establish new connecting lines and to make new perceptive discoveries precisely where what is immediately perceived as separated collides and sticks together. Here it becomes possible to establish new relationships.

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Within the new post-disciplinary contexts, the boundaries between fields of investigation and forms of knowledge become like thresholds that must be overcome and transitions that must be set into motion in order to establish a new, independent relation between that which immediately seems separated. This includes the boundaries between the human and the non-human. The differences begin to emerge as matters of concern that must be investigated, dealt with and balanced out in the right way in order to facilitate new forms of knowledge. As new types of research areas and forms of research emerge, clash and interact, different forms of ‘hybridizations’ often arise. Common offspring are created between that which at first sight appear to have separate genealogies and belong to separate species. These hybridizations can transcend and connect the boundaries between nature and culture,46 nature and society,47 science/technology and society48 or between ‘the exact sciences versus politics versus society’;49 or humans and animals,50 human and machine,51 organism and machine,52 the social and material,53 subject and object, living and dead nature,54 virtuality/artefact and nature55 or between ‘the natural versus the artificial in the human and its environment’.56 As is clear, these hybrids quite often transgress the boundaries between what we immediately perceive as the human and the non-human. Consequently, the contestation of such dichotomies also shifts around central ideas and definitions based on these divisions. This could include, for example, the idea of a human nature57 and its character58 or the 46  Descola (2007): Par-delà nature et culture. Latour (2007): Petites leçons de sociologie des sciences. 47  Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d’anthropologie symétrique, p. 184. Descola; Pálsson (eds.) (2004): Nature and Society: Anthropological perspectives. 48  Latour (2010): Cogitamus. Six lettres sur les humanités scientifiques. 49  Latour (1988): The Pasteurization of France, pp. 35–40. Latour (2007): Petites leçons de sociologie des sciences. 50  Deleuze and Guattari (1980): Mille plateaux. 51  Suchman (2007): Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. 52  Haraway (1991): Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, p. 152. 53  Latour (2005): Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. 54  Rose (2007): The Politics of Life Itself. 55   Lykke; Braidotti (1996): Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and Cyberspace. 56  Descola (2011): L’écologie des autres: L’anthropologie et la question de la nature, p. 78. 57  Sahlins (2008): The Western Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy, Equality and the Sublimation of Anarchy in the West, and Comparative Notes on Other Conceptions of the Human Condition. 58  Braidotti (2013): The Posthuman. Braidotti (2013): ‘Posthuman humanities’.

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definition of ‘culture as the system for mediating the nature that humanity has created’.59 In extension of this, some researchers have begun to investigate the post-human and underline the necessity of establishing a cyborg theory60 in order to examine such things as the human, man and woman, individuality and self, and race and body as a way to develop a science of the otherness that appears in the gap between immediate contradictions; especially ‘the new’ that appears in the encounter between the human organism, and technologies that open the possibility of entirely new forms of cognition and sociality.61 The challenge and encouragement to think about the human that comes from the new ‘disciplines’ is, as such, a challenge of disciplinary, professional, focus-orientated, societal and task-related changes in relation to both the external knowledge and the internal organization of the sciences. In all of this, the scrutiny of the human is undergoing rapid changes; both as a point of conflict and common task between the traditional faculties, and between the sciences and society.

References Bell, Daniel (1974): The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. London: Heinemann Educational. Bell, Vikki (2006): ‘Performative Knowledge’, Theory, Culture & Society 23(2-3): 214–17. Bergmann, Rolf (1964): ‘Der elfenbeinerne Turm in der deutschen Literatur’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 92(4): 292–320. Braidotti, Rosi (2013): The Posthuman. Cambridge; Malden: Polity Press. Braidotti, Rosi (2013): ‘Posthuman Humanities’, European Educational Research Journal 12, no. 1: 1–19. Bush, Vannevar (1945): Science: The Endless Frontier. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Félix (1980): Mille plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Descola, Philippe (2007): Par-delà nature et culture. Paris: Gallimard. Descola, Philippe (2011): L’écologie des autres: L’anthropologie et la question de la nature. Conférences-débats organisées par le groupe Sciences en question, Paris et Dijon. Versailles: Éditions Quae. Descola, Philippe; Pálsson, Gísli (ed.) (2004): Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. London: Routledge.  Descola (2011): ‘L’écologie des autres, p. 36.  Haraway (1991): Simians, Cyborgs, and Women. 61  Haraway (1991): Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, pp. 149–81. 59 60

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Drucker, Peter Ferdinand (1993): Post-Capitalist Society. New  York: Harper Business. Etzkowitz, Henry; Leydesdorff, Loet (2001): Universities and the Global Knowledge Economy: A Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government Relations. London: Continuum. Etzkowitz, Henry (2008): The Triple Helix: University-Industry-Government Innovation in Action. New York: Routledge. Gibbons, Michael (1994): The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London; Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Grossberg, Lawrence (2010): Cultural Studies in the Future Tense. Durham: Duke University Press. Grossberg, Lawrence, et al. (eds.) (1992): Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge. Hall, Stuart (1990): ‘The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities’, The Humanities as Social Technology, 53: 11–23. Hansen, Birgitte Gorm (2011): Adapting in the Knowledge Economy: Lateral Strategies for Scientists and those who Study Them. Copenhagen: Ph.D. dissertation, Copenhagen Business School. Haraway, Donna J. (1991): Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Hart, Stuart (1992): ‘Cultural Studies and its Theoretical Legacies’. In Grossberg, Lawrence, et al. (eds.): Cultural Studies. New York; London: Routledge. Hoggart, Richard (1964): ‘Schools of English and contemporary society’, The American Scholar 33(2): 237–255. Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1810/2010): ‘Über die innere und äußere Organisation der höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten in Berlin’, in Humboldt, Wilhelm von (2010): Werke in fünf Bänden. Band IV, edited by Andreas Flitner & Klaus Giel. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 255–66. Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1910/2010): ‘Entlassungsgesuch’, in Humboldt, Wilhelm von (2010): Werke in fünf Bänden. Band IV, edited by Andreas Flitner & Klaus Giel. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, pp. 247–254. Johnsen, Rasmus; Raffnsøe, Sverre (2008): ‘Om viden, socialitet og immaterialitet’, Slagmark-Tidsskrift for idéhistorie. Videnssamfundet, 52: 79–88. Kalischer, Wolfgang (1960): Abschied vom Elfenbeinturm: Einheit der Bildungswege, Nachwuchs u. Förderung, Studium im Ausland, Mut zur Politik. Bonn: Verband Deutscher Studentenschaften. Klein, Julie T. (1990): Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Latour, Bruno (1988): The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d’anthropologie symétrique. Paris: La Découverte.

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Latour, Bruno (2005): Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-­ Theory. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Latour, Bruno (2007): Petites leçons de sociologie des sciences. Paris: La Découverte. Latour, Bruno (2010): Cogitamus six lettres sur les humanités scientifiques. Paris: La Découverte. Luhmann, Niklas (1990): Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Lykke, Nina; Braidotti, Rosi (1996): Between Monsters, Goddesses, and Cyborgs: Feminist Confrontations with Science, Medicine, and Cyberspace. London; Atlantic Highlands: Zed Books. Lykke, Nina (2010): Feminist Studies. London: Routledge. Lyotard, Jean-François (1979): La condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Nelson, Cary, et  al. (1992): ‘Cultural Studies: An Introduction’. In Grossberg, Lawrence, et  al. (eds.): Cultural Studies. New  York; London: Routledge, pp. 1–22. Nowotny, Helga, et al. (2010): Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Rose, Nikolas S. (2007): The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rüegg, Walter (2011): ‘Themes’, In Rüegg, Walter (ed.): A History of the University in Europe. Universities since 1945, volume IV. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–30. Sahlins, Marshall (2008): The Western Illusion of Human Nature: With Reflections on the Long History of Hierarchy, Equality and the Sublimation of Anarchy in the West, and Comparative Notes on Other Conceptions of the Human Condition. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press. Schulman, Norma (1993): ‘Conditions of their Own Making: An Intellectual History of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham”, Canadian Journal of Communication 18(1): 1–13. Serres, Michel (1994): ‘Nous entrons dans une période où la morale devient objective”. In Les Grands entretiens du Monde. Tome II. Paris: Le Monde-­ Editions, pp. 37–39. Snow, Charles. P. (1956/1998): The Two Cultures: And a Second Look. Cambridge: University Press. Suchman, Lucille A. (2007): Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Stehr, Nico (1994): Knowledge Societies. London; Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. Wallerstein, Immanuel, et  al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Williams, Raymond (1958): Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York: Columbia University Press.

CHAPTER 6

The Contemporary Turn

Abstract  Making use of the analysis of the historical backdrop established in the three preceding chapters, Chap. 6 examines the contemporary organization of knowledge. Here all the historical layers previously described are still present and continue to exert a significant influence. At the same time, a new remarkable turn makes itself felt. Drawing on discussions in contemporary science studies, in particular outlined by Latour, this part describes how the unbridgeable gulf between the human and the non-human, man and nature, established as crucial for the organization of knowledge with the foundation of the modern university, has become increasingly questioned. In parallel, the divisions between scientific faculties and disciplines are being increasingly interrogated. This questioning does not entail that the human sciences disappear or that the study of human existence has become an irrelevant pastime. Quite the contrary. It leads to a redistribution of the human sciences and the emergence of types of scientific knowledge that map different forms of situated human existence. The emergence of science studies already in itself forms a most important, recent addition to the history and the development of the human sciences in the modern university. Moreover, the emergence of science studies demonstrates in exemplary ways how this history and development unfolds in the shape of an ongoing reproblematization and a continuous productive crisis.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 S. Raffnsøe, A History of the Humanities in the Modern University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46533-8_6

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Keywords  Science and technology studies • The modern constitution • Anthropocentrism • The human & the non-human • Copernican Turn • Crisis • Scientific humanities • Blumenberg • Kant • Latour

6.1   The Contemporary Turn in the Organization of Knowledge and Studies It may be an obvious move to turn towards the meta-discipline of science studies if, by taking a point of departure in the latest contemporary shifts, one wants to gain a comprehensive overview of the aforementioned development of the historical landscape of knowledge with particular attention to the position of the human and the human sciences within it.1 Here one finds precisely such a scientific study of the sciences, their development and results in a broad sense. This is a field that does not first and foremost seek to determine what science is or should be but instead seeks to be a decisive empirical investigation of how scientific cognition actually works, becomes and functions.2 However, it usually does so with the particular aim of developing how science emerges and constitutes itself within a broader context. In such investigations of the actual genesis of scientific knowledge, as well as shifts within and constitutional conditions of individual disciplines,3 a certain sense is often demonstrated in terms of their place within a wider scientific and social context of knowledge and in terms of the wider scientific consequences of such investigations. Furthermore, the constitutional conditions, challenges and consequences of its own investigations are often discussed. In science studies, one may find, then, a general and fundamental discussion of the latest decisive scientific developments and their consequences, coupled with an examination of the view and the (re)understanding of the collected scientific developments of the past 200–300 years.4

 Biagioli (1999): The Science Studies Reader.  Bernays (1923/1961): Crystallizing Public Opinion, p. xii. 3  Callon and Latour (1991): La Science telle qu’elle se fait. Callon (1989): La Science et ses réseaux: Genèse et circulation des faits scientifiques. Collins (1985): Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. 4  Shapin and Schaffer (1985): Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Shapin (1994): A Social History of Truth, Civility and Science in Seventeenth Century England. 1 2

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In central proponents of contemporary science studies, and in particular in Bruno Latour, one finds precisely an insistent questioning of the presupposed, clear-cut ontological distinction between nature and society/culture/the human, as well as a questioning of the conventional, simple epistemological division between the natural and the social/human sciences; a problematization that is very much in accordance with the present study in so far as it has repeatedly questioned the seemingly self-­evident character of these divides and their far-reaching consequences, as well as examined how they have come into being and have been reconfirmed in ever new ways. These dichotomies been accepted and taken for granted by the traditional champions of the cause of the humanities, with the consequence that the defenders of the humanities come to render unintentional disservice to the defendant.5 Whereas these distinctions have equally formed basic presuppositions in modern times and established a fundamental, unbridgeable gulf between separate realms, they have also established a fundamental asymmetry between nature and humanity that has put humanity at the centre of the universe, as will become clear in the discussion with Latour in Chap. 6 of the study. In accordance with what has been articulated, it will be shown how these simplifying dichotomies lead to a uni-polar and uni-dimensional universe in so far as everything may, after all, seem to revolve around the human pole of the opposition. While being in accordance with the worldview of the traditional champions of the humanities, the conception of the humanities that these fundamental dichotomies lead to has somewhat paradoxically proved detrimental to the perception of what is at stake in the human sciences. To substantiate these points, the present chapter will be devoted to examining the problematization of these dichotomies as it has been developed in science studies by Bruno Latour in particular. This approach will avoid considering nature and humanity as given entities that collide and superpose each other and escape a perception of science as the meeting point between such transcendent incommensurable entities. Instead of accepting and reaffirming the ‘either/or’ between nature and the human from which the inherited modern conception of knowledge and its related ordering of the world in separate realms departs, one should begin perceiving scientific knowledge and scientific disciplines as a ‘both/and’: as a 5  Confer also Chap. 2: ‘An Alleged Crisis of the Humanities’ and Chap. 1.8: ‘Different Conceptions of the Human Sciences’ of Chap. 1 ‘An Agenda-Setting History’.

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place and an experimental scene where bodies that are neither simply things nor human actors are added to the world and become matters of concern. When classical humanism is compared to this world characterized by a disseminated and redistributed humanity, it becomes clear that it is reductive in so far as it seeks to localize and find the human within some particular, limited places or faculties. Rather, the human here appears as that which has emerged and determined itself in establishing these matters of concern. As further developed in the following main section, this shift in approach has decisive implications for the understanding of the challenges, role and character of the human sciences in the contemporary predicament. At the same time, the emergence of science studies, as it will be articulated in the present main section with a particular focus on Bruno Latour’s contribution, already in itself forms a most important recent addition to the history and the development of the human sciences in the modern university. Moreover, the emergence and contribution of science studies demonstrates in exemplary ways how this history and development unfolds in the shape of an ongoing reproblematization and a continuous productive crisis.

6.2  A Problematization of the Division and Polarity Between Faculties In a central character within science studies such as Bruno Latour one finds a continuous striving not only to grasp the latest scientific developments within science studies, but also to understand scientific developments on a much more general level. In order to be able to understand these things more fully, it nonetheless proves necessary for Latour to fundamentally rethink the more extended development of the sciences and the fundamental conditions that have led to the present time. Only in this manner is it really possible to understand the current scientific conjuncture. This must be thought alongside the development of the realm of modern knowledge, which has taken place with the foundation of the modern university and its organization of knowledge, as described above. This becomes evident when Latour, in his book Enquête sur les modes d’existence (An Inquiry into Modes of Existence) from 2012, confirms with satisfaction in a review of recent developments how science studies has, since the latter half of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, been

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capable of providing significant contributions to studies of the nature, achievements and ‘objectivity’ of scientific knowledge within a wide range of disciplines across the different faculties.6 Here, it is possible for Latour to determine how science studies have proved themselves capable of this precisely by moving not only across disciplines but also across the divisions of different scientific main areas. Finally, he is able to indicate how science studies is constantly in danger of losing its ability to shed light on how scientific objectivity comes to be and becomes binding, in so far as one mistakenly begins to take for granted the divisions between faculties and their respective approaches and ontologies. Social science studies has been able to study not only the scientific practice but also the content and implications of its knowledge in a much more detailed and clarifying way than the traditional theory of science. It has done so by involving sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, economists, literary scholars, ethnomethodologists and cultural historians, thus applying approaches that have traditionally been ascribed to the social sciences but also to some extent to the human sciences.7 Latour also indicates the necessity of radically moving across disciplines and the challenges involved in this when he, as early as the beginning of the 1990s in the article ‘One more turn after the social turn’, scrutinizes the development of the field since the 1970s.8 Yet, at the time of Latour’s compte rendu, science studies according to him already seems to be on its way to ‘stagnation’ and ending up ‘at a dead end’.9 This is due to the fact that science studies may seem to be ‘falling into a trap we have built for ourselves’. Such studies end up getting themselves caught this way in so far as they understand themselves as a ‘sociology of scientific knowledge’ or as social studies so that they end up explaining the content of scientific knowledge with a point of departure in social relations. This is what one of the researchers who partook in drawing up the field, David Bloor, tended to do with his Knowledge and Social  Latour (2012): Enquête sur les modes d’existence: Une anthropologie des modernes, p. 17.  Latour and Woolgar (1986): Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Bloor (1976): Knowledge and social imagery. Callon (1989): La Science et ses réseaux: Genèse et circulation des faits scientifiques. Callon and Latour (1991): La Science telle qu’elle se fait. Latour (1987): Science in Action. Schapin and Schaffer (1985): Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Latour (1988): The Pasteurization of France. 8  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’. The first version of this article is from 1992. However, I am here referring to the more elaborate version published in 1999. 9  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, pp. 276, 278. 6 7

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Imagery and his ‘strong programme’, according to Latour.10 If one thereby merely ‘adds society to science’,11 one ends up ‘expecting’ ‘society to explain nature’.12 To the extent that science studies at this intermediate stage can be understood only as social studies of science in the sense of applying the social and human sciences to the study and understanding of science or the practice of the natural sciences and its knowledge, Latour, in an internecine battle within the studies he had himself contributed to, can say with Marcus Antonius from Shakespeare’s drama Julius Caesar that he has come to bury such studies, not to praise them.13 In order to avoid the deadlock and maintain a productive moment, it seems pressing, according to Latour, to take another turn in science studies after what in an immediate and superficial glance would seem to be a social turn.14 If science studies are to remain interesting, its contributors and others must be brought to understand that a much more fundamental reorientation is at play than a central turn towards and inclusion of social elements for the understanding of science. As in the case of Marcus Antonius, it turns out that Latour is not merely providing a funeral oration—in this case for science studies; Latour is just as much concerned with the attempt to revitalize science studies as he seeks to show how their discoveries, when followed through, have more radical consequences for a wider context than is usually realized. The fundamental problem in simply transgressing the traditional scientific divisions in a narrow sense, as is the case in the social turn, is that one merely looks beyond the original research area in order to collect resources to explain what takes place inside, outside or beyond the area itself. As such, it becomes an externalistic and asymmetrical explanation that ends up reducing one core area of research to another in order to find its truth there. For Latour, however, such an explanation is challenged by circumstances he had already pointed to in his monumental work Pasteur: guerre et paix des microbes,15 first published in 1984. In this work, he shows how 10  Bloor (1976): Knowledge and Social Imagery. Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 280. 11  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 277. 12  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 280. 13  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 276. 14  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 288. 15  Latour (1984/2001): Pasteur: Guerre et paix des microbes; suivi de Irréductions.

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Pasteur’s microbes, as he had studied them, ‘are obviously discovered or constructed out of natural and material actants that lie outside the control of our human wishes’.16 A similar problem arises if one, in order to avoid focus on the human and social field and the relativity that such focus seems to open up, lays claim to the primacy of the opposite field. This can be done by justifying the truth of scientific knowledge in reference to the object of knowledge or nature. To this kind of approach, Pasteur’s microbes appear primarily as natural, ‘timeless objects’ whose activity is determined by forces of nature.17 At the same time, however, it turns out not to be so simple to determine whether Pasteur’s microbes are living, chemical, physical or social entities.18 Both explanatory models share the problem that they remain asymmetrical in so far as they implicitly or explicitly presuppose and respect a fundamental dichotomy between nature and society. This division means that everything that appears must basically be understood as a result of one of the poles in this tension or as constituted in a mediation between them. Whatever is the case must be explained as a result either of natural conditions or social and human conditions, of nature or culture; or it must be understood as a meeting point, as having come to be as a result of a cooperation or a distribution between these separate, autonomously fundamental factors. As clear and distinct, in themselves pure entities belonging to separate realms, these factors can, at most, partake in a relation of exchange with one another without being fundamentally confused. Such polarity between nature and society, the known and the knowing, the immediate and mediation remains constitutive in debates between social constructivists (or social realists), who, to varying degrees, claim the primacy of the human contribution, and natural realists, who, to varying degrees, claim a predominant significance of the non-humanly affected object.19 The polarity also leads to a fundamental tug-of-war between such positions20 since they agree to jointly establish a polemic, moving back and  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 285.  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 284. 18  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 286. 19  Often, the tension between nature and human society is overlapping with and overdetermined by yet another polarity, namely the polarity between necessity and contingency, so that it becomes a question of the polarity between necessities of nature and contingent human conditions. 20  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 279. 16 17

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forth in one and the same dimension—the polarity between nature and human society—in order to argue which is the right position on this axis. The axis between nature and society/culture therefore finally becomes the fundamental measurement that can be applied when one has to explain or understand what is going on. In so far as this is the case, any mapping of the field of knowledge becomes fundamentally one-dimensional. If science studies is to emerge from this tug-of-war or stalemate, it is necessary to abandon this division between ‘two fundamentally ontologically different zones’,21 even if it has been constitutive to the modern understanding of knowledge and its organization.

6.3  A Problematization of the Modern Division Between the Humane and the Inhumane As long as one takes a point of departure in and returns to the dichotomy and polarity between nature and society in this kind of understanding, one respects and affirms what Latour determines as the ‘modern constitution of truth’ in his article ‘Postmodern? No, simply amodern! Steps towards an anthropology of science’.22 This constitution of truth stipulates, namely, that one kind of truth applies in the representation of things, while another kind of truth applies in the representation and mediation of the human.23 By way of this division, it is also a ‘constitution’ ‘that defines human and non-human forms of existence (les humains et les non-humains), their abilities, their relations, their competencies and their groupings’, as Latour

 Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, p. 21.  Latour (1990): ‘Postmodern? No, Simply Amodern! Steps towards an Anthropology of Science’, p. 154. 23  In the same article, Latour provides the following formulation: that such a constitution of ‘our modern world’ comes to be through this kind of division: ‘a world in which the representation of things through the medium of the laboratory is forever severed from the representation of the citizens through the medium of the social contract’ (Latour (1990): ‘Postmodern? no, simply amodern!’, p. 155; italics in original). In the article ‘One more turn after the social turn’, Latour indicates that ‘modern’ and ‘modernity’ are characterized by ‘the complete separation of the representation of things - science and technology - from the representation of humans  - politics and justice’ (Latour (1999): ‘One more turn after the social turn’, p. 288; italics in original). In the same context, Latour also points out that ‘the common origin’ in such division ‘remains hidden’. 21 22

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points out in Nous n’avons jamais été modernes (We Have Never Been Modern).24 According to Latour, the outline of such a frame of reference is tentatively drawn up from the beginning of early modern times (from the 1600s).25 A constitutive formulation is achieved with the radically critical distinction between ‘the things in themselves on the one side’ and ‘the transcendental ego on the other’ in Kant’s philosophy, which ‘has made us modern, more modern’.26 At the centre of such organization, one pole has ‘dominating authority’ in so far as it is here that ‘the phenomena were formed’ so that they may appear as binding knowledge. This is a deeply asymmetrical universe in so far as the things in themselves are ‘left to their own devices’, ‘without initiative’, and revolve ‘passively shaped’ around the foundational sun; ‘the subject-pole’. Their ‘sole task is to guarantee the transcendental non-human character of our knowledge in order to avoid the terrible consequences of idealism’. It is, therefore, also a question of an ‘anthropocentric enterprise’ that subsequently may amount to a ‘sociocentric or logocentric’ one.27 As outlined above, this modern cleft between the human and the non-­ human was not just fundamentally outlined as a general rule with Kant’s transcendental philosophy and its distinction between subject and object, between the things in themselves and the transcendental ego; it also established a significant yardstick for the subsequent conception and establishment of the total field of knowledge, and it was thoroughly institutionalized with the modern organization of knowledge that was established with the founding of the modern Humboldtian university. In this reassembly of the realm of knowledge, the human was granted, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly, a central position as a connecting centre in so far as the human did not only appear as the authority capable of conducting science and being the highest authority of what could be determined as science but also became the entity that science had to serve. Thereby, the study and cultivation of human spirit was awarded 24  Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, p. 26. ‘The hypothesis is’ ‘that the word “modern” refers to two forms of practice [ensembles de pratiques] which are fundamentally different and must remain separate if they are to have any effect’ (Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, p. 20). 25  Latour (1990): ‘Postmodern? No, simply Amodern!’; Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. 26  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 280. 27  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’.

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a central and mediating role in the organization of knowledge, such as it could occur at the faculty of humanities. The demarcation of such a central and particular position of the human was thematized in letters (literature and erudition) and was cemented by the establishment of science in the shape of the natural sciences as well as life and health sciences. Henceforth, the division between two separate fields was instated as a fundamental separation between two branches of science or scientific faculties that each to their own focused on and represented these two distinct areas of reality. The division and the conception of two distinct realms were later repeated and, as such, confirmed by the emergence of the school of social science. With this school, a mapping of the human world becomes possible that converts it into an object of investigation and represents it as a binding state of affairs.

6.4  A Turn Beyond the Dichotomy of the Human and the Inhuman In order for the ‘empirical science studies’ to become a real possibility, according to Latour,28 another turn beyond the social turn and the division between the natural world and the human world is, nonetheless, needed and necessary. This is, at the same time, a turn beyond the division that has constituted the cleft between the sciences of the factual and the sciences of the particularly human. For Latour, such division between the human and the non-human is problematic if one wants to shed light on the production, justification and recognition of scientific knowledge. It is reductive because it leads to understanding everything that is happening by resorting to two underlying, elementary bodies and explaining everything that is going on by reducing it to an effect of one of these separate bodies or of an interaction between them. It is one-dimensional in that such an ontology forces the localization of everything into a crude ‘graph’ with only one axis, namely the bipolarity between nature and human society. It is also unproductive in so far as it leads to recurring futile discussions about whether and to what extent an instance is the result of one thing or the other. The process and outcome of scientific cognition cannot productively be described and explained as half nature and half sociality/culture.  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, pp. 276–289.

28

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On closer inspection, the social turn thus only indicates the necessity of a more extensive and fundamental revolution. This involves a departure from the critical division between nature and human society. Formerly, the division between facts and opinions, between the given and convention, may have seemed a productive way to distinguish between knowledge and belief, and a way to reveal prejudices and illusions.29 Now, however, the dichotomy itself has become a fundamental dogma, in the eyes of Latour, that stands in the way of an adequate understanding of what takes place in scientific cognition and, in this manner, also obfuscates the elucidation of scientific cognition in science studies. Instead of considering nature and society as two different species of ontological, logically contrary or mutually exclusive types on one and the same horizontal axis, one must turn the axis 90 degrees so that it becomes possible to add a new form of measurement that allows a vertical differentiation in relation to the previous axis and, thereby, an alternative mapping of both. Such a shift entails what Latour calls ‘a counter-Copernican revolution’30 in relation to the turn that Kant had previously suggested. The previous fundamental Kantian ‘change of thought’31 had installed a sharp ontological distinction between the two poles, nature and human society, while it had, at the same time, defined them in their separation from and relation to each other. The subject-pole of cognition guarantees, in this context, that our knowledge is fundamentally humanmade, while the object-pole guarantees that cognition and the realm of our knowledge is not just humanmade and subjective.32 In order for this to be possible, it seems important to keep these two poles apart at each their end of the spectrum. In that case, knowledge can appear as a binding ‘fact’ in so far as it is fabricated without, however, being fabricated, and thereby distorted, by someone. At the same time, the Kantian turn implies that the human subject-pole is basically instated as the decisive pole on the axis.33 The human being takes up the position of the sun in this universe as it becomes the entity from which light emanates and around which all else revolves. The human 29  Latour (2004): ‘Why Has critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern’, p. 232. 30  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 282. 31  Kant (1781/1976): Kritik der reinen Vernunft 1, pp. 11–13 (Vorrede AA III). 32  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 282. 33  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 280.

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being becomes the decisive locus where phenomena first appear and bindingly take form. With the Kantian turn, a fundamentally asymmetrical universe is thus instated. In this context, the different discussions of perception and cognition repeatedly took their point of departure in perception understood as human perception.34 Latour’s counter-Kantian turn, however, seeks to displace the yardstick by 90 degrees in relation to both the Kantian turn and the later prolongation of it within early science studies. In this displacement, nature and humanity no longer appear as two fundamentally different ontological entities that must serve as the point of departure when one wants to explain and expound empirical knowledge. With this 90-degree turn, nature and humanity begin to appear as constituted entities rather than transcendent or transcendental entities. Instead of being two causative and justifying bodies of empirical knowledge, they become, through the movement of cognition, a result of it. They first appear as two different aspects of the joint practice of cognition that is investigated in science studies. By avoiding considering nature and humanity as given entities that collide and superpose each other, it is thus possible to consider them at a more fundamental constitutive level as ‘two stable tectonic plates’ that are formed when the ‘hot, molten magma that erupts through the gaps between them’ cools down.35 Whereas the origin in the modern constitution of knowledge was placed asymmetrically to an endpoint or a pole on the horizontal axis between the human and the inhuman, the starting point of measurement is displaced 90 degrees with Latour’s counter-Copernican turn towards a transversal axis in the origin between the two poles on the horizontal axis that indicates the joint symmetrical origin of the first axis and its division. Latour underlines that one hereby overcomes neither ‘the nonhuman origin of knowledge’ nor ‘its human origin’.36 The endeavour is, rather, to put an end to the modern dogma of ‘the complete separation between the two’, precisely in order to grasp the concomitant human and nonhuman origin of knowledge.37 34  It could, therefore, also be argued that the basic modern constitution establishes a fundamentally symmetrical polarity on the axis nature-human. Granted that it is a question of a fundamental division of the two, this symmetrical polarity simultaneously forces a fundamentally asymmetrical positioning at one or the other pole, in casu a positioning for the human. 35  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 284. 36  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 282. 37  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’.

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According to Latour, ‘this new generalised principle of symmetry’ is ‘the most important philosophical discovery’ that has been made by science studies.38 The principle of symmetry indicates that science cannot productively be understood as a meeting-point between transcendent entities, such as the human and the non-human. Instead, scientific knowledge and the scientific disciplines must be understood as a place where bodies running transversely to what is merely a human creation and to what human beings have dominion over emerge and become binding. In continuation of this turn, it becomes problematic, according to Latour, to understand scientific objects, the constitution of which science studies examine, as hybrids. As they appear in Latour’s studies, Pasteur’s microbes are not half object, half subject or the result of a cross between human and nature. Rather, he chooses with Michel Serres to determine them as quasi-objects.39 They are not only timeless entities that awaited discovery by Pasteur; nor are they simply the result of a political manifestation of power in the laboratory; just as they also cannot be understood merely as a mixture between pure social elements and natural conditions. They are, rather, entities in the world that are not simply passive objects but actively form a part of and constitute a connecting link in a conversion or transferral they contribute to without having control over. Instead of history appearing as a ‘zero-sum game’ that must be explained by reference to two ingredients—nature and humanity—it becomes a plus-sum game. History becomes like an ‘experimental scene that produces and shapes new actants’ who are neither ‘simply things’ nor ‘human actors’,40 and who add themselves to the series of things that constitute the world. Where the defenders of the modern constitution would perceive ‘a science of necessary laws’ and ‘a history of contingent human events’, ‘a common history of society and things’ begins to appear.41

 Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’.  Latour (2004): ‘Why has Critique Run out of Steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern’: 236. Cf. also Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. 40  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 284. 41  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, pp. 288, 284. 38 39

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6.5   Scientific Humanities After the counter-Kantian revolution, it becomes possible to perceive and recognize how we, in our practical creation of knowledge and our relation to knowledge in general, ‘have never been modern’, if this implies having lived up to, respected and realized this kind of fundamental constitution. With this kind of turn, science studies maintains that the critical separation between what is real in itself and what is human, between facts and values, in the long run was not sufficiently critical; neither was it sufficiently realistic, empirical or scientific. If one approaches the matter in an empirically less biased fashion, it becomes clear, rather, how the self-proclaimed ‘moderns’ have consistently demonstrated disrespect towards the division between scientific knowledge of what is the case and human conditions. Much in the same way, a closer look demonstrates that in their practical relations to the scientific world,42 they have also never paid heed to the understanding of it as being an autonomous world in relation to the social one,43 the former of which demands leaving the second one behind in order to primarily recognize what is actually the case.44 It is necessary to recognize that ‘reality is not defined through matters of fact’ and that ‘matters of fact are not all that are given through experience’. Rather, ‘matters of fact are only very partial and […] very polemical, very political renderings of matters of concern and only a subset of what could also be called states of affairs’.45 If one recognizes this, it becomes possible to discover that there are many different kinds of states of affairs in reality; in the same way, it becomes possible to have a feel for how the circumstances we encounter appear as matters that touch and move us and become ‘matters of concern’, and which are necessary to relate ourselves to before they can be reduced to matters of fact.46 If one overcomes the modern uni-dimensionality, it becomes possible to closely follow science as it develops [‘la science en action’]; and it  Latour (2010): Cogitamus. Six lettres sur les humanités scientifiques.  Latour (2004): Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. 44  Already Latour (1984/2001): Pasteur: Guerre et paix des microbes also demonstrates to what extent Pasteur, also when he acts as a scientist, is very much a man of this world. 45  Latour (2004): ‘Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern’, p. 232. 46  Latour (2004): ‘Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern’. 42 43

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becomes evident how the critical endeavour of science is not primarily ‘to debunk’ by extracting something (superfluous) from reality that prevents access to it. The endeavour is, rather, ‘to protect and to care’:47 to make something count as reality by doing everything possible and adding something in order to make it count as binding reality. Hereby, it also becomes possible to add a further dimension to the understanding of science which transgresses the uni-dimensional, namely, an investigation of how it more or less stabilizes its object.48 In this manner, it likewise becomes possible to shed light on how scientific activity gradually adds dimensions to our reality as it establishes new ‘natural and social conditions’, new ‘quasi-­ objects’ or object-like relations, in which it is impossible to distinguish sharply between nature and the human.49 If it is to be possible to establish and further develop a science of knowledge on the level of the simultaneous development of knowledge, it is necessary, according to Latour, not just to turn towards already existing disciplines but, first and foremost, towards the established divisions between primary areas of research with the intention of problematizing and critically rethinking the implicit preconditions for these, so that they may begin to take on a different form. It is necessary to replace the ‘either/ or’ from which the modern conception of knowledge departs with a ‘both-and’ that allows following the passages and the connections of cognition50 through which both nature and the human is redetermined. In this kind of context, it becomes clear that there is no ‘boundary between the domains [frontière entre les domaines]’, but there are still ‘differences’ between them.51 The fact that it is necessary to practise an approach that differs from the division constitutive of modern science has, according to Latour, incrementally become clear through the scientific development that has taken place since the modern constitution 200 years ago, which stipulated that 47  Latour (2004): ‘Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern’, p. 232. 48  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, pp. 285–87. 49  Latour (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’, p. 287. As Latour was early to point out in The Pasteurization of France (1988), it has become necessary with the new turn to ‘redefine’ sociology in order to avoid being ‘deaf to the lessons of the actors themselves’ (p. 40). Rather than being a ‘science of “social facts”, sociology must become a science of “associations” about which we cannot say that they are either natural or human’ (p. 40). 50  Latour (2010): Cogitamus. Six lettres sur les humanités scientifiques, p. 54. 51  Latour (2012): Enquête sur les modes d’existence, p. 47.

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they should be kept as far apart as possible. Through the subsequent development that his work attempts to grasp, it has become increasingly difficult to ‘distinguish between facts and values’; between that which is given by nature and the human. This is connected to the fact that ‘an increasing mutual intricacy between humans and non-humans [l’intrication grandissante des humains et non-humains]’ has been accentuated through the scientific process of modernization, which opened up with a basis in the modern constitution.52 With Latour, it becomes clear that a modern constitution that stipulates ‘the non-humanity of nature’ and thereby, basically, bases itself on the division between the human and the non-human has to be replaced by a contract that establishes the humanity of nature as well as the naturalness of the social and the human. It becomes possible in the investigation of the sciences, with an approach that moves between the main research areas, to uncover how ‘the articulated language of humans [le langage articulé des humains]’, by ‘collecting the testimony of another collection of entities to be submitted to trials [recuellir le témoinage d’un autre ensemble d’entités soumises à des épreuves]’, ‘is filled by and takes care of the world’s articulated language [se charge du langage articulé du monde]’.53 What appears with this kind of approach is, thereby, ‘scientific humanities’.54 The fact that the human and the non-human, through this kind of development, mutually appear enmeshed to such an extent that they seem to assume the same proportion55 does not mean, in Latour’s view, that they will come to cover each other in the sense that they appear as entities that are identical and may be reduced to one another.56 According to Latour, the alternative constitution, which is still under construction, admittedly means that it will be a matter of a ‘redistributed humanity’.57 With this kind of redistributed or ‘disseminated’ humanity, however, it is not a question of a humanity that is merely diffused and  Latour (2012): Enquête sur les modes d’existence, p. 21.  Latour (2010): Cogitamus. Six lettres sur les humanités scientifiques, p.  189; italics in citation. 54  Latour (2010): Cogitamus. Six lettres sur les humanités scientifiques. 55  Latour (2012): Enquête sur les modes d’existence, p. 21. 56  For a more extensive articulation of the relations between the human and the non-­ human, see discussion of the human  colossus in the Anthropocene landscape in Raffnsøe (2013): The Human Turn. The Makings of a Contemporary Relational Topography. 57  Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, pp. 186–89. 52 53

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disappears in some greater inhuman something. Instead, it hereby becomes clear that ‘nothing is sufficiently inhuman for it to dissolve the human being and announce its death [rien n’est assez inhumain pour y dissoudre l’homme et annoncer sa mort]’.58 Indeed, it becomes unmistakable how the human is to be found and emerges in this kind of redistribution in particular. The human appears precisely as that which has taken part in creating the machines, whereby it has, at the same time, put itself into them and constructed its own body with them. The human appears as that which has emerged and determined itself since it has taken part in multiplying the objects that science acknowledges.59 In the eyes of Latour, classical humanism is reductive in so far as it seeks to localize and find the human within some particular, limited places or faculties. At the same time, it is a counter-final endeavour in so far as it, precisely in its efforts to withdraw to the human core in order to find its particular essence, loses sight of the specific forms in which the human being gains specific contours. Ironically, and despite efforts to achieve the opposite, such classical humanism often ends up making the human indistinguishable precisely by seeking to localize the human. Finally, such humanism necessarily becomes tragic since it constructs the humanity of the human as a singular, rare and fragile existence surrounded by a foreign, greater nature or sociality that threatens to eliminate it.60 The fact that the human being does not, in the eyes of Latour, take on a final, solid and enduring form does not in his view make it into something shapeless. Only if one leaves behind the reduced form that the human being was assigned in its modern constitution will it become possible to discern how the human is present in the very delegation of and exchange between the different forms. According to Latour, a humanism may thereby only be maintained if one abandons classical, exclusive humanism in order to disperse the human and share it with all its representatives. ‘Human nature’ must, therefore, be found in ‘the collection of its delegates and its representatives, its figures and its messengers’.61

 Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, p. 187.  Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, p. 188. 60  Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, pp. 188–189. 61  Latour (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, p. 189. 58 59

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6.6  A Human Turn in the History of Knowledge In extension of the described development and its rearticulation in science studies, it becomes problematic to attempt to maintain the human sciences in a central—or, perhaps, often even implicitly in the central—position as the privileged location of a ‘cultivation of the entire human being’ that can have a gathering and guiding impact on the other activities of existence in general, such as Martha Nussbaum demands. Of course, it is possible to draw on and seek to revitalize the central and gathering role assigned to the humanities 200 years ago if one seeks to expect and demand that the humanities should educate and refine the human in a state of pure cultivation. Nevertheless, the effort does not really take into account the fact that it was already a particular construction that responded to and had to compensate for an earlier process of knowledge and its experience of loss62 with the constitution of the modern university and the related installation of the human sciences and their cultivation of the human in a central position. It is even more problematic, however, that this kind of assertion of the humanities as having a particularly privileged access and prerogative to the specifically human does not seriously take subsequent developments into account in which the point of departure has continuously been put into question, further developed and qualified.

62  As Kant already pointed out in his time, it is possible to understand this kind of re-­constitution of the realm of knowledge as a reaction to an earlier, Copernican breakthrough in relation to our understanding of the universe or as a revolution of a way of thinking. This previous Copernican turn had implied a tremendous shift of human experience, cognition and manner of thinking in so far as the human being had to experience itself as displaced from its previous central position, which it had thought to possess within the former, Aristotelian and Ptolemean geocentric realm of knowledge (Blumenberg (1981): Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt 1). With the reversed Copernican turn in Kant and the realm of knowledge of that time, as well as the corresponding fundamental ‘change of the way of thinking [Umänderung der Denkart]’ (cf. Kant (1781/1976): Kritik der reinen Vernunft 1, pp. 11–13 (aa III)) which this turn implied, the human being was nonetheless able to take up a central position; now, first and foremost as constitutive and of perpetually vital importance to the epistemic level on which knowledge of the world is obtained. In the long run, however, the significance of the human contribution was also developed on the moral, juridical and existential level. For a further investigation of this, see Raffnsøe (2016): Philosophy of the Anthropocene. The Human Turn.

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6.6.1   The Reformation of the Humanities Such self-justification of the humanities does not seriously take into account the fact that, since the time when philosophy was established as the leading faculty, other prominent faculties have appeared and departed from it. These have been institutionalized as the faculty of science, the faculty of life sciences and the faculty of social sciences, all of which have added to knowledge in general and to knowledge about the human in particular and, concurrently, reconfigured human life-forms and human self-understanding. What is more, in the wake of this differentiation new transversal, situated and interdisciplinary forms of scholarly knowledge have been constituted that establish and articulate a decisive different relationship between scientific faculties, science and its object, human earthlings and their surroundings. If, in this situation, researchers in the humanities accentuate their privileged connection and access to the distinctively human, they will not only be incapable of living up to the new conditions of self-assertion that appear with the growth of this kind of knowledge. Now, any knowledge about the human must be made relevant in relation to the human lifeforms that have been modulated by such knowledge forms. By laying claim to their own prerogatives, the human sciences miss out on the gains in knowledge concerning the human that are established within the other main research areas. Finally, this kind of self-justification does not take into consideration that, in a context where the human is ascribed vital importance as a modifying and dynamic entity, knowledge about the human built on a common or general human essence and consciousness can hardly claim credibility. Knowledge about the human can no longer assert itself in an anthropocentric form; only in an anthropological form.63 It can assert itself as pragmatic-­practical knowledge about the human in relation to given contexts of knowledge as an irreducible contribution that sheds light on and adds to the understanding of further relationships. A traditional conception and justification of the humanities which binds it to the cultivation of the distinctively and exclusively human only risks relegating the human sciences to a distinctive and particular sphere of letters or Geisteswissenschaft set aside in a particularly limited reserve at the edges of society and, thereby, only of limited and secondary importance to wider society. Such  Please refer to Chap. 4.10.2. ‘The Human and Its Modes of Being as a Decisive Addition and Perpetual Interstitial Point’ and in particular Subchapter 4.10.2.1 ‘From Anthropocentric Study of Humankind to Anthropological Study of Human Modes of Being’ towards the end of Chap. 4: ‘The division between the different sciences on the singularly and emphatically human and new branches of science’. 63

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justification of the humanities neither takes into account nor manages to assert the human sciences in the face of the challenges that have ensued. Firstly, the justification fails to keep step with a fundamental and general shift in the conception of the role and relevance of knowledge that takes place alongside the creation and expansion of the various primary scientific research areas as they grow tremendously in scale and turn out to have decisive consequences as to how we can understand and act in the world that they reconfigure. In extension of this, knowledge of the human, like other forms of knowledge, is expected to be able to leave the ivory tower by demonstrating its performative aspects, its importance and significance, and its value and consequences for the world quite directly; and this includes showing itself capable of making a difference to other areas of knowledge and other disciplines. Secondly, the traditional (self-)edifying and exclusive cultivation of the humanities also fails to take into account the emergence of new forms of knowledge that meet the requirements of relevance and demonstrate an ability to ‘perform’ in relation to the surrounding world by showing an ability to engage in new networks of interdisciplinary collaborations. Thirdly, this kind of self-assertion turns its back on prominent new developments that are already progressing at the faculty of philosophy. Within a string of new trends within the human sciences, of which only a few have been described here, there has been an attempt to take into account and relate productively to a deeper crisis in the traditional humanities and their attachment to the cultivation of a common humanity. This attempt has been made by drawing on approaches from different disciplines across the existing main research areas and by allowing these to collaborate with new fields under construction in order to contribute to new, concrete ways of understanding situated and engaged human existence. Considered from the perspective of the classical self-justification of the humanities, the human sciences, including the main research area of the humanities, may, then, be said to have found themselves in continuous crisis since their foundation in their modern form as a central study of the universally human. From the beginning, the apparently secure foundation of the humanities, established with the founding of the modern university, seems to have been sliding; while the task of studying and cultivating the uniquely human that gives sense and direction to the field has been

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challenged. With the differentiation of other head scientific areas, alongside the establishment of science as a new, transversal, and extremely performative-oriented and productive force, connections of knowledge are created that challenge the human sciences. Not only is the field of knowledge generally changed; the new fields of knowledge also contribute with new knowledge about the human and its conditions, thereby radically changing the context of the human and the traditional sciences concerned with the human being. The traditional humanities, therefore, appear to have been constantly in crisis in so far as both the framework of the exercise of the disciplines within the field and the conditions for justification and gaining recognition have changed throughout. This has happened to such an extent and with such speed that the practitioners of the humanities have continually struggled to keep up and have continually been forced to revise their own disciplines, arguments and justification. Since the founding of the humanities in their classical form with the modern university, subsequent developments have, from the very beginning, shown disrespect for the divisions of the field of knowledge that were established with its modern constitution and which established the framework for the classical self-understanding and self-justification of the humanities. This has only been reinforced by a later development within the human sciences in which an active response, in the face of what is seen as a deep crisis of the humanities caused by the field being bound to representing and safeguarding a universal model of humanity, has been taken by establishing different inter- and post-disciplinary forms of human science. These forms include knowledge and methods from other head research areas in the attempt to establish self-reflective and pragmatic knowledge about the human as it appears and relates itself in and to different and differing circumstances. The desire to maintain and reactualize the classical inheritance of the humanities against this overwhelming movement can thus easily be felt as an impotent one. 6.6.2   A Productive Crisis A very different historical landscape appears, however, if one leaves behind an arrangement of the history of knowledge with a point of departure in its modern constitution at the beginning of its development in order,

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instead, to gain an overview that takes its point of departure in later developments within the humanities and science studies. In this kind of retrospect, the human sciences certainly seem to have been in continuous crisis in so far as they have persistently been in transition and at a threshold on the way to a new and relatively unknown land in which a new and not quite predictable judgement on them and their previous form and starting point will be passed. The human sciences have also persistently been in crisis since they have constantly found themselves at a turning-point in which their previous point of departure and justification have been problematized. At the same time, it is important to note that it has been a consistently productive crisis since the human sciences, in this transitive situation, have been challenged to reinvent themselves anew. As a result, the human sciences have continuously had to stand trial for being up to date towards a new and greater connectivity of knowledge and, consequently, have had to relate critically to themselves in order to live up to this demand. In a long-term perspective of knowledge, the crisis appears to have been a productive state of normality to the human sciences, which has meant that they have not only retrospectively redefined themselves but also been decisive in setting new agendas for others. At the same time, the human sciences have been able to supply new, situated suggestions towards an understanding of the human in its historical context. With a point of departure in a constitutive division between the human and the non-human, the development in the field of knowledge in general, but also in decisive aspects of the human sciences in particular, has led us towards an ever-closer connectedness between the human and the non-­ human. Such a close connectedness that weaves together the human and the non-human and complicates an ontological and epistemological divide between facts given by nature and human culture/values does not result in the disappearance of the significance and relevance of the human; on the contrary, it makes the human ubiquitous. In this redistributed humanity, the human being is not only consistently present on a mundane level, in so far as human activity operates as a decisive ‘force of nature’ on a number of fundamental conditions on the

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planet.64 On an epistemological level, the situated human likewise bursts forward as a decisive force that one must take into account in a wider range of contexts of knowledge, as indicated in the present examination of the history of the overall organization of knowledge and the human sciences since 1800. As an irreducible, decisive element, the human turns out to have an implicitly decisive significance to, and a decisive influence on the human sciences. In the context of a shared history of knowledge, the human appears as already redistributed in perceived objects and in organized society. As such, the human emerges as having decisive influence on the way in which it can continue to be invoked as a binding force; just as the human raises the question of how one most adequately takes this into account and takes care of it—in thought as well as in action. Finally, the human likewise has a decisive influence on how new connections that are underway may be articulated. Conceived as a creature that can relatively naturally assume a position at the centre of a universe, confident that this forms a stable framework around its expressions and activities, man may already be threatened with extinction as indicated in the history related in this book. Actually, modern anthropocentric man and the anthropocentric turn seem to have waned already, ‘as a face drawn in the sand on the edge of the sea’.65 And yet, with the turn of the human sciences described here, the human in the recent past and the imminent future reappears in the form of human beings, manifesting themselves as they relate actively to the landscape they are attempting to successfully inhabit. They reappear as an inescapable empirical, historical, situated topographical and ethical topic to be investigated by knowledge and science in general, and by the human sciences in particular. Worded differently, they reappear in a setting that lays down a new agenda for knowledge in general and especially for the human sciences. Herein lies not only a special challenge for the human sciences but also a singularly important task for human beings (Illustration 6.1).

 See Raffnsøe (2016): Philosophy of the Anthropocene. The Human Turn.  Foucault (1966): Les mots et les choses, p. 387.

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Illustration 6.1  The contemporary turn. With the contemporary turn, human beings re-emerge as existentially diverse fields of investigation. The study of these fields of investigation may elucidate how human beings are affected by, relate to and re-create various parts of the landscape. (Drawing by Hannah Heilmann)

References Bernays, Edward Louis. (1923/1961): Crystallizing Public Opinion. New York: Liveright Pub. Corp. Biagioli, Mario (1999): The Science Studies Reader. London: Taylor & Francis Books Ltd. Bloor, David (1976): Knowledge and Social Imagery. London; Boston: Routledge & K. Paul. Blumenberg, Hans (1981): Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt 1, Band 1, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

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Callon, Michel; Latour, Bruno (1991): La Science telle qu’elle se fait. Paris: Éditions de la découverte. Callon, Michel (1989): La Science et ses réseaux: Genèse et circulation des faits scientifiques. Paris: La Découverte, Conseil de l’Europe, Unesco. Collins, Harry M. (1985): Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. London; Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Foucault, Michel (1966): Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard. Kant, Immanuel (1781/1976): Kritik der reinen Vernunft 1. In Kant, Immanuel (1976): Werkausgabe, Band III. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Latour, Bruno (1987): Science in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno (1988): The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno (1990): ‘Postmodern? No, Simply Smodern! Steps towards an Anthropology of Science’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 21(1): 145–171. Latour, Bruno (1997): Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d’anthropologie symétrique. Paris: La Découverte. Latour, Bruno (1999): ‘One More Turn after the Social Turn’. In Mario Biagioli (ed.)  (1999): The Science Studies Reader. New  York; London: Routledge, pp. 276–289. Latour, Bruno (2001): Pasteur: Guerre et paix des microbes; suivi de Irréductions. Paris: la Découverte. Latour, Bruno (2004): ‘Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern’, Critical Inquiry 30(2): 225–248. Latour, Bruno (2004): Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno (2010): Cogitamus six lettres sur les humanités scientifiques. Paris: La Découverte. Latour, Bruno (2012): Enquête sur les modes d’existence: Une anthropologie des modernes. Paris: la Découverte. Latour, Bruno; Woolgar, Steve (1986): Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Raffnsøe, Sverre (2013): The Human Turn. The Makings of a Contemporary Relational Topography. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School. Raffnsøe, Sverre (2016): Philosophy of the Anthropocene. The Human Turn. New York & Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Shapin, Steven (1994): A Social History of Truth, Civility and Science in Seventeenth-­ Century England. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. Shapin, Steven; Schaffer, Simon (1985): Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life: Including a Translation of Thomas Hobbes, Dialogus physicus de natura aeris by Simon Schaffer. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 7

Whither Goest Thou? The Present Predicament

Abstract  This part reflects upon crucial implications of the investigation. What appears is an enduring productive crisis that has spurred not only an ongoing recovery and repossession of the human sciences but also self-­ affirmation and fertile self-transgression. The genealogy of the human sciences permits a more complex and favourable diagnosis, symptomatology and assessment of the present predicament. The book has examined the workings of an indomitable will to knowledge. This will to cognition can be understood as an expression of the will to power if one follows a Nietzschean interpretation of the syntagma. The will to knowledge articulating itself through the history of the human sciences is not a will to power that primarily expresses itself in domination. It is a will that stands forth in its specificity taken to the most refined, self-­ evident and self-assertive level, a will that stands out in its characteristic difference, repeating and reasserting itself in a most distinct and intense way. A new context for the reassertion of the human sciences has been established with the recognition that the existence and effects of human beings have acquired a paramount importance for life on Earth. This recognition is signalled in the widespread use of the term ‘the Anthropocene’ as an overarching framework for comprehending the significance of climate change, population growth, environmental strains and other global grand challenges. The crucial importance of the human implies that the field of investigation for the human sciences has become vital for the world at large. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024 S. Raffnsøe, A History of the Humanities in the Modern University, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46533-8_7

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Keywords  Genealogy • Diagnosis • Symptomatology • The will to know • The will to power • Nietzsche • Heidegger • Deleuze • Lear • The great health • The Anthropocene

7.1   A Genealogy of the Human Sciences As initially signalled, the history of the humanities in the modern university conveyed in this book claims the status of a relatively detailed, long-­ ranging genealogy aiming to shed a revealing light on the lines of descent and the emergence of the human sciences. Since the history recorded here presents itself as a genealogy, it is not, essentially, to be read as an all-comprehensive, complete and well-balanced story that in itself leads to and permits a complete and objective representation of the present and its predicaments. Rather than claiming to tell the full story, the history rendered here is to be understood as an engaged plea or intervention that provides evidence accumulated by one of the involved parties in a still ongoing and present strife or dispute concerning the role and character of the human sciences. Instead of aiming and claiming to present a systematic and unengaged view from nowhere that floats in the air in so far as it is uninterested in accounting for its own conditions of emergence and their consequences, the portrayal of the development of the human sciences given here is a past that is compulsory and essential precisely since it emerges as and is the result of an ex parte submission aiming to give an account of itself in a still ongoing argument. In accordance with Nietzsche’s historical investigations, the present study is to be read as ‘Eine Streitschrift’, ‘A Polemic’, or a special pleading by one of the involved parties that attains objectivity precisely in so far as it engages in and seeks to correct the received view and an already official story that is marked as relatively neutral and unbiased.1 Aiming to accomplish this mission, the present genealogical study has tried to avoid indulging in ‘random hypotheses out of the blue’ by moving closer towards the ‘real history’ that at first appears to be ‘grey’ in so far as 1  In his On the Genealogy of Morality, Nietzsche subscribes to the conception of genealogy as a partial examination and rendering of the complex and irreducible conditions of emergence for a contemporary phenomenon. This is also evidenced in the fact that Nietzsche entitled his work Zur Genealogie der Moral/On the Genealogy of Morality and added the title Eine Streitschrift/A Polemic Nietzsche (1888/1999): Zur Genealogie der Moral, p.  245/ Nietzsche (2014): On the Genealogy of Morality, p. 205). Cf. also Raffnsøe (2007): Nietzsches ‘Genealogie der Moral’. Cf. also Raffnsøe and Pethick (2024): History, Diagnostics and Metaphysics in Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’, forthcoming.

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it is the history that can be ‘documented’ and ‘is actually ascertainable’ in the past.2 Fortunately, however, what has been undug and comes to appear in and through the study of this grey, documented past of ongoing dangers, difficulties and challenges also proves to be a hitherto overlooked prolific ‘green’ provenance taking the shape of an ongoing productive crisis that has spurred not only recovery and repossession but also affirmative and fertile self-transgression. Of course, the decipherment of an as-yet insufficiently recorded historical past of enduring growth and gemmation does not imply that the often-­ propagated history characterized by long-lasting decline and decay that also comes to be reflected in wide-spread reactivity and resentment in the humanities is totally inexistent and uncorroborated. Rather, the capacity to decipher a critically affirmative counter-history in the development of the human sciences testifies to the fact that the prevalent story of ongoing, negative crisis and decay is not the full story. Moreover, the articulation of this critically and yet affirmative history of the human sciences makes it clear that the commonly acknowledged history of the human sciences is decisively misguided if it is simply taken at face value and regarded as adequate and covering. In so far as this story claims to state the harsh and whole truth of the human sciences, its veracity must be duly questioned.

7.2   A Genealogically Based Diagnosis of the Present Conversely, what a genealogical counter-inquiry exploring the historical emergence and the lines of descent of a given present situation can hope and aim to do is to contribute to establishing a broader, more articulate and accurate diagnosis of this present. Seeking the ancestry of the present, genealogy can present an extended account of its historical genesis, within which many forbearers have collided and interacted, so as to finally result in the constitution of the present as a multilayered, dynamic contemporaneity.3 As has become apparent in this genealogy of the human sciences, the starting point for this kind of genealogy is the examination of a series of events that express neither a 2  Nietzsche (1888/1999): Zur Genealogie der Moral, p.  254/Nietzsche (2014): On the Genealogy of Morality, p. 213. 3  Raffnsøe et al. (2016): Michel Foucault. Research Companion. Philosophy as Diagnosis of the Present, in particular pp. 59–61, 426–465.

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necessity nor a teleological convergence but are rather characterized by an ongoing productivity in so far as they form new historical departures that move beyond the hitherto given limitations as they point ahead and continue to exert a significant determining influence on the present. In this way, a genealogically based diagnostic of the present can intervene in contemporary practice by discerning, determining and deciding the nature of the present condition. Diagnostics distinguishes and intervenes in the present time as it conceives the latter as a complex, still developing state of health that is not only to be discerned from previous stages in specific ways but also going through a critical and still undecided stage in its history.4 The diagnosis of the present seeks to discern the present condition by perceiving it as a complex and dynamic state that is still under development and differs from itself as it moves into the future.5 According to the approach of a genealogical diagnostic of the present, diagnosis is to be clearly distinguished from aetiology. In agreement with the etymology of the term, ‘aetiology’ is the branch of knowledge or science that examines the causes or the causation of a given examined condition or state of health.6 Rather than shedding light on a given present state of health by reducing it to a specific set of origins and aiming to understand it in terms of these continuously all-determining causes, the diagnostic approach seeks to understand and determine the present condition as a still open-ended and relatively undecided situation by acquiring knowledge that can determine how it stands apart from and can be distinguished from other closely related or seemingly equivalent states. Whereas aetiology in the inherited sense tends to perceive itself as explaining a state of health by determining and representing its hidden origin and causes, diagnostics is essentially differential and diagrammatic.7 Drawing on a genealogical approach, the diagnosis of the present seeks to discern how the present distinguishes itself from, marks itself out from or stands apart from other previously given and possibly related states.8 4  Cf. also Raffnsøe et  al. (2016): Michel Foucault. Research Companion. Philosophy as Diagnosis of the Present, in particular pp. 426–454. 5  Cf. also Raffnsøe et  al. (2016): Michel Foucault. Research Companion. Philosophy as Diagnosis of the Present, in particular pp. 455–465. 6  Cf. Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966), entry ‘aetiology’, p. 16. 7  Concerning the constitutive nature of the diagrammatical engraving or partitioning, rather than the metaphysical source, well or origin, cf. Derrida (1967): De la grammatologie; Derrida (1972): ‘Ousia et Grammè’; Derrida (1972): ‘La différance’. 8  Cf. Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966), entries ‘diagnosis’ and ‘dia’, p. 264.

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Likewise, a genealogically based diagnostic of the present is to be distinguished from prognostics and prognosis. While a diagnosis contributes to the characterization of a present condition in its contradistinction to other states, a diagnosis does not in itself necessarily predict the future development and the final outcome of the state it diagnoses. Rather, the diagnosis contributes to the characterization of a condition one should try to face, relate to and try to measure up to. Since the condition discussed and suggested as a shared situation or compact in the diagnosis not only is proposed as the conditio sine qua non, or condition of possibility, for this future responsive conduct but also declared as the conditio per quam, or the condition through which this behaviour will have to develop or unfold, it is of course to be expected that the diagnosis offered will have a significant effect on this behaviour.9 Yet, the diagnosis is to be expected to have an impact on responsive conduct precisely because it does not exhaustively determine and prognosticate entirely what is to come but rather requests that one relates to the diagnosis in adequate and not necessarily predictable ways. Consequently, a suggested diagnostic of the present time is also to be distinguished from a prescribed therapy. A diagnosis does not in itself mete out a specific treatment intended to cure or relieve an experienced disorder; and neither does it in itself prescribe the right way to restore and improve a given state of health. Instead, the diagnostic contributes to characterizing the problematic condition and its propensities that one should face and relate to if one aims to restore or even improve a state of health.10

9  Concerning the plurality of politics as ‘the condition’ ‘of all political life’, ‘not only the conditio sine qua non’, but also ‘the conditio per quam’ it is forced to develop, cf. Arendt (1958/1998): The Human Condition, p. 7; italization in Arend’ts original text. 10  In this manner, an accurate diagnosis calls for an attempt to reassert existence in a new form in the face of the diagnosis. The ability to do so may serve as an indication of health. Cf. Canguilhem (1943/1966/1972/1992). Le normal et le pathologique; Canguilhem (2009): La connaissance de la vie. Cf. also Raffnsøe (2013): ‘Pathology and Human Existence’.

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7.3  Establishing, Evaluating and Responding to a Symptomatology When characterizing the set of dispositions or propensities that one needs to face, a genealogically informed diagnosis of the present, by contrast, takes the form of a symptomatology. The diagnosis of the present examines a number of (social and historical) occurrences not only as incidents or happenings but also as signs or symptoms that seem to form a cluster of characteristics that is sufficiently persistent to indicate that they possess a recurrent or consistent relationship to one another.11 When practising symptomatology, the diagnosing clinician distinguishes a number of indications that may previously have been considered in isolation or grouped together with other symptoms and signs in order to disentangle, isolate and regroup these indications in a new table as signs and indications of a new correlation. Noticing how the symptoms occur together to form a characteristic pattern, the practitioner interprets them as indications and expressions of a certain specific syndrome.12 11  Related to the verb‘sympiptein’, a compound formed of ‘-piptein’ indicating ‘to fall or happen to’, and ‘syn-’, meaning ‘together or at the same time’, the Greek term ‘symptoma’ indicates not only something that happens or befalls, but an occurrence (συμπτώμα) that occurs together with other occurrences (συμπτώματα) (Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966), entry ‘symptom’, p. 896. 12  According to Deleuze, one should more closely investigate the conditions for determining forms of illness such as Parkinson’s disease (or, e.g., Benson’s syndrome) that are named after the physician who discovered the disease. Whereas the physician does not invent the disease, he or she has ‘dissociated symptoms that were hitherto brought together [réunis], brought together symptoms that were hitherto separated’. In this manner, the physician finally manages to constitute a profoundly original clinical table or mapping [tableau]’ (Deleuze (1967): Présentation de Sacher-Masoch. Le froid et le cruel, p. 15). For Deleuze, ‘the history of medicine is’ at least double. There is ‘a history of illnesses, which disappear, recede, resume or reshape, depending on the state of society and progress in therapeutics. Yet, interlinked with this history, there is another one which is the history of symptomatology, and which in some cases precedes and in other cases follows the transformations in therapeutics or illness. Here one baptises and removes the name [débaptise], one regroups the symptoms. In general, progress […] takes the direction of an increasing specification and attests to a more refined symptomatology. […] The great clinicians are the greatest doctors [médecins]. When a doctor lends his name to an illness [maladie], it is both a linguistic and a semiological act of great importance in so far as this act unites a proper noun and a set [un ensemble] of signs, or effects that a proper name connotes [connote] signs’ (Deleuze (1967): Présentation de Sacher-Masoch. Le froid et le cruel, pp. 15–16; italicization in Deleuze’s original text).

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This understanding of symptomatology is in accordance with Deleuze, who speculates that there might ‘be three very different medical actions [actes medicaux]: symptomatology or the study of signs; aetiology or the search for causes; therapeutics or the search for and application of a treatment’. Whereas aetiology and therapeutics according to Deleuze ‘are integral parts of medicine, symptomology calls on and appeals to a sort of neutral point, a premedical or sub-medical limit point, belonging as much to art, and to the art of diagnostics and criticism in general, as to medicine: It is all about drawing a “table”, “portrait” or “picture” [il s’agit de dresser un “tableau”]. “table”, “portrait” or “picture” [il s’agit de dresser un “tableau”. The work of art exhibits symptoms, as do the body or the soul, albeit in a very different way. In this sense, the artist or writer can be a great symptomologist, just like the best doctor: so it is with Sade or Masoch.’13 When establishing a symptomatology, the clinician may also arrive at a specific typology or a categorization based on the way certain traits or types occur together and what it reveals concerning the state that the traits indicate. By recognizing how the established type or syndrome may be subject to modifications, de- and reformations, according to displacement in space or time, the diagnosing clinician may concomitantly work out a topology. Working at the crossroad or intersection between medicine, figurative art and art criticism, science and the social, writing and literature, philosophy and thinking, the symptomatologist strives to isolate, juxtapose and group together a number of symptoms in such a way that an idea of a complex but specific set of symptoms is formed. The set forms a group of connected indications that are preserved as the related indications consistently emerge together in relation and in response to a specific setting or site.14

13  Deleuze (1967/2002): ‘17. Mystique et masochisme’, p.  183/ Deleuze (2002): ‘Mysticism and Masochism’, p. 132; translation slightly modified. 14  In Logique du sens (The Logic of Sense), Deleuze makes it plain that ‘there is always a great deal of art involved in the grouping of symptoms, in the organization of a table where a particular symptom is dissociated from another, juxtaposed to a third, and forms the new figure of a disorder or illness. Clinicians who are able to renew a symptomatological table produce a work of art [une œuvre artiste]. Conversely, artists are clinicians, not with respect to their own case, nor with respect to a case in general; rather they are clinicians of civilization’ (Deleuze (1969): Logique du sens, p. 276/Deleuze (2009): The Logic of Sense, p. 237; italicization in original work, translation slightly modified).

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By amassing and interpreting the occurring indications to discern a pattern under development, the symptomatologist is first and foremost trying to get at and distinguish the specific dynamics that are at play and come to express themselves in and through the set of symptoms singled out. In this manner, clinical symptomatology establishes and assesses a specific constellation of forces at play that has an effect and affects but also presents a challenge and a possibility.15 According to Deleuze, the symptomatologist moves from the strictly traditional meaning of signs, indicating sense or linguistic meaning, to symptoms or to interpreting signs as symptoms. When a symptomatology ‘interprets phenomena, treating them as symptoms’, it involves understanding and interpreting them as signs of ‘real activities and real relations between forces [rapports reels entre les forces]’. Symptomatology searches for the sense of the events and activities examined in the forces that produce them and that make themselves felt in and through them; and the aim of this examination is to understand what is making itself felt in and with the influence of these forces.16 When gleaning the relation of forces that lies beneath and finds its expression in what may at first appear to be an object or a static or congealed state, symptomatology and the related genealogy do not content themselves with interpretation but rather assess and evaluate.17 They assess the character and the quality of the forces as they have been constituted over time and as they presently continue to have an influence on and express themselves in the examined to better comprehend the latter’s character, the momentum inherent in it and the directions in which it

15  Within this context, force is to be understood as that which moves something, yet also and in particular in ways that exceed the simple conception of force as an action that tends to alter or maintain the motion of a given body. Rather, force is to be understood in prolongation of the way Spinoza uses it. In his Ethica, for example, Spinoza determines the ‘force [vis] with which the human being perseveres in his existence as limited’ and hastes to underline that it is ‘infinitely surpassed by the power [potentia] of external causes’ (Spinoza (1677/1977): Éthique démontrée suivant l’ordre géometrique et divisée en cinq parties: Tome deuxième, p. 16–17; quatrième partie, propositio III). 16  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  85/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 70. 17  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  7/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 6.

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might point.18 Rather than seeking to predict a determined outcome and prescribe the cure, they further articulate the dispositions and tendencies that make themselves felt in the examined. In this way, symptomatology and genealogy assess the play of forces exhibited in the examined to evaluate the character of its specific constellation, the challenges it represents and how one may respond to it in ways that are on a par with it.

7.4  The Will to Know as Play of Forces In accordance with indications that were partially given at the outset of the book, the genealogical and symptomatologic elucidation of the human sciences given here understands this history and its present outcome not only as the workings of a persistent and productive will to knowledge. Simultaneously, this will to knowledge, as well as the science it produces and the sense it makes, is here perceived and articulated as traversed by and as indications of forces that are at work.19 In prolongation hereof, knowledge, science and the sense they make can be understood and illuminated according to a mode suggested by Nietzsche. When appearing as traversed and composed by forces in action, the will to knowledge can be understood as an expression of the will to power. The history articulated in this genealogy demonstrates how new forms of knowledge and levels of scientificity have been continually constituted and confirmed in ways that have constantly established new conditions of 18  According to Deleuze, ‘we will never find the sense or meaning of something (of a human, a biological or even a physical phenomenon) if we do not know the force which appropriates the thing, which exploits it, which takes possession of it or is expressed in it. A phenomenon is not an appearance or even an apparition, but a sign, a symptom which finds its meaning in an existing force.’ Deleuze even claims that ‘the whole of philosophy is a symptomatology, and a semeiology. The sciences are a symptomatolological and semeiological system’ (Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, pp. 3–4/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 3. 19  In an elaborate and original comparison of both Spinoza’s and Nietzsche’s work, Stuart Pethick demonstrates how they both ‘share the same overall tendency of making knowledge the most powerful affect. This is an extremely interesting approach, because rather than knowledge being considered as a way to get around affectivity in order to ground and understand the world around us, Nietzsche sees himself and Spinoza as considering knowledge as an affect and a way to augment affectivity and thus enhance our experience of the world’ (Pethick (2015): Affectivity and Philosophy after Spinoza and Nietzsche. Making Knowledge the Most Powerful Affect, p. 3; italicization in original work). Cf. also Pethick (2011): The Immanent Refrain: Affectivity and Philosophy after Spinoza and Nietzsche.

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assertability and acceptability for knowledge. Following the traces of agenda-setting, major prescriptive and normative events in the history of science over the preceding two centuries, the genealogy of the human sciences recounted here indicates how the constitution and spread of knowledge have decisive normative and performative effects as new forms of cognation outstrip previous forms of knowledge and leave the past behind in a constantly forward-moving but also precarious development. What has appeared is a history and a present in which events and forces succeed and co-exist with one another as they dominate, appropriate, make use of, exploit and reinterpret one another. In this interplay, a complex of meaning has appeared where every interpretation is always already an interpretation of an interpretation ad infinitum. Contrary to what may be expected from an abstract point of view, it has also become clear that this persistent reinterpretation does not mean that every interpretation has the same value or that all interpretations are at the same level. On the contrary, in so far as each interpretation takes previous interpretations as a starting point and reinterprets them, the interpretations appear as stacked upon another in an uncircumventable sequence.20 As Deleuze highlights in a close reading of Nietzsche, the genealogical and symptomatological approach that the latter adopts understands the investigated object as an ‘apparition’ and ‘expression’ of forces. According to Nietzsche’s conception, forces are essentially relational and plural. In so far as all kinds of forces are necessarily related to other forces, it is meaningless to perceive forces in isolation from one another and in the singular. In Nietzsche, forces are conceived in a plurality where they relate to other forces and establish correlations between forces and constellations of

20  In a  commentary on Foucault’s contribution to the understanding of Nietzsche’s thought, Deleuze underlines how Foucault has highlighted a depth in Nietzsche’s understanding that derives not from a traditional hermeneutic profundity but from the analytic assumption of an endlessly progressing reinterpretation: ‘As Mr. Foucault has shown us, Nietzsche invents a new conception and new methods of interpretation: first by changing the space in which signs are distributed, by discovering a new “depth” [profondeur] in relation to which the old depth flattens out and is no longer anything; but above all by replacing the simple relation of sign [signe] and sense [sens] with a complex of senses [complexe de sens], such that every interpretation is already the interpretation of an interpretation ad infinitum [à l’infini]’ (Deleuze, 1967b/2002): ‘15. Conclusions sur la volonté de puissance et l’éternel retour’, p. 165/Deleuze (2002): ‘Conclusions on the Will to Power and the Eternal Return’, p. 118; translation slightly modified; italization in Deleuze’s original text.

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forces.21 On closer inspection, a similar kind of dynamics between forces is what has come to the fore in the genealogy and symptomatology of the human sciences articulated in this book. In the same context, Deleuze claims that Nietzsche coined the term of the ‘will’ to designate forces but under the specific aspect where they relate to other forces. According to Deleuze ‘the will [la volonté]’ and ‘the will to power [la volonté de puissance]’ refer to ‘the differential element of force’, or the quality of forces that they relate to and introduce a difference with regard to other co-existing forces.22

7.5  The Will to Know as a Will to Power For Deleuze, a reconception of the millennia-old philosophy of the will follows from Nietzsche’s coining of and understanding of the syntagma ‘the will to power’. According to Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power, ‘the will is not exercised mysteriously on muscles or nerves, still less on “matter in general”, but it is necessarily exercised on another will. […] “Will” can of course operate only on “will”—and not on “matter” (not on “nerves” for example).’ In this sense, the pluralism of the play of forces, also according to Deleuze, ‘finds it immediate corroboration and the chosen ground in the philosophy of the will’.23 Nonetheless, a misleading natural interpretation of the syntagma ‘will to knowledge [Wille zur Macht]’ may form an all-too obvious inclination. For this reason, the significance of this syntagma and its implications for the understanding of knowledge call for further scrutiny. It is expedient to develop possible misinterpretations and an adequate understanding of the will to power in dialogue with both Heidegger’s and Deleuze’s readings of Nietzsche’s will to power. Contrary to what might be expected, the conception of knowledge and of the history of knowledge as expressions of the will to power does not imply a reductive approach to knowledge that perceives it as a simple 21  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  7/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 6. 22  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  7/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 6. Despite Deleuze’s warning that one should avoid perceiving and speaking of a force in the singular and in isolation from other forces, he often ends up getting caught in this trap. 23  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, pp.  7–8/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, pp. 6–7.

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expression of power in a traditional sense. Nietzsche’s conception does not imply that one conceives of knowledge as a mere tool or as a means to handle the world. Neither does the characterization of the will to knowledge as a will to power imply that one should seek to understand knowledge as just another means that one can make use of to subdue others and assert oneself in the face of others, be it openly, indirectly or clandestinely. Finally, the characterization does not imply that the will to knowledge is a will to knowledge in the sense that the former can be interpreted as a will to subdue others by other means. In his book Nietzsche. Erster und zweiter Band (Nietzsche Volumes I and II) primarily devoted to understanding Nietzsche’s expression ‘will to power’, Heidegger is at first most careful to avoid such all-too obvious and tempting interpretations of the term. In his final critical assessment, nevertheless, he comes close to voicing concerns of a related kind.24 Discussing Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s syntagma ‘the will to power’ will thus permit the development of a more precise and productive understanding of the will to power. After having recognized that Nietzsche ‘belongs to the most significant thinkers [wesentlichen Denkern] that stand out by being ‘one-sided [einzeitig] and ‘only thinking one single thought [einen einzigen Gedanken]’, Heidegger points out that Nietzsche ‘struggled for the intellectual or thoughtful design or formation [denkerische Gestaltung]’ of a single thought after the time around 1884 when Nietzsche’s thought of the will to power began to appear ‘in a bright and determined light [ins Helle und Entschiedene]’ and came to form the title of a future principal work that Nietzsche aimed to conceive of and complete for the remaining part of his intellectual life.25 Asserting that Nietzsche in and through ‘his single thought of the will to power’ ‘conceives of [denkt]’ ‘the basic 24  In this monograph, based primarily on Heidegger’s lectures on Nietzsche from 1936 to 1940, Heidegger can be said to establish his own symptomatology of Nietzsche’s thinking centered on the concept of the will to power as a crucial event in Nietzsche’s thought. 25  Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, pp. 475, 482; Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, pp. 4, 10; italicization in Heidegger’s original text. Heidegger also makes sure to underline that the oeuvre published by Nietzsche in his lifetime is only to be regarded as ‘the foreground [Vordergrund]’. ‘The true or proper philosophy [die eigentliche Philosophie] ‘stays behind as “literary remains, or posthumous, unpublished work [Nachlaβ]”’ (Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, p. 17/Heidegger (1984): Nietzsche. Volumes One and Two. Volume I: The Will to Power as Art. Volume II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, p. 9).

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character of beings in general [den Grundcharacter des Seienden im Ganzen]’ and consequently also claims that ‘life [das Leben] is will to power’, Heidegger finds it important to ward off an obvious biologistic misinterpretation of Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power. In opposition to the biology of his own time ‘that is under influence from Darwin’, Nietzsche does not determine ‘the essence of life [das Wesen des Lebens]’ as ‘ “self-preservation [Selbsterhaltung]” ’ and ‘the struggle for existence [Kampf ums Dasein]’. Rather, the essence of life is in ‘self-transcending enhancement [Steigerung über sich hinaus]’.26 Despite his recognition and careful consideration, however, Heidegger also finds Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power and its role in Nietzsche’s thought profoundly problematic. According to Heidegger’s interpretation of Nietzsche, it is evident that living beings and life, to live, must, for their own sake and benefit ‘be propelled toward the permanent [auf Beständiges drängen]’, or press towards their own continued existence.27 At the end of the day, human practice according to this conception is not to be understood as ‘an activity to realize something [Betätigung als Verwirklichung]’ but as a ‘consummation of the livelihood of life [Vollzug im Sinne von Lebendigkeit des Lebens]’; and this understanding implies that Nietzsche must conceive of human practice in general as a consummation of the livelihood of life that takes the form of a self-assertion or self-affirmation of life.28 According to Heidegger, this understanding also has serious implications for Nietzsche’s conception of cognition and knowledge. For Nietzsche, cognition, reasoning and truth are not to be understood as ‘representation [Abbilden]’ but as assertion and self-assertion; and in prolongation hereof, Nietzsche must basically understand reason as a fictional and creative faculty. Accordingly, Nietzsche must ‘retain the poetizing

26  Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, pp.  492, 12, 488/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, pp. 4, 10, 15; italicization in Heidegger’s original text. 27  Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, p. 571/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p. 85; italicization in Heidegger’s original text. 28  ‘Praxis as life-occurrence [als Lebensvollzug] is in itself [in sich] the securing of stability [Bestandssicherung]’ (Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, p. 572/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p. 86; italicization in Heidegger’s original text).

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character of reason [den dichtenden Character der Vernunft festhalten]’.29 Consequently, according to Heidegger’s Nietzsche, both cognition and life are thus to be conceived as essentially stating or giving themselves in the ‘grammatical’ mood of authoritative commands or as imperatives.30 Whereas Heidegger thus takes care to highlight Nietzsche’s distance from a biologism that became prevalent in Nietzsche’s own time, Heidegger at the same time finds that his predecessor not only ‘relates everything to “life”—the “biological” ’, but essentially determines life and thus being in general ‘along the lines of the imperative and poetic [in Richtung des Befehls- und Dichtungshaften], the perspectival and horizontal [des Perspektivischen und Horizonthaften]’. In this manner, Nietzsche distances himself decisively from a traditional biologistic approach in so far as he tends to perceive and understand both biological beings and beings generally in non-biological and above all human terms, in ‘the direction of commanding and poetizing [in der Richtung des Befehls und Dichtungshaften], the perspectival and horizontal [des Perspektivischen

29  Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, p. 586/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p. 97; italicization in Heidegger’s text). Cf. also ‘Will is command [Befehl] […]. […] Accordingly Nietzsche understands commanding as the fundamental mood of one’s being superior [die Grundstimmung des Überlegenseins], indeed, not only superior [überlegen] with regard to others, those who obey [den Gehorchenden], but also and always beforehand superior with regard to oneself [Überlegenheit über sich selbst]. The latter means [besagt] excelling [Überhöhung,] taking one’s own essence higher [Höhernemen des eigenen Wesens], in such a way that one’s very essence [das eigene Wesen] consists in such excelling [Überhöhung]’ (Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, p.  651/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p. 152). 30  ‘We can see only this much now: If the law of contradiction is the uppermost fundamental principle of holding-to-be-true, if as such it supports and makes possible the essence of holding-to-be-true, and if the positing character of this law is a command, then the essence of knowledge [das Wesen der Erkenntnis] has the essential nature of command [die Wesensart des Befehlshaften] deep within it [zuinnerst]. But knowing as re-presenting beings and what is constant [Vorstellen von Seiendem, Beständigem] is, as the securing of permanence [Bestandssicherung], part of the necessary essential constitution of life itself [eine notwendige Wesensverfassung des Lebens selbst]. Hence life in itself—in its very vitality—contains the essential trait of commanding [den Wesenszug des Befehlens]. Accordingly, the securing of permanence in human life [Bestandsicherung des menschlichen Lebens] takes place in a decision [Entscheidung] about what is to count as in being as such [überhaupt als seiend gelten solle], what is called Being [was Sein heisse]’ (Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, p. 609/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p. 128).

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und Horizonthaften]: of freedom [Freiheit]’.31 In fact, Heidegger finds that ‘so little is Nietzsche’s thinking in danger of biologism that on the contrary he rather tends to interpret what is biological in the true and strict sense—the plant and animal—nonbiologically, that is, humanly, pre-­ eminently in terms of the determinations of perspective, horizon, commanding and poetizing [des Befehlens und Dichten], in general in terms of the representing of beings [Vorstellens von Seiendem her]’.32 Since Nietzsche, according to Heidegger, moves beyond simple self-­ preservation with the concept of the will to power and asserts that self-­ maintenance can at best only render service to the overriding human concern to ‘rule’ and ‘overpower oneself’, to become ‘master of oneself’ 31  Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, p. 615/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p. 133; italicization in original text. 32  Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, p. 615/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p. 133; italicization in original text. In accordance with this alleged anthropocentrism, Heidegger also claims that power is essentially in Nietzsche understood as ‘overpowering [Übermächtigung]’, or the manner in which one may become ‘master of oneself [das Herrwerden über sich selbst]’ ‘by rising above oneself to a higher hight [aus dem errichtenden Ersteigen einer höheren Höhe]’ (Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, p.  643/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p.  146; translation slightly modified). Heidegger further develops the ‘logical’ understanding of the will to power towards the end of his lectures in a paragraph entitled ‘The will to power’. The paragraph begins in the following way: ‘What will means [Was “Wille” heisst], anyone at any time can discover for himself: To will is to strive towards something [Wollen ist ein Streben nach etwas]. What “power” [“Macht]” means, everybody will know from daily experience [Erfahrung]: the exercise [Ausübung] of force [Gewalt]. Finally, what the will to power altogether signifies is then so obvious [klar], that one only hesitates furnish a special explanation for this conjunction of the words or linguistic construction [Wortgefüge]. “Will to power” is evidently a striving for the possibility to exercise force and power [ein Streben nach der Möglichkeit der Gewaltausübung], a striving for the possession of power [ein Streben nach Machbesitzt]’ (Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Zweiter Band, p.  263/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p.  193; translation modified). Having underlined that ‘commanding in its primordial sense [das ürspringliche Befehlen]’ always ‘has its source in [entspringt] freedom’, Heidegger accentuates that freedom is in itself ‘poetic fabrication or poetizising [Dichten]’ as Kant understood it: ‘the unfathomable grounding of the ground [das Grundlose gründen eines Grundes]’ ‘in the way where it itself enacts the law of its being [das Gesetzt ihres Wesens]. Commanding [das Befehlen] signifies nothing other than this’ (Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Erster Band, p.  611/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p. 119; translation slightly modified).

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and the world,33 Heidegger feels justified in classifying Nietzsche’s work as the end and consummation of classic metaphysical and ontological thought; only now, with the culminating point in Nietzsche’s will to power, metaphysics takes the form of modern metaphysics or of a metaphysics of freedom and the will.34 As Heidegger understands it, Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power negatively indicates an emancipation from a prior embeddedness in Christian and ecclesial assurance of salvation, but this liberation can only be positively ‘safeguarded’ in human activity. The affirmation and protection, or ‘surety [Sicherung]’, ‘can now be perfected only by and for man himself [aus dem Menschen selbst und für ihn selbst vollzogen werden]. In the new freedom, humankind [das Menschentum] in its unconditioned self-deployment [Selbstentfaltung] aims to be certain [will sicher sein] of the absolute self-development of all its faculties for unrestricted dominion over the entire earth [Vermögen zur unbeschränkten Herrschaft über die ganze Erde].’35 Only with the metaphysics of the will developed by Nietzsche does this new kind of human self-deployment and freedom begin to reach its full potential.36 In its highest and fullest realization, the will to power in Nietzsche consists in the capacity of

33  Heidegger states that ‘preservation [Erhaltung] is of course the necessary, but never sufficient, and properly supportive, […] way of powering [Weise des Machtens] in the will to power. Enhancement [Steigerung] in every case exceeds what is preserved and its preservation [geht jedesmal über das Erhaltene und sein Erhalten hinaus], but not through mere accretion, never merely through more power. The “more” in power consists in the fact that enhancement reveals new possibilities of power beyond the present power, transfigures will to power into these higher possibilities, and at the same time incites it to go thence to its own proper essence which is to be the overpowering of itself [Übermächtigung seiner selbst]’ (Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Zweiter Band, p. 315/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p. 236). 34  Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Zweiter Band, pp.  321ff/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, pp. 240ff. 35  Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Zweiter Band, pp. 320–321/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, pp. 240–241; translation modified. 36  Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Zweiter Band, p.  321/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, pp. 240–241.

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‘establishing the conditions for oneself [Setzen der Bedingungen seiner selbst]’.37 Despite his meticulous reading of Nietzsche’s text, however, Heidegger is not in full accordance with Nietzsche’s own characterization of the terms ‘will’ and ‘will to power’. In a fragment from 1888, Nietzsche underlines that the concept of a ‘weakness of the will [Schwäche des Willens]’ is ‘an image that can lead astray [ein Gleichniβ, das irreführen kann]’. A rigorous scrutiny reveals that ‘there is no will, and consequently, neither a strong nor a weak will’. It is rather the ‘multitude and the disgregation or dispersion of drives [Vielheit und Disgregation der Antriebe], the lack of a system between them’ that ‘result in [resultieren als]’ a weakness of the will. By contrast, ‘the coordination of drives under the predominance [Vorherrschaft]’ of a single drive results in a strong will. Whereas a weak will is characterized by an ‘oscillation and lack of main emphasis [Schwergewicht]’ between the drives, not an absence of drives, a strong will is characterized by ‘precision and clearness of direction [Klarheit der Richtung]’.38 In another fragment from the same year, Nietzsche further elaborates his point concerning the fictionality inherent in the conception of the will that Heidegger—somewhat paradoxically—ends up finding and criticizing in Nietzsche. Here, Nietzsche discusses the conception of the will as it has been elaborated not only by Schopenhauer but also as a uniting conception in the psychology of his time. By regarding an ‘immense wealth of forms of behaviour’ as expressions of the will, it becomes possible to conceive of them as cohering and originating in a single underlying ‘unity’.39 In this context, Nietzsche also counters a related ambition that the notion of will should permit the realization or the unveiling of how all living beings, despite appearances, basically ‘strive to attain power, more power [es strebt nach Macht, nach Mehr in der Macht], rather than personal happiness. In accordance with these reservations, Nietzsche also voices criticism of a reduction of the will to power to a will in the described sense of ‘commandment [commandieren]’. Nietzsche claims that the will as it appears in contemporary psychology is simply the result of an 37  Heidegger (1961): Nietzsche. Zweiter Band, p.  324/Heidegger (1987): Nietzsche. Volume III: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics. Volume IV: Nihilism, p. 243; translation modified. 38  Nietzsche (1888/1999): [14=WII5. Frühjahr 1888], Band 13, p. 394. 39  Nietzsche (1888/1999): [14=WII5. Frühjahr 1888], Band 13, pp. 300–301.

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‘unwarranted generalization’ and that ‘this will does not exist at all’. Instead of seeking to apprehend the ‘development of a determined will in many forms’, one has, in the final analysis, ‘erased [weggestrichen] the character of the will’ by ‘subtracting the content, the wither [das Wohin]? from it’.40 If one puts multifarious activities, actions and events on a level by conceiving them as expressions of an underlying dynamics or drive, be it the will, the will to power, power or commanding, Nietzsche claims, one reduces them all to utterances of a non-existing, constructed or fictional entity. Moreover, since this entity is created by generalization and abstraction, and thus by subtracting the very content, the concrete directedness, one ends up erasing the very character and mode of the will and the will to power. Contrary to what is to be expected if one takes Nietzsche’s terms at face value as they appear both within the horizon of the common understanding of the will and within Heidegger’s more elaborate interpretation of Nietzsche’s text, Nietzsche thus does not introduce the terms of the will and the will to power to assert a metaphysics of the will. Rather than seeking to explain phenomena as expressions of a single underlying drive or dimension of the will, he uses the syntagma ‘will to power’ as an entry to examine and a means to explore the formation of specific, multidimensional dispersions and constellations of drives that make themselves felt in the examined; and he does so to gauge and assess the specific characteristics of the relationship between the forces that are in play.41 40  Nietzsche (1888/1999): [14=WII5. Frühjahr 1888], Band 13, p. 301; italicization in Nietzsche’s original text. 41  Analogously with Nietzsche, Spinoza claims that no free will exists if one conceives the latter as an instance that wills and choses freely: ‘In the mind [In mente] there is no absolute, or free, will [absoluta sive libera voluntas], but the mind is determined to will this or that by a cause which is also determined by another, and this again by another, and so to infinity’ (Spinoza (1677/1977): Éthique démontrée suivant l’ordre géometrique et divisée en cinq parties: Tome deuxième, pp. 219–220, propositio XLVII). In the ensuing demonstration, Spinoza further clarifies that the mind [mens] is a certain and determined mode of thinking [modus cogitandi].’ For this reason, the mind ‘cannot be [potest] a free cause [causa libera]’ for its actions that can be in possession of an absolute faculty ‘to will or not will’ (de Spinoza, 1677/1977): Éthique démontrée suivant l’ordre géometrique et divisée en cinq parties: Tome deuxième, pp. 220–221; propositio XLVII, demonstratio). In accordance with this understanding, and with Nietzsche, Spinoza clarifies that by “the will [per voluntatem]’ he understands “a faculty of affirming or denying and not a faculty to desire” (Spinoza (1677/1977): Éthique démontrée suivant l’ordre géometrique et divisée en cinq parties: Tome deuxième, pp. 220–221; propositio XLVII, demonstratio).

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7.6  The Will to Know as a Determinate Will to Power or Self-Empowerment To avoid this metaphysics of the will and the will to power that makes it impossible to grasp and understand both will and power, it is necessary to turn the order of explanation around. Instead of starting from the general assumption of an abstract dynamic will, which would then have to materialize itself and become concretely accessible in specific, concrete and determined forms, a more sophisticated articulation of the idea of the will to power would have to operate from an understanding and a study of the will in its realization in concrete and complex modes of will to power. For this reason, Nietzsche recommends seeking to ‘grasp [fassen] the formation of A determined will [die Ausgestaltung Eines bestimmten Willens] in multiple forms’.42 If one follows this lead, one realizes that it is misguiding to understand ‘the will’ in the will to power as a substantivized verb or as a verbal noun, as is the case in the traditional interpretation of Nietzsche’s term. The ‘will’ in the ‘will to power’ does not denote a willing or an active agent that takes power either as its object or as its objective. As Deleuze also highlights, it is a misleading to believe that the will to power, as Nietzsche conceives it, is ‘a will [une volonté] that wants power [qui veut la puissance] or wants to dominate [desire dominer]’.43 Instead of approaching the syntagma ‘Wille zur Macht’ sequentially from the beginning, and thus taking the presupposition of an already existing will as the starting point, Nietzsche suggests that the expression should be read in the inverse: from the ‘Macht’ and ‘Bemächtigung’, the power and the empowerment that may initiate or motivate the will. Deleuze is in keeping with this reversion in the approach when he notes that in Nietzsche’s will to power, ‘power [la puissance] is not what the will 42  Nietzsche (1888/1999): [14=WII5. Frühjahr 1888], Band 13, p. 301; italicization and capitalization in Nietzsche’s original text. 43  Deleuze, 1967/2002: ‘15. Conclusions sur la volonté de puissance et l’éternel retour’, p. 166/Deleuze (2002): ‘Conclusions on the Will to Power and the Eternal Return’, p. 119. Deleuze further elaborates kinds of misinterpretation of the will to power that are to be avoided in the following passage: ‘The question which Nietzsche constantly repeats, “what does a will want, what does this one or that one want?” must not be understood as the search for a goal, a motive or an object for this will. What a will wants is to affirm its difference. In its essential relation with the “other” a will makes its difference an object of affirmation’ (Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  10/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 8).

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wants or wills [veut], but that which wants or wills in the will’ [veut dans la volonté].44 If one reverses the approach in such a manner that the ‘content [Inhalt]’ and the ‘whereto [wohin]’ that was subtracted and erased in the usual understanding come to the fore, it becomes apparent, according to Nietzsche, that the will in the will to power does not simply ‘will’ or want to ‘continue its existence [sich zu erhalten]’. Neither is it simply to be conceived as ‘a will to life [Willen zum Leben]’ or as a will to acquire more power or become more powerful and get recognition in the traditional sense. Instead, it becomes plain that the will to power is a ‘Wille zur Macht’ in the sense that it, expressed in terms in accordance with the traditional conception of the will, ‘does everything possible [es alles thut]’ ‘not to continue its existence, but rather to become more [mehr zu werden]’.45 To further press this difference and articulate Nietzsche’s understanding of the will to power, Deleuze, in his book on Nietzsche Nietzsche et la philosophie (Nietzsche and Philosophy), highlights the difference between the will to power as it appears in Nietzsche’s genealogical-­symptomatological approach and as it is rendered in Hegelian dialectics as Deleuze understands it. In the famous dialectical examination of the master-slave exchange in Hegel’s Phenomenologie des Geistes (The Phenomenology of the Spirit), the relationship between master and slave, as Deleuze sees it, depends on the fact ‘that power is conceived not as will to power but as representation of power, representation of superiority, recognition by “the one” of the superiority of “the other”. What the wills in Hegel want is to have their power recognised, to represent their power’.46 In Nietzsche’s and Deleuze’s view, however, this is a very misleading conception of the will to power and its character. It is a reactive perception or the slave’s conception of power and the will to power. ‘It is the image that the man of ressentiment has of power. The slave only conceives of power as the object of a recognition, the content of a representation, the stake in a competition, and therefore makes it depend, at the end of a fight, on a simple attribution of established values. If the master-slave relationship can easily take on the dialectical 44  Deleuze, 1967/2002: ‘15. Conclusions sur la volonté de puissance et l’éternel retour’, p. 167/Deleuze (2002): ‘Conclusions on the Will to Power and the Eternal Return’, p. 119. 45  Nietzsche (1888/1999): [14=WII5. Frühjahr 1888], Band 13, p. 301; italicization in Nietzsche’s original text. 46  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  11/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 9; italicization in Deleuze’s text.

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form, to the point where it has become an archetype or a school-­exercise for every young Hegelian, it is because the portrait of the master that Hegel offers us is, from the start, a portrait which represents the slave […], as at best a successful slave. Underneath the Hegelian image of the master, we always find the slave.’47 By contrast, a resolute anti-dialectical post-Hegelianism, as Deleuze interprets them, runs through Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power and theory of forces and forms their cutting edge. Acting against the dialectical ideas of opposition and contradiction and of the work of negation, Nietzsche ‘substitutes the practical element of difference’ as a component that needs to be affirmed.48 In prolongation hereof, Deleuze also highlights what he characterizes as a ‘Nietzschean empiricism’. Whereas this empiricism frequently asks what an already determinate will wants, this kind of post hoc examination should not be mistaken for a search for a goal or a driving motivation; an object or an objective that governs the will. In accordance with Nietzsche’s conception of the will to power, the will as traversed by a play of forces is instead examined as essentially relational in an active and creational sense from the start. Whereas the wills in the described interpretation of Hegelian dialectics want to assume power and gain the upper hand, to represent their power and have it recognized by others, the will in Nietzsche ‘wants to affirm its difference’. While the will as conceived within a dialectical framework responds re-actively to an existing state and seeks recognition, the will when conceived as a will to power ‘in its essential relation with the “other” ’ is a will that ‘makes an object of affirmation’ ‘of its difference [fait de sa difference un object d’affirmation]’.49 In this manner, Nietzsche’s empiricism seeks out and affirms the enjoyment in being different and in knowing oneself to be

47  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  11/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 9–10; italicization in Deleuze’s text. 48  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  10/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 8. 49  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  10/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, pp. 8–9; translation slightly modified.

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different, in standing out as oneself in distinction from and in contradistinction to others.50 From Nietzsche’s notion of the will to power and its related empirically minded symptomatology follows a specific approach to the phenomena examined. These are determined as signs and symptoms of the expression of a specific will, or a relationship of forces, that the diagnostician seeks to describe and characterize. Nietzsche’s symptomatology and diagnostics of the relationship of forces that makes itself felt in and through the examined consequently leads him to ask: What do the instances that come to the fore in the examined symptoms will? What are the people or the beings that talk about and search for truth and cognition, that seek to create something that did not previously exist, really and truly driving at? While it seems immediately reasonable to conceive of willing as an act on the same level as every other act, it is also misleading to do so according to a Nietzschean approach, as Deleuze highlights.51 At a fundamental level, it is more precise to consider the notion of the will as the last and ultimate critical resource of empirical understanding and analysis. While the will understood as a relationship of forces is to be conceived as the formative dynamics out of which all actions and events spring, the will conceived as the will to power is also, at the end of the day, to be perceived as the critical instance according to which all actions and events are to be gauged and assessed. Rather than forming the origins or the carrying into effect of an act, willing in the will to power forms an instance that one

50  Nietzsche highlights how ‘the noble kind of human being [der vornehme Art Mensch] feels itself [sich] to be value-determining [wertbestimmend], does not need approval […] is value-creating [wertheschaffend]. […] In the foreground there is the feeling of fullness [Gefühl der Fülle], of power that wants to overflow [der Macht, die überströmen will], the happiness of high tension [das Glück der höhen Spannung], the consciousness of wealth [das Bewuβtsein eines Reichtums] that would bestow [schenken] and give of itself [abgeben möchte]’ (Nietzsche (1886/1999): Jenseits von Gut und Böse, p.  209/Nietzsche (2014): Beyond Good and Evil, p. 171; italicization in original text). In accordance with this passage, Deleuze underlines how difference is in Nietzsche ‘the object of practical affirmation inseparable from essence and constitutive of existence. Nietzsche’s “yes” is opposed to the dialectical “no”, joy; affirmation to dialectical negation […]. The empirical feeling of difference, in short hierarchy, is the essential motor of the concept, deeper and more effective than all thought about contradiction’ (Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  10/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 9). 51  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, pp. 88–89/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 73.

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resorts to when one seeks to articulate and assess the genesis of what happens and the implications of what comes to be. In this sense, the conception of the will to power and the genealogical approach are also closely associated with one another. Without the conception of the will to power, the genealogical analysis would risk losing its bearings, becoming insensitive and going blind. Without the empirical-­ genealogical examination, the notion of the will to power would become empty. Accordingly, the Nietzschean empirical and non-reductive approach relates the examined phenomena to the will of power to examine, estimate and assess them as symptoms and expressions of a kind of will without which they would not appear. What this kind of will wants to effect are not specific acts or works.52 Neither does it essentially will specific objects, objectives or ends. In a Nietzschean symptomatological analysis, acts, works, objects, objectives, ends or even motives are still examined as ­symptoms of a relationship of forces and the kind of will to power that is enacted in and through them.53 In this manner, what stands out as a result of this kind of analysis is a specific will that asserts itself in its difference; that affirms itself in its own quality and its peculiarity. In contradistinction to the underlying but abstract entity that is constructed in and through the pre hoc assertion of a prevailing metaphysical will to power that is given a priori, what appears in the Nietzschean post hoc empirically minded examination of the will to power is a will to power that affirms itself intensively in its own being and doing. According to Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche, ‘the will to power [la volonté de puissance] does not mean [ne veut pas dire] wanting power [vouloir la puissance]; on the contrary, whatever one desires [quoi qu’on veuille], it means raising what one wishes [élever ce qu’on veut] to its ultimate power [à la dernière puissance], to the nth power or force [à la énéième puissance]. In a word, it means extracting the superior form [dégager la forme supérieure] of everything that is [de tout ce qui est] (the form of intensity).’54 52  Nietzsche (1886/1999): Jenseits von Gut und Böse, pp.  232–233/Nietzsche (2014): Beyond Good and Evil, p. 191). 53  Deleuze (1962): Nietzsche et la philosophie, p.  89/Deleuze (1986): Nietzsche and Philosophy, p. 73. 54  Deleuze (1967/2002): ‘15. Conclusions sur la volonté de puissance et l’éternel retour’, p. 171/Deleuze (2002): ‘Conclusions on the Will to Power and the Eternal Return’, p. 122; italicization in original text; translation slightly modified.

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According to this understanding, the will to power that the examination seeks out and aims to characterize through its various symptomatological traits is thus to be conceived as a will to power that not only stands out as itself in contradistinction to the rest but also accomplishes staying true to itself in the sense that it manages to reaffirm itself as itself to a higher degree or in a form that is superior to the immediately given form. In this manner, the will to power that is worked out in the examination is also characterized by its truthfulness. The will that appears in the investigation and assessment is characterized by the quality that it is not only able to work out itself in its difference but also capable of reasserting itself in such a manner that it manages to stay true to itself when it is facing new situations that form as not necessarily foreseeable tests and challenges to this continuous task.55 In the event and to the extent that the will to power under examination also happens to be a will to knowledge, as it has been the case in this book, it is also a will characterized by its continuing faithfulness to the specific kind of truth that it seeks to establish. The will that is described takes the form of a recurrent return to the previously established forms of truth, but one that seeks to reassert, re-establish and refine them as one is confronted with unexplored fields, new difficulties and challenges, as well as hitherto 55  In A Case for Irony, Lear examines ironic existence as a claim to ‘human excellence’ that is also ‘a form of truthfullnes’ and ‘a form of self-knowledge: a practical acknowledgement of the kind of knowing that is available to creatures like us” (Lear (2011): A Case for Irony, p. 31). According to Lear’s reading of Kierkegaard and Plato, this kind of irony is ‘fundamental to the human condition, but poorly understod’ (Lear 2011): A Case for Irony, p. ix). Ironic existence presupposes that human existence is constantly ahead of itself and pretentious in so far as it makes claims concerning what would form a true, honest and dignified life and thus always already has commited itself to living up to such commitments, even in the face of difficult challenges. When Kierkegaard in his journals writes that ‘to become human does not come that easily’, he conceives of humanity as a difficult task and an achievement in this sense (Lear (2011): A Case for Irony, p. 3). In this light, Lear’s earlier work on the demolition of the Crow nation can be read as an elaboration of how human beings, even in the face of radical cultural devastation, remain self-assertive erotic beings in so far as they continue to ‘reach out to the world in yearning, longing, admiration, and desire for that which (however mistakenly) we take to be valuable beautiful and good’ (Lear (2006):  Radical Hope. Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, p. 120). Lear finds that this form of commitment to pretense and truthfulness is not only a prerogative of adult human beings. It also at work in infants who lack concepts (Lear (2006): Radical Hope, p. 122). In accordance with this logic, ironic existence could equally be seen to characterize other forms of non-­ human existence, even though Lear himself explicitly seems to deny the possibility to extend the scope of the concept in this way (Please cf. Lear (2011): A Case for Irony, p. 13).

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unforeseen opposition and objections. To articulate this trait has been an ongoing concern in the history of the human sciences and its ongoing establishment of new kinds of scientificity worked out in this monograph. When establishing the genealogy of the human sciences in relation to the modern university since the beginning of the nineteenth century, this book has examined the genesis and the workings of an indomitable will to knowledge. Overall, the study has studied and appraised the works of this will to cognition as an expression of the will to power, on the condition, however, that the will to power is understood along the lines of a Nietzschean interpretation of the syntagma rather than an all-too natural and self-evident reading of the term. Rather than searching for occurrences that reveal how the contributors to this will to knowledge and truth simply aim to get recognition and become more powerful than their predecessors in the traditional sense,56 this historical-empirical study has singled out and focused on a different kind of events. While this genealogy of the human sciences has selected and highlighted specific events where the will to knowledge relates to previous developments in order to establish and assert its specific difference, the study has been particularly devoted to articulating the points where these kinds of events and waves of events come together to form new and hitherto unestablished levels of scientificity. In particular, however, the study has focused on and sought to re-enact the points where these significant waves of events intersect and begin to form characteristic levels of scientificity and assertability that are repeatable and not easily ignored, and to such an extent that they seem escapable and thus give rise to characteristic, ineffaceable interpretations and mappings of the human.57 When one examines the history of the will to knowledge from the vantage point of symptomatology and the will to power, a world of fluctuations appear; fluctuations that are also undulations in intensity. The will to power is understood as the principle that forms the guiding line for these undulations and intensities as they cross, intersect with each other and penetrate one another. Considered as a will to power, the will to 56  For a critique of traditional conceptions of power tied to the conception of power as rule, coercion and ‘power over’ as well as an elaboration of a more refined notion power as ‘power to’ (or power through), cf. also Raffnsøe (2013): ‘Beyond Rule; Trust and Power as Capacities’. 57  Concerning an articulation of scientific development in terms of the notion of intersecting waves and effects, cf. also Raffnsøe et al. (2019): ‘The Foucault Effect in Organization Studies’, in particular pp. 157–158.

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knowledge as it articulates itself through crucial events in the history of science is not a will that comes to a heightened expression in domination and general recognition. It is a will that stands forth in its specificity and takes this specificity to its superior, highest possible, most ameliorated, refined, self-evident and self-assertive level.58 Considered as a will to power, the will to knowledge that marks the human sciences in this book is thus also a will that stands out in its characteristic difference that repeats and reasserts itself in its most characteristic and intense way.59

7.7  The Hour of Human Beings? A decisively new setting for the assertion and the reassertion of the various human sciences has been established with the widespread recognition that the existence of human beings and the effects of human existence have acquired a vital importance not only for human beings but for life on Earth in general. This importance is evident in the scientifically well-­ established experience of humanly induced or anthropogenic climate change at a planetary level.60 Yet, the discussion of global warming as the greatest ever threat to human civilization is but one example that the overall ‘climate’ on Earth is changing to such an extent that survival is at risk. The issue of climate change can thus also be understood within the wider context of the Anthropocene. Since being proposed, most notably by the Nobel prize winner in chemistry Paul Crutzen two years into our 58  The form of being or constancy that appears in the ongoing difference and becoming that appears in this study has the form of a returning and reassertion in the face of change and adversity. The general guideline of this returning and reassertion is not to identify and stay the same but rather to authenticate and verify, as well as to become more authentic. Cf. also Deleuze, 1967/2002: ‘15. Conclusions sur la volonté de puissance et l’éternel retour’, p. 173/Deleuze (2002): ‘Conclusions on the Will to Power and the Eternal Return’, p. 125. 59  In a certain respect, the history of the human sciences can also be conceived as an instantiation of what Nietzsche characterizes as ‘the eternal return of the similar [die ewige Widerkehr des Gleichen]’ (cf. also Deleuze (1967/2002): ‘15. Conclusions sur la volonté de puissance et l’éternel retour’, p. 171/Deleuze (2002): ‘Conclusions on the Will to Power and the Eternal Return’, p. 123). 60  For a very comprehensive and most interesting discussion of this decisive transition and its implications for the human sciences, please refer to Chakrabarty’s work, in particular Chakrabarty (2021): The Climate of History in a Planetary Age; Chakrabarty (2023): One Planet, Many Worlds; Chakrabarty (2016): ‘Humanities in the Anthropocene: The Crisis of an Enduring Kantian fable’; Chakrabarty (2019): ‘The Planet: An Emergent Humanist Category’.

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present millennium, the term ‘the Anthropocene’, or ‘the human epoch’, was initially ‘coined to crystallise the growing realization that human activities—or, more often, the unintended consequences of human activities—had fundamentally changed the Earth System. Hence, the patterns of behaviour of the oceans, atmosphere, land (i.e. the geosphere’s terrestrial surface), cryosphere, biosphere and climate are no longer those that over 11 millennia characterized the great bulk of the epoch that we still formally live in, the Holocene’.61 Since its introduction, however, the concept ‘the Anthropocene’ has grown decisively in scope over the last two decades to reach across scientific and public communities.62 The Anthropocene has become an overarching framework for understanding the significance of climate change, population growth, environmental strains and other global grand challenges. The concept forms the common denominator for a wide array of realizations that an all-decisive threshold in the history of the Earth and humankind is being crossed: Human activities are gaining overarching importance and beginning to play a dominant role in key processes of the Earth system. This alters the material conditions of subsistence for human beings so radically that the ground on which humankind has stood is quaking. The survival, role and existence of human beings in the world is at stake.63 The turn towards human beings as a decisive factor on Earth in turn sets a new agenda not only for humans but also for the sciences in general and for the human sciences in particular. More specifically, this setting implies that the traditional field of investigation for the human sciences has become crucially important. The human sciences investigate a field that has become a major factor for the world at large. If one wishes to understand and respond to the Anthropocene and current global environmental crisis adequately, it has become imperative to include within the scope of knowledge a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of how human beings bring about changes in climate, nature and the economy. Equally, it is necessary to comprehend how

61  Zalasiewicz; Waters; Williams; Summerhayes; Head; Leinfelder (2019): ‘A General Introduction to the Anthropocene’, p. 2. 62  Cf. Raffnsøe and Staunæs (eds.) (2024): Planetary Conversations on the Anthropocene, forthcoming. 63  Raffnsøe (2016): Philosophy of the Anthropocene. The Human Turn, in particular pp. 2–7.

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human beings respond to and try to cope with the challenges that these changes represent. Within this setting, the human sciences can no longer be conceived as a cognitive activity that forms an edifying but superfluous time-out that lies beside or beyond the ‘real world’. The human sciences have already left the ivory tower in so far as the knowledge they produce in this context has come to appear as fundamentally and inherently valuable and relevant to begin with. The human sciences are no longer classified as players on the sidelines. They are in the process of becoming players in the midfield.64 Still, knowledge concerning human existence is no longer pursued here as an end in itself (or as an absolute value) but as an irreducible insight apart (and a specific brand of know-how or expertise) that has to make a difference and prove its value when applied to something else. The human sciences are expected to measure up to this role. Whereas they were initially perceived as inherently relevant and considered intrinsically valuable, they are now perceived as fundamentally valuable and relevant to something else. Consequently, the human sciences have come under increasing pressure to legitimize their existence as they demonstrate that they are able to live up to these requirements of value to the wider world in a new sense. Knowledge about mankind is not perceived and pursued as an end in and of itself. Nor does it hold a solely instrumental value as a mere means to some other end. Instead, it is perceived as a kind of knowledge that sheds light on an irreducible aspect of the world—an aspect that is already crucially important and that only seems to be gaining in prominence. As evidenced, for instance, in the current climate debate and in contemporary discussions of management and value creation, the human sciences at first glance may seem to study a residual problem raised by the other sciences. At the same time, however, the human sciences study what has widely begun to constitute an implicit but essential condition of possibility for fully understanding other fields. In so far as human beings have become a factor to be reckoned with on a global scale, any study of climate changes or global heating that ignores the human factor lacks an essential prerequisite for achieving an adequate understanding of its field. Thus, even if it has become increasingly difficult to draw an absolute distinction between human beings and their surroundings, the question of the human re-emerges, albeit in a new form: not as an area apart but as an  Raffnsøe (2010): ‘The Obligation of Self-management: The Social Bonds of Freedom’.

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irreducible aspect that is relevant in various contexts. And even if examining and discussing the human factor as an isolated area apart has become inadequate, the question of the human factor reappears as an irreducible aspect or problem in a number of other contexts. As has been demonstrated and discussed earlier, branches of sciences that have become located in other faculties or fields, such as the health and medical sciences or the natural and bio-scientific disciplines, suggest their own mapping of the human, while at the same time see other approaches from the humanities and the human sciences as possible contributors. This creates a mutually challenging situation. Accordingly, the divides previously thought of as absolute, external boundaries to scientific activity are being challenged. The boundaries are not eradicated, but their status and character are altered. Instead of being frameworks or chasms that constitute an insurmountable distance, they begin to appear as limitations: as borders or boundaries to be respected and broken, or at least crossed, and as zones where encounters occur and may give rise to and elucidate productive differences as thresholds to be overstepped. The change is being felt within as well as between the individual sciences and disciplines. It can be seen in the rise of urgent themes, areas of attention and initiatives that are perceived as appropriate or necessary to address, in spite of—or perhaps precisely because of—their lack of respect for the boundaries between disciplines and sciences, their similar disrespect for the boundaries between disciplines and sciences, and their similar disrespect for established limits for the human and between human beings and other beings. This applies not only to the mentioned investigation of the Anthropocene but also to a number of related contemporary grand challenges. In this setting, human sciences prove their value by entering into an interdisciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration with other branches of knowledge that contribute to the same field of investigation. Likewise, the sciences in general, and, for example, parts of business economy in particular, are beginning to include disciplines from the humanities and the liberal arts in their examination of what would traditionally be conceived as alien topics. Confronted with such challenges form the surrounding world at large, and also from other important scientific areas, some representatives of the human sciences seek to justify the significance of the humanities by referring to them as sciences that constitute an independent area of knowledge

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and an especially privileged access to a special field of study, namely ‘the particularly human’ or ‘human nature’. Nussbaum pleads this case by admonishing contemporary education and research in the human sciences to return to, cultivate and revive a ‘noble ideal’ which has not merely set the general direction for ‘liberal education’ in recent years (though this does not necessarily mean it has ever been ‘fully realized in our colleges and universities’) but whose roots stretch much further back, even to Antiquity. This is ‘the idea of “liberal education”’ as ‘a higher education that is a cultivation of the whole human being’.65 Such a notion of education and research is ‘ “liberal” in that it liberates the mind from the bondage of habit and custom, producing people who can function with sensitivity and alertness as citizens of the whole world’; and since Senecas’ day, ranging across Hume, Smith and Kant in the continental Enlightenment tradition, this notion has had a ‘formative influence’ stretching all the way up to ‘the Founding Fathers in the American tradition’.66 This sort of noble ‘cultivation of the whole human being for the functions of citizenship and life generally’67 is at the same time defined very markedly as a space or a sphere where, in contrast to ‘a surrounding community focused on profit and success’,68 one focuses on higher values that at first encounter are ‘not for profit’ but which at a second encounter may prove very profitable, in that they prepare the educated to lead meaningful lives and perform meaningful work in the broadest sense. Such reminders from scholars in the human sciences concerning the traditional, special and outstanding character of the humanities are thus linked to admonitions about the necessity of returning to and retopicalizing the special nature of human beings today; and they are directed both towards scholars and researchers in the field of human sciences and towards other players in the field of science. In so far as such statements are made, they testify to the fact that today the humanities and the human sciences find themselves challenged both externally and internally. The appearance of human beings and the human factor as an element of overarching importance challenges the 65  Nussbaum (2003): Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, p. 9. 66  Nussbaum (2003): Cultivating Humanity, pp. 8–9. 67  Nussbaum (2003): Cultivating Humanity, p. 9. 68  Nussbaum (2010): Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, p. xiv.

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preconditions that the human sciences could take for granted when the humanities, with the founding of the university about 200 years ago, came into being in a shape that is still recognizable today. Within this context, the human and the particularly human could seem to form a limited but privileged and outstanding field. Since the founding of the university and the humanities in a form where they rested upon and expressed an anthropocentric worldview, this centripetal grounding has, however, been challenged and overlaid by an inversely directed centrifugal movement. For a number of the proponents and defenders of the traditional values of the humanities, it seems evident that the latter, in and through a long period of decline, have been seriously infected by ill health. As a result of this development, the humanities have presently arrived at an accentuated crisis in the common medical sense of the world, that is, where it designates the point in the course of the development of a diagnosed disease where a decisive change for better or worse must occur. Either the humanities must finally manage to regain their former original health and recover from the disease that is haunting them; or they seem doomed to wither away and depart from this life. In this manner, the traditional history of the humanities may seem haunted by the chimera of a perfect, untainted health. By contrast, the present genealogy and the symptomatology of the human sciences subscribe to and articulate a different relationship between sickness and health where they are not perceived as contrary, oppositional and mutually exclusive states or even as contrary conditions that must gradually replace one another. What appears is rather an ongoing process of cognition that is afflicted with illness from the very beginning, a beginning infection, and that throughout remains marked by an enduring contention to recuperate in and through an ongoing, unfinished process of convalescence. What comes to the forefront is thus a will to knowledge as a will to power that takes the form of a continued and reiterated productive crisis precisely because it is based on and articulates a continuous entanglement with illness and a process of convalescence that remains unfinished and still ongoing. It is thus also a will to knowledge that is characterized by a will to power that Nietzsche would qualify as enjoying ‘the great health’. Nietzsche coined the notion of great health exactly to designate the mode of convalescence in which one was sure, sound and sane enough to live with and live through disease, affliction and bad health rather than wishing them away. The great health indicates a surplus that remains ever delicate

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or precarious in so far as it is a state of abundance that distinguishes itself by having a surplus of restorative powers. Since it designates a mode of existence that demonstrates an insistent will to health rather than indicating a mode of existence marked by a well-established and stable health, the great health remains a tentative and experimental form of life. The great health designates the capacity to find, reassert and explore new modes of living, of cognition and recognition, on the border of affliction.69 From the vantage point of the great health, it is evident that ‘the energy of health [die Energie der Gesundheit]’ in the emphatic sense will ‘divulge itself’ in the afflicted existence in and through the brusque opposition or power of ‘resistance [Widerstand] to the elements that make one fall ill [die krankemachenden Elemente]’.70 Moreover, what can, according to Nietzsche’s notion of health, be ‘inherited [sich vererbt] in life’, or be bequeathed from one existence to the other, was not so much the actual illness but rather inclinations or dispositions towards life, health and illness. It is the great health and the ‘morbidity [Krankhaftigkeit]’, the force or ‘lack of force [Unkraft]’ against ‘the danger of detrimental immigrations [Gefahr schädlicher Einwanderungen]’ and afflictions.71 What can be passed on is either ‘the will to power [Wille zur Macht], to feel proud [Stolzgefühl], to have [Haben] or to want more [Mehr-haben-wollen]’ or the ‘weakening [Schwächung] as a task [Aufgabe]: the weakening of […] the will to power’.72 All in all, the development articulated in this book indicates that it is doomed to remain an inadequate and feeble gesture if one turns towards what is claimed to be a basic legacy of the humanities to revitalize them and to restore them to their former, unhampered health in the present setting. However, this does not imply that the future of the human sciences is destined to be bleak. The closer and more comprehensive genealogical examination of the past presented in this book has demonstrated 69  Cf. Raffnsøe and Pethick (2024): History, Diagnostics and Metaphysics in Nietzsche’s ‘On the Genealogy of Morality’, forthcoming. For further elaboration and discussion of the notion of the great health, please confer Raffnsøe (2023): ‘To Live by Trial and Test, Offering Oneself up to Adventure’. 70  Nietzsche (1888/1999): [14=WII5. Frühjahr 1888], Band 13, p. 389; italicization in Nietzsche’s original text. 71  Nietzsche (1888/1999): [14=WII5. Frühjahr 1888], Band 13, p. 250; italicization in Nietzsche’s original text. 72  Nietzsche (1888/1999): [14=WII5. Frühjahr 1888], Band 13, pp. 250–51; italicization and accentuation in Nietzsche’s original text.

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that the record of the human sciences broadly understood is a history of cognition and of a learning process that takes the form of an ongoing productive and self-­affirmative crisis and a history of a will to knowledge that distinguishes itself by its exceptional, proven ability to maintain its great health. On closer scrutiny, thus, the legacy that the human sciences leave behind may still inspire real confidence and provide a rich source of inspiration.

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Swedberg, Richard (2002): Principles of Economic Sociology. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Taylor, Frederick W. (1911/2007): The Principles of Scientific Management. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Filiquarian Publishing. Taylor, Frederick W. (1911): Shop Management. New  York; London: Harper and Bros. Taylor, Charles (1985): Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Troland Leonard T. (1928/1967): The Fundamentals of Human Motivation. Facsimile of the 1928 Edition. New York: Harper. Vebeln, Thorstein (1899): ‘The Preconceptions of Economic Science’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 13(4): 396–426. Veyne, Paul (1990): René Char en ses poèmes. Paris: Gallimard. Virchow, Rudolf (1871): Die Cellularpathologie in ihrer Begründung auf physiologische und pathologische Gewebelehre. Berlin: Hirschwald. Walker, Donald A. (2007): ‘Early General Equilibrium Economics: Walras, Pareto, and Cassel’. In Samuels, Warren J.; Biddle, Jeff E.; Davis, John B. (2007): A Companion to the History of Economic Thought. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 278–293. Wallerstein, Immanuel M. (1999): The End of the World as We Know it: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wallerstein, Immanuel, et  al. (1996): Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Walras, Léo (1874/1926): Éléments d’économie politique ou théorie de la richesse sociale. Édition définitive revue et augmentée par l’auteur. Paris; Lausanne: R. Pichon & R. Durand-Auzias, éditeurs/F, Rouge, libraire-éditeur. Walras, Leon (2014): Elements of Theoretical Economics. Or the Theory of Social Wealth. Translation of third edition, translated and edited by Donald A Walker and Jan van Daal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whewell, William (2001): The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 1. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. Whyte, William F. (1955): Money and Motivation: An Analysis of Incentives in Industry. New York: Harper. Wiebe, Robert H. (1967): The Search for Order 1877–1920. London; Melbourne: Macmillan. Williams, Raymond (1958): Culture and Society, 1780–1950. New York: Columbia University Press. Wilson, Holly L. (2006): Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology: Its Origin, Meaning, and Critical Significance. Albany: State University of New York Press. Wundt, Wilhelm M. (1883): Methodenlehre. Stuttgart: Enke. Wundt, Wilhelm M. (1885): Essays. Leipzig: Engelmann.

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Index of Names and Places1

A Académie française, 123n169 Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund, 126n181 Amos Tuck School of Administration, 104 Arendt, Hannah, 18n43, 24, 92n92, 195n9 Aristotle, 13, 14, 75n47, 132

Bod, Rens, 21–23, 21n52, 22n53 Boissier de Sauvages de Lacroix, François Nicolas, 64n19 Bonald, Louis-GabrielAmbroise, 124 Braidotti, Rosi, 161n55, 161n58 Broussais, François, 64n22 Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, 123, 124

B Balzac, Honoré de, 123, 124 Becker, Gary Stanley, 88n84, 89n85 Berlin, city of, 50n9, 64n21, 65, 66 Berlin, university of, 50, 65 Bernard, Claude, 64n22 Bernays, Edward L., 117 Biagioli, Mario, 166n1 Bloor, David, 169 Blumenberg, Hans, 182n62

C Callon, Michel, 169n7 Canguilhem, Georges, 43n14, 63n13, 63n14, 195n10 Ceasar, Julius, 170 Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 216n60 Chandler, Alfred, 102n112, 102n113 Char, René, 24 Chicago, University of, 99 Clark William, 18n44

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Collini, Stefan, 63n11, 63n12, 69n33, 126n182, 127n184, 128n186 Columbia, University of, 99, 105 Comte, Auguste, 67, 68, 68n31 Cullen, William, 64n19 D Dartmouth College, 104 Darwin, Charles, 17, 64, 203 Daston, Lorraine, 21n52 Deleuze, Gilles, 5–7, 15n35, 44, 44n15, 196n12, 197, 197n14, 199n18, 200, 200n20, 201, 201n22, 209–213, 209n43, 212n50 Derrida, Jacques, 7n11, 8n18, 194n7 Descartes, René, 14, 14n33 Descola, Philippe, 161n46, 161n47, 161n56, 162n59 Diderot, Denis, 63n12 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 126, 126n179 Drucker, Peter Frederick, 151n13 Dummett, Michael, 26n64 Durkheim, Émile, 68 E Etzkowitz, Henry, 154n23, 154n24, 155n25 F Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 50 Fleck, Ludwig, 74n45 Foucault, Michel, 10n21, 13, 14, 16n36, 44, 44n15, 131n194, 200n20 Frege, Gottlob, 26n64 French Encyclopedia, 63

G Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 126n179 Gibbons, Michael, 151n12, 159n44 Goethe, Johan Wolfgang von, 41, 44 Gossen, Herman Heinrich, 75, 76, 76n51, 76n53 Grossberg, Lawrence, 156n35 Guattari, Felix, 161n50 H Hall, Stuart, 156, 157 Haraway, Donna, 161n52, 162n60, 162n61 Harvard business school, 105, 106, 107n126, 112 Harvard, University of, 104 Hebdige, Dick, 157 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 126, 133n206, 210, 211 Heidegger, Martin, 14n34, 201–208, 202n24, 202n25, 203n26, 203n27, 204n29, 204n30, 205n32, 206n33 Hoggart, Richard, 155 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 50, 50n9, 54, 148–150 Hume, David, 37, 126, 131, 220 J Janet, Pierre, 120n164 Jevons, William Stanley, 76, 76n53, 78–81, 79n64, 80n68, 80n69, 84 Johns Hopkins, University of, 99 K Kant, Immanuel, 37, 50–52, 54n19, 131–133, 131n194, 173, 175, 182n62, 205n32, 220

  INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES 

Khurana, Rakesh, 99n105, 103n114, 108n129, 113n135 Koselleck, Reinhart, 40n7, 40n8 Kuhn, Thomas S., 22, 23, 23n56, 75n48 L Latour, Bruno, xxxii, 17, 18, 167–170, 172–177, 172n23, 179–181, 179n49 Lear, Jonathan, 214n55 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 8n14 Leydesdorff, Loet, 154n23, 155n25 Luhmann, Niklas, 158n42 Lykke, Nina, 159n45, 161n55 Lyotard, Jean-François, 150n9, 151n13 M Malthus, Thomas, 73 Marshall, Alfred, 74n43, 76 Maslow, Abraham H., 113, 119, 120 Mayo, Elton, 113, 116, 117 McGregor, Douglas, 113, 118, 119n161 Menger, Carl, 76 Mill, John Stuart, 126 Müller, Johannes, 64n21 N Nietzsche, Friedrich, 7n8, 12, 29, 43, 192, 192n1, 199–213, 199n19, 200n20, 202n24, 202n25, 204n29, 205n32, 208n41, 209n43, 212n50, 216n59, 221, 222 Nowotny, Helga, 159n44 Nussbaum, Martha, 21, 36, 37, 134, 182, 220

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P Paine, Thomas, 37 Pasteur, Louis, 17, 171, 177, 178n44 Pethick, Stuart, 199n19 Plato, 5n5, 14, 14n34, 214n55 Plumb, John H., 69n33 Posner, Richard A., 88n84 R Raffnsøe, Sverre, 10n21, 11n25, 14n33, 16n37, 27n65, 40n8, 43n14, 65n23, 89n86, 122n168, 150n9, 180n56, 215n57 Ricardo, David, 73 Riedel, Manfred, 125n176 Robbins, Lionel, 85–87 Rose, Nikolas S., 63n13, 161n54 Ryle, Gilbert, 9n20 S Sade, Marquis de, 197 Sahlins, Marshall, 161n57 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 50, 50n9 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 50, 50n9, 54 Schultz, Theodore, 88n84 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 37 Serres, Michel, 154, 177 Shakespeare, William, 170 Shapin, Steven, 169n7 Smith, Adam, 37, 73, 77–79, 77n58, 77n59, 90, 90n87, 91, 92n93, 92n94, 93, 93–94n97, 95, 96, 102, 102n113, 220 Snow, Charles P., 126n182, 127n183, 127n184, 128n186, 156n32 Steffens, Heinrich, 50, 50n9

252 

INDEX OF NAMES AND PLACES

T Taylor, Frederick W., 113–115, 115n141 Tuck, Edward, 104 Tucker, William Jewett, 104 V Virchow, Rudolf, 64n22 W Wallerstein, Immanuel, 61n1, 61n4, 61n5, 67n30, 69n34, 69n36,

70n39, 133n205, 148n1, 148n2, 152n15, 153n16, 153n17 Walras, Léon, 76, 76n54, 78, 79n64, 81–83, 82n72, 83n74 Wharton School, 103 Whewell, William, 62n9 Williams, Mark, 217n61 Williams, Raymond, 156n34 Wundt, Wilhelm, 120n63 Z Zalasiewicz, Jan, 217n61

Index of Subjects and Concepts1

A Aesthetics, 27n65, 54n19, 129n189, 151n10, 159 Aetiology, 194, 197 Agency, performative, 10–12, 11n25 Amodern, 172, 172n23 Ancillae theologicae, 27, 49 The Anthropocene, 180n56, 216, 217, 219 Anthropocentrism, 28n66, 28n68, 55, 130, 136, 205n32 Anthropology, 26, 54n19, 67, 68n31, 131n194, 132, 133, 133n206, 135, 153, 159 Antiquity, 13, 21, 22n53, 37, 220 Area studies, xxxii, 153 Artes liberales, 27, 49, 51, 69, 135 Atmosphere, 87, 217

1

B Bauakademie, 65 Big science, 154 Biology, 63–65, 83, 151 Biosphere, 217 Business economics and administration, science of, 96, 97n102, 153 C Capital, human, 88n84 Centrifugal tendency, 35, 40, 60–61, 111, 128, 221 Centripetal tendency, 35, 40, 67, 96, 111, 221 Cognition, vi, xxxi, 7, 7n8, 12–15, 14n33, 15n35, 17, 22, 54,

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54n19, 127, 162, 166, 174–176, 179, 182n62, 203, 204, 212, 215, 221–223 Copernican Revolution, 75n48 Crisis, v–viii, xxxiii, 16–18, 19n46, 36–44, 48–52, 136, 156, 168, 184–187, 193, 217, 221, 223 Critique, 40n8, 50, 52, 54n19, 131, 133n203, 175n29, 177n39, 215n56 Cryosphere, 217 Cultivation, xxx, 27n65, 28n66, 28n68, 37, 54, 60, 94n97, 98, 99n105, 103n116, 113, 124, 156, 173, 182–184, 220 Cultural studies, xxxii, 155–158 Cultures, two, 156 Cyborg theory, 162 D Diagnosis, viii, 193–196, 195n10 Dichotomy, 161, 167, 171, 172, 174–177 Disciplines, viii, xxx–xxxii, 20, 22–24, 23n56, 26–28, 53, 61, 62, 64, 64n21, 66–74, 76n51, 78, 86, 88, 96, 97n102, 98, 103, 109–112, 109n130, 123, 130, 133, 136, 148, 149, 152–160, 162, 166, 167, 169, 177, 179, 184, 185, 219 Dispositional analysis, 10n21 Dispositions, vi, 9, 9n20, 10, 88, 89, 119, 196, 199, 222 E Earth system, 217 École des Mines, 66 Economics, 36, 65, 67, 69, 71–98, 74n43, 75n48, 76n51, 79n64,

88n84, 89n85, 97n102, 99n105, 102, 102n113, 103, 103n116, 105–109, 107n124, 108n127, 109n130, 109n131, 118, 120, 125, 129, 149, 152, 153 neoclassical, 71, 72, 78, 78n60, 85, 96 Economy, political, 71, 73–75, 74n43, 80, 82n72, 90–92, 90n87, 94–96, 103, 105, 153 Enlightenment, 63, 75, 220 Epistemology, 131 Event, vi, 3–6, 3n1, 8, 11, 15, 16, 19, 40, 42, 114, 177, 193, 198, 200, 202n24, 208, 212, 214–216 F Faculty of arts, viii, xxx, xxxi, 26, 74 Faculty of philosophy, 51–52, 60–62, 67, 69, 96, 129, 130, 184 Founding fathers, 37, 60, 119, 136 G Geisteswissenschaft, xxxi, 25, 124–127, 136 Gewerbeschulen, 65, 66 Grand global challenges, 217 H Health, vii, 43, 43n14, 71, 90, 159, 194, 195, 195n10, 219, 221, 222 great, 43, 221–223 sciences, xxxi, 25n63, 63–65, 83, 132, 174 Heating, global, 218 Heritage, vii, xxx, 3, 11, 16, 21, 23–25, 25n62, 28n66, 29, 39–40, 130 Hiroshima, 154

  INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND CONCEPTS 

Hope, 4, 7n8, 16, 44, 54n19, 113n135, 120, 131n194, 135, 193 Humanity, vi–viii, xxx–xxxiii, 17, 20–29, 21n52, 28n68, 36–44, 48–56, 60, 70, 98, 112, 113, 115, 123, 125–130, 134–137, 155–157, 162, 167, 168, 174, 176–182, 186, 193, 214n55, 219–222 Hybridization, 161 I Illness, 64, 118, 196n12, 197n14, 221, 222 Irony, 94n97, 214n55 Ivory tower, xxxi, 149–150, 155, 184, 218 K Knowledge society, 152

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Medicine, 27, 51, 62n6, 64, 71, 97, 99, 101, 105, 107, 107n126, 132, 196n12, 197 Metaphysics, 12, 13, 54n19, 131, 206, 208, 209 Microbes, 171, 177 Middle Ages, 13, 48, 71, 149, 151 Modern constitution, xxx, 28, 172, 176, 176n34, 177, 179–181, 185 Morals, 15n35, 54n19, 68n31, 89n85, 98, 111, 113, 124–127, 131, 134, 182n62 Motivation theory, 113, 118, 119, 122 N Natural history, 17, 23, 62–65, 123–124 Natural philosophy, 62–63 Normation, 4–7, 12–18, 25n62 Novel, 41, 42, 70, 123, 124 Nuclear bomb, 154

L Law, 6, 27, 50n8, 51, 61, 68, 70, 71, 76, 80n68, 84, 89n85, 92, 97, 99, 100n106, 101, 105–107, 114, 153, 177, 204n30, 205n32 Liberal education, 37, 220 Literature, 22, 49, 70, 120, 123, 124, 127, 155, 174, 197 Lucrative professions, 51

P Postmodern, 172, 172n22, 172n23 Prescription, 4–7, 9, 10, 25n62 Professionalism, 62, 101, 110 Professionalization, 61, 74, 97, 99–101, 107, 118 Profession/professions higher, 99, 101, 107 learned, 97, 99–101, 105, 107, 112 Prognosis, 195

M Manhattan Project, 154 Matters of concern, 161, 168, 178 Matters of fact, 178

R Religion, 54n19, 89n85, 100, 154 Renaissance, 13, 49, 137 Research, mission oriented, 154

256 

INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND CONCEPTS

S Science/sciences health, xxxi, 25n63, 63–65, 83, 132, 174, 219 natural, xxxi, 62, 63, 69, 70, 83, 125, 126n179, 156, 170 social, xxxi, 26, 67–96, 103, 103n116, 109, 117, 118, 124–128, 152, 156, 169, 174, 183 technical, 26, 65–67, 70, 83, 115 Social studies of science, 170 Specialisation, 61, 110, 149, 150, 158 Studia divinitatis, 52n14 Studia humanitatis, 25, 27, 49–51, 52n14, 127, 135 Subculture, 157 Subject, v, xxx, 14n33, 16n36, 40, 51, 55–56, 61, 65, 66, 73, 80, 84, 86, 92, 97n102, 105, 121, 129, 136, 148, 152, 159–161, 173, 175, 177, 197 Symptomatology, 196–199, 201, 202n24, 212, 215, 221

T Taylorism, 114 Technical sciences, 26, 65–67, 70 Technische Hochschulen, 67 Theology, 26, 27, 49, 50n8, 51, 52n14, 61, 71, 101 Therapeutics, 196n12, 197 Time and motion studies, 114 Triple-helix relations, 154–155 Truth, 4n4, 14, 14n34, 15, 15n35, 16n36, 16n37, 150–152, 170–172, 193, 203, 212, 214, 215 U Universitas litterarum, 51, 60 V Virtual, 7–9 Virtuality, vi, 10, 161 W Will, 15, 24, 25, 96, 199–216 Will to knowledge, 199, 201, 202, 214–216, 221, 223 Will to power, 199, 201–216, 221, 222

Index of Titles1

A The Ancient Economy, 74n43, 92n92 Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Hinsicht, 131–132 Antrag auf Errichtung der Universität Berlin, 131n192 C A Case for Irony, 24n59, 214n55 The Copernican Revolution. Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought, 23n56 Cours de philosophie positive, 70n38 Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, 21n49, 37n3, 37n4, 134n208, 220n65–67

1

D De la grammatologie, 8n18, 194n7 Der königsberger und der litauische Schulplan, 54n18 Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie, 126n181 Der Streit der Fakultäten, 50n9, 51 Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft, xiv, 12n28, 13n29, 16n38 Différence et répétition, 6n6, 6n7, 15n35 E Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, 126n179 Éléments d’économie politique ou théorie de la richesse sociale, 76, 81 Elements of Theoretical Economics. Or the Theory of Social Wealth, 76n54

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Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, 125n174 Entlassungsgesuch, 50n10, 150n7 An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, 86n78, 86n79, 87n80, 87n82 Éthique démontrée suivant l’ordre géometrique et divisée en cinq parties, 198n15, 208n41 F From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession, 99n105 G Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn, 50n9 H The Human Condition, 92n92, 195n9 The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization, 116n149 The Human Side of Enterprise, 118–119 I An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 77n58, 77n59, 90, 92n93, 93n95 Investment in Human Capital, 88n84

J Jenseits von Gut und Böse, 212n50 K Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 131n191 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 182n62 Kritik der Urteilskraft, 54n16 L La condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir, 150n9 Les mots et les choses, 131n194 Logique du sens, 197n14 M Metaphysics, 13n30 Morgenröthe, 17n39 N Naissance de la clinique, 64n20 Nicomachean Ethics, 132n196 Nietzsche et la philosophie, 199n18, 209n43, 210, 212n50 Nosologie méthodique, 64n19 Nous n’avons jamais été modernes: Essai d’anthropologie symétrique, 173, 173n24 O On Interpretation, 13 On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 78n63

  INDEX OF TITLES 

P Parables for the Virtual, 8n13, 8n15, 8n17 Pasteur: Guerre et paix des microbes, 170 Principles of Scientific Management, 115n141 R Radical Hope. Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, 214n55 Republic, 14n34 S Sein und Zeit, 7n12 Shop Management, 114n139 Statesman, 5n5 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 22, 23, 23n56 Studium generale: Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums, 50n9 Système de politique positive ou Traité de sociologie, 68n31 A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, 125n178

259

T The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 93, 93–94n97 The Theory of Political Economy, 76, 76n53, 79, 80n69 A Treatise of Human Nature, 131 The Two Cultures, 126n182, 127n183, 127n184, 128n186, 156n32 U Unzeitgemäβe Betrachtungen, 7n8 Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, 4n4 V Vernunftprinzipien der Natur und der Gnade: Monadologie, 8n14 Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, 126n180 Vorlesungen über die Idee der Universitäten, 50n9 W Wahrheit und Methode, 126n179 Wealth of Nations, 78, 91 Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, 41, 43, 44 Z Zur Genealogie der Moral, 192n1