Humboldt Revisited: The Impact of the German University on American Higher Education 9781800735378

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Humboldt Revisited

Higher Education in Critical Perspective: Practices and Policies Series editors: Susan Wright, Aarhus University Penny Welch, University of Wolverhampton Students and academics, along with university managements, national governments, and international organizations are contesting the purpose and practice of “higher education” around the globe. For many the future is purported to lie in a “global knowledge economy” in which universities and other higher education institutions are suppliers of the two crucial raw materials: knowledge and graduates. This series critically reflects on this new constellation and on how academics and students find ways to explore new forms of learning and teaching, participate creatively in the organization of their own institutions, and engage with policy arguments about the national and international purpose of universities. Volume 7 Humboldt Revisited: The Impact of the German University on American Higher Education Gry Cathrin Brandser Volume 6 Neoliberalizing Diversity in Liberal Arts College Life Bonnie Urciuoli Volume 5 Opening Up the University: Teaching and Learning with Refugees Edited by Céline Cantat, Ian M. Cook, and Prem Kumar Rajaram Volume 4 The Experience of Neoliberal Education Edited by Bonnie Urciuoli

Volume 3 Death of the Public University? Uncertain Futures for Higher Education in the Knowledge Economy Edited by Susan Wright and Cris Shore Volume 2 Creating a New Public University and Reviving Democracy: Action Research in Higher Education Morten Levin and Davydd J. Greenwood Volume 1 Learning under Neoliberalism: Ethnographies of Governance in Higher Education Edited by Susan Brin Hyatt, Boone W. Shear, and Susan Wright

Humboldt Revisited The Impact of the German University on American Higher Education 

Gry Cathrin Brandser

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2022 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2022 Gry Cathrin Brandser All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Brandser, Gry Cathrin, author. Title: Humboldt Revisited: The Impact of the German University on American Higher Education / Gry Cathrin Brandser. Other titles: Impact of the German University on American Higher Education Description: New York: Berghahn Books, 2022. | Series: Higher Education in Critical Perspective: Practices and Policies; 7 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022016057 (print) | LCCN 2022016058 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800735361 (Hardback) | ISBN 9781800735378 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 1767-1835—Influence. | Education, Higher—Germany—History—19th century. | Education, Higher— Germany—Aims and objectives—History—19th century. | Education, Higher—United States—History—19th century. | Education, Higher— United States—History—20th century. | Education, Higher—Europe— Philosophy. | Education, Higher—United States—Philosophy. Classification: LCC LB2322.2 .B73 2022 (print) | LCC LB2322.2 (ebook) | DDC 378.001—dc23/eng/20220521 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016057 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016058 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-80073-536-1 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-537-8 ebook https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800735361

Contents 

List of Tables

vi

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction

1

Chapter 1 Mythos Humboldt

20

Chapter 2 The American Reception of Humboldt

89

Chapter 3 Liberal Education beyond Bildung

156

Chapter 4 The University in the Knowledge Society

201

Chapter 5 A Genealogy of the “Service University”

231

Chapter 6 The Gothic Tales of Hannah Arendt

303

Conclusion

338

References

352

Index

375

Tables 

1.1.

Educational ideals typified as Humboldtian

4.1.

Knowledge production in two modes

207

4.2.

Schematization of the various components leading to the assumption that Mode 1’s production process relies on a traditional bureaucratic form

215

The Mode 2 university

224

4.3.

23

Acknowledgments 

The book has been in the process of becoming for a long time. It has brought me immense joy, but also a great deal of frustration. I am glad the process has come to a close and proud I had the stamina to finish it. Yet, I must confess to the wisdom of a phrase my father often used: Partir, c’est mourir en peu. Many people have contributed to this book’s completion, all of whom deserve deep-felt thanks. First and foremost, I would like to thank Ivar Bleiklie and Thorvald Sirnes at the University of Bergen, both of whom have provided the support and feedback necessary for the project’s development and finalization. A special thanks to Thorvald: his insights, generosity, and inspiration have been invaluable. Other people have been important along the way. I am grateful for the opportunity to be a visiting scholar at Stanford University. I want to thank Woody Powell and the staff at the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research for making the year one of my best ever. Joanne Martin at Stanford also deserves credit for her “push” on intellectual endeavors that may involve “swimming against the tide.” I also would like to thank E.ON Ruhrgas Scholarship Foundation for a grant allowing me to stay at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. I am grateful for the invitation to be Gastforscherin at the Nordeuropa-Institut. Special thanks to Helge Høibraaten and Tomas Milosch in that regard. I would like to thank former colleagues and friends at the University of Bergen for their support, feedback, and encouragement though the whole process. Special thanks to Tor Halvorsen, Atle Nyhagen, Gigliola Mathisen Nyhagen, Svein Michelsen, Roar Høstaker, Ellen Mortensen, Arild Utaker, Arlyne Moi, Dag Lotsberg, Jill Loga, and Kjersti Halvorsen. A sincere thanks also to my many new colleagues at Nord University, especially my fellow members of the research group on leadership and innovation. Over the years, I have met many people whose intellect, compassion, and courage have inspired my own endeavors. I will use this opportunity to express my gratitude to some: Barbara Czarniawska at Gothenburg Research Institute, Kjersti Bale at the University in Oslo, Andrea Wilson Nightingale at Stanford University, and Bente Rosenbeck at Copenhagen University.

viii  ♦ Acknowledgments

My sincerest thanks go to my family and friends. Special thanks to my mother Maurid Hagen Brandser and my sister Kristel Helene Brandser for their encouragement and unyielding support through the research process. Thanks also to Aksel and Yngvild Brandser Alvsåker and the kids: Klara and Norunn, to Oda Brandser, Fabian Haugan, and baby Edvard, and to Stehn Aztlan Mortensen. I also would like to thank Aud Sivertsen, Ingmari Øiesvold, Kirsten Bang, Jorunn Nilsen, Tor Svaleng, and Hege Gyldenhav. A very special thanks to my dear Julia Andersen. The manuscript was researched thanks to a fellowship from the University of Bergen. The department of Administration and Organization theory has provided administrative assistance and financial support. Completion of the book was made possible by a grant from Nord University, Faculty for Social Sciences. I am very grateful to Berghahn Books for seeing me through the publishing process. Thanks to the Berghahn Books series editors and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions. At Berghahn Books, I would like to thank Amanda Horn and Sulaiman Ahmad for their support, their quick answers, and especially their patience. Many thanks for the proofreading assistance from Tim Challman at Semantix, and for the meticulous copyediting of Elizabeth Martinez and Illana Brown at Berghahn Books. I also would like to thank Cambridge Scholars for granting me the right to republication of part of one chapter. Part of chapter 6 has previously been published in The Norwegian Journal of Gender Studies, special issue on Hannah Arendt. This book is affectionately dedicated to my mother, Maurid Hagen Brandser, and in loving memory of my father, Sverre Brandser.

Introduction 

The reforming of universities, which has preoccupied most European countries in recent decades, marks their gradual transformation into service institutions. The effort to create an integrated European higher education area (EHEA), which was the main goal behind the Bologna Process1 and the Lisbon Strategy, initiated in 2000, has induced largescale structural changes on the national level in many countries. The introduction of standards for quality assurance and accreditation, credit transfers and certification, degree systems, a three-cycle structure, etc., has been justified as necessary means for ensuring efficient interaction, and for creating a larger competitive region of higher education and research. Because the reforms are regarded as merely instrumental, that is, as means to secure economic progress and increased opportunities for all, the changes have mostly been regarded as necessary adjustments and appropriations to changing external demands. The wave of reforms, beginning in Europe in the late 1990s, have later spread and are now widely referred to as GEM, a global educational movement. Despite some notable criticism and opposition to the way international agreements constrain national policies and limit the academic autonomy of universities, such discontent has largely been overruled with references to large-scale challenges and socioeconomic changes beyond the control of any national jurisdiction. This book is an attempt to question and problematize the ways the last decades’ reforms for a radical transformation of the university have attained legitimacy. It is an attempt, paradoxically perhaps, to answer some questions that have not yet been posed: What is it that makes the political quest for reform so meaningful and the arguments so credible and convincing? Why are the current changes met with so few objections and counteractions? What is it that makes the rhetoric of “service” and “marketability” so persuasive? What is it that enables some views, assessments, and opinions to be taken as intelligible and significant, while others are deemed insignificant or inapt? In short, from where does the power to reform derive its basis, justification, and rules?

2 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

The Discourse on the Knowledge Society The wave of reforms has for the most part been articulated and made meaningful within a translocal discourse dealing with the role and relation of universities to large-scale economic and social changes in the Western world. The need for universities to adapt to new demands, for instance, is proclaimed as important to ensure their future survival in competition with other producers in the emerging “knowledge society.” Hence, universities are understood within a discourse that re-presents them as enterprising, autonomous service actors in a globalized labor and education market. This representation has allowed a managerial mode of speech to become commonplace and convincing when problems are identified and analyzed and has made concepts such as “excellence” commonplace, if not mandatory, for evaluating academic performance. It is within this discursive reality that universities currently evaluate their own practices, often with the aid of professional higher education experts certified to make authoritative judgment on the university’s internal and external activities. The political demand for a transformation of the university into a more flexible, service organization is often justified by reference to large-scale socioeconomic changes stemming from globalization: the emergence of a postindustrial economy, the spread of ICT (information and communication technologies), and the development of a global multiculture. These and similar references are based on assessments that are embraced and articulated by policymakers and reinforced by most academics within the field. I will briefly list some of the most common ingredients of these assessments of our current state. The “knowledge economy” is one of the key slogans used to describe the emergence of a postindustrial society, or rather, the transformation from predominantly industrial mass production based on lower-skilled manual labor and linear careers to a more knowledgeintensive service production that demands flexible specialization and a mobile workforce. The transformation is portrayed as a major shift in the organization of work, like that of the Industrial Revolution; it has generated new understandings of the concept of work and new patterns of organizational structure. Due to the new economic conditions,2 businesses and organizations, such as universities, are more exposed to risk and uncertainty—global competition, market flux, rapid technological change—and thus are more vulnerable to external forces. The imperative claim is that universities, in order to survive, must adapt to the changes and re-engineer their functions from a

Introduction ♦ 3

traditional, bureaucratic mode of production to a more flexible mode of production. The transformation of the university into a flexible, consumer-oriented service institution is thus justified by reference to new demands for technical and social innovations and highly skilled labor3 in the emerging global market for research goods and educational services. The claim that universities need to re-engineer their function is supported by references to increased internationalization due to the worldwide diffusion of digital technologies. The widespread adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) is credited with enabling more knowledge producers to compete on an equal footing, thus providing universities with new challenges and new opportunities. Since more knowledge producers have the option of offering their services in teaching and research over the Internet, through e-learning and by virtual “campus-free” educational programs, there is a call for the universities to readjust their activities in order to take part in the new technological arenas. Furthermore, the digital, smart technologies are presented as creating new opportunities for universities to increase the prosperity of their home countries by providing scholars with infrastructure and open access to international research networks and thus gateways to valuable know-how. Concomitant with references to technological advances, claims are made about the emergence of a multicultural global world that challenges universities to contribute in fostering mutual understanding on a larger scale. The assumption is that widespread distribution of knowledge through the Internet and “borderless” communication will bring people around the world closer together. The frequent reference to a “global village” alludes to the multitude of cultural expressions made possible by the Internet and the new wireless social media. Furthermore, it is argued that a better adjusted service university will be able to contribute to the advancement of democracy; it will be an important generator of a democratic culture by empowering more actors and thereby ensuring freedom of expression. It is assumed that a university committed to serving the common good will be an important contributor to a more integrated world community by guaranteeing the universal (human) right to education, and by participating in joint efforts to secure and sustain world peace and friendship among nations. By providing know-how, the university can become more involved in dealing with common global issues and challenges such as outbreaks of pandemic diseases, famine, climate change, international terrorism, etc.

4 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

The Service University The discourse on the knowledge society/knowledge economy, which currently sets the terms for how we are to approach and evaluate the university, draws together a variety of elements from other discourses that are assembled to provide a logical, coherent order. References to the knowledge economy, network society, and globalization are key ingredients that are linked together to shape a common frame of reference, rationality or logic within which the service university is currently articulated and brought into existence as something meaningful and legitimate. Together they create a taken-for-granted reality that guides and governs the activities of governments and sets the terms for debates on education. Meanwhile, the term ‘service university’ carries no specific reference in itself but acquires rich conceptual meaning in relation to the key discursive elements mentioned above. When “the university” is articulated in relation to the discourse on the knowledge economy, it signifies a university adjusted to the flexible mode of production of the new profit-oriented knowledge industry. When “the university” is articulated in relation to the network society, it denotes a technically advanced university capable of providing service to a large number of people. And when “the university” is linked to discourses on globalization, it signifies either a university allowing the expression of cultural diversity or a university committed to serving the global good, such as becoming a provider of the universal (human) right to education and a committed partner in the battle against global hazards and crises. Thus, the key elements mentioned above confer on the discourse a legitimacy that enables some statements, questions, concerns, proposals, plans, and so forth, to be taken as intelligible, relevant, or significant, while others are rendered invalid, inappropriate, or illegitimate. To question the new discursive order and the parameters of action defined as appropriate is concomitant with questioning the reality that infuses “what is said” with meaning. This is what makes the new discursive order so difficult to address critically.

Goals and Purposes Much has been written about the fate and future prospects of the university. This book will not address the emerging service university from the vantage point of the socioeconomic changes depicted above. The aim is not to address the changes articulated in the reforms as necessary adaptations to an international market for knowledge exchange.

Introduction ♦ 5

Neither will the service university be analyzed as an outcome of ideological trends, such as New Public Management/Governance, nor as a consequence of a new alignment between higher education and the economy or the marketplace.4 The service university is approached not as a natural response to globalization, nor as a consequence of technological advances, nor as a response to the profusion of needs and demands in a multicultural global world. Instead, an attempt is made to contextualize the facts about our present condition so that these facts may be perceived as having a different significance. This is done by approaching the service university from another perspective, addressing its historical conditions of possibility. This book, in other words, is an attempt to identify the historical conditions that provide the service university with meaning and legitimacy. It is an attempt to locate some of the historical contingencies and transformations that have made it possible for the service university to appear as an object of discourse. This means that an attempt is made to carefully trace the historical origin of the different, yet intertwined layers of meaning that have enabled the present managerial objects, concepts, and modes of speech to appear, yet whose origins are forgotten, considered irrelevant, or are simply hidden from view. Thus, the aim is not to revise or reject other interpretations and explanations, but rather to introduce an alternative interpretation that treats the service university as a privileged sign within a historically and politically constructed discourse that strives for hegemony. The book examines whether the conditions that imbue the service university with meaning have been formed by specific historical events and experiences, which appear to have no immediate relation to the present situation and contemporary circumstances.

The Exclusion of the Humboldt University One of the conditions for the emergence of the service university seems to be the exclusion and dislocation of the old university, particularly the classical, continental university in the legacy of Wilhelm von Humboldt: the modern Enlightenment university. Although familiar concepts like “university,” “academic freedom,” “science,” “culture,” and more are important ingredients in the present discourse, these concepts are now embedded in a different order that imbues them with new meaning. When universities are referred to as “producers,” and scholarship as a “mode of production,” then the norms, practices and institutional arrangements that provided the modern

6 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

Enlightenment-university with identity and meaning are excluded and subsequently silenced. When academic freedom is understood as “rights to educational opportunities and intellectual property,” other conceptions of academic freedom, such as “a public space bereft of political, economic and ecclesiastic concerns,” are lost from view. The way knowledge is referred to as a “product” rules out the possibility of scientific knowledge (Wissenschaft) being understood as something indeterminate, something that continuously needs to be searched for. And when the university is requested to educate “knowledge-workers” and to ensure “employability,” it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to address the question of education and individuation (Bildung). The condition that provides the service university with identity and meaning seems, therefore, to be the same condition that excludes the “Humboldtian university” and deprives it of meaning. The way old concepts are re-interpreted and infused with new meaning, old practices superimposed with new significance, familiar ideals are paraphrased (e.g., academic freedom is exchanged for rights of individual agents), and new words are introduced that cause a metonymic slide of meaning, suggests the existence of antagonistic forces in the process of infusing the new service university with identity and meaning. Given the fact that concepts such as service and knowledge society are not new,5 but were introduced much earlier and in other discursive settings, suggests that the conditions for what now is considered relevant and appropriate in evaluating and criticizing the university may have been imported from elsewhere and have their origin in other temporal and spatial settings. This book is an attempt to inquire into this possibility. The way scholarship is re-inscribed as a “mode of production,” knowledge as “goods,” and academic autonomy as “rights” cannot be properly accounted for by simply reducing them to being effects of a necessary modernization of the existing public institutions or a “hostile takeover” by managerial, neoliberal ideology. Nor is it sufficient to interpret the proliferation of concepts manifest in the discourse, such as flexibility, marketability, and applicability, as responses to societal demands for less control and greater autonomy. Rather, I suggest that the service university, which underpins the present-day discourse, is the outcome of a series of historically discontinuous reactions against the Humboldtian university and consists of a variety of elements descending from prior discourses that have aligned themselves in a new and logically coherent order.

Introduction ♦ 7

Research Strategies and Design Through a rich selection of historical and contemporary texts, this work attempts to trace some of the historical contingencies and transformations that may have caused this new discursive configuration: the service university. The chapters strive to investigate the historical process from which the prevailing truth about the university, manifest in concepts, modes of speech, and objects, was formed in the past and has emerged. This mode of inquiry is frequently referred to as archaeological-genealogical history,6 or simply as “writing the history of the present,” by stressing the historical contingencies that have generated a new interpretation of concepts, morals and rules. Genealogy is an investigative method inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche,7 which involves an inquiry into the past with an aim to detect how present practices and modes of thought have emerged and come into existence. The purpose is not to analyze and thus uncover a pure origin or essence, but rather to detect in history a series of transformations (i.e., reinterpretations, conversions, etc.) affirmed by particular perspectives or local struggles. In other words, the purpose is to detect in history a series of instantiations of power. That said, the purpose is not to detect powerful agents in the course of events or to determine cause and effect, but rather to describe how contemporary objects, modes of thought, and themes can be found in more or less transformed editions in the past. Genealogy may thus be regarded as a narrative strategy that aims to describe how current modes and practices may have emerged through a historical process of assimilation, in which elements from past discourses and isolated practices have aligned themselves into new forms and come into new applications. Genealogy, as adapted by Michel Foucault,8 is a form of history that tries to account for the operations of power in the production of discourse. It is an attempt to show that the conditions for rendering an object in the social world into a form that is “knowable” are the same as those that render it “governable.” This is also the case for an “object” such as the university. Power is thus not regarded as external to knowledge, since techniques of knowledge are always immanent to and entangled in strategies of power.9 Thus, a genealogical analysis, on a more general level, may be thought of as an analysis of how one nexus or constellation of power-knowledge relations is displaced by another.10 A historical and genealogical strategy involves moving backward in time from the immediate present to the distant past. The aim of

8 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

this book, therefore, is to indicate at least three things: first, what the “Humboldtian university” was originally at the time of its emergence; second, what it became historically as it unfolded through a chain of transformations; and third, what it became after it was pulled from its historical context and made to refunction in the present discourse. In addition to the three dimensions, the book also attempts to show that some views or “statements” existing at the margin of the present discourse may be traces of the original Humboldtian ideal of higher education—das Humboldtsche Bildungsideal—that have survived and are preserved in another form. In line with this logic, the chapters are organized according to the following questions: 1. What was the “Humboldtian university” at the time of its emergence? (chapter 1) 2. What did it become as it unfolded through a chain of transformations? (chapters 2 and 3) 3. What did it become after it was set to work in a different context? (chapter 4) 4. How does the transformed version function in the present discussion? (chapter 5) 5. Are contemporary reflections on “academic identity,” deemed dysfunctional, residues of the original Humboldtian ideals that have managed to survive? (chapter 6) This study will not focus on the German reception of Humboldt’s ideals, or for that matter the Norwegian reception. Instead, the American reception of Humboldt’s ideals from the mid-nineteenth century and up until the 1960s is chosen as the archeological territory for a genealogical excavation. I intend to explore this particular spatial and temporal setting as a process of interpretation or translation, in which Humboldt’s ideals underwent semantic changes and suffered major qualitative transformations. The American reception is treated as the possible archive11 or locus of rules and heterogeneous prior practices forming the conditions of inclusion and exclusion that now enable the service university to emerge as an object of discourse. The text is separated into four sections and is guided by certain key questions.

Key Questions and Corresponding Sections The first section presents the educational ideas and principles associated with Wilhelm von Humboldt. This is not the “truth” about Humboldt’s ideals (heretofore often referred to merely as ‘Humboldt’),

Introduction ♦ 9

but an effort to revisit the educational ideals that provided the foundation for the modern university by relating them to the time of their appearance, that is, the philosophical and political debates that occurred in late Enlightenment Germany. A particular emphasis is placed on Humboldt’s reflections on the relationship between language, history, and Bildung. This section offers an outline of the key characteristics of the Humboldtian university: academic freedom, in-depth learning/the union of research and teaching, individual cultivation (Bildung), and scientific knowledge (Wissenschaft). I argue from the vantage point that the key characteristics constitute a frame or plot (mythos), which supports, organizes, and provides the design for different yet comprehensive representations of what a university is and what characterizes academic activity. These representations rest upon different interpretations, appropriations or translations of the ideas of Humboldt. The metaphor of translation is borrowed from Bruno Latour (1986) and suggests that change is a mimetic process in which ideas spread and are translated from one time/space context to another.12 The different representations may be regarded as answers to the same questions: What is the aim and purpose of a university? What is the relationship between the university and society? How does the university fulfill its role as educator of future citizens and scholars? What is the status of science and academic activity? The second section examines the American reception of Humboldt from the mid-eighteenth century to the 1960s. It asks whether dramatic shifts in this reception may have provided the historical conditions for the present discourse on the university. This section provides a narrative account of the American reception of Humboldt. Texts from American educational debates are subjected to a historical investigation in which an attempt is made to trace some of the transformations, displacements, and conversions the Humboldtian ideas underwent. The focus is on identifying “cognitive shifts” in the American debates concerning “the German university,” which is the collective term frequently used, and relate these shifts to conflicts and dramatic events occurring in American history. The aim is to examine whether the current practices—the service university—perhaps have emerged through a historical process of assimilation and conversion, in which elements from different local discourses and heterogeneous practice rooted in the American historical context have become aligned

10 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

into new forms. There are three guiding questions: first, to what extent has the American reception of Humboldt contributed to a dislocation and delegitimation of Humboldt? Second, to what extent has it subsequently dismissed other alternatives to the service university? Third, have the American experiences with the German university contributed to what today appears to be a discursive closure—or silence—on certain questions concerning the university? The third section explores the present discourse on the university with an aim to reveal the set of rules that governs “what can be said” about the university and subsequently how we can relate to it. The aim of this section is to understand how these rules regulate the present debates, by allowing some questions to be posed as important and relevant while excluding others. How are we expected to approach the university, and what is considered true (and conversely, false) in addressing it? This section addresses some well-reputed and influential contributions to the current debate. The texts are read with a critical intention aimed at exposing explicit as well as implicit conditions that make the present discourse possible. To what extent are these conditions related to and perhaps formed by the American translation—the American mythos Humboldt. The fourth section readdresses the mythos Humboldt in relation to some reflections on “academic identity”—the idea and purpose of critical inquiry—provided by late or postmodern philosophers,13 such as, in this case, Hannah Arendt. Is it possible to see Arendt’s attempts to promote new forms of critique as reappropriations or translations of Humboldt? An attempt is made to relate Arendt’s ideas and philosophical reflections to the American reception. Are her reflections on “academic identity” translations of some elements of the original Humboldt that have managed to survive at the margin of the present discourse? Are her ideas perhaps residue from Humboldt that have persisted because they fulfill a need not satisfied within the present discourse? And can these reflections contribute to reopening a discourse on Humboldt and inspiring a revisiting of some forgotten aspect of Humboldt’s ideas?

Reflection on the Use of Theories The study is based on a wide range of different theories and theoretical positions. No attempt, however, is made to describe or analyze

Introduction ♦ 11

the discourse or discursive formation (i.e., objects, modes of speech, etc.) via particular theories or theoretical systems. Rather, I provide an interpretation of how and under what conditions the discursive objects (concepts, modes of speech, etc.) emerged. This means that theories are not treated as analytic instruments to investigate the case at hand but are contextualized in order to see them as situated within a particular historical setting that allowed them to appear and within which they become meaningful. Theories, in other words, are treated as practices and their meaning as contingent, contextual and relational. This approach is particularly important in the case of Humboldt, whose educational ideas are frequently interpreted and understood in retrospect and thus attributed to, or even seen as the root cause of, the later political disasters in Germany. This perspective enables me to approach the theories of well-reputed scholars, such as John Dewey, in relation to other theories, political opinions and events at a particular time, rather than reducing them to novel contributions or modifications of an already given mode of thought. It becomes possible to see how theories may be responses or even reactions to dramatic events in time, rather than outcomes of ingenious inventions. I am thus more concerned with determining how certain ideas or theories functioned in relation to actual events or in relation to other theories in time, than I am with determining their position or explanatory strength. Furthermore, to read theories as being the knowledge produced in relation to the social circumstances in which they appeared, makes it possible to detect similarities or even underlying regularities between perspectives that today appear to be radically different or even conflicting. Moreover, the approach makes it possible to identify perhaps deep-seated conflicts that were later forgotten or reduced to incidents of minor importance. Dewey’s attack on Immanuel Kant’s idealism during World War I may serve as an example of a great controversy that was later forgotten, or that perhaps survived in another form. It may thus be possible to locate the social and political relations that may have provided support, acclaim, and validation to some ideas or theories, and conceived of others as problematic or controversial. By regarding theories as practices, I have avoided becoming too entangled in particular interpretations or positions. However, at least to a certain extent, I have treated some theories in a more conventional way, such as in the chapter on Arendt, where I examine her theory of action. However, I also try to show that this theory or set of reflections may be expressions of particular local concerns and may be interpreted as responses to events in time.

12 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

Methodological Considerations I base my investigation on an ensemble of contemporary and historical texts. The following provides a brief reflection on the selection of texts, how they are read, and why the presentation is given in a descriptive, narrative style. In addition, I add some comments on the empirical accuracy of my presentation, evidential support, oversimplification, and so forth.

Texts on Humboldt and the German University The chapter on Humboldt and his contemporaries is based on a wide variety of texts, primarily from philosophical, historical, and sociological journals. In an attempt to grasp the atmosphere in which these ideas were formed, I have also made a selection of original texts from Humboldt’s works. A reading of the original texts has also been important to either “check” or “balance” other interpretations. I have also made use of biographical works on Humboldt, historical descriptions and critical reflections on the historical period in question (1790– 1810). Meanwhile, I am perfectly aware that my own representation is situated, in the sense that I am subject to my own time and historical conditions. Nevertheless, I have tried to be faithful to the content and purpose of these ideas by relating them to the time of their appearance. I employ a wide range of commentaries on Humboldt and his contemporaries, as well as other relevant sources dealing with German ideas on education, in particular, the notion of Bildung. Many of the commentaries on Humboldt and the German universities may well be characterized as intertextual fields where a variety of interpretations blend and clash. Each text may, of course, be a reflection of the time when it appeared and can be related to the political climate and the theoretical tools available when it was written. I have found the multiplicity of voices intriguing; they indicate that Humboldt’s ideas (or what now are more often referred to as “the German university”) have become and still remain a field for discursive battles. This fact will obviously affect my own presentation, although I have tried to avoid becoming too heavily entangled in any single interpretation or position. In fact, I have placed particular emphasis on conveying the tensions that reside within the ideas of educational Bildung and tried to relate these tensions to the inspiration Humboldt derived from the intellectual currents and questions of his time. I have emphasized two important yet, to my knowledge, neglected sources of inspiration: first,

Introduction ♦ 13

the debate about Enlightenment played out in Berlin’s Jewish Salons where Humboldt was an active participant, and second, the inspiration he and many of his contemporaries got from the life sciences, particularly from what was later referred to as Enlightenment vitalism.

Text from the American Context The chapters on the American reception of Humboldt are based primarily on articles from well-reputed scientific journals. Other sources are biographical works by and about university presidents and/or educational entrepreneurs. I have also examined a postwar policy document (the Harvard Report), as well as contemporary historical works on the emergence of the American university. Finally, I use a range of other sources (journal articles, books, reviews, etc.) that cover issues not immediately related to the subject of my study. References, for instance, to US immigration patterns, dismissal cases at the University of Michigan, utopian novels, race riots, and more, may seem like unnecessary digressions. Some of these sidetracks are not necessarily explored any further but are nevertheless important because they underscore the points I am trying to convey; they hint at how and why new possibilities (e.g., practices, ideas, etc.) for thought and action emerged, which, in turn, may help to explain political responses and courses of action made at a much later point in history. The two chapters on the American reception overlap somewhat in time. Chapter 3 provides the overall, chronological view, whereas chapter 4 pauses and delves deeper into certain periods that are merely outlined in the previous chapter. This is done partly in order to change angles and force the reader to look twice at some issues in relation to particular historical events. In addition, the latter of these two chapters will, to a greater extent than the former, reflect debates that went on between educational reformers (i.e., university presidents, scholars, etc.); it covers some of the debate that gradually evolved among educational scholars/philosophers and teachers. However, there is no clear-cut definite pattern.

Reading for the Plot The texts from the American setting are not treated as historical documents in the sense that they are forced into certain combinations or ordered into a hierarchy of importance so as to imitate the work of an historian. There is no attempt to search for an underlying principle

14 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

or Zeitgeist, nor is there any ambition to convey a story of linear progression from an old to a new way of thinking about education and the university. I try to write the story of Humboldt in America, from a perspective that is contemporaneous with it. However, some texts are treated more thoroughly than others because they have had greater impact, facilitated more comments, and thus have been more widely discussed. Still, to avoid treating some texts as more valuable than others, I have tried to follow the “trail of the texts” (in other words, I have followed up on key references, comments of debates, etc.), and thus have focused attention on specific journals, to the neglect of others. This does not imply that my reading is completely random. My reading of the texts, as well as the narrative representation, is largely organized and shaped by the elements that constitute mythos Humboldt. The aim is to treat the texts as clues to detect changes in the perception or experience of Humboldt, and thus associate these with the historical and political circumstances of the time. Thus, it is the plot or the semantic transformation of these signifying elements as they unfold, that provides the dynamic driving the story forward.14 That said, it is worth remembering that the theme I am trying to present does not exist as such; it is created or produced by the way these texts combine and relate to each other and are incorporated into the narrative structure of my description. I am therefore not trying to compete with other more thorough historical descriptions of “Humboldt in America,” such as Hermann Röhrs’s (1995), in a vain attempt to ascertain who is closest to the truth, nor do I argue that other readings are less complete or more biased. The narrative I present is informed by an archaeologicalgenealogical approach and may thus be considered as another way of getting at the past. My effort must be regarded as an attempt, which perhaps may engender further investigation and complement other forms of historical inquiry, for instance, by pointing to the lacunas or gaps in other explanations. There is no real beginning or end of my story. Nevertheless, I deemed it essential to delineate a period that would be possible to investigate and that I would be able to access through texts. The choice of time period is not completely arbitrary; it marks the period between the introduction of Humboldt in America (mid-nineteenth century) and the emergence of a discourse on “knowledgeable society” in the mid1960s. The debates in America during the 1960s are important inasmuch as they incite an international or translocal discourse on higher education. Although the focus is on some key historical conjunctures (the 1890s, the period around the two World Wars, and two decades

Introduction ♦ 15

after World War II), with such a wide span of time and the huge quantity of texts available, especially from the post–World War II period, there are bound to be some oversimplifications. However, without reducing my own effort to a case of guesswork, I will admit that there are limitations to my approach in terms of the selection of texts and my own knowledge of the periods in question. I have thus relied on contemporary scientific works of these periods in American intellectual life, particularly some works of David Hollinger.

Contemporary Texts (1960 and Onward) I have selected some texts by well-known historians and historicalsociologists that present aspects of nineteenth-century German intellectual history and the German university, in a documentary, matterof-fact way. These texts are chosen, in part, because they are frequently cited (e.g., Fritz Ringer’s texts tend to reappear as validating references) and are thus regarded as important resources mobilized in the current discourse. I am particularly concerned with how the German university is represented in these contemporary texts, what they present as “factual,” and how these representations may reflect a set of underlying rules for what is considered relevant for the way we are to relate to the old university in this period. I have selected some texts from the present debate for a close reading. The purpose is not to analyze them so as to detect an underlying intention or hidden agenda, but rather to detect the anonymous rules that govern and guide the discourse and to which policy makers conform. It goes without saying that the quantity of texts available within the field at the moment is immense. The chosen texts are well-reputed and influential contributions, known by most participants in the current debate, and they function more or less as entrances to the issues currently debated. In addition to presenting the content of the texts, I investigate them as “statements,”15 or as means or leads to revealing the condition of possibility for the present discourse on the university. What do the texts permit us to see, and what is hidden from view? What are the conditions that enable the text to convey a message considered plausible and deserving of attention?

Structure of Study Chapter 1 examines in some depth the Humboldtian ideals of the university. An attempt is made to relate Humboldt’s educational ideas to

16 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

the intellectual debates of the German Enlightenment (Aufklärung), particularly Kant’s reflections on the university as an arena for critique. Furthermore, the chapter explores the “vital” element in Humboldt’s intellectual endeavor, in particular how he was influenced by one of the major counterdiscourses in late Enlightenment Germany— Enlightenment vitalism. Chapters 2 and 3 address the American reception of Humboldt from the mid-nineteenth century until the mid-1960s. The chapters focus on gradual transformations as well as more radical ruptures in the way these ideas were perceived. The focus is on three key historical conjunctures: the rise of the Progressive movement, the period during and after World Wars I and II, and the immediate post–World War II period. Whereas chapter 2 examines in more detail the early period and delves into academic reactions and responses to political events such as the wars, chapter 3 explores the significance of Dewey’s reactions against idealism, the rise of social psychology, and the progressives’ program for social reconstruction in shaping new perceptions. Some attention is also devoted to the General Education in a Free Society (often referred to as the Harvard Report), which set the terms for the American educational policy in the postwar years. Chapter 3 also examines some accounts of “the German university” in narratives by historians and historical sociologists in the late 1960s and 1970s. Chapter 4 examines two well-known and frequently cited texts of the university in relation to the “emerging new mode of knowledge production.” The chapter tries to determine the main claims and reasons for defending a large-scale transformation of the university. The chapter explores the artificially constructed typologies, Mode 1 and Mode 2, and examines how the Mode 2 university, which is presented as providing a better fit for the post-industrial era, acquires meaning through its negation of the Mode 1 university, presented as the “truth” about the university as it stands today. The purpose is to detect the underlying interpretation, perspective, or hypothesis of the old university that is operative yet concealed within such similar abstractions as Mode 1. Chapter 5 treats the texts accounted for in chapter 4 as leads in revealing the underlying conditions or “truths” that govern “what can be said” about the university at present. It explores some of the tensions (i.e., ambiguities, contradictions, paradoxes, voids, etc.) residing in the texts to detect the underlying condition that makes them meaningful: for instance, how are other texts put into play, and how are other layers of meaning activated by implicit reference? The chapter explores

Introduction ♦ 17

whether it is the American translation of the German university, that currently—in such disguises as Mode 1—dictates what is possible as well as impossible to say about the university. Is it thus the American experiences with the German university that provides some of the conditions for the present European debates? Chapter 6 discusses Hannah Arendt’s notion of “critical understanding.” It examines her reinterpretation of “political action” as a practical example of her own critical strategy, in which language, history and imagination hold a prominent place. The chapter asks whether Arendt’s attentiveness to education as a process of individuation, her emphasis on history and on the relationship between thinking and judgment, are residues of the Humboldtian legacy that have survived in another form. The conclusion provides a condensed summary and is an attempt to recapture the main points in an effort to contextualize the interpretation offered.

Notes 1. The Bologna Process is based on the declaration signed in Bologna on 19 June 1999 by the Ministers of Education in twenty-nine European countries. It now comprises more that forty-nine countries, plus the European Commission. 2. There have been many attempts to contest the “postindustrial” thesis (Vallas 1999). He points out that the concept of flexibility, which is a key component, came to occupy a central place in the social scientific and managerial thinking about work in the 1980s. 3. It is often assumed that since the traditional work structure based on mass production and manufacturing has become obsolete, there is less focus on the organization and more on the individual employee, in terms of mobility, adaptable and transferable skills, and competence. 4. This study is not an attempt to critique “academic capitalism,” as for instance, Sheila Slaughter and Larry Leslie (1997) or Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades (2007) do. Because the discourse on the knowledge society articulates cooperation within a framework of competition and freedom/rights within a framework of market access (and intellectual property), the service university cannot unambiguously be linked to the logic of corporate business or denote a market-driven enterprise. In fact, it seems that any opposition to competition is rendered somewhat suspect, as it is tantamount to an assault on democratic values. This is what makes the discourse particularly resistant to criticism. 5. The European Commission attributes the concept to Fredrich A. Hayek, who in 1945 wrote the article “The Uses of Knowledge in Society.” 6. Foucault (1984b). Archaeology denotes an attempt to understand the historical a priori, archive, or form, which has enabled certain systems of thought to emerge, while genealogy signifies an attempt to identify the practices that

18 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

go into the formation of these systems or archives. Put differently, it identifies how present practices have their origin in past rules or formations. Nietzsche (1967/1887), Foucault (1984c), Babich (1994), Dean (1994), Irwin (2001). Foucault (1984a). Foucault (1978) provides some suggestions or “rules” to follow in an investigation. However, these suggestions are best regarded as prescriptions rather than as methodological imperatives: In a genealogical investigation, it is suggested to start with “local centers” of power-knowledge, since any area or field of investigation is always made possible because power-relations have established it as a possible object (“the rules of immanence”). Since relations of power-knowledge are not static forms of distribution, but “matrices of transformations,” the researcher is urged to seek the patterns of modifications, variations and shifts that the relationship of forces implies by the very nature of its process (“rules of continual variation”). For any “local center” to function and have an effect, it is best to link it to an overall strategy. Therefore, Foucault urges the researcher to conceive of how a strategy is made possible by the specificity of possible tactics, but also how tactics are made possible by the strategic envelope or frame that makes them work (“rule of double conditioning”). Through conceiving of discourse as a multiplicity of discontinuous segments that can come into play in various strategies, the researcher may try to reconstruct the distribution, with the things said and those concealed, the enunciations necessarily forbidden, the position of the speaker, etc. Finally, the researcher is encouraged to seek how discourses transmit and produce, reinforce and undermine power, how silence and secrecy are shelters of power, as well as obscure areas of tolerance (“rules of the tactical polyvalence of discourses”). Shiner (1982: 387). Foucault (1972). This spread may explain why there are different translations of the Humboldtian university at the same time, all of which may be the outcome of transformations or local experiences and adaptations of Humboldt’s ideals. I will return to the issue of translation in the concluding chapter. This study will focus on Hannah Arendt. I provide a similar inquiry into the reflection on the “academic identity” of Richard Rorty and Michel Foucault (2005). My source of inspiration is Peter Brooks (1984), Reading for the Plot. I refer to “statement” much in the same way as Foucault (1972). A “statement” can be attributed to a subject, but the subject is not understood as a “speaking consciousness” such as within traditional hermeneutics, where one searches in the “utterance” for deep-seated meaning (i.e., in the subject’s thoughts or experiences, or in his/her context). A statement may be regarded as a “material object” that carries a specific meaning in relation to other statements subject to a set of “rules.” Although a statement may be regarded as verbal performances in the sense that something (i.e., the discursive rules) is

Introduction ♦ 19 manifested though them, this does not mean that a statement can be equated to a performative “speech-act.” It is not rhetorical in the sense that it aims at an effect.

CHAPTER 1

Mythos Humboldt 

Introduction Mythos Humboldt refers to the conception of the modern university formulated in the early nineteenth century (1809–1910) by Wilhelm von Humboldt, following Prussia’s loss against Napoleon at Jena in 1806. The model of academic freedom attributed to Humboldt became widely copied around the world, not least in the United States.1 This model reduced state power to the barest minimum to ensure teachers’ freedom to lecture as they believed best (Lehrfreiheit) and students’ freedom to cultivate their “natural dispositions” and pursue learning according to their own inclinations and wishes (Lernfreiheit). As opposed to the utilitarian and anti-university attitude2 of late-Enlightenment Germany and the prevailing demand for Ausbildung (education for the benefit of society as a whole), Bildung, or self-formation, implied a strong emphasis on the capabilities and uniqueness of each individual student; thus, it stressed introspection and the careful tending, shaping, deepening, and perfecting of individuality though learning. Humboldt’s conception of a university was developed on an ideal of freedom in teaching and learning, but it was also shaped out of a deepfelt need to unite the previously segregated domains of teaching and research, by penetrating into the “depths of scholarship.” Many explanations have been given for what has been regarded as a sudden change or reorientation in emphasis from the enthusiastic, enlightened belief in the potential for intellectual maturity of “the common man,” to ideals of complete and harmonious human development. Some accounts emphasize the deterioration of the old estate (Stände) structure, followed by a search for new forms of sociability (e.g., the proliferation of various intellectual clubs, Salons, and secret societies). Others see the reorientation as a reaction to the increasing power of the absolute state and the rapid growth of a bureaucratic intelligentsia.3 Yet others stress the fact that Kant’s ideas were increasingly attacked as socially and politically dangerous insofar

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 21

as they created men that had become übergebildet und so verbildet (overeducated and thus misshapen).4 The rise of the Romantic movement is cited; in particular, the writings of young Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller provided inspiration and new visions of man as an organic, “self-unfolding subject,” expressing himself in his actions, relationships, and creations.5 The proponents of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s philosophy of education (i.e., valuing spontaneity, natural sentiments, authenticity) criticized and condemned the claims of universality maintained by the universities and aimed instead at providing university studies with a new and much stronger humane basis, detached from utilitarian demands. The philosophers of German idealism, although influenced by Rousseau, placed strong emphasis on the ancient Greek civilization as the model for human society. Through an education for individuation—the cultivation of each individual’s inner urges and his striving for creative and intellectual profundity—a relationship could develop where the state and the person were not in conflict but instead joined in civic responsibility. As such, both the state and the individual could expand and complement one another. For it is only by retaining and developing one’s individuality, one’s Eigentümlichkeit, that one could contribute to others “variety of situations” just as others, in their Eigentümlichkeiten, contribute to one’s own.6

The cultivation of one’s Eigentümlichkeit, however, did require both the security of individual freedom and the opportunity for free, voluntary interaction of one’s individuality with others. Humboldt, who was inspired by the metaphysical presuppositions of Leibniz (his notion of a pre-established harmony of “vital energies” in the universe),7 insisted that Bildung demanded a space or an agora for political and social interchange and natural harmony between individuals. The condition of possibility for such an interaction was a renegotiation of, and thereby a change in the relationship between, the state and the individual. Judging from his early writings, Humboldt reacted strongly against the Prussian state’s disregard of individual growth, in favor of obtaining productive and obedient citizens. In fact, he believed it was wrong for a state to serve the goal of material well-being and moral happiness for its citizens. To avoid the dangers of uniformity and to ensure the opportunity for people to prosper and become as fully developed individuals as possible, Humboldt asserted that there should be only a minimum of interference from the absolutist state, and a maximum of freedom and variety of opportunities available for

22 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

people to experience. He subsequently regarded the state as primarily responsible for providing the assurance of freedom for each individual to act for himself or herself. He regarded this as the first condition for self-formation. The second condition was to secure the free interchange of individuals by forming new social bonds. Humboldt’s eventual three-point reform program for the educational system demanded, in short, that the national government was to assume financial responsibility for schools and thereby allow citizens to educate themselves freely through prolonged study.8 Furthermore, he prescribed the founding of the University of Berlin, which would be financially independent through an endowment of former Crown lands. This would guarantee its status as a national institution; presumably, it was also a means for restoring Prussian cultural life.9 Humboldt proposed that the educational barriers segregating the estates and training students for special functions should be removed; in their place would be an educational egalitarianism that would create new social bonds based on ancient Greek virtues. Nobility and commoners, future scholars and future artisans were to attend the same school. The curriculum was to combine courses in such a way as to provide general education (i.e., sciences such as mathematics and history, as well as classical and modern languages). This would help cultivate each student’s unique abilities in allgemeine Menschenbildung and give them the freedom to move up the educational ladder. Only after a broad and general education could students proceed to specialized training for government employment in the service of the state.10 In addition to the university, devoted to “free inquiry,” the schools were to be divided into two units: an elementary school and a high school (gymnasium), where students were taught to become intellectually independent.11 The aim of university education was no longer simply to acquire encyclopedic knowledge and accept received truths. Instead, it was to congregate students in a community devoted to learning (Wissenschaft), and to vouchsafe their total freedom to interact with their peers in an environment which, saturated with learning, proffered numerous models of consummate cultivation.12

Four important attributes of the Humboldtian conception of the university are commonly referred to as constituting a frame on which the future universities were built:13 an Enlightenment notion of intellectual freedom guided by reason and detached from politics and

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 23

Table 1.1. Educational ideals typified as Humboldtian Ideals

University founded upon

Academic freedom

Independent “critical” judgment

The unity of knowledge

Reason in the “depths of scholarship”

Bildung

Neohumanist idea of individuality

Principles of academic research (method) and practices of learning

Search for the “universal form” (Ideen) through receptivity and creativity

religion; a unifying principle in education by the doctrine of reason (i.e., a separation of public and private use of reason); a neohumanist idea of individuality formed through cultivation; a conception of scientific knowledge (Wissenschaft) as distinct from common knowledge. Closely tied to scientific knowledge was the concept of truth or certainty (Wahrheit): It was something to be incessantly (unablässig) searched for yet acknowledged as “not entirely discoverable.”14 In the following four sections, I will delve into each of these Humboldtian ideals and ascertain their distinctive character vis-à-vis Humboldt’s contemporary philosophers, yet I will also highlight some of the intrinsic ambiguities and tensions residing in them. In the concluding summary, I will return to the four ideals to present an extract of what is essential for an understanding of educational Bildung.

I. ACADEMIC FREEDOM Wilhelm von Humboldt envisioned a university in which the unity of teaching and research, along with the freedom of teaching and learning, would provide scholarly educated and intellectually independent beings, equipped to meet the challenges faced by the utilitarian conception of knowledge that emerged with the Enlightenment. In his responses to the discussion concerning the role of the university in reforming the Prussian state, Humboldt drew heavily on the Kantian idea of academic freedom, which Kant introduced in The Conflict of the Faculties in 1798. Two notions of academic freedom were hitherto presented: First, academic freedom as an ideal attributed to each individual scholar, insofar as he is a free and responsible member of the (absolute) state. Second, academic freedom attributed to the

24 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

community of scholars, as a corporate or institutionally autonomous group vis-à-vis the state. In advocating Kant’s ideas, Humboldt regarded the state, along with the church, as a threat to the acquisition of scientific autonomy; meanwhile, he expected the state to protect the university from special interest groups. In his early work, The Limits of State Action (1791–92),15 a document containing numerous intellectual impulses, Humboldt proposed reducing state power to the barest minimum to ensure freedom for individual self-cultivation. Under the influence of the eighteenthcentury revolutionary spirit of liberalism, Humboldt believed it was necessary that the state refrain from setting up educational institutions (or maintain religion or regulate morals,16 agriculture, trade, or commerce for that matter), for such public schooling would produce uniformity with a proportionate decrease in the free, spontaneous activity of individuals. More important than training good and obedient citizens was the task of providing society with enlightened, wise human beings, equipped with a diversity of experiences. Moreover, as mentioned above, Humboldt envisaged a society containing a great variety of freely chosen associations (i.e., those of family, friendship and comradeship). At first glance, his vision for the future seems tantamount to a “night-watchman” state, in which the main responsibility of the state is to maintain the legal freedom (i.e., through the exercise of police powers) of individuals, and to preserve the legal property rights of its citizens.17 However, Humboldt’s admiration of the ancient Greeks and his close ties to the intellectual Salons, which flourished in Göttingen and especially in Berlin during the late Enlightenment,18 may be a more obvious, yet oft neglected background for his liberalism. In fact, Humboldt himself drew an analogy between these salons and “those relations so much in vogue among the ancients, and more especially the Greeks, . . . those so frequently, but unworthily, given the name of ordinary love, and sometimes, but always erroneously, that of mere friendship.”19 The effectiveness of all such relations as instruments of cultivation entirely depends on the extent to which the members can succeed in combining their personal independence with the intimacy of the associations for whilst, without this intimacy, one cannot sufficiently possess, as it were, the nature of the others, independence is no less essential, in order that each, in being possessed, may be transformed in his own unique way. On the one hand, individual energy is essential to both parties and, on the other hand, a difference between them, neither so great as to prevent one from comprehending the

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 25

other, nor so small as to exclude admiration for what the other possesses, and the desire to assimilate it into one’s own character.20

Twenty years later, as Privy Councillor and Director of the section for Culture and Education (Kultusministerium) within the Prussian Ministry of Interior, Humboldt’s attitude changed toward the functions of the state in relation to the private life of its citizenry. Nevertheless, it may be argued that in his effort to institutionally promote Bildung, he upheld his earlier opinions on the importance of bringing the variety of human sensibilities—our sensuousness or Sinnlichkeit (that is to say, urges, natural drives, energies, and sensual desires)—into creative tension with Vernunft. Thus, one could argue that his theory of Bildung (i.e., stressing the necessary multiplicity of human stimuli) actually became integrated into the Prussian educational system, even though he paradoxically aspired to return control to the state.21 In his construction of an educational system, many scholars have been concerned with how Humboldt managed to reconcile his neohumanist idea of Bildung with educational reforms. Some argue that Humboldt succeeded in his primary goal of ensuring freedom for the individual, but that he failed to create a Leibnizian program that satisfied his second condition, namely, to create intermediate institutions that could establish a harmonious bond of interchange between individuals.22 However, the appearance of a new concept, the nation,23 which made its entrance at the time of the reform, became a useful, mediating concept between the individual and the state. The concept provided Humboldt with a theoretical solution as well as a political justification for implementing his ideas.24 By returning the schools to the state and creating an egalitarian system of education suited to the individual rather than the citizen, and by providing a broad and varied education in an atmosphere of freedom, Humboldt apparently hoped to foster the social bonds necessary for Bildung. By assuming that the nation was responsible for education and absolute freedom would prevail within the educational institutions, “the nation would develop an associational life in and around the educational system that would foster the interchange requisite to Bildung.”25 Thus, he declared: The . . . principle that the state should not intervene in the particulars of school affairs is in itself certainly the only true and correct one.26

Even though Humboldt strongly opposed state and religious intervention in education, and never regarded Bildung as an instrument for the state, the aim of education ultimately came to be perceived as

26 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

cultivating obedient servants,27 since education was seen as providing a solid basis for creating a consolidated nation of moral men and good citizens. Humboldt assumed that state purposes were best met by allowing individuals to freely develop and interact, and thereby indirectly become harmonious, responsible, and thus contributing citizens.28 By leaving the fiscal responsibility to the state, free interchange and new social bonds would emerge naturally. However, later critics have persistently argued that the institutionalization of education meant that the political imperative embedded in his early conception of Bildung was betrayed.

Kant and Humboldt on the Public Use of Reason The question of academic freedom and the relationship between the university and the state was addressed prior to Humboldt, in Kant’s aggregate of essays entitled The Conflict of the Faculties. Here Kant sought to reconsider a dilemma he addressed in his famous essay “Was ist Aufklärung”29 from 1784; namely, the role of the university as an autonomous arena for critical reflection, which he calls the “public use of reason.”30 In this text, enlightenment is depicted as an attitude or obligation—Aude Sapere: Dare to know—using reason freely and courageously to raise questions of importance for one’s own time. As reflected in his political writings,31 Kant was concerned with the possibility of a free debate (Publizistik), in which “men of letters” could help set the terms of public debate, and frame issues in a new and universal way. Thus, Kant imagined that “what had previously seemed only private now could be seen as the shared concern that continued to drive public controversies and actions.”32 Judging from his statement that Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage (selbst verschuldeten Unmündigkeit) or the self-caused state of never coming to maturity—of remaining under the tutelage of some higher authority—the intellectual and moral maturation of individuals was to be a long-term concern for any community. Kant insisted that the capacity of each individual to freely think for himself (Mündigheit) was dependent upon free public debate. This meant that the quest for knowledge could rely neither upon instruction and passive learning of received truths, nor upon secretive, specialized knowledge. Rather, it was an active process of critical questioning. Academic freedom was thus framed as the individuals’ obligation to lead a life devoted to critical thinking.33 This also meant that issues central to public order and cultural life could be subjected to critical questioning,

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 27

and analyzed as different (i.e., historically contingent) perspectives by various groups, in their own struggle for power or benefits.34 Due to the years of religious and cultural conflict following the introduction of his rationalistic system, Kant, once again, in 1798, drew attention to the question of Aufklärung and the way in which his “freedom to think” under the influence of pragmatic social and political forces, had inverted into (what he saw as) the cultural project of Enlightenment.35 He alerted his audience to the appropriateness of seeing the university as a divided institution; along with the public sphere itself, the university was rife with a series of natural and necessary conflicts. On the one hand, the university was like a factory (fabrikenmässig) with its specialized sub-industries (professional and humanistic faculties) producing “lettered individuals” and teachers. On the other hand, he admitted that what the government perceived as valuable in the university’s function does not always coincide with what the academics or the public view as important. In fact, the government that used the “professional” faculties to influence its citizens, could not, in Kant’s view, claim to really know the truth of what the educated communities were asked to deliver. Thus, Kant repeated his initial point that it was only academic freedom, or the independent, free action of reason—critique—which could secure true rational insight. It is absolutely essential that the learned community at the university also contain a faculty that is independent of the government’s command with regards to its teachings; one that, having no commands to give, is free to evaluate everything, and concerns itself with the interests of the sciences, that is, with truth: one in which reason is authorized to speak out publicly. For without a faculty of this kind, the truth would not come to light (and this would be to the government’s own detriment); but reason is by its nature free and admits of no command to hold something as true (no imperative “Believe” but only a free “I believe”).36

Nevertheless, this recognition indicates that Kant had arrived at a more pluralistic model of the public sphere. He recognized it as multileveled with deep tensions, and thus he questioned the possibility that it could be an open forum for critical scholars. Departing from his previous stance, he now argued, in The Conflict of the Faculties, that the public arena had partly been created by the aims and self-interests of modern governments, given that they sought to influence the public.37 However, as I will show in the next section, Kant did apparently find a solution for how to spread authority between institutional faculties: to

28 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

secure free reasoning, while still guaranteeing the professional scholars’ obedience to pragmatically set goals. Humboldt was keen to give the Kantian idea of reason—the inner (innere) quest for knowledge and truth—an outward (äussere) institutional form. For him, the true function of the state was to provide the freedom for higher educational institutions to “engage in the unceasing process of inquiry.”38 This could be achieved by offering scholars the opportunity to develop their own scholarly and creative abilities, without any disturbance or intrusion from political, ecclesiastical or economic interests. He insisted that the state must acknowledge higher intellectual institutions—the universities—as being different from lower institutions, since the former do not rely on “closed and settled bodies of knowledge,” but are, “nothing other than man’s intellectual life which external opportunities and deeper motivation have led towards scientific and scholarly research.”39 In other words, the ongoing pursuit of truth had to be exercised in Einsamkeit und Freiheit, where solitude would ensure the conditions for undistracted concentration and contemplation, and freedom would provide a space in which individuals could realize their potential and capacities in intellectual collaboration with others. Humboldt’s ideal of academic freedom, cultivated though individual Bildung, was thus never intended as the privilege of a minor elite,40 although some, in posterity, have perceived it thus. Rather, it was to function as the guarantee for a life devoted to free, critical inquiry.41 However, Humboldt assumed that acquiring the occupational status of “academic” entailed a civic or social responsibility, just as in ancient Greek times; this relative freedom should be conscientiously used for the good of society. Nevertheless, since the individual scholar was the model for such an authoritative norm of freedom, there was an obvious risk of failure, for freedom gives ample occasion for authorities (i.e., the state) to lay down laws. Such was the case in France, as Humboldt experienced himself while visiting the country after the Revolution.

Replanting the Idea of Reason The dilemma was as follows: How was it possible to institutionalize and at the same time safeguard the use of free, autonomous reason? In Kant’s view, the university and each of its faculties contained a portion of a larger, progressive “freedom to think.” The lower faculty provided the university with protection from potential abuse of power by the state; it was obliged to ask fundamental questions and, if necessary, interfere with the higher faculties on the basis of reason alone. Hence,

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 29

it was the lower faculty—philosophy—which, in Kant’s view, incarnated the pure principle “that animates the University and differentiates it from either a technical training school (guild) or a specialized academy.”42 Knowledge was generated through a conflict or dialectical movement between the established tradition (higher, professional faculties) and the free, rational inquiry (lower, philosophical faculty). Kant assumed that the conflict was necessary because it contributed to historical progress and guaranteed a universally grounded rationality. Thus, the state must protect the university by ensuring its autonomy, and critical philosophy must protect the university from abuse of power on the part of the state, in limiting the rule of established interest in the higher faculties.43 Humboldt assumed, as did Kant, that the pursuit of knowledge constituted a perpetual search, yet, contrary to Kant, he realized that this search could come to a halt and thus be reduced to a mechanical “pile-up of unconnected facts,” with the subsequent loss of the cause of learning.44 To prevent science and scholarship from becoming just a mechanical procedure or “empty shell,”45 Humboldt suggested an inward “replanting” (geplantzen)46 of the idea of reason: Only science and scholarship which comes from the inner depths of the mind [aus dem Innere stammt] and which are cultivated only at those depths [in’s Innere gepflantz werden kann] can contribute to the transformation of character. The state gains as little as mankind from mere facts and discussion [Reden]. They are both more concerned with character and conduct [Handeln].47

The problem for Humboldt, it appears, was not only that of avoiding one-sidedness and promoting intellectual diversity, but in reconciling the unifying principle (reason) with his deep-seated conviction of life’s multiplicity and diversity. I will return to this problem in the next section when discussing Humboldt’s reflections on the role of aesthetics, particularly his effort to reconcile philosophy and art in order to solve the methodological problem of preserving “research”: The free and permanent application of reason for the humanization or long-term moral good of society at large.

Theoretical Inconsistencies or Humboldt’s Betrayal As stated earlier, the frequently asked question is whether or not Humboldt’s political reform of education was compatible with his initial vision, which advocated “private” individual education (Bildung),

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free of interference from the state. There appears to be a thoughtprovoking inconsistency between the Leibnizian Humboldt of character Bildung and the practical politician Humboldt of “training for a profession” in the new state (Ausbildung). This tension has generated a diverse set of explanations by historians and social scientists. For instance, David Sorkin (1983) argues that Humboldt made the state responsible for the preservation of academic freedom, because he assumed that the state was “not an educational but a legal institution.”48 The freedom of the individual should be the first condition for self-formation, since education was the only way of extending politics into private life, thus providing necessary public debate as well as ensuring loyal citizens and a harmonious state. Carla Thomas (1973) argues similarly that the dissemination of simple educational principles (e.g., to nurture strength in individuals by ensuring they have a variety of stimuli) was the best way to control the role of the state vis-à-vis the life of private citizens. Others argue that Bildung served to reinforce and spread into the modern world the ancient assumption that the learned few form a kind of aristocracy of intellect, and that “men of letters” are the embodiment of a divine ideal.49 Humboldt’s ideas, to some extent, are modeled on the same notion of harmony that presumably existed in the ancient Greek city states, where person and citizen were one and the same, and where the state (polis) was minimal, governing only a few areas of life. Humboldt recognized that the modern state had to be restricted to a negative function, providing the conditions for freedom and individual development; its tendency is that it “suppresses man’s energies and thwarts man’s personal growth in favor of obtaining a productive and obedient citizen.”50 Though it seems paradoxical, Humboldt’s theory of Bildung is considered the educational doctrine that eventually legitimized the alliance of the intelligentsia and the liberal state, by means of the university.51 According to Bill Readings (1996), it is Humboldt’s ideas that linked the university to the destiny of the nation-state by producing a liberal, reasoning subject. Others, such as Konrad Jarausch (1978), argue that establishing an educational and scientific system was an ingenious way to demonstrate Prussian leadership at the time, and it was an effective means to create the liberal bureaucracy needed to sustain further political reform. Placed in a larger political setting, Steven Fuller (2000) argues that Humboldt, when faced with the inadequacy of the old feudal-clerical order’s response to Napoleon, came up with the idea of co-opting the intellectuals by declaring the university the natural home of “Enlightenment.” Sorkin (1983) argues similarly that

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since Prussia was then at the mercy of Napoleon, new weapons had to be forged to continue the struggle. In his view, Humboldt thus called for substituting “moral power” for physical power, so that the university could serve a political goal. A commitment to science and scholarship could, in other words, win back for Prussia some of her lost prestige. Whichever of the above views is most likely the case, there is little doubt that many of the idealist philosophers, who in fact became the late nineteenth-century professoriate, believed the German universities had managed to encapsulate the true spirit of Enlightenment.52 Although this view may have its substantial supporting arguments, one of the most prominent critics of the German university, Fritz Ringer (1969), has persuasively argued that the spiritual mission of the German university, which was seen as offering the foundation for a modern national state, degenerated into a “mandarin culture”—a national elite—that gradually retreated into an inner cultural world, indifferent and detached from their political responsibilities. Whether or not the aim of Bildung was to form individuality (as part of a larger Geist), or to construct the liberal subject through the acquisition of cultural knowledge, it nevertheless is assumed to have had the longterm effect of bestowing a cultural tradition of political indifference.53 Later perceptions (particularly after World War II) of an anti-political attitude among German professors were generally explained as the result of a Romantic disdain for politics, and a pietistic view of the political world as the world of the profane. Whereas some have paid tribute to Germany as “the culture of the inward man” and saw it as a “noble, patient, deep, pious and solid country,”54 others have noticed a remarkable lack of indignation by ordinary German citizens at “the so-frequent interference with the freedom of the person.”55

II. THE UNITY OF KNOWLEDGE Kant founded the modern university on the principle of reason. Reason was what gave the university its universality in the modern sense. Whereas the medieval university had no unifying principle but was divided according to the Aristotelian principle of the nature of the matter to be studied, the modern university was organized as an architectonic unity according to the idea and ruling principle (arché) of reason. The framework was designed by Kant, who stated that, “in accordance with reason’s legislative prescriptions, our diverse modes of knowledge must not be permitted to be a mere rhapsody, but must form a system.”56 Kant designed the university’s purpose on the basis of

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reason, enabling philosophical reasoning to judge as if by “eternal and unalterable decrees.”57 As mentioned in the previous section, the university was construed as an arena for dialectical reasoning or perpetual conflict between the three higher “professional” faculties (theology, medicine and law) serving government purposes, and the lower, “theoretical” faculty (philosophy), which served truth. Each of the higher faculties, with their own particular content, relied on their own source of authoritative written texts and prescribed their teachings through particular statutes: Theology depended on the authority of the Bible, medicine on the ordinances and decrees of the medical profession, while law acquires its authority from the civil code. In contrast, the lower faculty of philosophy was free to judge anything relevant to the interest of science.58 One of the functions of philosophy was thus to determine the scope of the various sciences; it could critique the higher faculties, but was itself free, self-critical, and autonomous. Kant provided an outline of the distinctive character of each of the higher faculties, and thereby presented what appear to be jurisdictional limits on what each could do. Although each discipline developed itself though self-critical questioning, a line was drawn to separate the “professional” higher faculties from the free play of reason. Only the lower faculty freely searched for truth, for insight into the meaning of acquired experience, or for guidance furnished through a concept of nature. It was thus restricted to a search for what was essential, and to constantly ask fundamental questions based on reason. Since the ordering of the sciences was a philosophical task, it had to proceed in accordance with the method of philosophy and follow the laws of logical reasoning. The conception of scientific knowledge (Wissenschaft) rested on a distinct principle, which was intrinsically necessary and certain. For Kant, the reduction of multiplicity to a systematic unity distinguished scientific knowledge from common knowledge, as the foundation of this system was reason itself. This enabled the scientist to discover “identity in differences” and thereby to create a classificatory system (i.e., reduce multiplicity to a small number of laws). Humboldt, influenced by Kant, was critical of the “scientism” of Enlightenment critique and skeptical about the practicality of Kant’s work, along with many of Humboldt’s contemporaries. In defending “the basic force of human inclinations and feelings”59 against the repressive conformity of Enlightenment mechanism, Humboldt thus came to play an important role in what often is perceived as the paradigm shift marking the beginning of the modern human sciences, later referred to as Geisteswissenschaften.

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Humboldt knew of Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s proposals to reorganize the universities on philosophically Kantian grounds,60 allowing for free inquiry and critique (Lehrfreiheit). He was also acquainted with Fredrich Schleiermacher, who reacted strongly against turning university studies into vocational schools,61 and he expressed admiration for Fredrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s lectures on university studies delivered in Jena in 1802.62 According to the views of these thinkers, utilitarian reformers had disregarded the fact that the professional qualifications and civic responsibilities imparted by university studies were only byproducts of a much larger and more universal objective: humanization or an “intellectual coming to terms with basic material contents, on a philosophical basis of justification.”63 Although their conceptions of the university vary, Fichte, Schleiermacher, and Humboldt all believed that a unifying coherence existed, underlying unity or transcendental order behind empirical objects and actual appearances. It was not enough for scholars merely to collect facts and perform critical investigations, since this unity could not be discovered through reason alone. Education should be sought through in-depth scholarship and thus involve an active pursuit and a more profound intellectual orientation toward the larger pursuit of truth. Moreover, university studies should involve a culture, association or society of scholars similar to Plato’s Academy, where the instructors and students collaborate on equal terms, in their quest for Wissenschaft, yet with the humble recognition that they are “dealing with ultimately inexhaustible tasks” and are “engaged in an unceasing process of inquiry.”64 As hinted in the previous section, Humboldt opted for “replanting” the Kantian idea of reason “into the depths of the mind.” The principle of reason should not govern the university, as Kant proclaimed, but should rather become the achievement of elevation as well as interiorization of the idea of reason.65 The purpose of knowledge was more than deduction from the universal principle; it was idealization, where ultimately the principle and the ideal should be fused into a coherent idea.66 In order to arrive at a deep understanding of the unifying form—the unity in diversity—Humboldt suggests a lively and spirited exertion of the intellect in three directions (dreifaches streben des Geistes): [F]irst, all understanding in the wider sense must be sought by the application of a fundamental principle to explanations of natural events which penetrate from mechanical to dynamic, organic and ultimately psychological levels: all efforts should be directed at an ideal; and ultimately, the principle and the ideals should be fused into a coherent idea [in Eine Idee zu verknüpfen].67

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Humboldt insisted that the tendency toward depth and breadth should be expressed in its most “pronounced form in philosophy and art.”68 However, these domains needed to be appropriated into other fields and adequately adjusted without being reduced to procedures or “formal rules.” And it was this appropriation of art and philosophy that eventually “sprouted” or expressed itself in new academic disciplines, such as history and linguistics. Quite apart from their [philosophy and art’s] inherent tendency to decay [entarten], little is to be expected of them if their essential spirit if not appropriately expressed in other branches of knowledge and categories of research, or if it is applied there only in a logically or mathematically formalized manner.69

Throughout several of Humboldt’s writings where these ideas were applied, in particular, his 1821 essay “On the Historians Task” and his later comparative works on languages,70 Humboldt gave rise to a number of historically informed new disciplines. He is thereby attributed a prominent role in providing the theoretical foundations for the development of the modern human sciences and is considered a forerunner for what later became known as historicism.71 What is more, Humboldt’s efforts to turn (comparative) language studies into a definite linguistic science (Sprachwissenschaft) exercised great impact on thought concerning language and human development, even unto the present day.72 And as we shall see, Humboldt’s effort to facilitate new ways of perceiving reality and of representing these perceptions was not necessarily a reaction to Enlightenment mechanism but may have been a consequence of his more profound, yet core assumption about man’s essential rootedness in material nature.

Enlightenment Vitalism The majority of literature on Humboldt asserts that he aspired to create countersciences, that is, alternatives to the natural scientific reasoning and to the explanations that dominated higher education at the time. Yet some studies argue that Humboldt consciously constructed his concepts of historical and linguistic science upon the existing model of science formulated by Enlightenment thinkers. With the notable exception of the historian Peter Hanss Reill,73 few commentators in fact have looked at the connection between Humboldt’s works and the regnant sciences of the time. Reill emphasizes, for instance, that many counterdiscourses existed within the general contours of

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scientific thought during the Enlightenment (i.e., Newtonian mechanics), and that Humboldt’s effort to construct a “science of history” was made possible by translating one of these major alternative scientific visions, Enlightenment vitalism, into the disciplines of history and later linguistics.74 It is this particular influence, I suggest, that makes Humboldt different from the other educational “idealists” and that also provided him with a scientific justification for his quest for individual Bildung. Before delving further into some of the dynamics of his ideas on Bildung, it is perhaps necessary to look more closely at how this new scientific vision provided many of the philosophical underpinnings for Humboldt’s reforms. This influence might tell us something about the underlying assumptions guiding Humboldt’s writings,75 as well as help explain the logic behind his effort to develop an accompanying epistemology for the new sciences. The idea of Bildung may, in fact, be the result—as well as a reflection—of a tension residing within late-Enlightenment thought, especially concerning the role of nature or “dynamic living matter.”76 Enlightenment vitalism is the name given to a model designed to mediate between the two ideas competing in the early eighteenth century: Newtonian mechanism and animism.77 Vitalism opposed the reductionism of both ideas and attempted to mediate between them. It is this mediation, Reill argues, that enabled the emerging human sciences to develop their own methods, epistemology, and pedagogical procedures. For the new science to advance, a new method was needed, one that could mediate between the two dominant strategies of discovery: simple empiricism and logical abstraction.78 The newly developed research strategy was referred to as “controlled empiricism.” In short, the task of the new scientist was to combine empirical observation with scientific imagination to understand wie es eigentlich gewesen und geworden ist (how it actually was and became). Yet in addition to method, there was the problem of matter. Whereas mechanists defined matter as an aggregate of identical yet independent parts, which constituted a unity based on reason, vitalists understood matter as a complex conjunction of related parts. In their view, everything was interrelated, joined, or zusammengesetzt (composed), implying that to reach an understanding, one must start with the conjoined rather than the simple and then proceed to the complex. This insight made interconnections, interaction and relations, or what was referred to as Verwandtschaft (“family,” similarities, affinities, or analogical relations), into one of the defining principles of matter. Hence the natural world was depicted as a circle of relations

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or symbiotically interrelated parts in which the observer was included, not an aggregation of independent elements to be observed from “outside.” By reintroducing the concept of active or self-activating force, which nevertheless presumably had an inner, teleological character (yet not attributed to an all-empowering drive but a “will” residing in matter itself), it became possible to dissolve the strict separation between matter and spirit so essential to Newtonian mechanism. Change was not thought to be continuous, but took place in a step-by-step, revolutionary manner,79 followed by a controlled development in the newly formed shape. This change was often conveyed in the image of metamorphosis in which each step had its own unique character. The postulation of the teleological principle tied to that of universal interaction and connection between organized bodies and the world around them reintroduced both contingency and development as central scientific explanatory concepts. In effect: nature was historicized: qualitative, directional change over time was deemed natural to organized bodies. But this “progressive” development was not continuous. It proceeded through a series of drastic changes, “revolutions” in which the outward form was changed drastically, followed by a gradual development in the newly formed shape.80

According to Reill, the changes in scientific explanation challenged late eighteenth-century thinkers such as Humboldt to construct an epistemology capable of justifying and validating these assumptions. The crucial question was how one could grasp the depth of observed reality, decipher life, and interpret the “language of nature”? The solution to this puzzling question was to adopt a comparative, functional analysis and reasoning based on analogies, for only in such a way was it possible to reach a “harmonic appreciation” of the unity in the diversity of nature. The scientist, who now took on a key role in the process, had to investigate closely the many particular empirical phenomena, and cultivate his own creative imagination in order to sense their unity. This type of higher or deeper understanding was termed Anschauung (intuition). Its operations were based on the image of harmony or mediation: of continually moving back and forth, letting empirical elements nourish and modify each other.81 However, instead of endlessly moving from one to another, a third, implied or hidden agency (Ideen) was postulated as the ground upon which all reality rested. It is worth noting that this way of introducing a “hidden organizer” was not the implantation of a metaphysical entity, at least not directly,

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but it reflected the dominant way of thinking about nature before the scientific revolution.82 This thinking did not rest upon a traditional binary system of nature and culture (humanity) but was an attempt to move beyond the dichotomy. Life was perceived of to be “floating” between both poles. Thus, the new investigatory model was basically an attempt to resolve the conflict between the dualistic poles by elevating ambiguity and paradox over that of unity and contradiction. It was made possible because empirical reality (matter) was perceived as constituting a variety of active and dynamic forces: energies, drives, urges and appetites, and not an aggregate of independent parts. Harmony, the merging of opposites within an expanding middle, served as the norm and desired end of each historical or natural process, though that dynamic was continually in motion, leading to everchanging harmonic combinations.83

As attested by his writings, it is evident that Humboldt assumed there was a basic analogy between living matter and human culture.84 They were linked together by life, which he somewhat esoterically describes as “the maintenance of a ruling form of thought as a law within a mass of material through the action of a mysterious power.”85 In the physical world, this form and law were termed ‘organization’; in the moral and intellectual world it was termed ‘character.’86 The assumption of an analogy between the laws governing the physical/organic and spiritual/moral world runs throughout Humboldt’s writings, as I have suggested, and provided the foundation from which the new human sciences emerged. History and linguistics (Sprachwissenschaft),87 for Humboldt, were particularly important fields because both dealt with being in time. They were the only “sciences” capable of charting the interaction of stability and change, structure and process.88 To grasp this relationship, Humboldt employed analogies borrowed from the life sciences, for example, those of (organic) time (reproduction, growth, and development) as well as analogies of being (connection, mass, and structure). Neither language nor history was seen as advancing toward a pre-established goal (telos), nor could they be understood in terms of mechanically progressive change. Language and history were dynamic processes located between these two poles. Change was the result of active forces that leaped forth into new creations at once; it was a process in which each newly created entity developed analogously to the life of the individual, proceeding from material necessity to “spiritual” freedom (i.e., unfolding/fruition). In order to observe and discover the

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changes, one had to look carefully at both paths of development yet acknowledge that they could only be captured through analogies. In his Ideenlehre, Humboldt developed an epistemology emphasizing how ideas89 direct history and language development. Language is not understood as a product, tool, or organ (ergon) for representing thought and ideas, but rather, as an ongoing activity (energeia) in which meaning continuously is created.90 The creative acts, whereby human beings make use of language for employing words in new combinations, are considered the essence of language; they also make language crucial for the expression of individual freedom. And even though each individual speaker, group, nation, and so forth approached knowledge from different “subjective” languages, Humboldt argued: The “sum of knowledge” is “independent” of language. It is a “field to be cultivated by the human spirit” and lies “between all languages, in the middle.”91

As stated earlier, Humboldt assumed it was possible to approach this dynamic or “objective” middle through the process of cultivation. Through the path of human subjectivity (i.e., the subject’s own Erkennungs- und Empfindungsweise) or the active use of language, the process of cultivation attuned each individual to a deeper understanding of the “ultimate relatedness” of mankind. This form of understanding, in other words, could be reached only through an active engagement with language, which, in its individual form, was subjective (i.e., each language reflected particular speech conventions).92 The understanding every language conveyed was thus assumed to be both objective (i.e., it expressed the common, unifying middle) and subjective, and this understanding is metaphorically described as the “vibrating chords” of the universal “nature” or humanity.93 The new “logic of ambiguity” is illustrated by the way Humboldt reversed the subjective-objective dichotomy and implanted objectivity into the medium of subjectivity, namely our individual use of language. The procedure for the linguist is the same for the historian as scientist: Humboldt recognized that historians were confronted with fragments, or manifestations of an event that were “scattered, disjointed, isolated”;94 thus they must acknowledge an event only partially visible in the world of senses. The task of the historian was twofold: to sort out “what has happened,” he or she must observe and be receptive to every fragment of fact. Yet to truly grasp the “inner causal nexus, on which their inner truth is solely dependent,”95 the historian must use

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his or her imagination and connect fragments into a whole and give shape “to that which by mere intuition he could not have perceived as it really was.”96 In other words, the historian’s task is approximated to that of the artist or, more specifically, the poet. For if the historian, as has been said, can only reveal the truth of an event by presentation, by filling in and connecting the disjointed fragments of direct observation. He can do so, like the poet, only through his imagination.97

Humboldt recognized that the historian and the artist were both in the business of representation but with different aims. While the artist merely touched reality only to “fly away” from it, the historian sought reality alone, and needed to “plunge deeply” into it. He pursued the truth of an event (die Wahrheit der Begebenheit) whereas the poet merely sought the truth of form (die Wahrheit der Gestalt). Unlike the poet, the historian must subordinate his imagination to experience and investigate facts. Two methods had to be followed simultaneously: First, the exact, impartial, critical investigation of events, or what he referred to as the “measuring of sides and angles.” Second, to connect the events recorded with the help of imagination. This dual act could thus point to the underlying unity or relatedness, what he refers to as the “breath of life” (ein lebendiger Hauch).98 To follow only the first path is to miss the essence of truth itself; to neglect this path, however, by overemphasizing the second one is to risk falsification of truth in its details. . . . Everything depends on the fusion of the inquiring intellect and the object of the inquiry.99

Narration and Understanding In order for the historian to “attain a vision of man’s fate in its complete truth, its living abundance and pure clarity,”100 he or she must faithfully pursue the simple narration of events. The task of the historian was thus to describe the struggle of energies in the process of realization, yet without losing the sense of any event’s uniqueness. Humboldt, who obviously was concerned with the affective or emotional reception of representation,101 insisted that only by vivid description could the historian awaken and stimulate a sensibility to reality. This would provide (in the reader) an awareness of the transience of time, and thus also the consciousness of spiritual freedom. The point was, in other words, not to please the reader, nor to teach by providing

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moral examples, but rather to compose the narrative of events in such a way that the reader’s emotion would be stirred by it “as if by life itself.” Thus, history was useful by virtue of its relation to active life in the present. History does not primarily serve us by showing us through specific examples, often misleading and rarely enlightening, to what to do and what to avoid. History’s true and immeasurable usefulness lies rather in its power to enliven and refine our sense of acting on reality.102

When faced with facts, the historian must try to uncover the inner character and visualize the active forces in order to present their formal coherence or truth. Yet instead of merely copying the form or contour of the events, the historian must apply the artist’s method, and use his or her imagination to create an image or figure of the inner truth of form, which was hidden from view. The necessity of moving from inner recognition to outer representation, points to the existence of a third and linking element, a middle, which allowed understanding to occur. If you want to understand the contour of form from within, you must go back to form per se and to the essence of the organism, i.e., to mathematics and natural science. The latter provides the definition, the former the idea of the form. To both must be added, as a third linking element, the expression of the soul of the spiritual life.103

In other words, the historian’s understanding of an event was guided by an idea, or rather a form-giving drive, which “emerges from the mass of events themselves, or, to be more precise, originate[s] in the mind through contemplation of the scattered and disjointed events.”104 Just as with the artist, in order for the historian to attune his or her mind to grasp what is right, subtle, and hidden, imagination had to reside in solitude; through a contemplation of the events, the historian had to establish for him- or herself an image or visual picture (Bild) of the inner nexus of active forces, and recognize trends at any given moment.105 The historian had to inquire into the relationship of both forces and trends to the existing state of affairs and to the changes that preceded it. It was the underlying or universal ideas that allowed deep understanding or Anschauung to occur, yet the ideas were neither visible, like the form—the symmetry and proportions—in visual art, nor could

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they be captured by abstract reasoning. The ideas rested on the belief that there were some basic regulative patterns or “breaths of life” common to all living entities that could be sensed or apprehended. Understanding is not merely the extension of the subject, nor is it merely a borrowing from its object; it is rather both simultaneously. Understanding always is the application of a pre-existing general idea to something new and specific. When two beings are completely separated by a chasm, there is no bridge of communication between them: and in order to understand each other, they must, in some other sense, have already understood each other.106 [Wo zwei Wesen durch gänzliche Kluft getrennt sind, führt keine Brücke der Verständigung von einem zum andren, und um sich zu versehen, muss man sich in einem andren Sinn schon verstanden haben. Bei der Geschichte is diese vorgängige Grundlage des Begreifens sehr klar, da alles, was in der Weltgeschicte wirksam ist, sich auch in dem Innern des Menschen bewegt.]107

These active forces or ideas manifested themselves as a trend, which gradually became visible at a given moment, and as a creation of energies uneducable from its circumstances.108 The development of language was explained similarly, as was the development of the human race. Thus, for Humboldt, language was constituent of thought and hence an outward manifestation of the inner spirit of humanity.109 For this reason, to unlock the secrets of language provided access to history, just as history provided insights into language development. As hinted at earlier, one of the implications of this view is that analogical reasoning and comparisons became important “scientific” methods and procedures.

The Unity of Research and Teaching The notion of a universal truth of mankind residing in an extended or “floating” middle, affected Humboldt’s attitude toward academic scholarship. Among other things, it justified the cultivation of the individual’s creative capabilities through broad and varied scholarly activity and encouraged the joint effort of teacher and learner in an in-depth search for this common ground. Consequently, it made history and philology (i.e., classical philology and comparative linguistics) into important, if not necessary disciplines, not only on behalf of the scholarly enterprise but, more urgently, on behalf of humanity

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as a whole. Philosophical reasoning was not enough to determine the dynamics of history. Rather, since language was seen as the key to unlocking the human spirit in all its variety, it was important to investigate the different languages’ forms and more so, how the inner form—the universal Bildung of man—“shines forth” in the expression of individuals, civilizations or nations, and more. To Kant’s mind, philosophy guaranteed the unity of the sciences by means of a common method of thought. And it may be argued that along with the idealist philosophers, Humboldt followed Kant in his ambition to produce a rationalistic system that could replace theology and make philosophy into a superior science in the service of truth. Kant introduced the conviction that a common transcendental order resides in all, and that the fundamental principles or essences of being can be intellectually deciphered and comprehended by reasoning subjects. Nevertheless, whereas Kant saw reality as appearances or representation constructed by way of the transcendental subject itself (i.e., the categories of thought; space, time, etc.), reality for the (later) philosophical idealists, was perceived as empirical manifestations by way of the knowing subject of that which was found in the transsubjective or ideal. This difference is important because it makes “the self” or rather the human sensibilities and creative actions, into the dynamic and creative center capable of expressing, transmitting, or manifesting the ideal. (I will return to this intellectual move later in the section on the concept of Bildung.) It might be argued that, because of his early emphasis on the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Humboldt managed to reconcile Kant’s emphasis on the subject’s receptivity with the dynamism of vitalism (i.e., active forces). A notion of a subject’s “becoming” or continuous formation was thus given precedence over consistent, invariable being. To study history was to critically investigate the struggles from which life’s interconnected energies become manifest in an infinite number of autonomous events or individualities. Furthermore, the crucial task was to connect fragments into a whole by means of an intuitive understanding. The historian’s task was to bridge the gap (Abstand) and engender a sense of the whole, or the interconnectedness that resides between them. In other words, the task was to connect and represent “facts” truthfully, in the mood they called for, and through the “subjective” expression—exposition, depiction, portrayal, or performance110—to awaken a sense of the “spirit” that animated them.

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The Importance of History for Bildung When Humboldt formulated his conception of the university, the already existing priority placed on philosophical speculation and human consciousness was enhanced and strengthened by the neohumanist revival, particularly through the influence of Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s writings and in the literary movement of the early Romantics. However, there is reason to believe that the anti-French attitude and emerging nationalism of the time gave the educational ideals that followed in the wake of this revival a distinctly political shape. Even though an interest in classical antiquity was a prominent feature of the Enlightenment, it is often assumed that the revival of studies in Roman and Greek culture resulted in profound changes in the Western view of history.111 The most prominent change was perhaps the assumption that “man is the measure of all things,”112 and that the true study of any discipline must be historical (i.e., reflect temporality) in its orientation. Through the “discovery” of the human’s potentials and qualities, and of the differences between (national) characters, German classical scholarship expanded its scope and methods, gradually turning into the study of history. History was no longer seen as narratives made by individuals with artistic or utilitarian motives but was believed to encompass a series of facts: authentic events that could be fitted into a larger unified pattern and systematically studied. This meant that history could be not only subjected to a critical method and fitted into a universal “system” but had to be studied as social processes analogous to the dynamic processes in nature. With the notion of “the spirit of humanity,” Humboldt advocated a deep residing unity or universal harmony, which meant that one could study the birth, growth and development of different civilizations both individually and comparatively. However, since “objective” knowledge of the past could be obtained only through the scholar’s subjective experience, the limitations imposed by “historicity,” as indicated in the previous section, could be applied to the individual scholar as well. The process of Bildung was a means to equip the individual scholar with the creative power, talent, or sensibility necessary to capture and represent the unity in diversity. This could best be achieved by actively cultivating one’s diverse abilities and talents though variegated studies, and by seeking to enter into the subject, which one wanted to understand. The relationship between Bildung—individuation or

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self-cultivation—and, particularly, the development of history as a scientific discipline, can, to some extent, also be attributed to Rousseau’s influence on German scholarship. In addition to the Augustinian heritage stemming from the German medieval historians, it was Rousseau’s individualism—his description of man in his state of nature as a pure and good being, endowed with perfectability113—that found its greatest echo in Germany. Both Kant, who asserted the power of man’s pure and practical reason, and the German Sturm und Drang literary movement drew heavily on Rousseau’s ideas. Although Rousseau himself believed that man was a “pure” being who must forget history to regain his natural heritage that had been degenerated through civilization, his ideas were transformed in Germany into a notion of history as the unfolding of man’s natural capacities (Humanitas). Hence the notion of self-formation or individuation that developed is distinct from that of individualism (i.e., the expression of an innate, essential, natural self), for individuation focuses more on dynamic, differentiated growth and cultivating one’s own inner form or Eigentumlichkeit though an active encounter with society and history. Although influenced by the Greeks’ self-formation (paideia), it hints at a new and characteristically modern focus (labeled Romantic to distinguish it from classical) on differences; on the particular, unique, and distinctly human urges, sensibilities, yearnings, actions, and continuous search for “perfection,” shaping each and every individual in different ways, as opposed to the individual understood as the expression of an innate, universal or serene human ideal or form.114 In this modern conception, history is understood as the self-education of mankind; the realization of humanitas, understood as “an underlying coherence or pattern working itself out through an immense diversity and gaining nourishment from it.”115 The study of history would thus be a humanistic—cosmopolitan—endeavor.116 Hence, to study history in its entire individual expressions would be important for the formation and ethical nurturing of the individual (i.e., character) in relation to what was common to all. Only through a broad understanding of human life’s diversity could men be able to reach the heights of self-realization.117 Thus, history became a prerequisite in educating the individual’s awareness and his (ethical) understanding of mankind. The more profoundly the historian understands mankind and its actions through intuition and study, the more humane his disposition is by nature and circumstances, and the more freely he gives rein to his humanity, the more completely will he fulfill his task.118

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Cosmopolitan Humanism and National Character It was J. H. Herder, one of the inspirational sources of German literary romanticism, who first resisted the tendency to base history on GrecoRoman antiquity. Instead, Herder proposed that the foundation of a philosophy of history should proceed from classicism to a broader idea of humanism. In expanding its scope and methods, history would be sought in contingent and concrete reality, in the plurality of different, nationally specific ways of living, and through a focus on the internal coherence of each unique way of life.119 History was the “biography” of a culture’s characteristic virtues, education, achievements, dominant opinions, customs, and more. Since history embodied all of a culture’s individual expressions, history was the formation of a national character.120 Herder, who uses the term Bildungstrieb to characterize the creative drive that permeated nature and art, regarded language and literature, the arts, law, the state, and so forth as parts of an organic process in which humanity learns to take charge of its potentials and possibilities.121 And as the study of classical antiquity gradually turned into the study of human civilization in general, it was assumed that a unity or “objective form” of any particular culture could be identified though individual or comparative studies. It is this deeper unity, as Holborn expresses it, that “constituted the riddle to be deciphered.”122 Posterity, however, has disregarded Herder’s notion of culture as nationalistic, even though he himself never advocated German superiority, nor was he “a believer in the preordained domination of European civilizations.”123 Herder’s organic conception of history implied that social processes were understood as analogous to the organic processes in nature (i.e., “natural law”).124 He was thus able to harmonize his belief—that man’s natural development can take place in history— with Rousseau’s contention that natural man is the ideal man. Yet, as critics have pointed out, one may argue that embedded in this “organic humanism” lies the nascent scientification of history. I will return to this in the last section.

III. BILDUNG Bildung is perhaps the concept tied most explicitly to the achievements of Humboldt. It is an autonomous ideal of “self-cultivation” and is assumed to be the result of intellectual inspiration Humboldt received from the neohumanist revival in Göttingen, at the time of his education for state service between 1787 and 1789. Bildung depends, in

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part, upon an image of man that Humboldt derived from his reading of Leibniz; it developed further through his close association with the Jewish intellectual community, particularly the Tugenbund (League of Virtues), which Humboldt founded together with the Saloniere, Henriette Herz in 1787.125 Already in his early text, The Limits of State Action, Humboldt envisioned Man as a dynamic organism: uniquely characterized by his energy (Kraft), with an “inner urge” to find appropriate outlets for his energies and an “outer drive” to realize his potentialities and thus increase his abilities. Humboldt here emphasized the freedom of selfreliance and acting for oneself, yet he insisted that this freedom could best develop through an interchange of one’s individuality with that of others. Bildung is subsequently understood as the interplay between two processes: the inner spiritual realization and the outer interchange of one’s individuality with others. Yet the “enlightened absolutism” of the Friedrician state of Humboldt’s own time could not be an instrument for the free development of human potentialities. Instead, as I have argued, Humboldt found the model for such a voluntary social interchange in the city-state of ancient Greece, where “the person” and “the citizen” harmonized as one. He saw the political constitution of the polis as the instrument of this unity: It was minimal, governed few areas of life, and was bolstered by extending politics into private life through an education aimed at producing loyal citizens. [T]hese ancient institutions preserved and heightened the vigorous activities of the individual man. The very desire, which they had always before them, to train up temperate and energetic citizens gave a higher impulse to their whole spirit and character.126

In his later endeavor of establishing the educational system, Humboldt found the means to satisfy this second associational condition of Bildung.127 One may thus argue that Humboldt, in his attempt to devise a practical educational program based on autonomous individual development, managed to reconcile the Enlightenment goal of providing service to the state with his ideal of individual formation or Bildung. Education was proclaimed as a process for creating a nation of “moral men and good citizens” (sittlichen Menschen und guten Bürger).128 For Humboldt, only an individual, who is freely and harmoniously gebildetet, will become a “wise legislator,”129 and thus the person best suited to serve the state and society at large. The state was conceived as legitimate only insofar as it demonstrated a capacity to commit itself to

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promoting Bildung. This could be achieved by providing institutional autonomy and protecting the university from utilitarian demands.

From the Nation to the Idea of National Education Humboldt’s emotional attachment to Prussia provided him with the means for the theoretical resolution of his principles of Bildung and his alleged nationalism. In reforming the educational system, he saw the possibility for their concrete implementation. Thus, he declared that the individual’s energy and Bildung depended upon that of the “nation.”130 He assumed that if freedom prevailed within educational institutions themselves, then the nation would develop into an associational bond that could foster the interchange necessary for self-cultivation.131 However, whereas the inward self-cultivation and the civic—associational—conceptions of Bildung were closely associated in his early text The Limits of State Action, the civic conception was to some extent suppressed in the process of reconciling it with Ausbildung (education for the benefit of society as a whole). Humboldt nevertheless upheld his original claim that a person educated to be a free and harmonious individual would be a better citizen than the person educated merely to be a citizen, even though they both had to fill the role of the citizen. He, who has been thus freely developed, should then attach himself to the state; and the state should test itself by his measures. Only through such a struggle, could I confidently hope for a real improvement of the national constitution, and banish all fear of the harmful influence of civil institutions on human nature.132

Critics have remarked that the political imperative that could have animated the schools133 was lost in the attempt at reconciliation, and that the educational system would “remain an instrument of autocratic rule producing obedient if not apolitical subjects.”134 Indeed, it is perhaps the nationalist spirit advocated by Fichte, a friend and contemporary of Humboldt, that constituted the major threat to the sovereignty of individual Bildung and eventually subordinated it to the goal of awakening the civic and military spirit of patriotism. Early in his career, however, Fichte conceived of the limits of state action much the same as Humboldt did. He opposes the common (Aristotelian) contention that the state was a part of the absolute purpose of human life; he assumed the state to be merely a means or vehicle for the formation of an enlightened, perfect society. He thereby

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rejected any interference by the state in educational matters, even though he insisted that the state had to assume its obligation to establish schools as well as to protect scholars’ freedom of thought and expression.135 Yet later, Fichte became an eager defender of a consolidated system of national education, and regarded the state as having the justifiable right to make education compulsory. The change in Fichte’s attitude toward state intervention in education is often explained as a result of the political circumstances at the time.136 Some claim that he argued in favor of national education because the state would no longer need a special army but would have a nation of able citizens to recruit when necessary. A national education could thus help defeat the French “by other means,” since national education would produce the necessary patriotic spirit: The stable and certain spirit which is the only possible foundation of a well-organized state—the spirit which includes that love of fatherland from which spring of themselves the courageous defender of his country and the peaceful and honest citizen.137

It is important to note, however, that Fichte saw the state as a liberating power with an obligation to order, rather than as a justified coercive power. The dilemma of achieving unity without sacrificing diversity, of securing order without letting go of freedom, was a great concern for political and philosophical programs of that day. However, contrary to Humboldt’s emphasizing the cultivating process of Bildung on behalf of humanity, it is assumed that Fichte placed a stronger emphasis on the product, form, or Bild imposed on a person by education. He believed that not only the individual, but also the community, or rather the national character, would find its harmonious form though national education. Meanwhile, Humboldt was an ardent opponent of the movement for national political education and did not teach adoration of the state. The state should not determine the content but should instead ensure the process of Bildung. Humboldt’s “nationalism” in regard to education was cultural rather than political; it was similar to Herder’s in kind,138 and, as hinted above, thus intimately related to a notion of universal humanity. Such ideas evolved through the neohumanist revival yet were gradually transformed by the political tension of the period. However, Humboldt repeatedly stressed: It is human worth, dignity which he [the individual] is to seek. And the questions he must answer are: What is it that by a universal

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standard could measure the value of things for man, and the value of one man for another? How do I recognize it? Where do I find it? How do I bring it about when it does not seem to be present? Since it is supposed to apply to all men, it must be something general, but since it cannot be anyone’s serious intention to make all the different human natures over into one single model, it must not violate the difference between individuals. It must therefore be something which always remains one and the same, but which may be carried out in manifold ways.139

Nevertheless, it is frequently overlooked that Humboldt was a nationalist because he was a cosmopolitan (this also applies to Herder).140 For Humboldt, the nation was merely a medium through which humanity could realize its potentials, a space from which life’s manifold expressions—the vital energies—could become manifest in the “true richness and range of human nature.”141 Thus the national culture and civilization came to be seen as superior to the state, since both, in Humboldt’s terminology, represented the (illuministic) “flashes” of a larger and more continuous spirit of humanity.

Humboldt and Romantic Subjectivism Although the notion of Bildung is often linked with the subjectivism associated with German Romanticism, this was not the source of inspiration for Humboldt and his contemporaries; rather, they all started from Kant’s assumption of the unity of knowledge by a supreme and “pure” reason. They shared Kant’s concern with the problem of how to preserve the autonomy and authority of reason. For them, the difficult question was to determine how it was possible for the human subject to know. As Kant’s disciples Fichte and Schelling asked: What do we mean by the simple expression “I know”? What constitutes the true relation between the subject and the object, the knower and the known? What is the relationship between the conditions of experience and the objects of experience? What is the relationship between the concept of human consciousness and that of language? As I have tried to convey, Humboldt assumed an antecedent interrelation existed between subject and object. He insisted that ideas, or rather, an inner temperate harmony of energies, provided for this unity. The fact that he assumed an all-pervasive metaphysical dualism and described human nature in terms of a dichotomous structure (i.e., mind/body, abstract understanding/sensibility, active/passive) is no

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contradiction to such a claim, as he saw the duality as locked in a zusammengesetz relationship. Bildung was necessary for Wissenschaft. By cultivating each individual’s talents, creative powers, and capabilities, they would become attuned to the “chords” residing in our common ground. Similar to Goethe, Humboldt recognized in human beings a “natural” urge toward growth and the unfolding of a self. He assumed each individual was a dynamic undifferentiated matter that never manifested itself in one stable or complete definite form, but was infinitely open to revaluation.142 And one may argue, as Lewis Hinchman does, that the person or “self” was pictured as a dynamic force, or as a “a path of development and transformation that will, if successful, culminate both in genuine self-discovery and a glimpse of harmony between the self and its cultural or natural environment.”143 However, Humboldt applied a more “vital” terminology when emphasizing the individual’s inner or natural urges for development or cultivation. All difference among living creatures, among plants and animals, among the manifold species of the latter, among nations and individuals in the human species, rests solely upon the differences in their life-urges . . . What is here called “urge” (Trieb) should perhaps more correctly be called “self-acting, or spontaneous, idea” (selbstthätige Idee). But I avoided this otherwise synonymous expression because it may lead to the misapprehension that the idea lies ready and waiting only to carry itself out, working gradually, in time. According to my conviction, however, the workings of nature’s fundamental energies, the epitome and the norm of all ideas, consist in activity which defines and determines itself only through its own operations.144

The German word selbstthätig, which most often is translated as “spontaneous,” is important in relation to Bildung because it illustrates the dynamism embedded in Humboldt’s notion of free cultivation, and that his conception of “action and growth” was thought to be an active, self-generating process involving vital force (“urges”) rather than simply a passive (“vegetative”) or instinctual response by something given. Yet Humboldt insisted that within the inner urge to continuously shape and reshape the self, there was also a naturally given yet underdeveloped yearning for association, unity or harmony; an urge to carry the self beyond itself toward a sympathetic understanding or identification with others. It was from this assessment that Humboldt, in his early writings, so persuasively argued in favor of creating an institutional setting of maximum personal liberty by limiting the action

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of the state. And it was this yearning that found expression in the free interchange between teachers and students in the research seminar. Humboldt’s notion of a dynamic and differentiated self sets him somewhat apart from the Romantic thinkers, who, to a greater extent, stressed the incomparability of each individual as being and knower. Even though the concept of individuality was understood neither by the Romantics nor by Humboldt as a reflection of an inner, natural essence, or the fulfillment of a pre-determined purpose or divine plan, the Romantics tended to assume that each individual was destined— by his nature and in his achievement—to bring to life his or her own incomparable image.145 Although Humboldt uses the same term, his conception of individuality is more ambiguous and open-ended as opposed to his conception of character.146 Since he believed that the “self” was open to change (i.e., the formation or unfolding within society) and revaluation, questions concerning the means for cultivation (as well as its purpose) were intimately linked to ethical ideals of what it was that constituted a good life. To Humboldt’s way of thinking, an obligation rested on the government to protect the process in which each and every individual could freely pursue life to its fullest and thus obtain the inner will, moral integrity or “character” necessary for attaining a good life in harmony with others. “Individuality” was thus not defined in terms of psychology, nor was “character” delineated in terms of particular traits or code of conduct. Rather, the latter is closely connected to the kind of self-formation (i.e., ascesis) or moderation of the self by self-discipline, which the ancient Greeks referred to as character or ethos.

How to Bridge the Gap between the Ideal and Real For Humboldt, the national character that best reflected the essential qualities of humanity was that of the ancient Greeks, for they aimed at mastering the “art of living by educating men in the highest possible versatility.”147 In order to foster a similar harmonious development, modern education needed to draw inspiration from the Greeks and be active and dynamic, not passive and doctrinal. Education should be sought through free inquiry and an intimate acquaintance with classical artworks, beyond scholastic instruction or vocational training.148 Much in the same way as history in ancient times was, the modern study of history should be grounded in experience and generate knowledge useful for life.149 As I have touched upon earlier in the chapter, modern studies of history should be comparative and

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analogical, because an awareness of different “arts of living” would lead to a greater understanding of mankind in its diversity. One should extract, from the scattered details of past civilizations and cultures, the common spirit150 that animated them, without losing the sense of their unique “character.” Scholarship was thus a search for the essential or highest human values, and thereby also an effort to seek confirmation of the interconnectedness of life. However, to be able to rise from the plane of “actual man” to that of “ideal man” required scholarly abilities and attentive individuals endowed with a specific kind of understanding that comprised reason, imagination, and memory; this understanding entailed a kind of visual intuition, which, as previously mentioned, was known as Anschauung. However, the notion of intuition reflected a new awareness of the human powers of imagination (Einbildungskraft) and the possibility of bridging the apparently insurmountable cleft between man and nature, the ideal and real, the subjective and objective, the past and the present, through aesthetic experience.

Anschauung and the Human Imagination Kant represents the point of origin for Humboldt and other philosopher’s reflections on aesthetic experience as an independent realm, yet Kant himself used the term in several divergent ways.151 In Kant’s rational system, intellectual intuition is impossible, because no human mind is capable of comprehending “things in themselves.” The human act of consciousness is conditioned and therefore limited. Consciousness can only be represented through concepts; the “labels it attaches to things.” In Kant’s critical philosophy, experience is the result of the unification, mediation, or linking of a concept (the common, universal and general) with an intuition (i.e., reception through the senses).152 Yet this means that consciousness is split, insofar as it signifies the mind’s ultimate lost harmony with the world. We are, so to speak, destined to be “outside spectators” of the external world of noumena. When Kant addressed the question of intuition in the Critique of Judgment, however, it was discussed in relation to the possibility of making valid aesthetic judgments. Now he argues that when the subject makes a disinterested aesthetic judgment (e.g., when we deem an art-object beautiful), there is a mandate for universal agreement, in other words, a “common” sense.153 Although Kant may have felt that he had successfully resolved the tension between the subject and things in the world, for philosophers following in his wake, the tension prevailed between the empirical and the transcendental (self). Fichte and Schelling questioned Kant’s view

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and tried, through diverse paths, to present dialectical solutions to the problem. Fichte’s aim was to posit the first, absolutely unconditioned proposition of all scientific knowledge,154 while admitting that the subject-object dichotomy could not provide such a foundation. For Fichte, this self-evident truth or pure origin (Reine Ursprunglichkeit) “springs from the deep realms of the Ego.”155 The self or ego is not understood as a static thing, but rather as a process of free self-determination involving an infinite reasoning activity infused by moral will (i.e., autonomy is understood as self-imposed lawfulness), in which the subject posits itself as the object of critical reflection. Intellectual intuition (Anschauung) would thus be a kind of pure self-comprehension. Meanwhile, Schelling approached the problem from the ideal or transcendental side: For him, intuition was not an insight into the activity of the self, but rather, an insight into something that was neither the self nor any of its activities.156 Intellectual intuition was an insight into the Absolute, objectified as Nature’s universal spirit, since Nature was “the sum of all that is purely objective in our knowledge.”157 Schelling assumed that the human mind could intuit the forces of nature (Urgrund) and that such an intuition constituted absolute knowledge. Intellectual intuition was the identity of thought and being, the moment when we recognize the unification or identity of the real and ideal, of the subject and object. He thus apparently assumed the subject and object as being united in aesthetic creation. Art was the manifestation of the absolute, yet also an empirical product in which the self recognizes itself.158 Genius was depicted as the element of the incomprehensible and infinite made manifest in art, although not an element incorporated into the artwork, but rather something the artist seemed to express by instinct.159 The basic character of a work of art is . . . an unconscious infinity . . . In addition to what he has placed into it on purpose, the artist seems to have represented in it by instinct, an infinity which no finite understanding can wholly explicate.160

This means that art and aesthetics became further entrenched as an independent realm of speculation and a means of discovery that supplemented philosophy. The philosopher may understand why what the artist does is necessary, but he cannot understand how the artist does it. Meanwhile, the task of a philosophy of art was to discover art’s place in the Absolute, in other words, to determine the a priori ground from which art (potentially) “evolved,” rather than to provide empirical consideration of it.

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Aesthetic Education: Humboldt and Schiller Humboldt was, as much as Schiller, concerned with the ambiguous relationship between the sensible and the intelligible. He regarded Kant’s treatise on aesthetics to be superficial and “needing correction,” and he was eager to pursue Schiller’s plan of writing an essay on Aesthetic Education.161 For Schiller, as for Humboldt, cultivating the imagination involved a more profound ethical imperative: The will was sensitized and made more responsive to impressions from the world, and thus was also transformed by them. In the aftermath of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror in France, they both believed that aesthetic education was a way to “make men better,” and improve the human condition. This could be achieved by cultivating the human imagination, which, in Schiller terminology, is described as a “play-drive” (Spieltrieb), or, more precisely, an interaction of the two necessary yet antithetical operations of the human mind: the matter-drive (Stofftrieb: sense-perception) and the form-drive (Formtrieb: transcendental, pure forms).162 From this, it would follow that the task of education is to cultivate the “play-drive,” since it is transformative and creates in individuals a broader worldview that affects the way one experience and acts.163 Schiller assumed that aesthetic experience and education (Erziehung) were fundamental for the moral development of society as well as of the individual.164 It created harmoniousness, enabling any person to act freely and thus “naturally” in accord with reason. In Schiller’s notion of (the experience of) beauty (appropriated from Kant), lay both absolute freedom and rigorous subjection to law.165 Humboldt was a close friend, intellectual companion, and admirer of Schiller. They both believed that the ideally good and the ideally beautiful were linked in a mysterious bond. In accordance with Schiller, Humboldt stressed that one must not think of education as being only “direct guidance to sensible behavior, good character and sufficient knowledge,”166 but that education depended on the capacity of a person to “work on himself at the instigation or through the influence of the educational force.”167 More important than moral discipline was an education that aimed at moral maturation through individuation: To be developed in such a way—subtly, delicately, and meaningfully—takes a person who is not merely concerned with the lawfulness of his way of life, as is the duty of everyone, but one who thinks of and works on his own character as though it were a free-standing work of art. Such a person is suffused by a deep feeling for his

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own individuality, and deeply familiar with the universal ideal of humanity.168

However, Humboldt was skeptical of the way Schiller made aesthetic education the sole key to human improvement. The study of man as an aesthetic being was important, primarily because aesthetics or imagination, as he phrased it, provided the key for interpreting the expression, symbols or signs (chiffre) whereby the invisible world of our nature became manifest and revealed to the human senses.169 Meanwhile, the concept of beauty occupied a subordinate role in Humboldt’s reflection of aesthetics in comparison to his conception of the imagination (Einbildungskraft) and the Ideal.170 He argued persistently that “the feeling of beauty derives neither from theoretical nor practical reason, but rather from all human faculties combined, and it is actually that which binds all human capacities together into a single whole.”171 Although Humboldt shared Schiller’s belief that the superiority of ancient Greek art rested on their emphasis on harmonious unity over expressiveness,172 in his view, the Greeks should be studied for the inspiring example they gave, all the while acknowledging that modern man is a wholly different creature.173 Furthermore, Schiller’s distinction, in which he tends to place reason over the senses, unity over multiplicity, Formtrieb over Stofftrieb did not appeal to Humboldt,174 who rejected the abstract voice of reason. Humboldt’s emphasis on sensibility and his idiosyncratic use of the concept Sinnlichkeit175 is evidence of his skepticism of Schiller’s distinction. Instead, Humboldt yearned to create conditions for the free rein of man’s vital energies, in which the “sensuous urges” (Sinnlichkeit) played an important part. His effort was soon directed toward establishing a method for generating actual knowledge that could be valid for practical, contingent application, which was, in his terminology, to “find the Ideal, without destroying the Individuum.”176 Although the Greeks symbolized “how godlike men could be if they lived at full capacity,”177 Humboldt realized that the modern ideal must constantly be tested by observing nature and presenting things “as they are.” Thus, the “science of man” came to mean “the study of (human) subject matter,” just as the natural scientist studied nature, by combining the philosopher’s rational insight with the poet’s sensibility to form. Although Humboldt never wrote a systematic treatise on aesthetics, he addressed the issue as an aspect of anthropology or the study of man. Interestingly enough, he began this study with an examination of the differences between the sexes and their significance for

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the aesthetic Bildung of men. Thus, as one might expect, he asked a crucial question: Do the governing principles underlying this theory of Bildung apply to both males and females?178 Even though Humboldt, along with his contemporaries, believed that feminine and masculine were essentially different “gender” qualities, he did not imply any hierarchical distinctions between them, nor did he reduce them to sexual differences. His exploration of the physical world was done in predominantly organic/vital, if not sensualistic terms, referring to “desire,” “procreation” and so on.179 Yet, in accordance with his emphasis on ambiguity, interconnection and the conjoined, his writings on “gender” contain a rather utopian call for a transcendence of the polar, gender opposition, through artistic androgyny.180 Androgyny is not, however, depicted as the ideal of human perfection, or, as one may expect, an ideal toward which Bildung should aim, but it is primarily a representation or figuration of the balance or harmony obtained through a union of inner energies or forces. Androgyny was thus the combination, assimilation, interrelation, or “bridging” of contrary qualities. Consistent with his intention, Bildung thus implies a process that promotes in each individual the desired development toward an androgynous union. To better explain what seems to be a rather controversial idea, it is perhaps necessary to keep in mind Humboldt and his generation’s admiration for Greek art. The Greek conception of ideal beauty as transsexual or androgynous was well-known to the German public, especially through Winckelmann and his definition of the Greek aesthetic ideal.181 And as Humboldt saw it, the Greeks came closest to representing ideal humanity in their plastic art.182 As reflected in their greatest artistic examples, the Greek ideal is an androgynous amalgamation. However, for Humboldt, it is not the artwork but the artist who stands as the androgynous ideal; he pronounces that the true genius is in fact “sex-less” (Geschlechtsloses Genie), understood as the unification of masculine and feminine energies.183 Although such an opinion may seem controversial today, there is reason to believe that Humboldt, though his writing on androgyny, made a case for gender equality, much in the same manner as Schleiermacher, who, a few years later, had “called upon women to demand a Bildung, unlimited by the bounds of sex, equal to that of men.”184 The fact that Humboldt’s intellectual milieu consisted of many influential women,185 may also explain his radical views. Yet I believe that his intellectual convictions, his emphasis on vital energies and the conjoined, which stresses ambiguity and paradox, engendered and spurred on these novel and original ideas.

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IV. METHOD AND PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES For Humboldt, the challenge was to develop systematic methods of learning that would help the individuals fulfill their own capacities and potentials and would aid the collective to lead lives of maximum harmony or “ideality.” The purpose of the new studies of man—history and linguistics—was to decipher the “infinite in the finite” and thereby bridge the gap separating the real and ideal, the particular and the universal, the past and the present. The notion of individuality and particularly the concept of character were important for his endeavor to develop methodological tools capable of providing knowledge of man. For Humboldt, as hinted above, individuality was the form in which the energies that infused the universe became manifest. The infinite number of individuals, nations, cultures, were but singular expressions—signs—or imprints of a larger universal spirit (Idee).

The Importance of Intellectual Passion (Geist) By the concept character, Humboldt referred to the outward manifestation of inner urges and vital forces (Kräfte). It was the inner reality of vital forces, their degree of intensity, state of tension and interplay that determined the individuality that eventually came to expression. He reacted strongly against the emphasis on man as a uniform rational being, as expressed by Kant and others who held an a priori view of history, for their attention was too focused on cultures and civilizations, yet they neglected the primitive conditions from which developments germinated. He thus aimed to find an appropriate method that could enable “the gifted seeker” to grasp this inner reality that was merely expressed in the outer signs. Still, he realized that there would always remain, no matter how deeply one penetrated, an unknown magnitude, the primal vital force . . . the personality that is given with life itself.186

The point of such a method was to enable the scholar to discover the inner reality behind the multiple expressions of individuality. To obtain this kind of knowledge one needed a scientific approach that combined empirical investigation and imaginative insight. Thus, in addition to assembling facts and making a generalization, it was necessary to acquire a deeper understanding of this invisible, yet common inner nature. However, since the inner reality or essential nature of things could not be perceived but only inferred (i.e., from events in history),

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scholars needed to possess a particular passion, spiritual energy or Geist,187 described as an “enviable state in which the senses, the imagination and reason are operative in proper relationship to each other.”188 Humboldt insisted that Geist only could be acquired through a manysided Bildung, since only a diversity of inputs could provide “the capacity for intuitive knowledge of unfamiliar characteristics.”189 In addition to collecting facts, one needed the artistic (i.e., poetic) ability of quickly perceiving what gave an entity a configuration or Gestalt of its own. Still, Humboldt’s reference to Geist has often been misinterpreted as a reference to a special talent or even a spiritual quality only a chosen few possess.190 The last thing he wanted to do, claims Sweet, was to “leave the impression that he preened himself upon being in possession of the means of knowing completely the actual character of human beings.”191 Humboldt acknowledged that it was impossible to know truth, and one could but only approach it and receive intimations of it.

The Role of Aesthetics in Education Schiller insisted that aesthetic education was necessary for individuals to obtain the harmony or balance necessary to fulfill our potentials and thus have an enriched life. Humboldt was skeptical of Schiller’s appeal to pure reason and ideal beauty and insisted that the world of art and aesthetics was self-contained and autonomous, separated from the world of reason. As conveyed in many of his writings, art was not understood as an imitation of nature or as objects created for mere pleasure. Art was an act of expression performed by the human subject, or, rather, by the artist’s own imagination.192 The most general task of all art, he insisted, was to transform “reality” into an image or Bild.193 The artist’s primary task was thus “to annihilate nature as he finds it mirrored in his mind as reality, and to recreate by the power of his imagination a new symbolic world.”194 The purpose was not to create a world “private” to the artist, but rather to awaken the reader’s imagination. For Humboldt, the artist “gives us the world” by putting us in a particular mood or state of mind—Stimmung—in which we “comprehend everything.”195 He thereby addressed the profound question of art as a sensible (affective) representation or reception. Stated in more modern terms, he addressed the possibility that art or aesthetic experience could be a medium of intersubjective communication.196 He assumed that the artist had the ability to transform nature into an

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expression or representation—“spark”—that may ignite the imagination of viewers.197 Since the artist had the ability to arouse effects by stimulating the audience’s imagination, the artist could thus engender “communication” among minds. The aesthetic experience or imagination could thus provide a bridge between the real and ideal (common, inner truth), the place where the imagination of the artist interacted with the imagination of the audience. It is assumed that Humboldt’s view of art marks a radical shift toward modern aesthetic theory; art came to be understood as an act performed by the human imagination. Moreover, the problem of how to detect the “unknown something” that could not be understood by reason and deduction, yet “applied to all men,” seemed now to have found its resolution. His insight and reasoning in relation to aesthetics provided a solution to his reflections on the task of the historian as scientist: How could the historian awaken a sense of the “reality” by presenting the scattered facts “as they happened”? How could the historian use his or her imagination and represent the “truth of an event” so that others could understand it “as it actually was”? How could the historian produce an image that affected the reader, yet still remain faithful to the empirical facts?

The Historian’s Ambiguous Task As hinted earlier, Herder and Humboldt are often regarded as the pioneers of the new philosophy of history that emerged in the last decades of the eighteenth century. They insisted that history was a science because it rested on empirical facts and aimed to describe “what happened.” The only way historians could educate individuals to a higher level of humanity was by representing (describing) the historical events “as they were.” Living (and thus also enlivening) history was more important than an appeal to the “objective” forms of the ancients. In fact, Humboldt singled out Kant’s essay “Idea of a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View” as an example of what was objectionable in a priori history, drawing attention to the “tendency to envisage the consummation of humanity in a general, abstractly conceived perfectability rather than as the development of a wealth of great individual forms.”198 Despite Humboldt’s eventual rejection of this approach, he never came to share Fichte’s opinion that history should disclose the “world plan” or that a purely empirical history is worthless. For Humboldt, the purpose of historical study was to provide insight into the “nature” of mankind, by detecting and taking into possession the

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early creative moments, “the first flashing of the spark,”199 when the life forces began to unfold. Moreover, it was important to recognize the nature or objective forms of single civilizations, to move beyond classical studies as the only way to understand the potentialities of man, and into the comparative studies of civilization’s objective forms; for instance, the comparative study of language and literature, law, the arts, sciences, the economy, and so on. Still, another important question loomed: What procedures should the historian follow to guide him through the welter of details? And would it provide a coherent and meaningful interpretation? I have previously mentioned how the inner/outer polarity was an important part of Humboldt’s notion of Bildung. The idea of reason had to be planted into the soil of the university so as to sprout and materialize in research.200 Freedom and solitude (i.e., contemplation) were necessary for scholars to move beyond mere facts and detect how “the laws that govern events” manifested themselves as trends that gradually became visible, and as sudden “eruptions” of energies that could not be explained in terms of cause and effect.201 These historical eruptions could be detected as sudden developments, or, as the first “flashing of the spark.”202 To study such apparently unpredictable ruptures, “which arise suddenly or gradually without explicable causes,” pointed to “the hidden connection of all things,” since they “seem to follow their own laws.”203

Transforming Ideas into Pedagogical Practices Humboldt’s theory of Bildung was a theory of individual self-formation, not a set of pedagogical principles to train a skill or foster a particular “scientific” conduct. Individual Bildung was not separated from “science” (Wissenschaft), but intimately linked to the “perpetual quest for truth” and thus subordinated to the idea of reason. And because Wissenschaft was synonymous with “the wholeness of knowledge,” the university should be a place where Wissenschaft in its deepest and broadest sense was cultivated. For Humboldt, the task of the university was to “wrestle the problems whose answers were not known,” not to transmit what was already known. In order to expand the frontiers of knowledge, proper conditions had to be furnished to provide the atmosphere in which creative thinking was possible. The state should provide the freedom and allow for a maximum of variety for each individual to go about the quest in his own way, and according to his own inclination. Humboldt believed that by participating in the scholarly

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enterprise, the student and professor would contribute to their own individual Bildung, even though the main consideration was the cultivation of Wissenschaft. Although teaching and the linking of teaching and research were important, Humboldt was particularly “mindful of the type of man for whom solitude was the best condition of creative work.”204 Humboldt laid out the principles that should guide the university in setting up its pedagogical practices. In his reform proposals, he emphasized that the task of the new university, as opposed to the academies of sciences and the “lower” gymnasium, was to grapple with unanswered questions. The university was not a vocational school merely enforcing the mechanical transmission of knowledge but represented “emancipation from being taught.” Thus, the freedom from any interference—academic freedom—became the mark of academic activity. And since knowledge was assumed to be something to be incessantly searched for, yet acknowledged as not entirely discoverable, students were expected to pursue their own interests and give free rein to their mind and imagination. Thus, enhanced investigative philosophizing and broad learning also became the marks of a university. Furthermore, Humboldt insisted that every academician, with or without formal habilitation, should have the right to conduct lectures. And with Kant’s “critique,” the “open lecture” had already become an important mark of academic practice, for it united teaching with research and engaged students and teachers in a continual dialogue. More important perhaps, through lectures, the young students could “see” the activity of reason, and thereby learn to imitate it.205 However, the university was not a “school,” and it was never enough to just attend lectures. For Humboldt, academic associations (known from other countries) were not important for individual Bildung, first because they were considered “private,” and second, because such associations “serve a useful purpose only in those experimental sciences where ready communication of current facts and findings is useful.”206 Collaboration and cooperation between teacher and student were “loose” (informal) and important, insofar as they contributed to Bildung, even though the main consideration was the cultivation of Wissenschaft. As a result of the emphasis on languages and particularly history, two additional methods or pedagogical practices that distinguished the university from other types of educations were introduced: the seminar207 and (later) archival research. The seminar entailed an equal relation between teacher and student, where the roles interchanged freely as the

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discussions progressed. Texts under investigation were not deemed “authoritative,” but instead narratives subject to repeated interpretation. However, the institutionalization of the new research practices into more formal methods is closely connected with the gradual move from history as Bildung to history as Forschung. In light of this, it is clear that while Humboldt may have succeeded in laying out the principles guiding the university, he was not the master of its destiny.

From Enkyklos Paideia to Forschung The influence of Enlightenment vitalism provided the new studies of man with a scientific status that may have legitimated the first step in the professionalization of the humanities, yet, as Reill notes, there was never any surrender to the idea that everyone could partake in a larger common discourse. The study of history and the study of languages were studies of man—anthropologies—and thus different paths to a broader and more profound understanding of mankind. However, through the course of the nineteenth century, as the studies of history and languages slowly became rigorous scientific disciplines, focus shifted from “reason as the guiding principle” to “culture as the guiding principle.” History’s new claim of representing actual facts was now justified by its new, rigorous method that guaranteed objectivity. This method was eventually called historicism, as it was closely connected to a certain form of epistemological idealism in which history (as a cultural science) was assumed to deal with the ideas in history (Zeitgeist etc.) And with the expansion of the fields of study, technical methods developed to cope with the objective forms of civilizations: linguistics, metrics, archaeology, and more. However, with the increase of knowledge and technique, the idea that the scholar could grasp the totality of knowledge waned. This signaled a change in which scholarship was undermined by scientific specialization or the mastering of a technique. Some argue that the new research practices endowed the trained historians (and later the linguists) with expert knowledge, providing them with credentials that formed a basis for the academic study of history and a professional community of trained historians. Because the university’s role as educator was given a more prominent role, academic (self-) discipline and collaboration came to be considered crucial in order for the scholar to be capable of holding any state office, whether in academia, administration, or politics of the new state.

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Summary: The Humboldt University Humboldt gave theoretical and institutional expression to education as “the practice of freedom through the idea of reason.” According to his conception, the modern university represented liberation from the medieval university, where studies were guided by dogma and justified by certainty. The new university liberated education threefold: from the hierarchy of the authoritative magister and the discipulus, from the authoritative texts (scripturas) that could only be interpreted and reinterpreted, and from pedagogical practices under which students were passively instructed. The eighteenth-century revolutionary spirit may explain why “autonomy” defined the spirit of the modern university, and why there was such strong opposition to preserving ties between the university, the church, and the state. An anti-authoritarian and democratic spirit was infused into the roots of the new institution, against the religious dogma and authoritarianism of the past. Scholars were now depicted as free-thinking, autonomous individuals, who, under the guiding principle of reason, could make independent judgments. To “penetrate into the depth of scholarship,” new pedagogical practices were required. Traditional instruction was replaced by lectures, seminars, and archival research, all conducted by a community of equals, irrespective of social rank. Certainty came to be perceived as the mark of a narrow mind. Research was understood as an ongoing process where individuals have the freedom to develop their capabilities; through free intellectual activity such as debate and more, they could become broad-minded scholars and mature and tolerant citizens. Academic freedom was also the mark of the new, enlightened university, for it was synonymous with the liberation from dogma, superstition, and ignorance. This thought is well illustrated by Kant’s motto Aude Sapere: dare to know. The individual was seen as a thinking subject with the ability to act, and with the responsibility to use his reason for the good of society. Yet the freedom to think depended on a space or arena where critical questions could be voiced and debated. Kant and Humboldt were both intent upon defining this space by limiting the activity of the state and religion. These limits were necessary, for, as Kant claimed, the truth would not come to light, and this would be to the government’s own detriment. Realizing that the idea of reason had to be institutionally embodied, Humboldt saw it as the true function of the state to provide freedom and protection from interference,

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so that the community of scholars can engage in the unceasing process of inquiry. He opted for “replanting” the idea of reason into the “soil” of an institution to achieve perpetual (unablässig) learning. In other words, scholars needed to conduct their inquiry in such a way that it did not degenerate into a mere amassing of disconnected facts. By means of cultivation (Bildung), the researcher directed his inquiry toward detecting the form of an event—a world that existed inside the events that were apparent. Kant founded the modern university, organizing it as an architectonic system in accord with the ruling principle of “reason.” His university was configured to be a conflict between higher and lower faculties, where the higher relied on authoritative texts and statutes, and the lower (foundational echelon), since it was legitimated by reason alone, was free to judge all fields of inquiry. Critical of the “scientism” of Enlightenment critique, Humboldt feared the tendency to reduce universities to vocational schools, because professional qualifications and civic responsibilities were merely byproducts of a larger purpose, namely humanization. Education was to facilitate an understanding of human interconnectedness, what Humboldt referred to as “unity in diversity.” He thus assumed that education should help detect a “hidden agent”—Ideen—postulated as the ground upon which all reality rested. In other words, the purpose of knowledge was more than deduction; it was to elevate and interiorize the idea of reason in each individual’s thought. Only through the process of cultivation (Bildung) could the principle and the ideal fuse (“sprout”) into a coherent idea. Therefore, for the scholar to detect (i.e., through his intuition) the unity in diversity, he must investigate empirical phenomena and cultivate his own creative scientific imagination—mediating or “moving back and forth letting each element nourish and modify the other.”208 Humboldt confronted the “gap” instituted by Kant, between the transcendental order and the human consciousness, by reconciling explanation (following a general rule) with interpretation (performed by a thinking subject). To Humboldt’s mind, and in contrast to Kant, the knowing subject was integrated into the process of understanding. Humboldt’s early influence from vitalism was transformed into an awareness of individualities, each one a manifestation of something unique, distinct, and particular. The individual’s human sensibilities, emotions, and action were thus capable of expressing the ideal by way of interpreting “the real.” Deep understanding or Anschauung was possible and necessary for the scholar to detect the deeply residing unity or pattern of things. And Bildung was the means to equip the scholar

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with the abilities and imagination needed to “sense,” and furthermore to express the “spirit of humanity.” Bildung is the concept most explicitly tied to the achievement of Humboldt. It was pictured as being the result of interplay between two processes: the cultivation of inner capabilities (individuation) and the outer interchange of one’s individuality with others (collaboration). Modeled after the Greek polis, where the individual and the citizen were one, and where education (paideia) was a way to train “temperate and energetic citizens,” Humboldt’s goal was that Bildung would create a social bond or association that served as a means for intellectual cultivation. He called this social bond or association “nation.” Humboldt’s “nationalism” is thus of a cultural nature, related to his (and Herder’s) belief in universal humanism. The nation was but a means for humanity to realize its potential, a space in which life’s uniqueness and variety could become manifest. The problem, however, was to reconcile Ausbildung with Bildung, and to create “moral men and good citizens.” Meanwhile, the more politically inclined Fichte insisted that the product of Bildung was more important than the process, and eagerly defended nationalistic education. This notwithstanding, Humboldt’s idea of Bildung introduced a new conception of individuality as the uniqueness of each individual through a “temperate” manifestation of inner urges. The challenge for Humboldt was to “find the ideal without destroying the individuum.” This idea connects with his reflection on the possibility of intuition or Anschauung. It became a question of the role played by aesthetics or the human imagination. To grasp the interrelatedness of the world—the zusammengesetz relationship—it was necessary to grasp the “harmonious” middle. Although Schiller suggested aesthetic education as the road to the harmonious middle, Humboldt insisted instead that man had to be studied as an aesthetic being capable of transforming the ideal into the real by creative actions. If aesthetics was an autonomous realm of experience, it provided the key to understanding the signs by which the “invisible world of nature” became manifest and revealed itself to our senses. Sinnlichkeit, later Einbildungskraft, was the limit whereby the spiritual and the sensual interpret each other.

Method and Pedagogical Practices At the time, there was a change in orientation from the study of classics to studies investigating how man’s capabilities unfold in history. Humboldt sought a way to help individuals realize their potential;

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to form their character, and to engender in the scholar an ability to critically investigate the facts and construct an image or Bild for describing what it was that gave facts meaning. In contrast to Schiller, Humboldt argued that aesthetics was an autonomous domain with the capacity to improve human beings. It was not enough for the historian to investigate facts; he also had to recognize the objective form of single civilizations—the “laws” that governed events, and from deep understanding and using his imagination, he must create for himself an image of the situation. Hence, investigative philosophizing and the ability to cultivate productive, scholarly thinking were the hallmarks of the university.

Notes 1. This was particularly the case after the Civil War and is the main topic of my next chapters. 2. Collins (1987: 60). There had been proposals for the abolition of universities. Already in 1700, Leibniz proposed that universities be replaced by governmentregulated professional schools, and with academies taking over the preservation and extension of science and culture. The Prussian president of the chamber court, Julius. E. von Massow, made the same proposal in 1806. We must bear in mind that in the 1700s, there was an active arena of debate and cultural production outside the formal schools, in salons and in literary and philosophical networks. After the political crisis of the 1790s, the number of students enrolled in universities fell. During the Napoleonic Wars (1792– 1818) and their aftermath, twenty-two of Germany’s forty-two universities were abolished. 3. Kocka (1981). 4. Lestition (1993: 93). 5. Hinchman (1990: 764). 6. Humboldt (1854/1993): The Limits of State Action [Ideen zu einem Versuch, die Grenzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu bestimmen], editor’s introduction, xxx. 7. Sweet (1973: 471). Although Humboldt had studied and was influenced by Kant, he was strongly influenced by the philosophy of Leibniz and his depiction “of individual entities driven by mysterious energy toward higher development and perfection.” The Leibnizian influence is accounted for in Sweet (1978). It is thus often assumed that when Humboldt spoke of “essences” as “vital energies” or Kräfte, he was referring to Leibniz, yet, as I will return to later in the chapter, this core notion may also derive from Humboldt’s having been influenced by the life sciences, particularly Enlightenment vitalism. Since I draw on both Paul Sweet and Peter Hanns Reill in my presentation, there may be some ambiguities as to the use of certain concepts. 8. I rely on Sorkin (1983), Sweet (1980), and Burrows (1969). Humboldt presented his policy suggestions in two documents written while he was in

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9.

10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

charge of cultural affairs and education in the Prussian Ministry of Interior: Der Köningsberger Schulplan and Der Litauische Schulplan (1809). Although the plans concern secondary education, they are considered classic statements on the application of the ideal of Bildung. The documents are reprinted in Humboldt (1956) and in Humboldt (2017), together with other key texts on Bildung. To restore Prussian cultural life was a goal expressed in Fichte’s famous lectures: “Addresses to the German Nation” [Reden an die Deutsche Nation], delivered in Berlin 1807–08 during the French occupation. In these lectures, Fichte insisted that an appropriate application of pedagogical principles could rejuvenate the German nation and German culture. It is often assumed that the impulse for the establishment of the university in Berlin came from Fichte, who, in 1807, was commissioned to write a memorandum to be used in the planning of the university. Fichte became the university’s first rector, elected 17 July 1811. As early as 1770, a qualifying examination was established for employment in the Prussian bureaucracy. In 1804, three years of study at a Prussian university was required for all higher officials. With the foundation of the University of Berlin in 1810, a series of official examinations was established. Berlin was the first institution in the West to establish such a system of examinations. From then on, legal studies at the university were a requirement for government employment. The Abitur (i.e., examination for admission to the university), established in 1788, limited the number of university students. The reform also made the humanistic gymnasium a preparatory school for university studies, rather than an alternative to it. Sorkin (1983: 63) refers to Humboldt, Gesammelte Schriften (hereafter, GS), XIII, 280. Von Bruch (1997) refers to four aspects, as I do. My presentation differs from his. I use the terms attributes and ideals synonymously. According to Humboldt (1810/1964: 32): “Das Prinzip zu erhalten, die Wissenschaft, als etwas noch nicht ganz Gefundenes und nie ganz Aufzufindendes zu betrachten, und unablässig sie als solche zu suchen.” I refer to the key text, Über die innere und äussere Organisation der Höheren wissenschaftlichen Anstalten in Berlin (1810), hereafter referred to as: Über die innere und äussere. The Limit of State Action was finished already in 1792, when Humboldt was only twenty-five years old. It was due to be published in 1793, but Humboldt withdrew the manuscript, presumably because he wanted to make revisions. Burrows (1969), however, argues that Humboldt did not publish it because he anticipated trouble with Prussian censorship. The manuscript was not published until 1854, when, according to Sweet (1973: 469), it was at once recognized as “a significant expression of a significant point of view.” Large sections, however, had been published earlier. Three chapters (V, VI, and VIII) were published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift in the autumn of 1792, and Schiller’s journal, Neue Thalia, published chapter II and the first part

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16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

of chapter III. An English edition appeared in 1854, entitled The Sphere and Duties of Government. The same year, John Stuart Mill began writing his essay On Liberty, in which he chose as a motto a passage from Humboldt’s book. A literature around Humboldt also developed in France. The immediate background for Humboldt’s essay on religion in The Limits of State Action was his opposition to the Prussian government under Frederick William II, who, in 1789, insisted on religious orthodoxy as a matter of public or official concern for providing moral guidelines. Humboldt, by contrast, considered the efforts to bring religion into harmony with reason as harmful. Religion and reason belonged to separate spheres: the truths in religion were objects of belief, while the truths of rational morality were objects of inquiry. It may be argued that this view marks Humboldt’s departure from the German Enlightenment, which, according to common opinion, sought to reconcile religion and philosophy in one rational system. Humboldt’s claim—that true principles of morality could only be derived from the study of man, from freedom of investigation, and that they had to take account man’s sensual as well as his intellectual qualities and opinions—also placed him in radical opposition to the policies of the Prussian government, which he soon was to enter (Sweet 1973, 1978). Bruford (1975: 25) points out that Humboldt often called himself “a poor heathen” and that he could not bear churches. It is important to note that Humboldt’s liberalism is of a different kind than the liberalism that “in the interest of its visions of a general enlargement and freedom and rational direction of human life—it drifts towards a denial of emotions and the imagination” (Burrows 1969: xiii). The political upheavals in France at the time and the political fragmentation of Germany, with its large number of small political units, may perhaps explain his reluctance toward state control. See, for instance, Blackbourn (1997). See Hertz (1988) and Arendt (1957/1997). Both authors make explicit remarks about Humboldt’s involvement in these Salons. Humboldt (1954/1993: 11). Ibid., 11–12. It is often argued that Humboldt made the state the sole authority at all levels of education, yet as Sweet (1980: 49–50) and others have argued repeatedly, Humboldt’s purpose was not to enhance the state’s power. In fact, he was eager to establish procedures to prevent any misuse of state authority. The idea of setting up advisory committees to deal with educational matters and thus to prevent state interference was endorsed by Humboldt. In his Wissenschaftliche Deputationen, representation was restricted to those academic disciplines qualified as true Wisssenschaften; in other words, it was restricted to those who devoted themselves to philosophical, mathematical, philological, and historical study. Sorkin (1983: 60–61); Humboldt, GS, V, 29–30; Cowan (1963: 69–71): “On the relationship between individuals and the nation.” We must keep in mind that the idea of the nation became the dominant political idea on the European continent in the nineteenth-century due to the

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24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

influence from France, even though the concept was much older (Husserl 1939; Berger 2000). Sorkin (1983: 61) argues that Humboldt, in the periods 1791–1792 and 1809– 1810, “discovered” the nation, both theoretically, as the mediating concept between the individual and humanity, and personally, as a concrete entity in his own life. In his essay on the “Decline and Fall of the Greek Free States” (1807), Humboldt declared that the energy (Kraft) and ultimately the Bildung of the individual were dependent upon that of the nation. I will return to this later in the chapter. Sorkin (1983: 61). Humboldt, GS, IV. The German theologian Ernst Troeltsch has argued that the concept of obedience had a different meaning in Germany than elsewhere in Europe. At that time in Germany, obedience was not associated with oppression or coercion, but rather as the free surrender of oneself, as a matter of duty and conscience, to the state. Obedience thus resembled the self-surrender of the faithful to the church. Thomas Mann has even stated that alongside Bildung, the Germans developed the special capacity for self-subordination without loss of dignity. See Bruford (1975: 226–38). We have to keep in mind that Humboldt’s conception of the self is dynamic. The self consists of energies or drives that bring the individual into contact with the world. Any artificial limits on the free and spontaneous activity of the individual (e.g., moral doctrines, discipline) would thus mean a loss in the natural capacity for freedom and “growth.” This kind of self-cultivation is, as I will return to, not comparable with idiosyncratic self-fashioning, since the cultivation, or rather self-formation, always occurs within and through society. Humboldt’s emphasis on the importance of collaboration for the scholarly enterprise does not mean “merely that one individual supplies what another lacks.” Rather, it is a kind of collaboration, which “operates through a process in which the successful intellectual achievement of one person arouses the intellectual passions and enthusiasm of others.” Humboldt, (1810/1970: 243), “On the Spirit and Organizational Framework of Intellectual Institutions in Berlin,” (hereafter: “On the Spirit and the Organizational”), Über die innere und äussere, 30. See also Thomas (1973). The essay was published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift, which served as one of the main organs of the German Enlightenment (Aufklärung), particularly between 1783 and 1796. Kant published fifteen articles in the journal and, together with Moses Mendelssohn, was one of its most regular contributors. Humboldt also made several contributions. As mentioned earlier, three chapters in The Limits of State Action had been published in the journal. See J. Schmidt (1989) and La Vopa (1990). Kant (1784) in Reiss (1970/1991: 55): “By the public use of reason I understand the use of one’s own reason, I mean that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning addressing the entire reading public. What I term the private use of reason is that which a person may make of it in a particular

70 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

civil post or office with which he is entrusted.” In other words, the scholar is responsible to an idea, reason, as well as to the social system he represents as part of society, whereas in the role of civil servant (e.g., clergyman), he makes private use of reason and must perform the functions for which he is hired. Reiss (1970/1991). Lestition (1993: 79). This is an important issue in Michel Foucault’s (1984b) effort to reclaim Kant’s critical position, and his mediation upon the relevance of the question of “What is Enlightenment?” in our time. Lestition (1993: 79). The cultural controversies revolved around religion and its role in the Enlightenment. Kant (1798/1992: 28–29). Lestition (1993: 103–4) points out three obstacles Kant found to his original appeal “dare to think freely.” First, the large group of learned who took up posts as mere “instruments” of the government (clerics, judicial officials, doctor) were taught to grasp only so much theory as was needed to make a passive classificatory use of it in assembling empirical knowledge within the statutes outlining their posts. Thus, the appeal for critical thought comes up against the obstacle that such individuals simply are unlikely to follow theoretical arguments far enough in order to see the sort of inconsistencies, perplexities or skillful solutions Kant saw as necessary for his whole “critical method.” Second, how could intellectuals earn a living except as employees of the university? Outside the university setting, they would be living without the prescripts and rules needed to exercise the systematic self-discipline needed to question their thoughts and practices, in order to search for the rules and principles Kant thought necessary. As for the third obstacle, Kant recognized that state officials and the general public could collude together to bypass the criticism of the “free market” of ideas that circulated between philosophers and intellectuals, or they could bypass the “official” censorship of university professionals. Kant argued that officials do so because of a narrow conception of their self-interest and institutional power; members of the general public do so because it reflects their natural tendency not to “exert themselves” to alter their lives in the ways any higher conception of human character and capacities might require of them. Humboldt (1810/1970: 243), “On the Spirit and Organizational.” Ibid., 244. The quote is an English translation of the German original: “Was man daher höhere wissenschaftliche Anstalten nennt, ist, von aller Form im Staat losgemacht, nichts anderes als das geistige Leben der Menschen, die äussere Musse oder inneres Streben zur Wissenschaft und Forschung hinführt” (Über die innere and äussere, 31). I intentionally quote the German original because it clearly illustrates the inner/outer polarity in Humboldt’s text, and shows how his conception of the self as the expression of “vital” energies (i.e., Streben, Trieb, etc.) underlies his conception of individual Bildung. In fact, quite the opposite is the case. Humboldt’s reforms break with previous ways of viewing the various professions and social classes as separate entities because the reforms required very different kinds of specialized training.

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 71

41.

42. 43. 44.

45.

46. 47. 48.

49. 50.

51. 52.

53. 54.

Since he conceived of all knowledge as a unity, he insisted that all scholarly institutions should reflect this in their operations. See Paulsen (1908). O’Boyle (1983). She does however refer to “in-depth learning” as “knowledge for its own sake.” I will return to her interpretation of the educational ideals in the next chapter. Kant (1798/1992). Readings (1996: 58). Humboldt (1810/1970: 244–45), “On the Spirit and the Organizational”: “As soon as one ceases to pursue scientific and scholarly knowledge or imagines that it need not be pursued from the utmost depths of the mind, and when one comes to believe that it can be cultivated simply by piling up unconnected facts, then the cause of learning is irremediably and permanently lost.” This may of course have been a more subtle response to his friend, Friedrich Gentz’s warning against Kant that “no more fearful weapon can be placed in the hands of an uneducated man than a universal principle.” Quoted in Lestition (1993: 107n145). Bathi (1987). Humboldt (1810/1970: 245), “On the Spirit and the Organizational.” Über die innere und äussere, 32. Sorkin (1983: 62); Humboldt, GS, X, 100. Humboldt argues in legal terminology when referring to the responsibility of the state, for instance: “the right to appointment [die Ernennung] of university teachers must be reserved exclusively to the state.” See 1810/1970: 245 in the English translation, and Über die innere und äussere, 32 in the German original. In other texts, he insists that the state can only put its citizens in the position to educate themselves, and, “should have enough respect for them to be aware that the moral standpoint can never be calculated precisely, nor its development mechanically predicted.” Thomas (1973) quotes from Humboldt, Werke, Band. IV: Schriften zur Politik und zum Bildungswesen, 98. O’Boyle (1983). Sorkin (1983: 60). His assessment is based on Humboldt’s statements in The Limits of State Action, such as in chapter VIII, 81: The state must wholly refrain from every attempt to operate directly on the morals and character of the nation . . . and that everything calculated to promote such a design, and particularly all special supervision of education, religions, sumptuary laws, etc. lies wholly outside the limits of its legitimate activity.” Sorkin (1983: 65). I refer to a critique by Collins (1987). Reill’s (1994: 345) study aims to show that the German Aufklärung was not merely “a poor imitation of the Western (Franco-British) model of Enlightenment,” but in fact “had its own unique character, its own set of central issues, and its own set of conflicting solutions.” Reill focuses on the role played by academics and the universities as intellectual centers in the German Enlightenment. Bruford (1975). Ibid., viii–ix. The first quote is from John Stuart Mill, the second from Thomas Carlyle.

72 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 55. 56. 57. 58.

59.

60.

61.

62.

63. 64. 65.

Ibid., ix. Kant (1781/1965: 653); “The Architectonic of Pure Reason,” a832–b860. O’Neill (1986). According to Lestition (1993: 87), Kant compares the restrictive function of his critique “to the negative, but indirectly positive function of administrative ‘policing’ (Polizei): that of maintaining a proper social space between different state subjects, their diverse affairs and roles.” This is a statement made by Friedrich Getz, a former student of Kant and a close friend of Humboldt, who had entered into a debate on the effects of Kant’s conception of enlightenment. Getz argued that, from Kant’s appeal to reason, a vicious circle would emerge—a Malthusian politics driven by the socioeconomic misery of the masses. Under the influence of Humboldt, Getz argued that the actual goal of the Enlightenment was to mold the whole human species into one and the same form; the result was to destroy the “free movements of the spirits.” The final good for mankind, a multifaceted self-cultivation (Bildung) had thus been lost from sight. Getz attacked Kant’s insistence on seeking universal principles, which, in his view, resulted in a move toward a republic where the philosopher is king of a philosophical republic. Furthermore, it had the effect of labeling a considerable part of human knowledge and spiritual concerns as either “child’s play” or as causing political-social repression. Lestition (1993: 95–96). See also Sweet (1973: 473, 1978: 91–94) and Hertz (1988: chap. 3). As argued by Reill (1994: 347n8), in the late eighteenth century, despotism was increasingly associated with uniformity, or allgemeine Gleichförmigkeit, which was the characteristic associated with inert matter in mechanical systems. Despotism proceeded in a manner analogously to the methods of mechanical natural philosophy. It simplified everything (“der sonst überall alles simplificirt und gleich macht”). In September 1807, Fichte was commissioned to write a memorandum for the new university: “Deduced Plan for an Institution of Higher Learning to be Established in Berlin” [Deduzierter Plan einer zu Berlin zu errichtenden höheren Lehranstalt]. The text is reprinted in Anrich (1956/1964: 125–200). Fichte was, along with many educational reformers in the early nineteenth century, inspired by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi’s pedagogical principles. Schleiermacher published an essay (“eine öffentliche Denkschrift”) in 1809, entitled “Occasional Thoughts on Universities in the German Sense [Gelegentlichen Gedanken über Universitäten im deutschen Sinn]. Reprinted in Anrich (1956/1964: 219–308). Schelling attempted to delimit the nature, purpose, and pursuit of higher learning in these lectures: “On University Studies” [Vorelsungen über die Methode des akademische Studiums]. The text is reprinted in Anrich (1956/1964: 1–123). Röhrs (1995: 17). Both quotes from Humboldt (1810/1970: 243), “On the Spirit and the Organizational.” Elevation and interiorization is what were commonly referred to as “maturing”: the idea was to recede inward, engendering an integrated, broad understanding.

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 73 66. To combine the “principle” and “idea” in the idea of Wissenschaft means to think of an “idea of reason” as the foundation for a procedure of knowing and researching from a “principle of reason” toward an “idea of reason.” The university was to be founded upon the idea, and the idea was to be incorporated within the organization of the university. 67. Humboldt (1810/1964: 32), Über die innere und äussere, Humboldt (1810/1970: 245), “On the Spirit and Organizational.” 68. Humboldt (1810/1970: 245), “On the Spirit and Organizational.” 69. Humboldt (1810/1964: 33), Über die innere und äussere. “Allein nicht bloß dass die selbst leicht entarten, so ist auch von ihnen nur wening zu hoffen, wenn ihr Geist nich gehörig oder nur auf logisch oder mathematisch formale Art in die anderen Zweige der Erkenntnis und Gattungen der Forschung übergeht.” I quote from the original because it clearly shows how Humboldt’s mix of specific “vital/organic” metaphors crucial for understanding his epistemology are, so to speak, lost in translation. The choice of a German verb like entarten (develop/turn into) is hardly coincidental. It is intimately related to verknüpfen (germination, sprouting), which means to start growing or developing into something else (metamorphosis). This meaning is completely lost when entarten is translated into English as “decay.” Thus, it becomes difficult to understand the point he makes that Wissenschaft (scientific knowledge) is the verknüpfen (sprouting) of two crucial elements: reason (philosophy) and imagination (art). 70. I refer to Humboldt (1836/1988), On Language [Uber die Verschiedenheit des menschenlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluß auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts], published posthumously. 71. There are many interpretations of what historicism is (Liebel 1971; Reill 1994; Iggers 1995; Rand 1964). 72. Aarsleff (1988); Sweet (1980: 392–428). 73. Reill (1994, 2005). My exposition is based entirely on Reill. 74. Reill (1994: 347). 75. Reill bases his assertion on the fact that Humboldt read the major works of the Enlightenment vitalism and was a close friend of the Göttingen physiologist, comparative anatomist and anthropologist, Johan Friedrich Blumenbach. From letters, we know that Humboldt learned and discussed these issues with his brother, the scientist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, as well as with Goethe and Schiller. On his many travels, he also visited the leading scientific thinkers of the day. Furthermore, he had firsthand experience with the life sciences, as he had studied comparative anatomy and physiology in Jena from 1794 to 1796. Although several have mentioned this influence, such as the biographer Paul Sweet, the historians Hayden White (1975) and Helen Liebel (1971), no one except Reill gives any account of how these ideas had an impact on Humboldt’s thought. 76. Lenoir (1980). 77. Animism does, of course, refer to the belief that all life is produced by spiritual force (anima) or that all natural phenomena have souls. According to Reill (1994), vitalism was an attempt to correct what was regarded as the misuse

74 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

78.

79.

80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

88.

89.

of physical laws by the mechanists, and the misuse of metaphysics by the animists. The latter tended to spiritualize nature and thereby elevate mind and soul over matter. The empiricists, as Reill points out, were ridiculed as methodically eager collectors of simple facts, whereas the logical abstractionists were ridiculed for providing abstract proofs by mathematical and hypothetical (axiomatic) reasoning, which merely reflected a sterile “truth,” incapable of saying anything beyond a tautology that affirmed what has already been proclaimed. And it is these forces or energies that account for “change” or new births, sometimes referred to as sudden sparks of light. To describe the developmental process of change, Humboldt often applied organic metaphors, such as seeds, plants, and growth. Reill (1994: 351). Ibid., 353. Although I refer to Reill, others have made similar observations, such as Lacqueur (1990). Reill (1994: 354). Due to several factors, this analogy and the scientific conception of culture have subsequently been lost. See Veit-Brause (2001). Reill (1994: 356) refers to Humboldt, Betrachtungen Weltgeschichte, I, 572 (III, 356). Ibid., 356. Cowan (1963) provides extracts from Humboldt’s writings on languages, among them, the canonical essay from 1820 entitled “On Language, On the Diversity of Human Language Construction and its Influence on the Mental development of the Human Species.” [Über das vergleichende Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung]. Humboldt was particularly interested in the languages of the American Indians yet was unaware of the significant work done in the field in the United States, until he met the American student George Bancroft, who received his doctorate from Göttingen and came to Berlin the winter of 1820–21 for further study. For their discussions on the American Indian languages and on ways of improving American education, see Sweet (1980: 399, 498–99). I will return to Bancroft in the next chapter. The reproductive analogy is assumed to be most important because it explains origins and offers a model for change over time. The analogy covers all creation, ranging from single organisms to nations, and includes the generation of ideas, for “original initial activity is due to (masculine and feminine) generating powers.” It is interesting that the primary dyad Humboldt chooses to characterize the limits in which harmonic action occur is the masculine/ feminine dyad. Reill (1994: 357n38). Humboldt tried to separate his conception of ideas from other, more familiar ones. In his usage, ideas do not constitute a metaphysical reality (as in Plato’s idealism) but are understood as inner forces that shape matter. Ideas are sometimes referred to as an “ultimate relatedness” that cannot be grasped or measured by thought, but demands “a wholeness of psychological

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 75

90.

91. 92.

93.

94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

99.

attunement.” See Humboldt (1860) quoted in Cowan (1963: 145–47): Letters to Charlotte Diede, March 1823. On the relationship between Herder’s Ideen and Humboldt’s idea, see Liebel (1971). Humboldt is famous for the insight that languages exhibit a diversity of world views and not only a diversity of sounds and signs. He insists that the way people think is dependent upon the language they use [Die Sprache ist das bildende Organ des Gedanken]. The study of language was important because he believed that through the medium of language, it was possible to acquire knowledge of other people’s world view, and a more profound understanding of “the sum of what can be known.” See also Schmidt (1968, chapter 4). The relationship between word and thought or the link between language and mind is an important area of speculation for eighteenth-century philosophers, even though few went as far as Humboldt. According to Paxman (1993: 19), “Implicitly or explicitly, nearly every important language recorder or philosopher ventured to explain how languages mirrored each other and how they differed.” Reill (1994) refers to Humboldt’s “Betrachtungen Weltgeschichte,” I, 20. His notion of objectivity rests on the assumption that there is an analogy between nature and language, or that language is analogous to a living organism and thus governed by natural laws. It is also “subjective” because it reflects specific (local/ethnic) speech conventions, influenced by time and place. In order to observe and discover its “paths,” one has to look carefully at both. The metaphors from music, such as, “attuned to,” “vibrating chords,” “in accordance with,” etc. are not merely linguistic decorations, but allude to the possibility of apprehending a “nature” that is common to all. They indicate the possibility of recapturing this “nature,” but also the possibility of reaching (in more modern terms) an intersubjective understanding though esthetic experience. The historian’s task is to attune the reader’s imagination to “what happened” through a creative representation of facts. This interaction is particularly apparent in Humboldt’s writings on translation, where he argues that the translator must try to attune the reader’s spirit in harmony with that of the author’s (Humboldt, GS, I, 280; Cowan 1963: 242). Every good “translation,” Humboldt argues, proceeds from and results from a particular sensitivity to “facts,” or what he more specifically refers to as “a simple and unassuming love for the original and the study that springs from such love” (Humboldt, GS, VIII, 132; Cowan 1963: 241). Humboldt (1821/1967: 57). Ibid., 58. Ibid. Ibid. As previously mentioned, Humboldt was inspired by the philosophy of Leibniz. Leibniz was known to be fond of Hippocrates’ phrase “all things breathe together,” and Humboldt’s references to inner life as “breaths of life” might be an echo of this influence. Humboldt (1821/1967: 59).

76 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 100. Ibid., 60. 101. Many, such as Humboldt and Schiller before him, tried to deal with the lack located in Kant’s aesthetics between representation and reception. The crucial question was whether an artwork would have the same affect, as intended by its producer, on the reader/spectators at all times and in all settings. The question was whether affect differed in accordance with different forms or genres. See Arens (1984). 102. Humboldt (1821/1967: 61). 103. Ibid., 62. 104. Humboldt (1821/1967: 64). 105. Although, for Humboldt, emphasis is on the subjective, it is important to note that the understanding the historian has of reality is not the kind claimed by the Romantic artist, that is, an expression of a subjective emotional state, but it is the “objective” conveyed through the subject. The point is that understanding is the combined product of the historical event’s constitution (facts) and the sensibility of the beholder (imagination). 106. Humboldt (1821/1967: 65). 107. Humboldt (1956: 103). The English translation may be somewhat misleading, because there is no German word corresponding to “communication” in the original text. The reference to Sinn in the original illustrates Humboldt’s emphasis on human sensibilities (Sinnlichkeit), and that understanding presupposes the interaction of the scholar’s and the reader’s imaginations through the representation. 108. To explain the latter, which is more difficult to perceive, he refers to “sprouting”: the idea is the “seed” in the force, which develops in its own way . . . bloom, fruition, withering, etc. 109. As previously mentioned, Humboldt had observed that a language was not simply a copy of people’s ideas but rather “the total energy of the people embodied, as if by a miracle, in certain sounds.” Different languages were “not just so many nomenclatures for the same thing, but present different views of it.” He thus argued that languages are “hieroglyphs” in which each individual (whether a person or a people) imprints its imagination and the world. As hinted above, Humboldt believed that “since the world and the imagination remain the same, and since the imagination links one formation to another by analogy, these hieroglyphs interact in further creation, multiply, and undergo continued formation” (Aarsleff 1988: xlix–l, in Humboldt 1836/1988). Aarsleff refers to Humboldt, Fragments, 1801. The passages are discussed in Michon (2016). 110. The dictum associated with historicism—wie es eigentlich gewesen (the way it actually was)—is often attributed to Humboldt, although perhaps more to Leopold Ranke. The word eigentlich (actually) suggests that historicism is a correspondence theory of truth. The English translations of Humboldt’s text reflect this association, as the first sentence is translated: “The historian’s task is to present what actually happened.” However, the German original is as follows: Die Aufgabe des Geschichtschreiber ist die Darstellung des Geschehenen. The verb darstellen means “representation“: in einem bild

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 77

111. 112. 113. 114.

115. 116.

117. 118. 119.

zeigen, abbilden, mimen, spielen, etc. The English equivalent is, of course, to picture, mime, play, perform, etc. Thus, it may allude to the “art” of representation (i.e., storytelling), in other words, to the transmission of facts in such a way that they “awaken a sense of life.” This brings to mind Humboldt’s fascination with the ancient historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the latter known for his orations. Holborn (1953: 40). Many studies have pointed to Winckelmann’s influence, for instance Harloe (2013). I refer to Schiller’s motto, which he borrowed from the pre-Socratic philosopher, Protagoras. Kelly (1968) remarks that Kant and virtually all German intellectuals referred to Rousseau’s idea of perfectibilité. It is far beyond the scope of my knowledge and the topic of this chapter to enter the intriguing debate concerning the relation between the ancient and the modern that went on at the time. Suffice it to say, there was a reaction to the tendency to place “objective” form—order and universality, characteristic of ancient art—over and above what was considered the richness of “subjective” content. As Lovejoy (1917) argues, the modern, or what was labeled “romantic” (to avoid a merely chronological distinction), was characterized by an eagerness to catch and express the particularity of things, their uniqueness and individuality. However, “romantic” also connoted a new kind of (epic) poetry: Romanpoesie. Goethe’s Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre was depicted as a typical expression of a Romantic genre. Humboldt addresses the question of the ancients as opposed to the moderns in his essay “On the Ideal, as Opposed to the Historical, View on the Greek Influence on Modern Times” (Humboldt, GS III, 188–218; Cowan 1963: 79–99). According to Burrows (1969: xviii). It is often assumed that Kant’s theory of cosmopolitanism, as expressed in “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose” is an attempt to discover the universal plan or “natural laws” of history. His attempt rests upon a conception of the unity of mankind, and of history as a process in which Man’s essential freedom is realized through the continuous advance of rationality. It is often argued that Kant suggests history is leading the way to a universal order of humanity based upon a republican constitution, and that he, in his later text, “Perpetual Peace,” argues in favor of a system of international law. A new relationship between states would, as Delanty (2000) argues, have implications for citizenship beyond the state. Arendt (1982) has emphasized that Kant argues that “The law of world citizenship shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality” (“Perpetual Peace,” in Kant 1963: 102) This idea of universal hospitality re-appears in her writings and is discussed in relation to her quest for a critical understanding, a “visiting imagination.” I return to this in chapter 7. Holborn (1953: 39). Humboldt (1821/1967: 59). Herder viewed culture pluralistically, as consisting of many different ways of life: different forms of thinking, different moralities, forms of education and

78 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

120.

121. 122. 123. 124. 125.

126. 127. 128. 129.

different national characters. He thus argued that national character was the product of many factors, particularly geographical environment and climate, ways of life and the education of a people. He was convinced, as pointed out by Geuss (1996), that each nation has its own center of gravity in itself and thus its own value. Herder’s pluralistic arguments were later to be used in the resistance to the French influence, such as the claim that the German legal code was different, but not inferior to the Code Napoleon. However, claims that the Germans were as good as the French were gradually turned into claims of national superiority. In his “Addresses to the German Nation,” Fichte insisted that the German nation was superior to the French, on grounds of its greater “primordiality” [Ursprunglichkeit]. The basic properties of the “primordial” people were vitality, sincerity, lack of egotism, diligence, and independence. Herder, it is assumed, saw the unnatural enlargement of states and felt that everything in Europe tended toward a gradual extinction of national character. “The health and duration of a state rests not on the point of its highest cultivation, but on a wise or fortunate equilibrium of its activating powers. The deeper in this living exertion its center of gravity lies, the firmer and more durable it is” (R. Schmidt 1956: 408, cites from Herder’s Ideen zur philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menscheit, 1774). Geuss (1996). Holborn (1953: 38). R. Schmidt (1956: 408). Spitz (1955). Bruford (1975) provides an interesting biographical account of the development of Humboldt’s notion of Bildung based on his letters and diaries. He charts Humboldt’s intellectual development from his childhood fascination with Stoicism combined with strong humanitarian feelings. Through an influential tutor, Humboldt and his brother were introduced to the Jewish intellectual community of Berlin, who supported new ventures in music and the theater, and encouraged “more adventurous taste in literature.” Although inspired by the Stoics, Humboldt insisted that their Tugenbund was not at all ascetic, but rather one which “gives free rein to desire and sees in enjoyment, even in forms which many would call intemperate, a great and beneficent power” (Bruford 1975: 5). Humboldt (1854/1993: 7). The University of Berlin was to become the institutional setting where the free and egalitarian interchange of teachers and students could occur. Sorkin (1983: 64) cites from a report to the king on the activities of the Section of Education in 1809. Humboldt was skeptical toward the new French constitution and saw it as a construct of “mere” reason: “It was like tying blossoms on trees with pieces of string.” By contrast, his “wise lawgiver” will “study the present trend and then, after he discovers it, he will either support it or oppose it, and so it receives a modification, and again another, and so forth.” For Humboldt, the practical advice to men of action is to exercise restraint and tact, allowing

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 79

130.

131.

132. 133. 134. 135. 136.

137.

138.

growth and development to take their natural course: Acting just as though one were not acting: Handeln, gleichsam als handelte man nicht (Sweet 1978: 106). Meinecke’s (1907/1970) argues that Humboldt used the concept of a nation without any explicit definition, even though he speaks of “the mind and character of the nation.” His vague use of the term is due to the fact that Humboldt saw the nation purely as a cultural phenomenon and not as a political phenomenon or collective will. Humboldt did, however, recognize a need for “the diffusion among the people of an attitude favourable to the constitution” (1907/1970: 36) as one of the means necessary to bind the state and nation together. This was a method, which in his view, had brought forth good results, particularly in antiquity. In Meinecke’s interpretation: “Thus, we can only visualize what he understands by the terms ‘nation’ and ‘the mind and character of the nation’ in as light and bodiless a form as possible— not as a vital force that leads and gratifies the individual—but rather as a vital spirit that arises naturally from the confluent breath of many individual souls” (1907/1970: 47). Berdahl (1972: 67) argues similarly that Humboldt, as well as Herder and to a lesser extent Fichte, were all nationalists because they were cosmopolitans. For them, “the nation became the vehicle through which humanity realized its uniqueness and variety, through which it manifested the “true richness and range of human nature.” The assumption is made by Sorkin (1983: 62) who relates Humboldt’s effort to declare the nation (and not the state) to be responsible for education to his early insistence on the need for cultivation within association or social interrelations. Humboldt (1854/1993: 49). Sorkin (1983: 69). Ibid. Turnbull (1937: 235). It is perhaps necessary to keep in mind the tense political situation at the time. After Napoleon had defeated Prussia in the battle at Jena in 1806, Fichte gave his famous series of lectures: “Addresses to the German Nation.” These lectures contain hope for regenerating Germany through education, and thereby moral power rather than physical power. It has been argued that this humiliating loss triggered the movement for national education and endowed it with a unified purpose: defeating the French. In trying to resist French influence, the German language and literature was to replace classical philology and instructions in history, geography, and civics were emphasized because of their immediate value. In addition, physical education received strong support as preparation for military training (Sorkin 1983: 71; Geuss 1996). Turnbull (1937: 237–38) refers to Die Reden [Addresses to the German Nation] and Der Patriotismus und sein Gegenteil [Patriotism and its opposite] from 1807. As hinted at above, Herder was concerned with the plural ways of living. Lukes (1971) argues incompletely, if not incorrectly, that there was a shift in this period during which the state and society were no longer regarded

80 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

139. 140.

141.

142.

as rational constructions or the result of contractual arrangements between individuals in the manner of the Enlightenment. He quotes Ernst Troeltsch to support his claim that states, from now on, are seen as “super-personal creative forces, which develops though time from the material of particular individuals into a spiritual Whole, and on the basis of that Whole proceed from time to time to create the particular political and social institutions which embody and incarnate its significance.” Lukes clearly overlooks the organic conception of the state and society (descending, partly from the Greek influence) that predominated in Germany, as well at its relation to the notion of Kultur. Both are seen as a result of cultivation—cultura—through the individual’s efforts and accomplishments. Humboldt, GS II, 324–34; Cowan (1963:149–50), “On the Spirit of Humanity.” Humboldt was not necessarily the same kind of cosmopolitan as Herder. Meinecke (1907/1970) argues that the idea of nation in its modern form in Germany at the end of the eighteenth century is “implanted in the womb of cosmopolitanism,” and the idea of the nation as a motivating moral force for state and society only gradually separates itself from universalism and a universal ethics and “first become usable for the purposes of the state.” (1907/1970: 39–44). What is more, Meinecke (1907/1970: 44) insists that Humboldt aimed for a close weave of theory and moral intentions because he wants the study of nations to be both contemplative and ethical. “His search for the ideal human being represents at once the highest ethics and the highest intellectual vision. In the course of investigating the national, he aimed beyond the national and sought the highest intellectual and moral attainable.” Judging from Meinecke’s observation, the perpetual search for the unattainable seems to be a more pronounced aspect than the organic-cyclic quest for a whole. Berdahl (1972: 67). Francke (1927) similarly describes Humboldt as a representative of German Cosmopolitanism and argues that his conception of humanity is also reflected in his scientific interest and studies. Sweet (1978: 240) confirms that Humboldt’s “cosmopolitanism” is embedded in his scientific interests. In the field of comparative linguistics, Humboldt did not focus primarily on the Indo-European context, and the research he is most famous for was outside the Indo-European group—Basque and Kawi—as well as the American Indian languages. In his early text, The Limits of State Action, Humboldt (1854/1969) actually cites Goethe’s treatise on plant metamorphosis as the paradigm case of individual development. This has led many to believe that he assumes that humans, in the same manner as plants, “draw sustenance through their roots, absorb sunlight, and put oxygen back into the atmosphere,” in other words that “individuals strike roots in their culture, absorb experience and ideas from social contacts, and they return to the environment the creation of their own individuality” (Hinchman 1990: 766; see also Bruford 1975: 75). However, one should be careful when drawing the conclusion that Bildung can be interpreted as an organic process, or, as Sweet (1978: 52) also points out, one should not think of individual Bildung as a vegetative “flowering”

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 81

143. 144.

145.

146.

147.

148. 149.

because it involved an active process. Meinecke (1907/1970) rejects the tendency to regard Humboldt’s notion of individuality as one that aims at some kind of uniformity and insists that it aims toward variety and uniqueness in human life. The ideal of humanity does not, in Humboldt’s view “manifest itself in one form, but in as many as are possible and compatible with each other, and it never appears in any other form than in the total sum of individuals.” Subsequently, humanity requires the union of many “in order to show the great variety of their capacities, the true richness and entire range of human nature” (1907/1970: 39). Hinchman (1990: 766). He emphasizes that the theme of self-discovery or fulfilment was common among German intellectuals at the time. Humboldt, GS III; Cowan (1963: 87–88), “History of the Fall and Decline of the Greek City States” [Geschichte des Verfalls und Unterganges der griechischen Freistaaten]. This urge, he continues, “which springs from that part of the psychic constitution which is ruled by self-given law, is called, by Germans, Sehnsucht [yearning]” (ibid., 88). My argument is based on Georg Simmel, who makes a distinction between “eighteenth-century individualism” (which, he argues, originated in the writings of Humboldt, Novalis, Schleiermacher, and Schlegel) and the “new individualism” of the Romantics (Lukes 1971: 54, 55). Humboldt argues that: “Insofar as character can be described in accordance with its utterances and even its qualities, such descriptions never reveal true individuality. This always remains inexplicable and incomprehensible. It is the life of an individual, and the part of it that appears in a statement about him is always the least important. In a certain way, individuality can nonetheless be recognized, as being the consequence of a striving, which excludes a number of other strivings: it is something that individuates itself against, and through, restraint” (Humboldt, GS III, 138–40; Cowen 1963: 329–30, italics are mine). Humboldt, GS III, 188–218; Cowan (1963: 87). It is often assumed that Kant marks the transition from a Roman to a Greek mode of thought. Kant distinguished between Kultur and Zivilisiering. The latter signifies a social property related to (moral) behavior and conduct, e.g., the skill to communicate, while the former refers to human accomplishments due to the cultivation of one’s faculties (Lloyd 1989; Geuss 1996). Elias (1939/2000) remarks that the specifically German sense of the concept Kultur finds its clearest expression in its derivative, the adjective kulturell, which describes the value and character of particular human products rather than the intrinsic value of a person. But this word, Elias insists, (the concept embodied in kulturell), cannot be exactly translated into French or English. Humboldt, GS III; Cowen (1963: 79–98). Holborn (1949: 3, 4). It is quite telling that, besides Plato, the ancient authors Humboldt was most interested in were Pindar (whose works he translated), Thucydides, and Herodotus. For Thucydides, the historian’s task was to be truthful and “tell the tale as it happened.” He was famous for his remark that his history was to be profitable, since the probable recurrence of events makes the record of the past the guide to the future (Nadel 1964).

82 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 150. See Humboldt, GS II, 324–34; Cowan (1963: 145–55), “On the Spirit of Humanity.” 151. Engell (1981). 152. Roberts (1988: 132); Kant (1781/1965: 167, b307). 153. Kant used the term Sensus communis to refer to a mode of “disinterested aesthetic judgment”: an inner sensibility he thought was common to everyone. This means that when a subject’s cognitive powers of imagination and understanding partake freely in reflective play, they harmonize with each other, in relation to the object being judged, and the exact same inner sensation of pleasure should arise and ought to be common to all who judge the same phenomenon disinterestedly. It is, however, a subjective judgment. In her Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, Arendt (1982) argues that Kant deliberately uses the Latin term to refer to “an extra mental sense—like an extra mental capability (German, Menschenverstand)—that fits us into a community.” It is the very humanity of man that is manifest in this sense, and it is a precondition for communication or for “society” as such. Arendt (1977/1993: 219) insists that Kant thus opens a sphere where we are “confronted with things which exist independently of all utilitarian and functional references, and whose qualities remain always the same.” Arendt, as I will return to in chapter 7, is concerned with the relevance of Kant’s theory of politics (i.e., action) and to the problem of critical judgment, or what she refers to as the possibility of critical thinking “without banisters.” 154. See Dewing (1910) and Gram (1981). 155. Rintelen (1977: 6, 7). 156. Although it is outside the topic of this book, it is tempting to hint at some of the problems arising from their approach to Kant. Some have argued that Fichte was caught in his own dualism and thus was unable to explain how the finite self can reach the perception he assumes is present in intellectual intuition, the “perception of self-identity.” Schelling, on the other hand, apparently assumes that there is a third function of the self, in which the self recognizes itself in its unconscious product. The artist, he argues, has conscious aims and purposes and he uses the techniques he has learned. Yet, art is not made by hard work alone, because “in all genuine art there is an element which is incomprehensible, unconscious, and analogous only to fate.” For Schelling, the artwork’s basic character of a work of art is “an unconscious infinity.” He assumes that the self recognizes itself in its unconscious product through esthetic creation. It is a “conflict” that ends in total harmony. Beauty is depicted, not as an ideal, but as the miraculous presence of the Infinite in the finite product, thus esthetic experience is infinite satisfaction. For a further elaboration on this point, see Fackenheim (1954), whom I rely on for this exposition. 157. See Lindsay (1910: 259). 158. Schelling differs radically from both Kant and Fichte insofar as he denies or abandons what they presuppose, namely that there is a difference between the condition of experience and objects of experience in philosophical

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 83

159.

160. 161.

162.

163.

164.

165.

knowledge (Gram 1981). Dewing (1981) tries to explain Schelling’s new use of the notion of intellectual intuition as a part of his attempt to construct a philosophy of nature, his Naturphilosophie (around 1797), in which nature is seen as the unconscious expression of an essential or eternal spirit. Others argue that Schelling saw the outer world as a manifestation of an evolving force or productivity—nature. According to Lindsay (1910: 266), in Schelling, nature is left “standing like an independent entity against mind, with her bi-polar categories, in unresolved antagonism.” He argues that Schelling never showed what this Absolute is and why it is there, and that the unity/ equilibrium or identity becomes reduced to an empty form of nothingness. It has been assumed that Hegel tried to resolve the problem by identifying the Absolute with progress itself. Nevertheless, Schelling left his thesis of art as the actualization of the identity of the finite in favor of a philosophy of revelation in which art was understood as the mere creation of finite spirit. Schelling used the term Kunst to signify the conscious and planned, and Poesie to signify the unconscious aspects of aesthetic creation. Fackenheim (1954: 312n10). Fackenheim (1954: 313). He refers to Schelling, Werke, I, iii, 619. Schiller’s essays, Grace and Dignity and Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (published in 1795), were written when Robespierre’s Reign of Terror was at its height in France. Whereas the “matter-drive” has “life in the widest sense for its object” and is determined by change, contingency, and the subjective sense impressions, the “form-drive” is attached to reason and “seeks unity, infinity and permanence,” beyond matter and substance. The “play-drive” brings sense-impressions and feelings into “play” with reason and transforms both in the process. Schiller thus argues that aesthetic judgments, in contrast to descriptive and ethical judgments, invite rather than demand my agreement, and as such, they involve a possible transformation of the self. Schiller’s writings have provoked many reactions. The most common is conveyed by Geuss (1996: 162), who argues that Schiller’s idea of a self-regulating aesthetic society was embraced by the “the educated middle classes” (Bildungbürgertum), who were excluded from independent political power. Instead, they used their “purported possession of a cultivated faculty of esthetic judgment, their taste, to legitimize the retention of a certain socially privileged position.” Membership was not determined by birth, inherited wealth, or economic success. Rather, good taste was a “tacit warrant (almost) of moral superiority.” Schiller argues, in short, that the practice of experiencing natural objects (disinterestedly, and in their specificity) will make one more competent in recognizing other selves for their own sake. It is through this mood or experience that one learns to appreciate the freedom or self-determining potential of others. Lovejoy (1920a, 1920b) argues that this text places Schiller in a transitional position within aesthetic theory, between those emphasizing universal form and those emphasizing subjective content. Schiller, he argues,

84 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

166. 167. 168. 169. 170.

171. 172.

173.

174.

175.

still insists upon “objectivity,” “universal validity,” and the “immutability of aesthetic standards” and thus reiterates Kant’s thesis of the “disinterestedness” of aesthetic enjoyment (Lovejoy 1920a: 3). Humboldt, Letters to Charlotte Diede, November 1823, quoted in Cowen (1963: 141). Cowen (1963: 141). Humboldt, GS, II, 343; Cowen (1963: 144). Humboldt, GS, XIV, 157–58; Sweet (1978: 163). Humboldt insisted that any true work of the imagination, by definition, is beautiful. “Everything, in fact, which cannot be thought of as other than in a condition of inner interaction is ideal in the simplest and strictest sense of the word” (Humboldt, GS, II, 128; Cowan 1963: 169). Sweet (1978: 162). Holborn (1953: 40) argues that German neoclassicism found the ideal of human perfection in Greek art and literature because it was regarded as immediate or spontaneous, or, in Schiller’s terminology, the “naïve” creation of a people, who, for a long time, preserved the natural unity of human capacities that are the highest state of man. In his interpretation, the Greeks provide the model for a solution to the conflict between human freedom and spontaneity, on the one side, and the necessity imposed by civilization on the other. Humboldt (long before Nietzsche) questioned the serenity of the Greeks, even while continuing to praise the predisposition of the Greeks for balance, clarity, and simplicity. In fact, Humboldt singled out yearning (Sehnsucht) for “measureless fullness of life,” as the Greek’s most significant attribute. This yearning, or “longing” expressed itself in the “myriad of images” that characterized their culture. For him, the Greeks, unlike modern man, possessed a singular genius of keeping their Sehnsucht from tearing them apart. While modern man “struggled to find the absolute in the depths of his own Ich,” the Greeks were not trying to attain a “vague, unattainable goal, but “sought ‘the infinite in the finite.’ To study the Greeks was to ‘attune oneself’ to the longing that animated them, and make this part of oneself” (Sweet 1978: 282–85); Humboldt, GS, III, 188–218; Cowan 1963: 84). Sweet (1978: 153–93) remarks that Schiller’s distinction made Humboldt uncomfortable, as he believed it to be too rigorous and abstract. Human beauty was, for Humboldt, an expression of the degree of perfectability attained at a particular time, for “ideal humanity bears the same relation to beauty as reality to appearance, a characteristic feature of ideal beauty being a ‘certain serene greatness.’” Human beauty had a cultural aspect, and he believed some cultures attained a higher level of beauty than others. This showed the capacity of Bildung, historically demonstrated to produce better people. His viewpoints are conveyed in essays published in Schiller’s journal, Die Horen, and later elaborated in his “Plan for a Comparative Anthropology.” One of the key words in Kant’s Critique is Sinnlichkeit, which is often translated as “sensibility.” In Kant, it signifies the capacity to receive passively an impression of something “given.” Although Humboldt uses the same concept, he does not use it to refer to passive reception of sensory impressions

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 85

176. 177. 178.

179.

180.

181.

182.

(as Kant and Schiller do) but includes bodily elements of “sensuousness” and “sensuality.” Thus, it has a more active connotation and refers to instinctual urges, and drives, as well as creative powers. In Humboldt, Sinnlichkeit is the source of all vital energy, whereas our reason (simply) gives direction to the energies and drives. The concept signifies, according to Sweet (1978: 109), “the borderline where the ‘spiritual’ and sensual interpenetrate each other.” Sweet (1978: 183). Ibid., 184. Humboldt published three articles related to the issue: a review of Friedrich Jacobi’s novel, Woldemar, and two essays in Schiller’s journal, Die Horen in 1795, “Sexual Difference and Its Influence on Organic Nature” and “Male and Female Form” (Sweet 1978: 161). Reill (1994: 357–58n39) states: “If one goes through his works, all categories can be put under the heading of masculine and feminine. For example: mass, matter, receptivity, and warmth are all feminine; their masculine counterparts are form, drive, activity and clarity. For the modern reader, such characterizations appear only to announce a set of gender stereotypes. Although most readers tend to confuse Humboldt’s reference to feminine and masculine qualities with sexual differences, Reill (2005) persistently argues, that unlike later writers, Humboldt actually refused to equate gender qualities with sexual differences. Reill (2005). For instance, with regard to Humboldt’s essays mentioned above: “Über den Geschlechtsunterschied” and “Über die männliche und weibliche Form,” MacLeod (1998: 47) argues that, in spite of the former essay’s “bellicose celebration of polar opposition,” there is a utopian call for transcendence through artistic androgyny. In the latter essay, the androgynous union is depicted as the highest state to be attained by humanity. As is well-known, Winckelmann privileged the male adolescent, “who occupies the fine line between the two sexes,” as the measure of the Greek aesthetic ideal. Sweet (1978: 194n64) refers to a statement Friedrich Schlegel made in On Diotima in 1795 to covey an image that was quite common at the time: “What is uglier than overemphasized womanliness, what is more repulsive than exaggerated manliness . . . Only self-reliant womanliness, only gentle manliness, is good and beautiful.” The conception of human nature as “androgynous” can be found in Greek myths, and it appears in the speech of Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium. As I already have mentioned, Humboldt admired the Greek Paideia. The emphasis on “form” clearly refers to the “aesthetic” process of shaping and transforming. The formation of character cannot be made through discipline and accordance with a preset “code” but rather, through interplay with others. This indicates that cultivation can be understood as similar to the process of shaping in plastic arts, because in the plastic arts, such a sculpture, pottery etc., the material is worked and reworked; it is never free from the marks or force of prior embodiments, intentions and actions. This is not the case with other art forms, such as painting or those arts that appeal primarily to the sense of sight.

86 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 183. Although Humboldt recognized that this was an ideal, impossible in real life, he referred to Sophocles as the embodiment of such an androgynous balance. 184. Sweet (1978) refers to a publication by Schleiermacher in the journal, Athenäum. I assume it is “Idee zu Katechismus der Vernunft für edle Frauen,” published in Athenäum in 1798. 185. Sweet (1978: 169). It is perhaps necessary to keep in mind that there were many influential women among the free spirits in the Humboldt circle, for instance Henriette Herz, Dorothea Mendelssohn Schlegel, Rahel Levin Varhagen, and Mme de Staël. However, his liberal ideas on “women’s liberation” were received badly, especially by Kant and Fichte. 186. Humboldt: GS, II, 26; Sweet (1978: 185). 187. The German word Geist is not easily translated. In the essay: “Über den Geist der Menschheit,” Humboldt (1956) delineates his use of the word Geist. At the same time, he determines its linguistic origin and transformations. Although the German word Geist is a metaphor frequently found in other languages (i.e., spirto, espirite, spirit), he insists that the German metaphor possesses some of the word’s original, secular meaning, namely “breath” (Hauch). The German word Geist is, he argues, a survival of a metaphor originating in the Hebrew language and denoting “something that cannot be determined” (dies ist noch näher zu bestimmen). In his more pragmatic usage, it signifies a passion, energy or force in which we “are in perfect harmony with the whole of nature.” Geist is then compared to the mode of living the Greek referred to as virtu, which he argues has lost its original meaning. He points to a passion or enthusiasm that Bildung needs [das bei uns Geist . . . eine so volle, echte und eigentümliche Kraft anzeigt und ebensogut von der innern und aussern Bildung gebraucht wird, 67]. 188. Humboldt, GS, II: 332–34; Cowan 1963: 147–55), “On the Spirit of Humanity.” 189. Humboldt (1821/1967: 67). 190. Sweet insists that Dahrendorf (1967) has mistakenly argued that “Humboldt propagated a methodology that downgraded empiricism and common sense and placed a premium on the knowledge to be acquired by a chosen few through intuitive divination of basic forces.” Dahrendorf labels Humboldt’s methodology “the elitist theory of manifest truth.” Sweet has reacted against this misrepresentation in several articles. Sweet (1978: 199n159). 191. Sweet: (1978: 197). 192. In his essay on Goethe’s Hermann und Dorothea, Humboldt (1799/1967) states: “Das Feld des Dichter ist die Einbildungskraft. . . . Das Wirkliche in ein Bild zu verwandeln, ist die allgemeinste Aufgabe aller Kunst, auf die sich jede andrer, mehr oder weniger unmittelbar, zurückbringen lässt.” Also printed in GS II, 126. Müller-Vollmer (1967: 2) points out the radicality of Humboldt’s ideas, and that they seem to belong to the modern world of Baudelaire rather than to his own age: “Le domaine du poète est l’imagination”! So beginnt der humboldtsche Text. Wer dächte da nicht bereits an Formulierungen Baudelaires, wie “‘l’Imagination seule contient la poésie.” 193. Humboldt, GS, II; Cowan (1963: 161). 194. Sweet (1978: 209) refers to Müller-Vollmer (1967: 146, 166–67).

Mythos Humboldt ♦ 87 195. Humboldt, GS II, 136; extracts in Cowan (1963: 159–62); Müller-Vollmer (1967). 196. I assume this is a reference to Alexander Baumgarten, who in Aesthetica, published in 1750, argues that sensorial perception and emotions were unique ways of understanding the world (sensible cognition), thus also stressing the poet’s ability, in a representation, to arouse a particular affect in a poetic product. With the advent of the Critique of Judgment, Kant argued that our judgment of a particular artwork (beyond mere appreciation) is mediated by certain formal features of the representation that cause the two human faculties, understanding and imagination, to fall into harmony. However, because nature is not directly accessible to the mind, the question of representation as a mediated reality arises. This question is often assumed to mark a shift in aesthetic reflections toward a modern theory that does not regard art as mere imitation of nature (mimesis). In Kant, “communication” between minds is secured since there are some categories of thought that are innate and common to all. As mentioned above, the crucial question was whether an artwork would have the same effect on readers irrespective of time and place. Such questions brought about new attempts, as Arens (1984) explains, to relate the workings of the human mind to the artwork or affective reception of art. What effect does a work of art—or more so, different genres of art— have on an audience? The question of reception was important for Humboldt. 197. In On Goethe’s Herman und Dorothea, Humboldt (1799/1967) uses the keyword ‘ignite’ in connection with the artist’s ability to awaken a sense of life in the reader/audience: “den elektrische Schock, der sie zum Leben erweckt.” 198. Sweet (1980: 430). He refers to Humboldt’s text “The Historian’s Task.” 199. Humboldt (1921/1967: 68). 200. The university thus becomes a site for broad understanding, as mentioned previously, by exerting the intellect in three directions: collecting facts in accord with the principle of reason (elevation), moving from the mechanical to the dynamic, and moving from the organic to the psychic (interiorization). Idealization is achieved through these processes; moreover, the idea of reason will be cultivated in the minds and in the “senses” of scholars. 201. His emphasis on changes and temporality means that “truth” was assumed to have history and was expressed through the investigation of historically unique events. The vocabulary employed by Humboldt (i.e., striving, searching, researching, etc.) indicates something constantly changing, yet still something that could be grasped (i.e., sensed) in terms of patterns, contours, or trends. 202. Humboldt (1821/1967) mentions, for instance, the eruption of art in its pure form in Egypt, and the sudden development of a free and yet mutually limiting individualism in Greece. 203. Ibid., 69. 204. Sweet (1980: 69). 205. This is the second element of what Schleiermacher (1803) considered “the mode of lecturing” (die Art des Vortrages), which does not mean that the student should admire the lecturer, but that the student should “experience” and

88 ♦ Humboldt Revisited gain insight [Der Lehrer muss alles, was er sagt, vor den Zuhörern entstehen lassen; er muss nich erzählen, was er weiss, sondern sein eignes Erkennen, die Tat selbst, reproduzieren, damit sie beständig nicht etwa nur Kenntnisse sammeln, sondern die Tätigkeit der Vernunft im Hervorbringen der Erkenntnis unmittelbar anschauen und anschauend nachbilden]. Schleiermacher’s text is reprinted in Anrich (1956/1964: 219–308). 206. Humboldt (1810/1970), Innere und ässsere; Cowen (1963: 138). 207. Humboldt was influenced by Schleiermacher’s emphasis on the relationship between dialectic and hermeneutic. The seminars were small workshops dedicated to the hermeneutic interpretation of historical texts. However, the “practice” was older and had been in use for a long time in monasteries (biblical research by monks). 208. Reill (1994: 353).

CHAPTER 2

The American Reception of Humboldt 

Introduction Wilhelm von Humboldt’s ideas on higher education and research had a great impact on American universities, especially regarding the ideas and criteria for higher learning in the humanities. Some even claim that the overriding ideal for American academic life after 1876 was “the model of Humboldt’s enlightenment university.”1 There is ample literature on the influence of Humboldt’s ideas on the growth of American universities; some are even firsthand recollections of student life in Germany in the early nineteenth century. From records and data, we know that more than 9,000 Americans studied at universities in Germany between 1815 and 19202—in Göttingen, Berlin, Halle, Leipzig, or Heidelberg—and virtually all of them, some of whom later became educational innovators,3 exercised major influence on American universities, both the already-established and those newly emerging. The large majority of the American students were enrolled in the philosophical faculties, although a substantial number of these students studied at the faculties of theology and law. There were also American students seeking professional training in the natural sciences, yet there were markedly fewer of them than students enrolled in the humanities, who were “learning something which went by the name of ‘philology.’”4 Most of the early group of American students came from prestigious institutions like Harvard (i.e., the so-called Harvard Group in Göttingen5) and Yale, but there were also students from other New England universities, as well as New York, the Midwest, and southern universities. The following two chapters explore the American reception of the educational ideas of Humboldt, known as the Humboldtsche Bildungsideal. This chapter, compared to the next, places particular emphasis on changes in the American experience of the German ideas from the mid-nineteenth century to the outbreak of the World War I. Due to the German influence, many old institutions underwent fundamental

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reforms, and many new universities were founded. However, as I intend to show, attempts to appropriate the new ideas roused tension between the new German model of scholarship and the old prevailing AngloBritish model of collegiate education. This tension also followed in the wake of later debates on the aim and purpose of liberal education. The very last section of this chapter involves a focal change from “local” American debates to historical representation of Humboldt’s ideas and the German university, as conveyed by historical sociologists in the late 1960s and 1970s. Despite the distance in time and place, a conspicuous commonality in respective views is displayed.

I. HUMBOLDT IN THE AGE OF FAME AND GLORY Literature from primary as well as secondary sources helps to confirm a statement made by Lenore O’Boyle (1983) that the German university was the most admired institution in the West. Newspaper and magazine articles, research journals, and biographies published in the period 1840–18656 provide clear evidence of American enthusiasm for the German “ethos of scholarship.”7 It is fair to say that the previously so dominant British college style of higher education, which had served as the model for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia and others, was seriously challenged by the arrival of new educational ideas from Germany.8 The German university of Bildung was soon praised as “an institution of superior instruction” (1873),9 as an education that sees “the hero as a man of letters” (1841), and as “the beau ideal of what American colleges should be” (1880). Some writers even assumed that “anyone who . . . wishes to make himself a thorough scholar . . . must go to Germany and learn method there and improve by his efforts on what he has learned” (1876). What [the English] student needs most is what the Germans are fond of calling Geist, a larger outlook and understanding.10

In the 1850s, presumably fired by the pioneering spirit of the nation they represented, the visits of American students to Germany engendered new discussions about the establishment of a national university in the United States. Thomas Jefferson, who founded the first state university in 1819, the University of Virginia,11 soon became known as “the American Humboldt,”12 and Johns Hopkins University was called the “Göttingen-in-Baltimore.” There exists a number of biographical

The American Reception of Humboldt ♦ 91

accounts of student life in Germany aimed to “enlighten the American public about student life in Germany.”13 Andrew D. White, who founded Cornell University in 1868, recollects the following in 1905, professors lecturing to large bodies of attentive students on the most interesting and instructive periods of human history aroused in me a current of new ideas. Gradually I began to ask myself the question: why not help the beginnings of this system in the United States.14

It is a curious fact that in the period between 1820 and 1920, American students actually preferred German universities over traditional English and French ones, since neither German history and literature, nor the German language were well-known in the United States at the time. A possible explanation is that the university devoted to Bildung had already become renowned for its egalitarianism, and German science, literature, and philosophy enjoyed a positive reputation in the nineteenth century. The English universities such as Oxford and Cambridge were, by many, regarded as outmoded and marked by the scholastic thinking of the late Middle Ages during which classics merely had substituted Christian authorities. From biographical notes, we know that many American students were attracted to the scientific approach in German universities to the classical culture of ancient Greece and Rome, as well to their in-depth study of other civilizations. Yet, it was the intellectual freedom of both students and teachers to pursue their own academic interests that perhaps left the greatest and most enduring impression.15 The new ideal of academic freedom implied for the visiting Americans a step beyond the monastic learning methods and other “relics of a disciplinary past” in which the pursuit of truth was distracted by paternalistic supervision (i.e., taking class attendance, paying heed to student conduct outside the classroom),16 and where the lecture halls were used to extol religious virtues. The German-trained professors sought to define the purpose and process of the university in terms that were free of moral constraints and undisturbed by ecclesiastical, political, or utilitarian concerns. This, however, did not involve renouncing moral standards but rather “transform[ing] [values] from the realm of external conduct to the substance of the investigative work at hand, in which it was presumed that the student would immerse himself along with the professor.”17 Indepth scientific inquiry18 was supposed to teach total independence and honesty, or, as Harvard Medievalist Charles Gross expressed it in 1894,

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Research generates not merely independence of thought, but also the spirit of self-reliance, zeal for truth, and love of patient, disinterested, conscientious labor.19

The new vision of scholarship, which the American students encountered, was embedded in a notion of democratic citizenship, and was, according to Hermann Röhrs, seen as “an effective counterpoise to the commercial spirit that was already making itself felt in the American colleges.”20

The German Influence on American Universities It is difficult to determine whether the new “ethos of scholarship” was considered a useful supplement to the prevailing English college system’s reliance on moral and mental discipline, or whether it represented a radical departure from an educational system, in which practical relevance and “the amassing of factual knowledge” was increasingly seen as most important.21 Nevertheless, there is little doubt that the academic endeavor encountered by the American students in Germany was met with a high degree of appreciation in the United States, as Carl Diehl also confirms: Through visible and invisible social interaction, the idea of German scholarship gradually acquired a respectability and status in America that it never quite attained in either France or England.22

Heidelberg professor Hermann Röhrs (1995) is one of few scholars who have tried to assess the influence of the German concept of education on the development of higher education in the United States. What makes the study particularly interesting is his attempt to delineate the German influence by focusing on the nascent stage of the new American universities, when they were in the process of searching for an identity. His investigation is limited in scope yet detailed enough to enlighten readers about the intriguing complexity of this particular interchange. Röhrs emphasizes that it is largely due to the development of the new Midwestern universities, especially the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, that the influence of the German university took root in American higher education.23 The University of Michigan, at the time a college strongly influenced by the social utility-oriented colleges of the pioneer West, had already turned against the elitist spirit of the Ivy League universities of the East; it aimed at establishing a university where scholarly research was “the pivotal concern.” Henry Tappan,

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who was appointed president at Michigan in 1852, ten years after its founding, was a great admirer of the German university system,24 and paid several visits to educational institutions there. Tappan also deliberately recruited German-educated scholars (for example Andrew Dickson White and his student Charles Kendall Adams25) in order to “place his venture on a sounder footing.” Despite his dedication and enthusiastic efforts, which in hindsight may have been somewhat premature, he was soon to be replaced by Erastus O. Haven, often described as a docile clergyman, who moved the university more in the direction of Yale. The longest presidency was held by Haven’s successor James B. Angell, who had studied in Germany and was influenced by the educational ideals now more frequently referred to as the “new education.” Harvard was under strong German influence in this period and underwent a series of fundamental administrative reforms, especially under the long-term presidency of Charles William Eliot.26 Eliot was an outspoken defender of the free elective system (Lernfreiheit)27 and strongly rejected the collegiate pastoral ideal of fostering a “wellrounded Christian gentleman.” In fact, once when Eliot was paid a visit by President Hadley of Yale,28 who presented a scholarly paper on the organization of the thirteenth-century university, Eliot rose and proclaimed: The American University has nothing to learn from medieval universities, nor yet from those still in the medieval period.29

Michigan notwithstanding, the university on which “the German model” of scholarship perhaps had the most durable effect was Johns Hopkins University, established in 1876. The university was shaped along German lines by its first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, who, after a visit to Berlin in 1855, wrote a treatise in which he describes the university’s truly worthy objective as being “the advance beyond factual knowledge to visions extending the frontiers of what is academically responsible and feasible.”30 Moreover, it was the conception of free scientific research embodied in the German university that set the standard for further development and eventually turned Johns Hopkins into a symbol of German research in America.31 In its early days, almost all of the fifty-three professors and instructors had studied in Germany, and thirteen had received their doctorates from German universities.32 The first appointed professor, Basil L. Gildersleeve, pioneered the establishment of classical studies in America.33 In what became known as his “enlightened attitude to life” and in his effort to

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“live up to his ideal of classical studies,” he was regarded as the first American representative of an authentically academic attitude. [O]f all scholars here, . . . he actually transplanted the idea of a university from the soil where Wilhelm von Humboldt first conceived it.34

In addition, the prestigious Cornell University was established in 1889 with a similar aim, namely, “to found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.”35 Andrew Dickson White built up the graduate school in close alignment with the German university concept.36 White, who had been a student in Germany and previously been appointed professor of history at the University of Michigan, is also credited with the honor of having introduced the German seminar method37 at Cornell. His well-known enthusiasm for German education is recorded in his autobiography: My student life at Berlin, during the years following, further intensified my desire to do something for university education in the United States. There I saw my ideal of a university, not only realized, but also extended and glorified—with renowned professors, with ample lecture-halls, with everything possible in the way of illustrative materials, with laboratories, museums, and a concourse of youth from all parts of the world.38

II. A CHANGE OF HEART ABOUT GERMAN SCHOLARSHIP The reminiscences from student life in Germany in the late nineteenth century give clear evidence of the American public’s enthusiasm for the German ethos of scholarship. Röhrs’ study furthermore illustrates how the German American interchange influenced the intellectual character and design of American universities.39 Though it is documented that the German educational system was both admired and copied, none of these rich sources give any clear indication of why this particular system of education was soon ‘demonized’ as a cradle of fascism and a danger to Western civilization. A change of heart toward German universities and the Bildungsideal can certainly be detected at the time of the Nazi ascent to power in 1933; first as a certain skepticism or ambivalence for the proclaimed superiority and excellence of the German ideals, a skepticism which immediately after World War II turned into resentment, disappointment and even despair. This change is well expressed in Max Weinreich’s book from 1946, in which he proclaims:

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German Scholarship . . . looking like a gigantic assembly line working toward one aim.40

Before discussing the fate of Bildung in the World War II years and their aftermath, it is necessary to relate this clear reversal of opinion to some changes that took place within American academia at the outbreak of World War I.

The Destiny of German Education during World War I As the United States in 1917 joined the Allies in their fight against the Germans, “Americans suddenly waged war against themselves at home.”41 This domestic “war” targeted all citizens suspected of unpatriotic attitudes.42 The upheaval and subsequent demand for public displays of loyalty had a particularly devastating effect on the many German immigrants in the upper Midwest.43 In these regions, German was regularly spoken in the schools, German newspapers were published, and the state capitol of Ann Arbor, Michigan, even had street signs posted in both English and German. With the advent of World War I, anything remotely related to Germany became suspicious and was perceived as a sign of disloyalty, and, as Clifford Wilcox argues, “disloyalty became tantamount to treason.”44 For the immigrants, the new anti-German attitude resulted in a suppression of German spoken in public, censorship of German newspapers, and the demand that German-speaking schools convert to English. This anti-German attitude, or what Wilcox emphatically describes as a “hatred of the Germans that swept through all American society,”45 was soon “allowed easy access into the university.”46 Among other things, he argues, it set the future standard for how academic freedom was to be understood and administratively enforced in American universities.

The Domestic Attack on Professors of German The suspicion directed at German immigrants had a particularly devastating effect on academic life, especially on professors of German at Midwestern universities in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nebraska, but also further afield in Oregon and Virginia. A large percentage of these professors, some of whom were ethnically German, were soon dismissed on account of their perceived lack of support for America and the Allies.47 What is more, this attack was exceptionally fierce at the University of Michigan, a university, it will be recalled,

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conceived in the spirit of the German model of higher education and that had actively recruited esteemed German scholars. And when considering the popularity the German model of education enjoyed in the universities of the Midwest in general, it seems odd that an institution such as the University of Michigan “almost completely dismantled its German department in the years 1917 to 1918 by permanently discharging six professors for suspected disloyalty.”48 An outbreak of war will most certainly cause public upheaval. However, the severity of the Michigan case cannot simply be explained by patriotic hysteria. The war drew manifest deep-seated fault lines in an increasingly ideologically and culturally divided America; fault lines that manifested themselves as “fractures within the structure of the American universities.”49 At the time, there was no settled agreement on what the identity or true function of the American university should be, and proponents of pure research worked side by side with those dedicated to applied research. The war had accentuated the division between these factions, especially between those who saw the university as a “service institution” and those who saw it as an institution where in-depth learning and research was the primary goal. Those who saw the university primarily as a service institution and an adjunct of the state “extolled the expression and inculcation of patriotism as the supreme aim of the university during wartime.”50 Those who regarded scholarly exploration of social and political issues to be the true purpose of the university “did, on the other hand, resist the pressure for university faculties to simply enlist in the government’s propaganda campaign.”51 The University of Michigan case, however, was a clear indication that the identity of the American university would become more contested in the twentieth century. And as, Stanford professor W. H. Cowley proclaimed in 1938, since the establishment of the new universities in the mid-nineteenth century, two powerful but conflicting points of view concerning the goal and purpose of American higher education had been making “a battleground out of American colleges and universities.”52 This was the dispute between the Intellectualists and those referred to as the defenders of holoism.53 Less than a decade later, this dispute had undergone changes and crystallized into a conflict between the Progressives and the Traditionalists over the aim and purpose of liberal education. Their respective viewpoints on the structure of the American university needs to be understood in relation to the tension that existed between the two dominant perspectives on the aim and purpose of higher education, namely the English collegiate

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system and the German emphasis on scientific or in-depth scholarly pursuits. The English collegiate model of a broad four-year liberal education in freestanding residential colleges, which dominated the American system from as early as 1640,54 was concerned with the education of the student “as a whole person”: the ideal, well-rounded individual. The sole purpose of education was to shape the character of a Christian Gentleman and leader of the community who would willingly subordinated his own desires to the social code. It was widely asserted that to reach this goal, educational institutions were responsible for the student’s emotional, religious, moral, social, aesthetic, and physical being, as well as their intellectual development. Since it was believed that human faculties could not be trusted to mature on their own accord, mental and moral discipline became an important part of the educational effort. The German Bildung model, by contrast, held that the university was responsible for forming self-reliant, critical citizens and proficient researchers, by guaranteeing freedom and solitude for the intellectual development of each individual, who, from the outset, was regarded as a full-fledged junior scholar.55 These “doctrines” on education differed in substantial ways and created tension in the debates on issues pertaining to goals and purposes of the university. Wilcox is particularly concerned with the effects these cases of summary dismissal had on the future interpretations of academic freedom in American universities. He argues, for instance, that the dismissal of the German professors was enabled through collusion between professors and a powerful alumni organization, thus alluding to the divergent ideological opinions that existed among the professorate on what the true functions of a university should be.56 The professors, who regarded the university primarily as a “service institution,”57 were, together with the alumni organization, able to force the administration to discharge professors deemed insufficiently patriotic or suspected of disloyalty. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), founded in 1915, had a very traditional conception of academic freedom and understood it as the assurance of professors’ intellectual autonomy to investigate, teach and discuss any subject.58 In fact, the initial “Report on Academic Freedom” published by the AAUP stated that, “‘academic freedom’ has traditionally had two applications—to the freedom of the teacher and to the student, to Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit.”59 However, when the movement for patriotism and loyalty arose, the AAUP was under pressure to revise and adjust their concept of academic freedom in accordance with the current demands. And eventually, in 1918, the

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AAUP Committee on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure released a modified version of its 1915 statement that recommended severely restricting the privileges of professors to teach and discuss controversial issues. This report provided specific guidelines for dealing with professors of German or Austrian-Hungarian birth, stating that these professors must not “do or say anything that might even hint at a lack of sympathy with the United States.”60 [They] should be bound to refrain from public discussion of the war; and in their private intercourse with neighbors, colleagues and students, to avoid all hostile or offensive expressions concerning the United States or its government.61

The case of Michigan, however, cannot be reduced to a conflict between academics and anti-intellectuals, because “the sternest censorship of professors came from AAUP.”62 There is reason to believe that the case of Michigan was more a question of how much cultural and ideological diversity could be allowed in American public universities. Because the AAUP was unable to defend the professors (who were accused of disloyalty and dismissed on the basis of their ethnic origin rather than because of what they said), they also missed the opportunity to expand the conception of academic freedom and to question the nature or function of the university in American society. Their inabilities were to have fatal consequences, especially during the Cold War. Had they been willing to put this conception to the test during the war years . . . they might have set a precedent for combating suspicion and prejudice that would possibly have prevented a similar but even harsher purge of “disloyal” academics that came a generation later with the onset of the Cold War.63

German Education and National Dispositions The anti-German attitudes in American society can certainly be detected in books on German education published during the war, some of which are “belated discoveries of Germany’s intellectual feebleness which the war has produced,” or more subtle attempts to bring forth “characterization of the German nature.”64 A few examples may serve as illustrations of this change in attitude. In James T. Shotwell’s (1916) review of Antoine Guilland’s Modern Germany and Her Historians,65 the Swiss professor is praised for having detected how the German historians played an important role

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in forming the national spirit and political union of German states. Shotwell refers to “the evil effects of Bismarck’s policy of controlling public opinion at home,” and of “the political corruption which is [exacerbated] by efficient manipulation”:66 If we consider that the policy had its warmest defenders in the recent Prussian historians, we are right in saying that they are authors in the first place of this degeneracy of manners. By so acclaiming strokes of force and cunning, in spite of the moral varnish with which they have covered their theories, they have helped to pervert the public mind. . . . Through their historical theories, they have been the propagators of the worst political maxims, for the refutation of which humanity already has shed seas of blood. They must be surprised with the results; they have worked for social democracy. In truth nothing lasting is based upon deceit and lies; sooner or later that work comes back to one.67

A similar example is found in Thomas R. Powell’s (1917) review of the book by Harvard historian William Roscoe Thayer, Germany vs. Civilization: Notes on the Atrocious War. (1917).68 Some citations from Thayer’s book may perhaps illustrate the transformed attitude toward German scholarship. We can hardly lay too much stress on the German self-conceit as an important element in bringing Germany to the condition where she would embark exultingly in the atrocious war.69 This war sprang naturally from the German heart and will, as a vulture springs from its nest.70 German mendacity bears witness to the insoluble barbaric residue in German nature.71

Thayer’s purpose, apparently, is to link a set of emotional dispositions (described as “the German nature”) to the German notion of Kultur. Kultur is subsequently contrasted to the English notion of culture, “which looks beyond itself, sees the best wherever it exists, recognizes the validity of different standards, and practices tolerance without the least surrendering conviction.”72 In this case, an affiliation is made between Kultur and egoism, whereas in other cases, attention is drawn to how German “subjectivism”—the reference to the state as an autonomous will—fosters submissiveness. A notion of the state as the power a society possesses, is, other times, described as “the German heresy” of nationalism, and contrasted to the principle of “English liberty.”73

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The mode of speech conveyed in the above examples is perhaps not very surprising, since the United States was at war with Germany at the time. Yet considering the quantity and the “institutional source” from which the books are publicly presented and reviewed, namely research journals,74 they seem overtly political and biased, at least by today’s standards. However, the examples illustrate a new and interesting trend, namely the steadily increasing preoccupation with emotions and the irrational, or rather, with analyzing human or psychological motives and dispositions in relation to social behavior. During this period there is, in other words, a marked preoccupation with psychology; in this case, an effort to offer psychological explanations for the war. These explanations are heavily infused with references to psychological attributes, traits, or a national collective unconscious. This means that the conduct or behavior and actions of various peoples or ethnic groups (sometimes denoted “races”75)—in this case, the Germans76—are increasingly explained as the result of certain national dispositions. The focus is on motives, moral attributes, character, instincts, dominant outlook, attitudes, values, drives, habits, soul, and national spirit, and so forth. This tendency might have something to do with advances in psychiatry at the turn of the century, and the emergence of the modern idea of personality that came into its own in the postwar years.77 Stuart Hughes (1958/1961), for example, calls this period “the recovery of the unconscious” as the question of unconscious motivation (i.e., will to power, libido, élan vital, etc.) was addressed and problematized by social thinkers. Alongside such psychological diagnoses of a “German war spirit” and a “German soul,” and so on, other concepts and references to the “American character” and “Americanism” gradually (re) appear and are given cognitive status and authority.78

Americanism and “Foreign” Influence The notion of Americanism reflects a new faith in what is termed ‘democratic individualism,’79 or “the only solid foundation for our duty to respect the other man’s rights.”80 This concept played an important role in the social reform movement that, from the late nineteenth century, worked to reinvigorate American democracy by assimilating immigrants and improving the national character.81 The new Progressive movement called on the (strong) state to provide aid and individual liberty to weak and oppressed members of society, and to control the distribution of wealth by regulating trade. Even though the movement toward Americanization began altruistically, with a humanitarian approach

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and an effort toward national integration, it soon developed into a new political nationalism, which set out to socialize the ethnically very diverse population into an American “common mind,” by insisting on social order, moral decency and mental hygiene.82 In calling Americans to participate in “the war to end all wars,” Woodrow Wilson, in fact, “drew on the Progressives’ desire to unite all citizens in a single community of shared valued and aspirations.”83 The preoccupation with individual virtues and vices characterized the Progressive movement’s “crusades for ‘good government.’”84 Progressive educators, such as John Dewey saw “good education” as an important tool for social reconstruction, that is, as a way to develop a healthy society by way of the socialized responsible individual.85 He firmly believed that education could help fashion a culturally pluralistic immigrant-society into an integrated moral community. The university had an obligation to meet public needs and support the development of democracy and social welfare. However, the outbreak of war and the eruption of communism in 1917 gravely affected the reform efforts. The liberals, who believed that liberation and revolution could be achieved peacefully by orderly social reforms, apparently lost faith and became less enthusiastic; the racist and nationalist passions unleashed by the war “made many liberals wonder whether the masses were capable of self-control, a characteristic they deemed essential to the success of a free society.”86 To remain democrats, many thought it necessary to limit reforms (e.g., restrict immigration) to those areas in which the irrational impulses and instincts could be checked. In fact, freedom of trade and the enhancement of competition were regarded as the only viable means to combat friction between the different racial and ethnic cultures.87 After the war, the socioeconomic structure was transformed, and with the consumer revolution, specific immigrant issues decreased in importance. Consequently, by the 1930s, questions of ethnicity and race were only a marginal part of the public discourse. They were substituted by questions concerning folk and people, concepts that referred to all Americans. The Progressives were soon challenged by the New Deal reformers, who regarded the social order as unsatisfactory and in need of a more profound reconstruction. If education was to have a positive influence on the further development of democracy, it needed to be more practical and thus better adjusted to the social roles and economic demands of a complex, industrial society. As John W. Withers, dean of New York University,88 expresses in his address “Education and Social Construction” in March 1934, it became recognized

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that one fundamental purpose of education as an institution is to serve as an important agency of social control and the maintenance and satisfactory functioning of an established social order.89

A proclamation made by the Progressive Education Association in the mid-1930s may serve as an illustration of the new trend that evolved. Here it is made quite clear that education must be re-oriented from past ideals toward prospects to teach the ideal of American democracy in its historic form, without the illumination that comes from an effort to apply it to contemporary society, is intellectually dishonest because it is an attempt to educate youth for life in a world that does not exist. The schools therefore, cannot evade the responsibility of participating actively in the task of reconstituting the democratic tradition and of thus working positively towards a new society.90

Because the schools were assumed to have a responsibility “in the task of reconstituting the democratic tradition,” teachers were expected to take on a new role: “to work boldly and without ceasing for a better social order.” It was of utmost importance that teachers assert their independence, as they owe nothing to the present economic system except to improve it; they owe nothing to any privileged caste except to strip of it privileges; their sole duty is to guard and promote the widest and most permanent interest in society. They must always be in a position to place their faith, their intelligence, their idealistic fervor and not merely their professional skill at the service of the masses of the people. If teachers are to play a positive and creative role in building a better social order, they must repudiate utterly the ideal of material success as the goal of education, acquire a realistic understanding of the forces that actually rule the world, and formulate a fundamental program of thought and action that will deal honestly and intelligently with the problems of industrial civilization. They will have to restate their philosophy of education, reorganize the procedures of the schools and redefine their own position in society. Such measures will, of course, require fundamental changes in the methods of teacher training and the assumption on the part of the profession of an increasing burden of cultural leadership.91

As a result of the Progressive movement’s efforts, a whole series of new suggestions were proposed to improve education: experimental programs aimed at differentiated teaching methods; the establishment

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of teacher training programs (education became an academic discipline institutionalized in separate teacher training schools); cooperative learning methods within the schools (i.e., learning communities); and construction, experimentation, and revisions of the curriculum. Thus, as Ruth Higgins (1940) remarks, “it is the increasing attention paid to ‘personalities’ or the individualization of education, that is the most noticeable trend,”92 in addition to what she argues is an increasing emphasis on the close relationship between education and democracy: Educators are stressing the responsibility of college graduates in working out guiding principles for the nation in harmony with democratic purposes and in maintaining democracy as a way of life.93

Higgins touches upon what was to become a passionate dispute over higher educational policies, particularly on the nature and purpose of liberal education. Against the Progressives and their stress on education of the personality, the so-called Traditionalists (the defenders of liberal culture) argued strongly in favor of the cultivation of the student’s character and intellectual virtues and thus learning to think for oneself. Both groups were responsive to the need for educational reform, but they had divergent opinions concerning the goal and purpose of higher education. In Professor W. H. Cowley’s (1938) review of the past century’s educational thought and practices, mentioned above, he detects a struggle between two powerful but conflicting philosophies of education. He uses the term ‘holoism’ to refer to the educational doctrine of those who are concerned with the whole person, while ‘intellectualists’ is the term he uses to characterize those philosophers who follow in the footsteps of “the great thinkers and leaders of American universities during the nineteenth-century.”94 His article targets the “chief present-day exponent of intellectualism,”95 and demonstrates clearly Wilcox’s assessment that the argument over the true function of the American university was not yet settled.96 In Cowley’s view, the Progressives were trying to reintroduce an educational program that previously had been implemented through the British collegiate way of living. This program, he argues, continued “unmolested for a century and a quarter—until Americans began to look to Germany rather than to England for educational leadership.”97 Before the invasion of German objectives and German methods, the American college was a teaching institution devoted to the cause of educating the selected young of the nation.98

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The defenders of research and the cultivation of scholarship, which, in the early 1930s, were labeled “intellectualists,” were however soon to be sorted—sometimes together with, other times apart from, the defenders of liberal culture—under other, less flattering names, such as traditionalists (1938), conservatives, (1945), reactionaries (1946), and right wing.99 The change in attitude may have something to do with the public reactions to the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933.

III. GERMAN EDUCATION DURING AND AFTER WORLD WAR II As the Nazis were gaining power in the 1930s, increasing reactions are registered in American research journals that had previously focused mainly on domestic affairs. The initial reactions were somewhat ambivalent toward the new regime and its attempt to reform German education. However, some were strongly critical in their effort to warn the American public of the developments in German universities. One example of this trend is an article by Paul Neureiter (1934)100 entitled “Hitlerism and German Universities: Warning to American Faculties.”101 He asserts that “three-fourths of the student bodies are estimated to have National Socialist leanings, and a large proportion are filling the ranks of the Brown Army as storm troopers.” This is happening, he argues, “while their professors have to take the back seat in the political arena.”102 At the University of Berlin, world-renowned for its brilliant faculty and one time the Mecca of American scholars, the student body is overzealous; it marches in the forefront of the movement, setting its pace. On the campus of the University there was conceived the grand idea of burning books with inimical contents in a public bonfire. There the student compelled the rector of the university, a man of international reputation, to resign because he refused to accede to their demands. Gone is the time-cherished tradition, equally respected by the republican and monarchical rulers of Germany for decades, which vested the university with absolute freedom of teaching and research, thus making it a state within the state.103

The author explains the latest political development in Germany by reference to some “intrinsic shortcomings of German education.”104 Special attention is devoted to the leaders’ failure to civilize the students. For instance, he asks: How was it possible that the German professors lost their hold on the minds of the students so completely? In his elaboration of the alleged shortcomings, he questions those

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educational ideals and academic practices previously held so high in the United States. To prove his point adequately, the reader is asked to imagine how an American student would react if he were transferred to a German university. Neureiter admits that Americans most likely would be impressed by the great independence (Lernfreiheit) enjoyed by German students. Yet, he rhetorically asks, “Is a young man of about twenty really mature enough to be his own master?”105 Or is this ideal simply a self-contained and convincing theory . . . that on close examination . . . reveals itself to be specially adapted to the by-gone days when it was the sole purpose of the universities to prepare a select group of people for the professions.106

The impression we are left with is that the teacher’s independence, so much valued in the Germans system of education, is nothing less than a façade behind which the faculty hides its indifference for the students’ well-being and progress. The author goes on to question the educational system that places so much emphasis on training the mind, for is it not, he asks, “falling short of other objectives such as the building of character and the development of a wholesome civic attitude?”107 Neureiter confronts the reader with other, yet similar shortcomings, such as the “absence of guidance and a scarcity of inspiration for the young students,”108 and the lectures, which are “dry and dusty as old church registers.”109 Undergraduate social life is poor and inadequate. The faculty is cutting responsibilities by their “indifference to the spiritual problems of their pupils.”110 He ends up concluding that the ideology of higher education in Europe “has stood still for decades,”111 and it is “a system stubbornly clinging to the shibboleth of the past.”112 Because the German university has a tendency toward overspecialization, it “does not aim to equip men and women with broad and liberal opinions which will make them adaptable to the ever-changing situations of modern life.” He continues, “entrenched behind the liberalistic phrase of the freedom of teaching and research, the universities have balked every effort at reform which was repeatedly urged upon them by outside forces that wished to bring them more in line with social conditions.”113 The article is basically an attempt to explain why German universities ended up as “hotbeds of Naziism [sic].”114 However, it is also an attempt to use the case of Germany as an example of an educational model that “teaches (us) a pellucid lesson as to what higher education should not be in a modern, democratic, industrialized society.” The

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author’s overriding aim is presumably to “build up a plea for the curbing of certain pernicious tendencies in American education.”115 For, as he argues, a democratic, industrialized nation “requires education to be diffused among a large number of people, first for the sake of democracy, and second, to relieve the labor market of congestion.”116 Our age, characterized by the prevalence of the machine power and penetrated with the recognition of human equality, calls for a type of higher education, which trains broadly, liberally, and non-professionally, with adequate emphasis on those parts of the curriculum which aim at the development of the body, the character, and the civic attitude of the learner.117

Later the same year, a related article appeared, this time by Wilhelm Reitz, trying to inform the American public of the Nazi higher educational program. The article is simply presented as “an attempt to select in an unbiased manner from the mosaic of information on the Third Reich,”118 a “sketch of the picture of the reorganization of higher education in Germany as the National Socialists conceive of it.”119 Whereas Neureiter tried to explain the failure of German education by comparing it to the American system of education, Reitz apparently attempts to give a sober, matter-of-fact account of how the National Socialist’s political education differs from the “old” Bildung model. In doing so, he inadvertently shows how the National Socialists’ educational vision of a political man was formed in opposition to nineteenth-century classical liberalism’s “ideal of a harmoniously educated man,” an ideal that “changed gradually into the one-sided, scholarly specialist who stood aside from his state and Volk.”120 One of the major differences between the new model of political education and the old model of Bildung is, Reitz argues, that a young person no longer has to graduate to the rank of Staatsbürger to have rights, but he could, without income and employment, become a citizen and a full member of the state. However, the new political state is not made up of individualistic citizens, as one may expect, but “of fellow countrymen who group themselves under the leader, each one fulfilling in his way and in his place the mission of National Socialism.”121 In remodelling the university, it is explained by National Socialists that, contrary to the old academic education, which let the priest or pastor talk over the heads of his congregation, let the philologist remain misunderstood by his students, let the language of the

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lawyers be known only to lawyers, and let the scientist search for the truth without requiring that he ever accept the social responsibility of putting his findings to practical application, the new political education asks above all: What about the service of the people?122

Reitz recognizes that the introduction of new principles means that basic concepts such as university, science, professor, student, teaching, and research have changed. The new “political education” is, as he interprets it, neither to be “a club of Philistines”123 nor a “supply-station for bread and butter.”124 Neither does it “look in favor on a science that is a heap of facts in the dream world of a bloodless intellect”125, nor does it “see in art a subject meant to be understood only by experts.” The new regime, Reitz argues, repeatedly stresses that “service of the people is the function of the political university.”126 Contrasted with the professors of the old university, who, the Nazi argues, were “exclusively concerned with the student’s progress and accomplishments in a scientific respect,”127 the professors of the new political university are expected to “foster and promote the student’s relations to the profession and the nation.”128 In the political university, the professor must never lose sight that he is a fellow countryman and that he must live a public life. And if a student objects to submitting to the political norm—for instance, “objects to belonging to a labor camp or to a defense sport camp [Wehrsportlager]—arguing that he would lose study time, he then demonstrates, according to the National Socialists, that he has understood nothing of the happenings around him.”129 Only time spent with abstract, disorganized study is wasted. The political student has learned to make judgment of what he needs and what he does not need. He wants as his university an institution where the virtues of deed and action are substituted for mediation, reflective consideration and scholarly seclusion.130

As Reitz describes it, the National Socialist mode of education is based on physical, political, and scientific training. Moreover, to foster the prized notion of fellowship, singing circles, speaking choirs, and game groups are projected. Professional guilds (Fachgruppen) are responsible for bringing about a lively relationship between student and professors; co-operation and a voice in the selection of students; joint responsibility with the faculty in the calling of professors to the university; the offering of

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proposals for, and having a voice in drawing up study plans; the establishment of a direct relationship to all professions through an active intercourse with fellow countrymen already engaged in professional life; for this purpose there shall be made available lecture evenings, working groups, and contact with the worker at his place of occupation; educational and vocational guidance; permanent cooperation in the construction of the curriculum and in the administration of the university; cooperation and a voice in the granting of study-fee remission and individual financial aid; participation in enterprises of adult education, in courses for workmen, and people’s universities (Volkshochschulen).131

One of the demands made by the new government was that all university students must belong to a professional guild. Yet this rule, Reitz remarks, excluded both non-Aryan and foreign students from participation in any guilds, because these students were not officially members of the student body.

IV. POSTWAR ANXIETIES: FOREIGN SURVEILLANCE AND DOMESTIC REFORM The debate on higher education that took place in the aftermath of World War II was naturally colored by the devastation of war and the shocking disclosures of the Holocaust atrocities. Disgust and public despair were soon followed by demands for public investigation and political prosecution. Once again, the German educational system, and now more specifically, the professors within their “ivy-covered walls”132 were expected to accept their part of the responsibility for the war. Scholars, who had previously warned the American public about “Hitlerism in the German universities,” once again, and this time even more emphatically, insisted that the universities must be targeted as the “incubators of the war spirit.”133 This time, however, it was not simply a matter of placing the blame on professors or pointing at structural defects in the organization of education; there was also an obvious fear of recurrence and consequently a cry for reform. Neureiter’s article from 1946 entitled “Watch the German Universities: The Responsibility of American Universities in German Rehabilitation” points out that there were two different objectives operating simultaneously. On the one hand, there was a felt need for closely surveilling the German universities while, on the other hand, there was an urgency to introduce reform alternatives.134 Neureiter insists that there is

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a need for American aid, as “it would be foolish to expect any reform to come from within the universities.”135 The German universities are badly in need of reform, and the academic profession in the United States is in a position to lend assistance by way of criticism and counsel.136

As for surveillance, Neureiter points directly at what he regards as faults and shortcomings in the German model of education. This time, however, he seems caught in the dilemma of whether German education could be equated with the Nazi system of political education, or could simply be seen as fostering the “war spirit” that caused the Nazi takeover. The article conveys some interesting ambiguities, which can be detected when Neureiter’s points out a curious inconsistency in the pronouncements of the Nazi bosses on the subject of the universities. These self-appointed custodians of Kultur treated the cultural mission of higher education with utter contempt, but bestowed high praise on the universities and institutes of technology for their scientific achievements. The same Goebbels who led the students in their orgiastic dance around the pyre of books, commended the researchers in academic laboratories for their ingenuity in creating devices of destruction.137

Furthermore, he states that the principles of academic freedom—Lehrund Lernfreiheit—are seen as “loathsome residue of democratic liberalism by the Nazis” and thus should be thrown out. Yet, he does not inquire further into this important difference between the liberal education of Bildung and the political education of the new regime; he simply states that the “old” system was feeble and thus unable and unwilling to resist Nazi dominance. In his search for responsible actors, he points to the German professors. He claims, for instance, that certain members of the teaching staff, insofar as they qualified as being “Aryan,” felt few qualms and experienced little difficulty in coming to terms with the Nazi dispensation . . . the number of professors dismissed . . . for reasons other than race was negligible.138

In Neureiter’s effort to delineate shortcomings, he acknowledges that the German model of education has had a certain influence on American universities in earlier days. However, he assures the reader, “the basic

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philosophies of higher education have always differed sharply in the two countries.”139 Having pointed out this difference, he is able to proceed in his criticism of what he refers to as “certain pernicious tendencies” in the German system, yet at the same time implying that the Americans have managed to overcome them. One of the flaws he directs attention to is the German educator’s financial dependence on the state. This dependency spelled danger to intellectual freedom, as it breaks down the “spirit of liberalism.” He argues this point as follows: The close tie between the state and the university is the reason why the resistance to the nazification of the universities was so slight. [There were] few, if any, martyrs for the cause of intellectual freedom.140

What is more, Neureiter suggests that the reform process must aim at making the universities responsive to the needs and demands of the broad masses of the German people, to abolish all privileges of wealth in higher education and to prevent the inbreeding of an academically educated class. The self-rule of the university is a relatively unimportant item within this broader scheme. Under no circumstances should it be possible for German professors to retire into academic preserves, fenced off from the outside by a specious academic freedom, within which the secret devices for the next war can be developed in safety. In introducing real democracy it may be best to abolish the self-administration of the universities and substitute for it control through a board of regents of trustees after the common American pattern.141

Neureiter persuasively argues in favor of reforming the universities so as to “bend all energies to the task of enlightening the common man and woman of the Fatherland, if necessary, go without research.”142 Reformers must begin from where the Weimar Republic fell short of its goals in the early 1920s, namely, to redefine the relationship between universities and secondary schools and make the latter institutions autonomous units, free to formulate their own objectives. Professors of pedagogy are to be given a more prominent position because the Continental universities have “failed to modify materially the practice of the schools, both lower and higher, in light of modern psychology.”143 He furthermore argues that the educational patterns of Germany and France have been characterized by considerable rigidity; an “excessive centralization of administration and the influence of military discipline.” He concludes that the German universities,

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with all these pernicious tendencies toward rigidity, repression and exclusiveness, . . . have connived without shame, since they have forever been intent on radiating their own standards into all branches of the system and on controlling, as far as possible, the education of their future recruits from the cradle up.144

Neureiter is particularly concerned with the psychological effect of such a rigid school system, which “seems to sit on millions of repressed youth like a strait jacket” and has “caused a severe emotional maladjustment in a large section of European people.”145 Its conservatism, he argues, is also reflected in the provision of academic degrees, with only one type of degree, the doctorate. The modern German university is essentially an institution for the training of specialists, and where “no pretense is made of giving a liberal education.”146 The university is completely uninterested in the student except insofar he performs tasks pertinent to his special line of study. This philosophy of splendid isolation from the student’s mind in all matters outside his elected specialty was defended in Germany on the ground that a young man or woman can only become truly mature by being left alone. Laissez faire in the extreme: let young people become Nazis so that they can reach maturity.147

American mass education methods “designed to suit the customer”148 are presented as the exact opposite of what is practiced in German universities, which are “hopelessly understaffed,” where there is “no credit system,” and where pedagogical institutes are “operating on some back alley of the campus.”149 He thus concludes that the survival of Germany as a nation of any significance depends upon her ability to regenerate herself spiritually. Educational reform must be one of the chief instrumentalities for such a necessary regeneration.150

Since it is assumed that the attempts at democratic self-administration during the Weimar Republic did not prevent the universities from becoming “bulwarks of the upper-class spirit, hotbeds of nationalism, and cadres of the Nazi movement,”151 assistance and aid must be sought from outside. In 1946, Neureiter suggested just this: Despite her physical ruin, Germany’s power of spiritual recovery need not be lost for good. . . . By the demonstration of mass-education methods, American educators can be very helpful to German and other European school reformers in the reconstruction of the continent.152

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Universities and Democracy: Disputes over Liberal Education The large majority of articles in educational journals in the postwar period deal with two main objectives. Some deal critically with what were regarded as shortcomings and flaws in the German (sometimes referred to as the European or Continental) educational system.153 Others are more concerned with the reforming of American education to better suit the “modern man.”154 Thus, the war affected the domestic debate in a series of ways, and suggestions were introduced for practitioners and administrators on the domestic front. Considering the German influence on American universities, it is perhaps surprising nevertheless that no reform issues discussed renewing, modernizing, or restoring the “old” German educational principles of Bildung. In fact, the contrary seems to be the case. “Reforming higher education” is increasingly understood as a necessary, if not inevitable, restructuring of American higher education in line with what now is referred to as “American ideals and academic practices.” However, to present an American style of liberal education as the only existing alternative, the other or “competing” model of liberal education, which made such a great impact on American universities since the days of Jefferson, must be emptied of content and declared dead and void. During the postwar years, there was virtually a cultural war over the meaning of science155 and over the goal and purpose of liberal education. Liberal education was expected to answer the proclaimed need for a broad, well-rounded education in general values. Thus, in postwar society, General Education was considered a necessary, if not urgent, means to meet the dangers (i.e., pernicious tendencies) associated with a secular education (narrowly) focused on specialization and vocational and technical training. Let us now turn to some of the ways General Education was achieved.

General Education The most obvious change in the postwar period is the concern with values, such as the proclaimed need in a secular society for “a deeper understanding of all the people of the world.”156 Reintroducing the idea of General Education157 and efforts at making this idea a vital part of the undergraduate curriculum in colleges and universities gained new force. ‘General’ is a response to the assumed danger of overspecialization (i.e., what is now seen as narrow and detailed research with no concern for values) and justified by reference to a need for “assimilating

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and synthesizing” education of basic concepts of our civilization.158 While what became known as the General Education Movement159 made several attempts to outline broad measures, it nevertheless met with a great deal of critical reactions. Some of these reactions reflect opposing interpretations of the role and purpose of liberal education in a modern society. Other reactions revolve around the necessities and dangers of specialization. The human sciences, or what are now increasingly referred to as the humanities, are profoundly affected by the professed new need for courses in General Education, as they are expected to offer liberating knowledge of choice, preference, and taste. As such, the humanities are asked to “assume the responsibility” and “fulfill their function in liberal education.”160 In other words, they should contribute to developing a broad common curriculum and offer instruction in what are referred to as “humanistic values,” “human dignity,” “moral living,” or simply “designs for living.” Despite apparently good intentions, humanist scholars faced with the new demands express a certain anxiety as to the future of their research field. Some find that the scientific status of their subject161 is increasingly questioned.162 Yet others react to the ways their science is reduced to general issues of practical ethics. Some scholars fear that General Education will reduce the humanities to “just another commodity in the general store of knowledge.”163 Others are less anxious and regard General Education simply as a passing fad or as “liberal education” in a new dress. Such questions are frequently supplemented by discussions over content and core curriculum, which of course are intimately related to divergent views about the purpose and long-term goals of such general courses. What follows are some preliminary reactions by scholars to General Education, which serve as a basis for further developments discussed in the next chapter.

The Function of the Humanities In the article entitled “General Education in a Tragic Era: To Prepare Youth for Flexible Adulthood,” William W. Biddle (1945) argues persuasively that General Education can no longer be viewed as “a body of cultural subject matter to be absorbed by the student in order to be educated;” rather it must be understood as a function, that is “a process or a series of experiments, by which students are inducted into a way of living.”164 General Education must thus be judged in terms of its usefulness, for instance, by providing guidance into a flexible adulthood—that is, “helping [students] find a place of usefulness, and

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develop attitudes and skills for such experimentation.”165 He suggests that education should provide the student with such skills as the determination of an occupation, the acquisition of social skills, development of suitable attitudes toward the opposite sex, achievement of understanding, attitudes and habits as citizens of a democratic community, and as member of the human race, formulation of a philosophy of life, a scheme of values by which all experiences and conduct take on meaning, are evaluated, and are given direction. Experience in this area must include study of historic cultures, aesthetic participation and appreciation, religious and moral evaluations.166

To achieve these goals, the author opts for introducing a “functional curriculum” that can guide the young person into life with a critical philosophy that measures “all behavior and decisions in the light of religious values.”167 This subsequently means that the curriculum can no longer be organized by subject matter and in classes, but rather by conferences.168 Such conferences may help the student to “explore the opportunities for usefulness available in the great community in relation to the possible life-contribution of each student.”169 And as the students gain insight into their own probable usefulness, he argues, they will be involved in supplementary conferences, organized by social experiences, family life, citizenship (political, economic, and international), philosophic, religious, and esthetic experiences: To aid both individual growth and group discussions, the college should have a large series of services available, such as clinics in physical and mental health, speech and writing, laboratories in the sciences and mathematics, and studios in music, art, drama, and literature.170

Furthermore, he insists that adults participate in the process (presumably as role models), including professional persons, businessmen, farmers, laborers, housewives, and ministers, a representative selection of person carrying mature responsibilities. They should be in majority, those who are themselves reaching out for a more satisfying way of life and a better social order.171

To enable the student to cope with a society in transition, the educational institution must “cooperate with churches, and political, economic, and religious institutions.”172 However, to make religious

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imperatives central for society and for education, he insists on the need for a change in the view of religion. Religion, he argues, is less a matter of rival interpretations of absolute truths, which “divide men into sects”;173 it is more a matter of the ethical imperatives which point toward a better life for “the least of these my children” upon which practically all religions would agree. These imperatives, being the possession of the whole human race rather than that of any exclusive sect, must be made practical in the behavior of men, communities, labor unions, corporations, nations. . . . All should learn to measure their individual and collective behavior against human values.174

Another concern is voiced in “What Are the Humanities?” in which B. L. Ullmann, the president of the American Classical League,175 reacts to what he perceives as a tacit transformation of religious doctrines into humanistic or ethical principles in the literature of the time. As a teacher of Latin, Ullmann reacts against the way the term ‘humanities,’ which as late as 1918 was synonymous with Greek and Latin, now has “an almost limitless application, and understood broadly as . . . the sum total of human activities.”176 His proclaimed intention is to “straighten out the issue of the humanities,”177 and defend language studies,178 especially the teaching of Latin and Greek in the new curriculum. He tries to locate contestants in what he regards as a battle over the meaning of the word ‘humanities,’ and argues that Classicists (who favor reading great books) and Progressivists, Vocationalists, or Modernists are now overshadowed by those who are . . . running around in circles and proclaiming that all the world is humanistic, but who overlook the languages or are fearful of being found in their company.179

In another, similar article from 1946 entitled “The Illiberal Arts: A Summary of Many Opinions,” the Marine Corps associate Argus Tresidder180 responds to what he regards as an attack on liberal arts courses and schools, especially accusations that they are impractical and wasteful. He reacts to how traditional notions of liberal education, such as “education for personal development and social responsibility,”181 or “the development of mental power and moral responsibility in each individual,”182 are confronted with questions of usefulness, as illustrated by questions such as “You sound good but what do you really know?” These attacks on scholarship are assumed to be an effect

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of the educational pressure caused by the postwar situation in which a new kind of student (i.e., the war veteran) “asks for proof that a given course is worth taking.”183 Men in professional courses have a realistic idea of what they want, and they are not easily satisfied with a romantic cultural indoctrination.184

He persistently argues that the threat to the humanities cannot be reduced to a “new episode in the old feud between liberal arts and engineering.”185 The new demand for courses “worth taking” has forced the humanities to provide immediately credible and convincing answers. He complains about a lack of agreement among the advocates of humanistic studies about what the purpose of their studies are, and that most discussions in popular magazines and educational journals revolve around the “civil war” between the Traditionalists and the Progressives. Whereas the former apparently wants to return to Greek and scholastic philosophy of education through the study of great books, the latter “holds that the function of the colleges is to train young men to an understanding and appreciation of the issues and problems of life and society as lived in our days.”186 The article clearly illustrates that postwar disputes over liberal education had crystalized into two opposing positions, to the disregard of other alternatives and viable options. The Traditionalists, he argues, believe that it is only by reading the masterpieces of Western thought and culture that our generation can “regain the clarity, discipline and competence of free minds,”187 while the Progressives believe that the meaning of education comes from analyzing the problems set by the political, economic, and international issues of the present time. Mortimer Adler calls John Dewey “public enemy number one.” Dewey replies with a blast at the return to scholastic philosophy in education. . . . The reactionary movement is dangerous (or would be if it made serious headway) because it ignores and in effect denies the principle of experimental inquiry and firsthand observation that is the lifeblood of the entire advance made in the sciences—an advance so marvelous that the progress in knowledge made in uncounted previous millenniums is almost nothing in comparison.188

Meanwhile, he argues, the non-vocational (i.e., scientific) study of the humanities is in a more desperate state than ever before, calling attention to the loss of prestige and dignity of the teaching of history, the overstress on social sciences, the persistent disregard for the

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contribution of science to civilization, the refusal of professors to make education a unified whole, the addiction to educational fads, and the failure to achieve coherent ideals of education. The new emphasis on ethics and moral issues in education can also be illustrated by the contribution of Frank G. Lankard, dean of Drew University. World War II has, according to Lankard, “made some startling revelations about our educational system,” which makes it obvious that “intellectual standards are not enough. Moral values must be inculcated.”189 It is true not only that millions of our fighting men were unable to explain the meaning of fascism or the underlying causes of the war but, worse still, they did not appear to be greatly interested, even though they were about to risk their lives to eliminate these dangers. It would seem that a sense of social responsibility was strangely lacking.190

Lankard defends General Education and disparages the notion of intellectual standards as merely a measurement of the student’s comprehension of facts and materials, quite apart from “their ethical and moral implications and consequences.”191 He argues that the growth of scientific knowledge has not increased our reverence for human life. Since the college tutors the student during his formative years, the college should strive for the well-rounded person. With reference to the early American colleges of Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, and others from the colonial period, he insists that we need to recover the ideal for which our forefathers were striving. . . . we need that same intense interest in character and good will for the world.192

In the dispute over liberal education, much interest focused on the fate of classical studies. Oliver Carmichael (1951), president of the Carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching, explains the development of “the general” as a consequence of previous changes in the American educational system, particularly how the classical curriculum has “given way to a plethora of courses so numerous and so varied as to defy descriptions.”193 Alluding to German ideals (Lernfreiheit), he points to the harmful adoption of the elective system by most universities and the emphasis placed on research rather than teaching. As the elective system was admitted by colleges and universities throughout the country, “the floodgates were opened and one by one the buoys of the classical curriculum were washed away, leaving both students and

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faculty without chart or compass.”194 Even though he acknowledges that research has fostered men skilled in the techniques of research, the emphasis on analysis, fragmentation of knowledge, and scientific method have made scholars unfit for the task of instructing “youth that are not themselves to become specialists.”195 The end result is a weakening of liberal education. What instructors need, in other words, are “synthesis, breadth of knowledge and the philosophical implications of subject-matter.”196 Carmichael points to previous efforts to restore liberal education after World War I, yet claims that these efforts were unsuccessful because they were neither generally applicable nor acceptable.197 However, the General Education Movement, which arose in the 1930s and was gaining ground, represents a new effort to find, as he says, the “hard core” of liberal education, “which should be the possession of all those who are truly educated.” General Education should “constitute the foundation upon which all specialized, technical, and professional training should rest.”198 As we move into the 1950s, a new trend in the debate on General Education arises, as witnessed by the contributions by Earl James McGrath (1951, 1953), who was US commissioner of education under President Truman and in 1946 had established the Journal of General Education. He proclaims the enhancement of education as a way to reaffirm the United States’ role as “the leader of the free peoples of the world.”199 Education is seen as necessary for Americans to “preserve our free society here at home and further international understanding.”200 McGrath insists that the educational system must fulfill two major functions: to educate our own citizens concerning the changed position of the United States in world affairs, and . . . support those activities, both private and governmental, which attempt to educate the citizens of other nations concerning the purposes and objectives of the United States.201

The justification for a new program for education is “to answer the threat posed by international communism” and to combat the Soviet Union’s “propaganda campaign designed to discredit the United States and its effort toward peace and the improvement of the lot of men generally throughout the world.”202 The program for General Education, he emphasizes, cannot be regarded simply as a defense of education in the ordinary sense (i.e., instruction); it constitutes a “world-wide program of information and education.”203 “It is education on a global scale. It is to our advantage and also to that of the free world generally to undertake such an educational program.”204

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What this program may encompass is answered in the other article, where he insists, “General education is really only liberal education in a new dress.”205 With reference to Carmichael, McGrath argues that the old term has come into being again precisely because liberal education has fallen into neglect and obscurity . . . There is among our people an immense amount of confusion about the internal purposes of our national life and about our destiny as a people in the world at large. This perplexity is our greatest present danger.206

The reason for the decline of liberal education is hinted at by reference to a “superficiality and fragmentation” of learning that “clutters up courses, textbooks and the minds of students.”207 In spite of the “growing belief that advanced studies has social and financial value,”208 graduates of our colleges and universities, however competent they may have found themselves in their chosen work, “have been baffled by their inability to understand and deal intelligently with many of the issue and problems of contemporary life.”209 McGrath concludes that the past century’s growing demand for practical value has shifted the emphasis from liberal to practical studies. Regrettably, these forces have been assisted rather than resisted within the academic fraternity itself: With the growing influence of the German ideal of university education, policies and practices even in the liberal arts colleges increasingly militated against the broad education of the youth. The emphasis has been placed on highly fragmented and specialized courses of study, primarily of value and of interest to those with an occupational objective in mind.210

Inadequate Learning Practice: Residues of the Past Thus, we see that the traits thought to be derived from German influence are perceived as problematic for further progress (e.g., specialization, the elective system, secular learning, non-vocational language studies, etc.). A large number of articles address more broadly the inadequacies and shortcomings of the American educational system. Many of these inadequacies, however, are easily recognized as pedagogical or learning practices arriving with the German-styled university. These practices are no longer labeled “German,” but are simply

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referred to as old-fashioned, authoritarian, elitist, militant, anti-liberal, or even totalitarian. A few examples may serve useful. In “Farwell to Passiveness,” Robert Berkelman (1951), professor of English at Bates College, regards “passiveness” as the most damaging flaw in the present college system. For him, passively listening to lectures only means that “the stream of thinking flows in one direction,”211 and that the “professor is thinking for them.”212 Instead, he insists that assignments, questions, pop quizzes, discussions, and professor-student cooperative lectures are better means for education, as they cultivate both dependability of character and creativeness of thought, and thus translate the passive toleration of learning into an active and eager reaching for wisdom. Passiveness in education can be worse that ineffectual: it can be dangerous. For a lecturer to dictate material and pour out his own conclusions day after day, [and students] who do nothing but listen and absorb, [it] may be excellent training for young Fascists and Communists, but such a procedure is certainly gravely questionable in a democracy that prides itself upon cultivating initiative and combating regimentation.213

With the title “The Madness of Method in Higher Education,” Herbert Schueler (1951), director of Teacher Education at Hunter College, similarly attacks the lecture method, this time through an undisguised ridicule of the professor, who is “always and continually talking.”214 The practice is described as old-fashioned and as “the most ineffective and wasteful of methods,”215 belonging to a time when books were few and laboriously hand wrought on parchment, when to read from them to a roomful of students was literally the only feasible method for professors to disseminate widely the knowledge contained in the precious manuscript. (To this day, conventional courses in German universities are called Vorelesungen and the professor is said to “read” them, which he, in fact, quite often does.).216

Professor of computation G. W. Stewart (1946)217 points to the creativity of the ordinary student as the blind spot of higher education. He opposes the way in which the narrow word “creative” is used to refer to “the works of the masters in the fine arts whose gifts are beyond the expectations of nearly all of us.”218 He argues in favor of promoting creativity in ordinary students, obviously for the potential utility this resource may provide for industry.

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College education, by neglecting to offer opportunities for experience in original effort, creates a distorted attitude of great respect for books and knowledge but little confidence in personal initiative. . . . Industry needs ideas. Time-motion study has revealed many ways of improving manufacturing so as to produce better products as cheaper costs. Upon the introduction of such new ideas and new processes will depend our supremacy in the markets of the world.219

Higher education, he argues, has not made the development of confidence in creative abilities one of its goals. Research does not describe what is implied by creativeness, because creative quality is not determined by the production of new information or a new interpretation (as in research), but rather by the individual response to a situation in a manner that is new to the student. What is important is that the student “actually takes part in the process, receiving mental satisfaction and stimulus, and increasing his confidence in his own creative powers.”220 To promote practices in creativity, the teacher must become an adviser who devotes sufficient time in planning and in individual conferences to make student participation possible. He concludes that the goal of developing creativity should accompany the acquisition of information throughout a general college education and not merely a “polishing-off touch for specialists only.”221 Stewart’s views resonate with the educator Harold Benjamin,222 who opposes what he believes is “uniformity, even regimentation, in education.”223 He argues against any school program that “stifles the unique and original contribution which the individual is naturally equipped to make to society.”224 An educational system, Benjamin declares, should be founded upon the individual’s native gifts. And this focus on the individual would “minimize the construction of curriculums, reject the listing of series of great books, and do away with other procedures really in the same spirit as Hitlerism and the Japanese system.” The real function of education is to develop personalities.225

Humboldt in America: Short Summary The German model of scholarship—previously acclaimed as an outstanding ideal and model for many prominent American universities—is in the postwar years increasingly associated with a series of inadequacies and serious flaws. Formerly praised as a system in which the scholar was considered a mature and responsible adult and a junior member of

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the faculty, it is now gradually regarded as a system in which the young student is seriously neglected. Some writers point to the absence of guidance and the scarcity of inspiration provided by the professors, others to the “dry and dusty” formal lectures—the most ineffective and wasteful teaching method.226 Undergraduate life is furthermore considered “poor and inadequate,” within a system in which faculties are “cutting responsibilities.” Still other writers point to how German educators’ financial dependence on the state “spells danger to intellectual freedom,” the “inbreeding” of an academic elite of professors, the narrow focus on research at the expense of a broader and more general education. There is also concern over the psychological effect of “a rigid school system” on the student, and how the German system narrowly focuses on training specialists by only providing one type of degree, the doctorate. Finally, there are also those that point to the dangers associated with “pure” research and what is presumed to be intellectual isolation, psychological maladjustment, dependency, and passivity, idleness and thus a general lack of commitment to general moral values. With these examples, extracted from the dispute over General Education, I have tried to convey that the German system gradually became associated with the “shibboleths of the past” and thus linked to premodern authoritarian structures and a feudal elitism unfit for a modern mass democracy. In other words, a university modeled after the German system was no longer considered to be an institution able to meet the demands of a modern, industrialized American society. It failed to equip scholars with broad and liberal opinions that would make them adaptable to the changing situation of modern life. Such a system was also dangerously “feeble” and thus unable or unwilling to resist totalitarian or anti-democratic tendencies that, I presume, unemployment and vagrant idleness may foster, as conveyed by such well-known expressions as, “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” I will return to some of these and similar claims in the next chapter, where the reception is viewed from the perspective of influential scholars. In the next section, attention is focused on later representations of the German university by historians and historical sociologists.

V. REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HUMBOLDT LEGACY IN HISTORICAL NARRATIVES With temporal distance to the context, which makes the firsthand recollections and reflections convincing and credible, we deal not so much with the facts of history as with secondary interpretations,

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reconstruction or representations of these facts. In approaching any historical event, we have no other option than to rely on reconstructions presented in documents that, in turn, provide us with certain images of the past. In other words, we are destined to rely on interpretations made from fragments cleverly constructed by adding what Humboldt calls “intuition, inference and guesswork.”227 The construction of convincing narratives of the past is obviously the work of historians and, to some extent, historical sociologists. It is thus not surprising that the great majority of references to Humboldt— and more specifically to Bildung—are found in journals and books that deal with nineteenth-century German intellectual history or the history of ideas, often in a documentary, matter-of-fact way. In the sociological or historical-sociological literature, Humboldt and the ideas of German education tend to appear in texts that deal analytically with issues of modernity or modernization changes in higher education, academic elites, professions and the relation between scientific ideas and social roles. Moreover, it is common to find references to Humboldt in works dealing with the current state of higher education (as I will return to in another chapter), even though the ideas most often appear in disguises such as the German model, elitist education, educational idealism, or simply as classic educational ideas. Such labels cannot be regarded as simply shorthand references to common facts, or as heuristic devices to ease understanding, but are abstractions or even metaphors that connote particular views or interpretations. Such interpretations subsequently determine how we understand and speak intelligibly about Humboldt’s conception of the university and which aspects of German education are considered important and worth our attention.228 In the terminology of Bruno Latour (1986), such interpretations may function as important resources in the struggle over which meanings may count as fact. In the following, I present some of the issues treated in these historical narratives. However, I do not intend to question the validity of the narratives, nor do I seek to reveal how meaning is rhetorically constructed. Rather, I try to detect the logic and focal points in these studies, and thereby illuminate the conditions that make their focus seem self-evident and their stories convincing.

Bildung: Semi-Religious Devotion to Abstract Form The ideal of Bildung we are introduced to in O’Boyle’s (1983) representation of German education is “a semi-religious ideal of devotion to abstract form.”229 Her speculation about the kinds of students that

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were attracted to the university serves to reinforce this assumption. O’Boyle, who has written extensively on the history of German higher education, uses the label ‘idealism’ to explain why scholars from clerical families were drawn to the new university. These were students for whom “scholarship now served as a substitute or at least as a supplement for a faith still held, but in a less compelling form.230 The identification of the good, the true, and the beautiful had often been made; now the identification of divinity with abstract form could be accepted with certain ease.”231 The assumption that Humboldt’s Bildung was a semi-religious ideal is not new; it was frequently repeated or tacitly implied in other interpretations. A similar assumption underlies, for instance, Fritz Ringer’s influential study (1969/1990), where he argues that metaphysics is the key element in the process that raised the status of the German professors and reinforced their claim to superior social status. When the professors made claims to a universal viewpoint, O’Boyle argues, they signaled a certain affinity with the governing class, above and beyond the “fragmented mundane existence of those who were ruled.” An embedded mass/elite dichotomy is revealed as she furthermore implies that the religious element in their quest for knowledge and truth imposed a general belief that scholars “did serve God rather than man.”232 This belief contributed to elevating professorial status in relation to the nobility. Moreover, the German educator’s emphasis on what she refers to as “the ideal of single-minded concentration on knowledge,”233 justified the scholars’ claims to superior knowledge, and so ensured a kind of preeminence over the merely cultivated nonscholar. In O’Boyle’s text, idealism is understood in terms of its social function, namely as the philosophy that justifies and gives rise to an educational hierarchy from which professors ascended into the role of semi-gods. O’Boyle’s main concern is to explain how Bildung—the ideal of pure learning, a disinterested pursuit of truth and knowledge for its own sake, which from the outset referred to something having a positive content—came to stand for all that was untainted by considerations of immediate usefulness. Bildung, in her view, sanctified impracticability and legitimized the creation of a new profession.234 The new profession gave men from the lesser middle class an opportunity to gain status and security in a country that otherwise offered few other opportunities for their advancement. The focus on pure learning, or rather, learning by abstract principles and forms in the philological disciplines, was given greater value insofar as it was concerned with the

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universal and general rather than with specific and concrete facts. She argues that the preoccupation with the universal helped those “from a lowly class of origin” to move up the social ladder into a position of alliance with “a governing class of aristocrats and patricians.”235 Deep involvement in the classical studies and the preoccupation with Bildung reinforced the assumption that the learned formed a kind of aristocracy of intellect. Men of the ancient world were accepted as the embodiment of the classical ideal. They had developed all the capacities natural to man. Study of such models seemed to make possible a kind of aristocratic existence through association, true Bildung even in the modern world.236

The ideal of “knowledge for its own sake” is in her presentation singled out as the factor that lifted the scholars above and beyond an association with manual labor “and the kinds of material rewards satisfying to lesser men, was eliminated.”237 Their social status was further reinforced by the fact that the German professors had the advantage of themselves being public officials. O’Boyle however insists that Bildung expresses a particular German mentality or “inner need.” In fact, she diagnoses Bildung as “the hope of a satisfying human fulfillment,” and explains this psychologically, as an answer to a deep-felt need in German society at the time. With reference to Goethe, she even suggests that Bildung, in the same manner as the particular German genre, the Bildungsroman, fitted a particular German psyche and was “expressive of a deeply felt need for wholeness, grace and plenitude of being.”238 O’Boyle’s assertion, which is perhaps best described as a semi-psychological diagnosis of German culture and mentality, echoes a common way of interpreting the philosophies of idealism, namely as a malfunction, an emotional need or “disease” that followed from a revolt or reaction against a weak German Enlightenment, and which was carried out by men who stood in radical opposition to the Enlightenment tradition.239 There are several versions of this interpretation. Wolf Lepenies (1992) describes idealism as a “bourgeois escapism,” Karl Mannheim (1936/1991) explains it as a utopian “flight from reality,” and Norbert Elias (1939/2000) describes the German-speaking middle-class intelligentsia as “far removed from political activity [and] whose legitimation consists primarily in its intellectual, scientific or artistic accomplishments.”240 The ideal referred to as “knowledge for its own sake,” which O’Boyle argues was a prerequisite for Bildung, justified the scholars’ claims to

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superior status. Yet, at the same time, the scholars were withdrawn and isolated from the very circles and cultivated high society they claimed a connection to. So even if they had extensive rights in self-government, they had no real political power.241 The state had ultimate control and did not hesitate to use it, for instance in appointments. She thus concludes that the educational system initiated by Humboldt succeeded because it was to the advantage of those in power; it was suitable to produce a ruling class, a new administrative class, and adequate to the demands of a still largely pre-industrial society.

The German Mandarins: The Professoriate’s Claim to Superior Status The assumption that the German university “as conceived by Humboldt, Schleiermacher, and Fichte” was an “aesthetical-philosophical system of education” and the true child of idealist principles appeared in earlier interpretations. The above citations are in fact appropriated from Fritz Ringer’s (1969/1990) seminal work, The Decline of the German Mandarins, a work that is well-known and widely cited. Ringer argues persuasively that the emphasis on “pure” knowledge, self-cultivation and culture came to define the German ideal of higher education for all future ages. And it is primarily the idea of Bildung, which, according to Ringer, originates in and is reflected in religious and neohumanist conceptions of integral self-development. Bildung contained the most important tenet of what developed into a professorial elite, what he calls a mandarin tradition. the material which is “experienced” in the course of learning is “objective cultural values.” The terminology here is Idealist or neo-Idealist; but the essential point can be stated more simply. It is epitomized in the neohumanist’s relationship to his classical sources. He does not only come to know them. Rather, the moral and aesthetic examples contained in the classical sources affect him deeply and totally. The whole personality is involved in the act of cognition. If the materials to be learned are properly selected, their contemplation can lead to wisdom and virtue. They can attract, elevate, and transform the learner. He can thus acquire an indelible quality, also called Bildung, which is a potential rival to the characteristics of the aristocrat.242

Ringer’s book is an investigation into the development of the Prussian intellectual elite, from its relative obscurity to its prominent position at the end of the nineteenth century. Ringer manages to trace deep

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continuities in the historical period between 1890 and the advent of National Socialism in 1933. However, Ringer states his aim and research program are an effort to “derive the opinions of the German academic intelligentsia from its peculiar role in German society.”243 Ringer emphasizes that the German intelligentsia was caught in a dilemma because of their dual relation to the state: the professors were an extension of the bureaucratic state and could be used in the king’s effort to fight against the aristocracy. They were part of the bureaucracy, paid as high-ranking public officials and thus were expected to be loyal to the state. Yet, at the same time they were free to pursue the own academic goals under the credo, “Knowledge for its own sake.” Because of their status within the bureaucracy, the professorate became increasingly self-confident, demanding respect and recognition. Yet industrialization posed a threat to their position, for new groups were making their way into German society.244 In a desperate effort to preserve their social position and privileges, Bildung was deliberately used as a means to protect and conserve social prestige. Thus, Ringer concludes, the professors’ ostensibly honorable effort to guard or safeguard academic freedom was simply a conspiratorial way to maintain their prominent social position and preserve the status quo. The vantage point from which Ringer writes his story reflects the troublesome values, common attitudes and opinions that came to characterize German academia as a whole. It is these values that lead him to present the intellectual as an ideal type, namely the mandarin. For Ringer, this term signifies a certain constellation of emotions “infecting even their language and their methods of argument.”245 More specifically, the professorate’s position in society created a distinctive bourgeois mentality and a specific anti-industrial spirit,246 which implied a general distrust of practical empirical learning. It was the feared loss of privileges that contributed to this stratum’s Kulturpessimismus,247 a skepticism and deep apprehension of modernity. What Ringer sees as an enduring skepticism toward modernity existed in Germany from 1800 to 1945 among the orthodox mandarins, to such an extent that it set the context for the development of German sociology. In its pessimistic attitude toward modern social conditions, German sociology “echoed anxieties in the social and political theories of Romantic conservatism.”248 Kulturpessimismus did not remain within the confines of the university. It spread beyond academic circles and became a widespread and influential current of conservative thought right up until the end

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of World War II. . . . Indeed, Kulturpessimismus has contributed significantly to German political history throughout the first half of the twentieth-century, from the legitimation of German participation in World War I to the scapegoating of Jews as responsible for capitalism and the formulation of the doctrines of racial superiority of the Völkish religions in the ’20s and the National Socialism in the ’20s and ’30s.249

The educational ideas of Humboldt are presented as the ideological foundation for what Ringer refers to as a “mandarin heritage.” This heritage developed in conscious reaction against the Western European Enlightenment. Randall Collins (1987) assumes, in much the same manner as Ringer, that a strong personal bond existed between the nineteenth-century philosophers; through an intellectual network, they came to occupy the influential positions in the new universities. Collins even refers to the philosophers as an idealist movement that profoundly and effectively developed the intellectual life of the time.250 Ringer uses the label “idealism” as a reference to what he sees as a creed and an expression of strong personal convictions among a number of influential philosophers. The reason idealism so profoundly influenced humanistic and historical studies was that this creed fitted well with the methods and problems of these fields. Ringer argues that the advancement of a new discipline, Geisteswissenschaft, which Wilhelm Dilthey defined more methodically in the 1880s, drew heavily on the methods of the cultural and historical disciplines of German historians, who from Humboldt and from Hegel . . . were deeply influenced by the philosophical and literary movements in which the mandarin creed expressed itself.251

Later, this influence advanced further into the German historical tradition, which, like other aspects of the mandarin heritage, . . . developed at least partly in conscious reaction against certain intellectual tendencies in the West European Enlightenment. As German scholars saw it, the historian’s greatest sin was to treat the past as a collection of examples to be used to glorify man, progress, and the present, to construct general maxims of statecraft, or to chart the advances of science and reason.252

The mandarins’ ideal of learning was, in Ringer’s view, developed essentially as an antithesis of practical knowledge. It was set in

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opposition to what the Germans regarded as the shallow Anglo-French Enlightenment. Furthermore, he emphasizes how German scholars resented what they thought of as “a vaguely utilitarian tendency” and a vulgar attitude in the Western European tradition toward all knowledge. They felt that many French and English intellectuals, from the seventeenth century on, associated science and learning with the “idea of practical manipulation, of rational technique and environmental control.”253 The mandarins’ own ideal of learning was, Ringer argues, “developed as the direct antithesis of practical knowledge” and expressed in the words Bildung and Kultur, with its axiom of the unique individual: Cultivation meant forming the soul by means of the cultural environment, through the emphatic understanding and experiencing [Verstehen und Erleben] of the objective cultural values.254

Nevertheless, Ringer admits that while the French had notions similar to Bildung, such as culture de l’esprit (personal culture), the notion of Bildung in Germany’s learned circles was gradually used, in its more general sense, to encompass all of man’s civilized achievements in society, namely Kultur. In this process, the German historical scholars attained a prominent position in the university.

The Gesinnung of German Historians Philosophical idealism gave rise to a new historical tradition, Ringer argues, in which one came to believe that a historic individuality could be reconstructed out of the surviving “objectifications” of its spirit. In other words, it was conceived as possible to identify an objective geist in the external signs of past cultural achievements: works of art, literature, codes of law, documents, and more. To do this, it was necessary to describe bygone ages, institutions, and individuals emphatically and as much as possible in their own terms, so as not to treat them in accordance with one’s own contemporary standards. In the terms used by Leopold von Ranke, pioneer of historicism, this was “the ideal of past-mindedness.” Ringer argues that this notion of individuality was linked to a deep-seated belief that each single part had its place within a greater organic totality. As such, he argues, it engendered an insistent emphasis on great historical individuals. This organic belief also resulted in a tendency to treat not only individuals, but also “cultures, states, and epochs as personalized ‘wholes’; and a conviction that each

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of these totalities embodied its unique spirit.”255 However, as the idea of German nationhood evolved, the historical scholars attained a powerful political position conditioned by what Charles McClelland calls a particular political Gesinnung.256 McClelland’s (1973) text “Berlin Historians and German Politics” extends and expands Ringer’s thesis of a particular mandarin creed to what he calls the “German cult of historians,” who “by the dawn of the twentieth century . . . had fallen into the role of a vaguely conservative and decidedly official establishment.”257 The territorial conquests of Prussia in 1866 and the extension of Berlin’s central position “in the galaxy of Prussian universities” closely involved the Berlin historians in contemporary political issues such as the effort to justify Germany’s Weltpolitik,258 to “defend Prussian Protestantism against the threats of Catholics, Jew, liberals, and Socialists,”259 and efforts to “make a hero of Bismarck.”260 But to exercise political influence through their work, the historians had to sacrifice the scholarly ideal of political detachment, which was the idea of the historians in the previous generation (e.g., Ranke). For all their undeniably careful and exhaustive research, they clothed the naked facts in splendid robes woven of untested assumptions and absolute value judgments.261

McClelland explains the new attitude toward politics that developed among the historians as due to the physical location of Berlin University and to the new criteria for appointment selections. The university’s geographical location almost in the center of the capital, only a few hundred yards away from the royal palace and the Reichstag, placed it “almost in the middle of Germany’s political life.”262 In addition, the professorate, who were living in “elegant comfort” isolated from “the press of capital life” were likewise spared the sight of “the gray ugliness” of “the working-class quarters of industrial Berlin, which reminded everybody of the die Soziale Frage—the ‘social question.’”263 This notwithstanding, the professors, like all the members of the parties in the Reichstag (except the socialists), proclaimed their loyalty to “patriotic ideas.” To obtain a position at the university, aspiring professors not only had to fulfill the academic demands set by the Philosophical Faculty, but the Prussian Ministry of Education also demanded an acceptable political attitude or Gesinnung. Loyalty to the House of Hohenzollern, according to McClelland, was a primary criterion for selection.

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Of course the government demanded acceptable political Gesinnung; acceptable Gesinnung was above party or could be reconciled with membership in the Conservative, Free Conservative, or National Liberal parties. Membership in the Catholic Centre, Socialist, or left-Liberal parties was emphatically not a part of good Gesinnung.264

Furthermore, a prerequisite for any historian’s call to full professorship (Ordinariat) was public visibility. Personal fame and even controversiality “were practically universal characteristics.”265 However, the professors could only obtain such a national reputation if they acted as crusaders for a highly charged cause. Thus, blandness of view “was almost a kiss of death to the historian who wanted to end his career in Berlin.”266 Ceremonial practices, such as the unveiling of national monuments, offered repeated occasions for German historians to give “flattering speeches in the presence of royalty and government officials.”267 McClelland tries to illustrate the dangerous interconnection of politics and historical professorial chairs that developed in Berlin. This liaison imposed a bourgeois mentality—Gesinnung—upon the professorate, which became particularly visible in their handling of contemporary political issues. Although the social question—resulting from Germany’s rapid industrialization—caused great controversy, McClelland characterizes the German intelligentsia as more or less passive protectors of the social peace rather than as active promoters of social-welfare legislation or electoral-system reform. With their general hostility to democracy and disdain for parliamentary politics, the German professorate “managed to play a remarkable role in other spheres of national political life.”268

Bildung and Its Embedded Flaws: Illiberal Socialization Konrad H. Jarausch (1978) provides a similar analysis of the societal consequences of the German educational system in an article entitled “Liberal Education as Illiberal Socialization.” His emphasis is primarily on how the concept of Bildung gradually degenerated in Imperial Germany. He aims at exposing some of what he sees as flaws that were embedded in the notion of Bildung, flaws, he argues, that rendered its long domination in Central European higher education problematic. These flaws were as follows: the strengthening of the state, a general neglect of professional training, and a gradual disassociation of neohumanism from humanness.269 Thus, Jarausch asks:

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How could this initial liberal idea of Bildung come to have such increasingly illiberal results?270

Jarausch works from the hypothesis that universities function as “key transmitters of ideals and purposes.”271 He uses the concept socialization to explore how the shifting relationship between the university (i.e., liberal education) and society (i.e., German politics) affected education at the time. He is particularly concerned with how social and cultural values are “inculcated by classroom authority and discipline or by student peer-group associations,” that is, how the professors, disciplinary practices, and student organizations affected the student’s behavior and values. Bildung or cultivation through Wissenschaft, Jarausch argues, was a “complex and elusive idea”272 that emphasized improving one’s inner self rather than economic gain or political action. The effort to train liberal man in the art of scientific reasoning and thus enable him to make use of his freedom was, however, an ideal impossible to fulfill under the prevailing political circumstances. He thus concludes that the educational reform’s primary aim was to demonstrate Prussian leadership and create a liberal bureaucracy needed to sustain further reform, rather than to transform passive subjects into active citizens. And it was this “curious blend of idealism, individualism, and cosmopolitanism (shading over into nationalism)”273 that captured the allegiance of students and professors alike, because it provided this “aristocracy of learning with a sense of cultural and political mission.”274 The transformation of liberal ideals into illiberal results was caused by structural problems in the newly created German empire. The Prussian conquest brought with it unification, free trade, the rule of law, and culture. The university graduates achieved high social prestige during the transition from an estate (Stände) to a class society. Yet with industrialization, they felt threatened by these new groups of commercial and industrial elites, as well as the masses. And as politics was increasingly defined according to interest groups, and as new problems caused by the disruption of industrialization appeared (i.e., the social question and urbanization), the humanist scholars lost power and prestige. After the explosion in enrollment after 1865, there were new organizational, psychological, and social problems that the neohumanist conception of liberal education was unable to handle; this is because the Bildung model treated students as if they were future scholars but did not take into consideration their emotional and social needs. Moreover, increased inclusiveness was accompanied

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with a more diversified student body, and thus great changes in social stratification. The opening of the university created job crises in the 1880s, but it also stratified the academic community: There was a student elite in exclusive corporations, a middle group in student associations, and a larger number of unaffiliated academic proletarians. Jarausch argues that the university’s administrative practices encouraged conformity and conservatism. In addition, there were laws charging the academic disciplines to maintain “order, morality and honor . . . thereby hoping to immunize against sociality and even democratic virtues.”275 Political criticism and demonstrations were usually exposed by Rightist newspapers and suppressed bureaucratically, since (according to ministerial memoranda and press discussions) the implicit aim of liberal education was not the well-informed citizen but the patriotic official “above parties.”276

Professors had the authority to influence the political and social views of their students through teaching, publishing, and political activities. Though ceremonial speeches (Festreden), the professors dealt with recent history, and some of them, Jarausch argues, were “prone to cultural pessimism deploring Vermassung (the rise of the masses) as well as growing materialism.”277 He concludes that among the professorate, there was an uncritical acceptance of the existing constitutional and political system. The overt or covert political values, which professors tried to transmit tended toward National Liberalism and Conservatism since formal (their status as officials) and informal (the tolerated range of opinions among colleagues) sanctions excluded socialists, most democrats, and often also politically conscious Catholics (i.e., anti-Prussian) from the faculty.278

Socialization also took place in student periodicals and brochures. Because the German system lacked residential colleges, student unions, and sponsored extracurricular activities, many student organizations were formed that “accepted dueling, downplayed ideological goals and stressed elitist character building.”279 And the goals for socialization in the student organizations were reflected in their mottos, which all revolved around honor, friendship, and patriotism. The corporation mentality can, according to Jarausch, without undue exaggeration be characterized as

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elitism (ritualized dueling to keep socially undesirable elements out), antiintellectualism (compulsive drinking etc., which prevented attendance at lectures), authoritarianism (Fuchstum similar to the pledge system and Chargierte. i.e., officers with absolute control), apolitical nationalism and instinctive conservatism (the Bismarck homage).280

The unorganized majority, who were primarily interested in finishing their degree, failed in establishing an alternative to this socialization. Some of them gravitated toward literary and artistic circles (known as Kaffeehaus bohemia), while other unaffiliated students sought Bildung in its original sense to “expand their intellectual horizons and enrich their personalities.”281 However, Jarausch insists, under the condition of mass culture and industrial society, “their politics tended toward vulgar idealism and ideological ambivalence.”282 Another problem was that, because of systematic persecution, socialist students could not form any college groups and had to participate in the labor movements only as individuals. What is more, in the 1880s, an influential movement (Kyffhäuser), infected most students with mass meetings and agitations, among other things. The movement advocated anti-Semitism, völkisch nationalism, and world political imperialism. The Freistudentenbewegung, which around the turn of the century campaigned for student self-government, was opposed by the student corporations that “preferred festival committees or interfraternity councils which were easier to control.”283 According to Jarausch, the chief result of such socialization (a socialization that followed from flaws embedded in the notion of Bildung) was that bourgeois sociopolitical norms were reinforced in preparation for future bureaucratic careers (as opposed to Bildung). Although liberal education was supposed to make academics more sophisticated in their political beliefs and actions, Jarausch argues that there was surprisingly little transfer of scholarly inspired criticism to the social and political realm. Jarausch describes an ideal type of educated person: Fundamental to it was an idealization of cultivation (which considered allgemeine Menschenbildung as the highest value, irrespective of any concrete content). Equally important was the widespread elitist (bildungsaristocratisch) consciousness of being educated; academic experience set the academic apart from the industrial-commercial bourgeois and lifted them above the petite bourgeois and working classes. Also fundamental to this ideal type was a disdain for politics, where interest-struggles were avoided or limited to the private or professional sphere. Along with this flowed an unreflective nationalism,

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unconditional loyalty to the existing dynasty, an unquestionable glorification of the heroic figure of Bismarck, fear of social revolution, and an enthusiastic support of power and world politics (Weltpolitik).

Chapter Summary In the first part of this chapter, I pointed out how the Humboldtian conception of education impacted American colleges and provided the impetus for change in old and well-established institutions; it was also the spawning ground for the formation of new universities. The prevalent collegiate model, which was imported to the New England colonies by the Puritans and widely copied, was challenged by the arrival of these new ideas. As hinted by Wilcox (1993), the evolving conflict between the two views on education, and the shape this conflict eventually took, may be the result of tensions that already existed between immigrant groups. I have tried to convey how the anger and fear caused by the wars fueled this tension and provided the ideological defenders of the Anglo-British liberal education with a convincing case against German education. The educational policy debates conducted during and after the wars can be seen as efforts to downgrade the educational ideals and ambitions associated with Humboldt. In this process, the notion of the German university underwent a semantic transformation and came to be experienced in a completely different way than before. I argue therefore that the American reception of Humboldt was consequential for how the future debate on the role and purpose of the university in society developed. I have tried to convey how the state’s protection of the university and its serving as a financial guarantor for the freedom of scholars to practice independent judgment (which was embraced by the early reformers), later was perceived as a façade behind which professors hid their indifference to student’s needs. The idea belonged to an authoritarian past and thus was associated with a feudal elitism unfit for modern American democracy. Whereas early reformers saw the German emphasis on freedom granted to both students and scholars as an improvement over the scholasticism and mental discipline that resided in the old colleges, these supposedly same ideals were soon associated with a set of flaws that fostered passivity, idleness, and unhealthy dependency. As such, these ideals failed to equip modern men with the enterprising initiative, flexibility, and well-rounded personality necessary for a modern industrialized nation. As the German

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emphasis on scholarship (which initially provided the foundation for new universities), was referred to as “specialization,” it was associated with narrow, unpractical, and remote intellectualism. (I will return to this aspect in more detail in the next chapter.) All in all, the German educational ideal, once so highly modern and advanced, was soon associated with the shibboleths of the past, in particular feudal elitism, passive submissiveness, and thus also with psychological maladjustment. The impact of the wars made it obvious that the German system would make students vulnerable to manipulative leaders. Humboldt no longer constituted the “true spirit of Enlightenment” but was thought of as the embodiment of a set of pernicious totalitarian tendencies; the German university was “nothing less than” a cradle for Nazism. One of the remedies for such tendencies was General Education, for only a general insight into Western values could foster the type of personality able to resist the threat posed by totalitarianism. The arguments against the educational ideas of Humboldt, as hinted at above, were particularly effective, because there was another “competing” model of liberal education already present. The German ideals could be understood in contrast to the Anglo-British collegiate education that already enjoyed a strong foothold in American society, particularly in the New England East and in the pioneer West. German education could thus be understood negatively as that which did not take into consideration the student’s needs (e.g., tutoring and pastoral care, etc.) and which did not foster the leadership embodied in the well-rounded gentleman. With the focus on education and socialization (i.e., attitudes, conduct, behavior), it was easy to identify the German educator’s emphasis on an education independent of political and ecclesiastic concerns as secularism, and for that reason, as a serious neglect of religious values and virtues. The ideas and intentions that gave rise to the Humboldtian reforms and were actually recognized by the early American reformers were increasingly lost in the process of transformation. By the late 1950s, the interrelationship between the state and the university was no longer thought of as protecting and preserving academic freedom but read as egotism derived from provincialism. The emphasis on scholarship (i.e., Lehr- and Lernfreiheit) was no longer linked to a freedom and solitude necessary to foster novel insights for the benefit of society; now it was linked with “narrowness” and “overspecialization.” Likewise, the ideal of Bildung was no longer thought of as a means to cultivate diversity and engender a humane, democratic ethos among citizens, but was coupled with premodern

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speculation and an emotional escapism serving only to justify professorial elitism at the expense of student’s needs. As I have tried to convey in the second part of this chapter, these interpretations seem to reappear in much later representations of the German university, among the texts of historians and sociologists. This does not mean that these historians have paid lip service to the influential American reformers, but rather that the American debate may have provided some of the conditions that determined how later generations have interpreted the German ideals, for instance, the issues that are considered relevant and important and the issues that should be relegated to oblivion. As mentioned, O’Boyle draws our attention to Bildung, or what she refers to as the ideal of “knowledge for its own sake,” and implies that this ideal made German scholarship semi-religious. When scholarship was defined as the search for general and abstract universals, the value of searching for what is particular and concrete (as in manual work) was degraded. She insists that because professors were assumed to be in the service of pure learning or Wissenschaft, a hierarchy developed that ensured them a kind of preeminence and enabled them to claim a superior position in society. In their search for metaphysical truth, the professors were able to escape any relation of subordination, be it to the state, the cultivated non-scholar or the student. O’Boyle emphasizes how the concentration on a metaphysical idea of pure learning made “impracticability in learning” a norm and explains how impracticability provided legitimacy to the new profession. She attributes a great similarity between the ideal of “knowledge for its own sake” and the Bildungsroman to a particularly German mentality. Ringer argues that the German idealism engendered by Bildung fostered a mandarin or bourgeois mentality and a specific anti-industrial spirit among the professorate. As privileged members of the upper echelon of the state bureaucracy, the professorate were simultaneously victims in the state’s struggle to fight the aristocracy. As the professorate increasingly felt threatened by the new societal groupings that arose through industrialization, Bildung was defended as a means to preserve their own social privileges. However, the professors’ protection of their position and social privileges fostered a conservative mindset and thus a skepticism and reluctancy (Kulturpessimismus) toward modernization. Their conservative mindset prompted a deep resentment against practical science and upheld a passivity and general disregard for politics. It is hardly a coincidence that the period 1890–1933 is chosen, because the decades after the 1890s are described as “the

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revolt against positivism” and 1933 is the year of the Nazi takeover,284 thus making it obvious to the reader that there is a causal connection or continuation between the German educators’ metaphysical ideals and the outbreak of Nazism. McClelland (1973) places an emphasis on the political role historians acquired under the process of German unification. He argues that the professors willingly subordinated themselves to an empire in need of loyal and trustworthy servants. In exchange for academic freedom (Lehrfreiheit) and official appointments, the state demanded loyalty accompanied by the correct political attitude (Gesinnung). Meanwhile, the demand for loyalty had a series of dramatic consequence. McClelland explains how the historians betrayed their ideal of academic freedom insofar as they enjoyed a position among the rich and loyally acted in compliance with the state on issue of great political controversy. Having social prestige but no political power, the professors became increasingly preoccupied with issues from which they could gain personal benefit and honor. Their submissive attitude engendered a non-political yet self-indulgent attitude, expressed in such ceremonial activities as, for instance, the unveiling of monuments and giving public speeches, where German history and the regime were glorified. Jarausch (1978) identifies unforeseen consequences of the German model and locates these as flaws built into the very concept of Bildung. He mentions the strengthening of the state, a neglect of professional training, and the inhumanity of the neohumanist ideal. Jarausch examines how such flaws affected the socialization of students; the liberal model, he argues, treated the students as future scholars but did not take their emotional and social needs into consideration. Furthermore, as student enrollment increased along with changes in social stratification, structural problems evolved: As the universities has nothing to offer in terms of extracurricular activities and such, students formed their own organizations, most of which were infected by an authoritarian, militaristic, and feudal corporate spirit (i.e., dueling, nationalism). All in all, this promoted elitism, anti-intellectualism, authoritarianism, and instinctive conservatism. All this conveys how the legacy of Humboldt is to be passed on to future generations. The ideals of Humboldt came to constitute a semi-religious system that made impracticability a norm. They were understood as fostering a conservative, bourgeois mindset, not only among professors but also among students. The close relationship between the university and the state meant that professors eventually sacrificed academic freedom in favor of obedience to the state.

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Professors were thus less devoted to intellectual inquiry and more involved in decadent and self-indulgent ceremonial activities for their own benefit. The system was elitist and inhumane, with an instinctive conservatism unconcerned with students’ needs. With these narratives as a backdrop, I will turn in the next chapter to the American reception, focusing on some of the reaction against the German educational ideas and practices. Many of these reactions came from influential educational scholars, particularly John Dewey, and evolved into disputes over the content and purpose of liberal education.

Notes 1. Daniel Fallon (1980: 52). 2. Röhrs (1995). However, numbers can be difficult. There is a lack of reliable statistics and also inconsistencies on how students in different categories are registered. Based on copies of university registers, Twing (1928) argues that there were about ten thousand American students who matriculated in German universities in the hundred years after the first quartet of students (“Harvard group in Göttingen”) arrived (from 1815) and received degrees. Diehl (1976) provides a statistical overview on selected universities in the decades up to 1870. In his account, the peak years were 1895–96 when 517 American students were enrolled in German universities. Scholars such as Richard T. Ely and Albion Small, who had direct effect on what later evolved into American sociology, were in Leipzig and Berlin between 1876 and 1879 (Herbst 1962; Martindale 1976). Werner (2013) provides detailed statistics, based on archival research from four German universities (Göttingen, Halle, Heidelberg, Leipzig) covering the period 1776 to 1914. 3. Diehl (1976); Twing (1928). No fewer than nineteen future college and university presidents—including Daniel Coit Gilman (Johns Hopkins), Charles W. Eliot (Harvard), Andrew Dickson White (Cornell), Charles K. Adams (University of Wisconsin), Henry Tappan (Michigan University), Edmund J. James (University of Illinois), and James Marsh (University of Vermont) who were considered educational innovators—were students in Germany before 1870. From the first generation there was Robert Bridges Patton, a Yale graduate who was the second American recipient (after Bancroft) to have earned a German PhD (in philology at Göttingen). Patton became professor of Greek at Princeton in 1826, but left in 1834 to assume a position at the newly established University of the City of New York. The decision marked him as a real educational reformer, as “the new university was dedicated to a new idea of teaching and research much closer than anything else in America to the German conception of the university” (H. Hawkins 1959; Diehl 1976: 337). 4. Diehl (1976: 338). 5. In particular, George Ticknor (1791–1871), Edward Everett (1794–1865), Joseph Green Cogswell (1786–1871), and George Bancroft (1800–1891), who were in

140 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13. 14. 15.

Göttingen from 1815 to 1820, comprised the Harvard group. On the importance of Göttingen for the aspiring American students, see Jaeck (1915); Meyer (2017); and Brown (1964). Others followed, such as Henry W. Longfellow, who was there in 1829, and John Lothrop Motely in 1832–1833. Motley received an honorary doctorate from the University of Groningen in 1864. Bancroft received his doctorate from Göttingen, and went on to Berlin in the winter 1820–21 for further study. Sweet (1980) recollects how Bancroft, while in Berlin became acquainted with Humboldt. See also Long (1935) and Pochmann (1957). See bibliography by Gougher (1969), for details, see Jaeak (1915). It is worth mentioning that Schelling’s lectures “On University Studies” were serially translated into English between 1877 and 1884 in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. See Coleman (1969). An oft mentioned event of importance for this “change of heart” was the English translation of Madame de Stäel’s book De L’Allemagne (On Germany) in 1813. Mme de Stäel was a close friend and associate of Wilhelm von Humboldt and was known to the American public to be an acquaintance of Jefferson. Whitford (1918) tries to explain why she became “famous overnight” in America. After having read her book, George Ticknor went to Germany to meet de Stäel in 1815. See also Jaeck (1915), R. Hawkins (1930), and Ryder (1949). All the references below are from Gougher (1969). The quote is from Richard Burdon Haldane’s book, Education and Empire (1902: 5). Jefferson, who was very much “in touch with the European Enlightenment” argued in favor of a university that could prepare students for service to the state. Such a university was to be independent of all organized religious societies and subsequently without a professorship in theology (Veysey 1965/1970: 12; Kohlbrenner 1961: 53). When Jefferson was planning the University of Virginia, he “bombarded [George] Ticknor with questions about the German university, while he was in Göttingen between 1815 and 1819. Röhrs (1995: 43). See also Pochmann (1957: 66–68). Ticknor’s student life in Germany, his visits to prominent representatives of German intellectual life, such as Goethe in Weimar, Friedrich Schlegel in Frankfurt, and Wilhelm von Humboldt in Paris, are all recorded in the collection of his letters and journals. See Hillary (1877). E.g., there are accounts by William Howitt in 1842 and Henry W. Longfellow in 1886 and 1909. White (1905/2004: 182). Ticknor reported that at Göttingen he saw scholarship displayed for the first time out of the context of rote recitation. He claimed that under the recitation system, students “learn a given book, rather than a given subject.” When he returned to Harvard, he insisted on lecturing in the German style instead of the old methods of instruction that he found to be outmoded, boring, and non-instructional (Urofsky 1965: 56). Reforms in teaching were some of the far-reaching changes he proposed for Harvard, all of which are expressed in a pamphlet entitled Remarks on the Changes Lately Proposed or Adopted at Harvard (Jaeck 1915: 252).

The American Reception of Humboldt ♦ 141 16. The mental and moral discipline that permeated the American colleges was enforced by a large number of rules and regulations, anything from detailed rules of conduct to treason codes and the imposition of loyalty oaths. These were justified on the basis of the immaturity of the youths and as a means to introduce the young to an adult life of hard work (Veysey 1965/1970; Blum 1976). 17. Veysey (1965/1970: 139). 18. It is necessary to keep in mind that before the German influence, ‘science’ referred to any well-organized body of principles on any subject. Science connoted orderliness and system: “a compilation of the laws of the universe on one subject.” The scientific approach was often contrasted to an empirical approach, which implied randomness of effort and “a groveling among details which remained unrelated because larger theoretical themes went unperceived.” In fact, it was considered the task of science to overcome “an unhealthy empiricism in the name of order, since such order constituted the unchanging reflection of the divine” (Veysey 1965/1970: 133–136). The quest for order did not, as might be expected, disappear with the age of Darwin, but was subsumed into “the eagerness to produce a tidy catalogue of generalizations” (Veysey 1965/1970: 134). However, due to the German influence, science came to mean something more definite. It demanded a close inspection and respect for the unique, and the researcher was expected to remain receptive or even humble to facts. The new scientific approach implied a new trust in the human intellect and the possibility of achieving objectivity. Science was a way to foster impartiality and thereby reach beyond superstition. 19. C. Gross (1894: 173). See also Veysey (1965/1970: 139). 20. Röhrs (1995: 37). 21. In the early 1800s, a large number of liberal arts colleges were established in the new communities of the “pioneer” West. These antebellum colleges were designed to meet the need of pioneer communities and oriented toward practicability. West Point Military academy (founded 1802), for instance, was created by the newly settled pioneers. The Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West (SPCTEW) was established in 1843 with an aim to “Christianize” the emerging new civilization through education. These new colleges are generally regarded as the “forerunners of the public high school.” Meanwhile, many proponents of the university downgraded them and assumed that they merely offered “a little of everything” (Pfnister 1984). 22. Diehl (1978: 110). 23. It is perhaps necessary to keep in mind that most Midwestern universities were so-called land-grant institutions, which benefited from public support from the federal state through the Morrill Act of 1862. This act, based on a suggestion made by President Jefferson in 1806, was important for stimulating the development of secular state colleges and eventually universities, which then came to “compete” with the colleges operated by religious denominations (Kohlbrenner 1961; Richter 1962). 24. The proposal for Tappan’s nomination came from George Bancroft. Tappan revealed his admiration for the German system in an essay published in 1850

142 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

25.

26.

27. 28.

29. 30.

31.

32.

entitled “A Step from the New World to the Old and Back Again.” See Tappan (1850) and Perry (1933). Adams was White’s student and succeeded him as president at Cornell. Adams was a historian and had served as dean of the Michigan School of Political Science, established in 1881, at a time when only the University of Michigan and Columbia recognized political science as a separate discipline. The Michigan school was clearly marked by German political science, as was American political science in general until World War I. It gave prominence to political and constitutional history (Staatstheorie) and offered a series of courses in “topics, which resembled closely the substance of German Staatswissenschaft” (Fries 1973: 394). This influence may explain why Adams eagerly defended keeping a close relationship between the state and the university, what later became known as the “Wisconsin idea.” See Veysey (1965/1970: 104). Harvard College was founded by John Harvard in 1636 and was designed after Emmanuel College at Cambridge, where the founder himself had been a graduate. Charles William Eliot, who actually was George Ticknor’s nephew, became president in 1869 and had a forty-year tenure there. By 1874, Eliot had introduced electives and a series of other radical reforms based on German ideas: higher standards for admission and examination; less focus on discipline; equal admission of blacks, Jews, and poor students; abolition of an automatic five-dollar M.A.; the granting of earned higher degrees; lectures; raising professors’ salaries; abolition of compulsory chapel; etc. Abbott Lawrence Lowell, who succeeded Eliot as president in 1909, repudiated the German “intellectualism,” which his predecessor had set up as a doctrine. In his inaugural address, Lowell announced Harvard’s return to “the collegiate way of life.” On Lowell’s effort to restore collegiate living, see, for example, Chase (1933); Cowley (1938); and Angell (1949). Charles W. Eliot’s famous essay on the elective system, “The New Education: Its Organization,” was published in Atlantic Monthly, 1869. It is perhaps necessary to note that leaders at Yale University, partly due to the increasing prestige of the universities of Germany, had issued the Yale Report of 1828 containing argument in favor of the “old college” of classical curriculum, collegiate living, and mental discipline. Jordan (1922); Veysey (1965/1970: 94). Röhrs (1995: 79); Gilman’s treatise, “Temple of Science.” For more on Gilman’s prominent position, see H. Hawkins (1959, 1966); Flexner (1946); Menand et al. (2017). Fallon (1980); Röhrs (1995). The new enlightenment spirit can perhaps be illuminated by the fact that the main speaker of the opening ceremonies in 1876 was John Huxley, who had popularized Darwin’s Origin of Species. This is said to have been the first educational event in the United States without the presence of prominent clergymen (Kohlbrenner 1961: 52). Clark University followed Johns Hopkins’s example in 1888, and then Chicago in 1889. Röhrs (1995: 80) mentions all thirteen of the names and their individual subject. Other influential scholars teaching at the university then were Thorsten

The American Reception of Humboldt ♦ 143

33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42.

43.

Veblen, Woodrow Wilson, and John Dewey. Dewey received his PhD at the university in 1884. Shorey (1919). Gildersleeve had studied in Berlin, Göttingen, and Bonn. He earned his doctorate from Göttingen in 1853. Fowler (1986: 62); Röhrs (1995: 82). Veysey (1965/1970: 63). The statement is made by the founder, Ezra Cornell, in his “Address” from 1868. Cornell established complete equality between classical, scientific, and technical studies, as well as a curriculum in which any student could pursue any study. White characterized as a “mistaken platitude” the conventional view that classical and scientific studies were incompatible; he insisted that the University of Michigan and Cornell, in fact, had proven, “that there is a distinct advantage in having classical studies and scientific students, and indeed technical students, within the same walls” (Beach 1965: 242). Other novelties were the total absence of religious (sectarian) strings to the university, the effort to link the university closer to the state’s public school system, the promotion of co-education, and an increase in faculty salaries to support their socializing with students, etc. (Beach 1965: 243–244). On the seminar method in the early American universities, see Webb (1955); B. Smith (1995). From Andrew D. White (1905/2004: 291). The introduction of the free elective system (as opposed to the prescribed curriculum) assumed that the college student was to be treated as a mature person able to make individual choices and no longer an immature child in need of assistance. The elective system was one of several measures that indicated a radical move beyond the paternalism that for centuries had resided in the colleges. Moreover, since one now assumed that the student had received sufficient discipline before enrolling as a freshman, “dormitories were no longer built, old-fashioned rule books were thrown aside and compulsory chapel tended to disappear, especially after the 1880’s. Harvard briefly abandoned classroom attendance” (Veysey 1965/1970: 67). Weinreich (1946). Wilcox (1993: 59). At the outbreak of the war, the Wilson administration instituted a program that alerted the American people to be aware of German espionage. For three years, the Justice Department prepared lists of aliens considered dangerous and attempted to register all male and female German aliens. At the beginning of the war, these lists numbered about 480,000. By the end of the war, more than 4,000 people had been arrested (Yockelson 1998). Although charges of spying for the German government was the chief reason for these arrests, other reasons to prosecute the aliens were found, such as uttering pro-German statements in public or publishing German-American newspapers. Many German immigrants landed on American soil after 1820. In 1890, there were 2,784,894 persons of German extraction in the United States, of which 30.1 percent were foreign born. To make a comparison, in the same year,

144 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

44. 45. 46. 47.

48.

49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

there were 1,871,509 people of Irish heritage (20.2 percent foreign born) and only 909,092 people of British heritage (9.8 percent foreign born). Most of the German immigrants in the Midwest were farmers, artisans, and laborers. The numbers of political refugees who came after the German revolution of 1848 were insignificant compared with this “new” group. The “forty-eighters” were mostly professionals: physicians, lawyers, journalists, musicians, and teachers, who settled in the cities. For statistical overviews, maps of settlements, etc., see Johnson (1951). Wilcox (1993: 59). Ibid., 84. Ibid. Hofstadter and Metzger (1955) and Gruber (1975). The former focuses on the discharging of professors at Harvard, Columbia, and the universities of Minnesota, Nebraska, and Virginia, while the latter focuses more specifically on the lack of commitment to academic freedom during the war. For a discussion of other cases, see also Rossiter (1985). Wilcox’s study is devoted to the dismissal cases at the University of Michigan, but he draws attention to the peculiar fact that very little data exists on faculty purges at all: “Nowhere in the historical literature has there been a full treatment of the difficulties faced during World War I by professors of German in American colleges and universities” (Wilcox 1993: 62n5). Cain (2011) builds on Wilcox, but argues that the challenges to academic freedom at the University of Michigan were more significant and lasting, showing how the faculty purges extended far beyond the German department. Wilcox (1993: 61). Ibid. Ibid. Cowley (1938: 470). From Greek holos: “whole, complete, entire.” Among the Intellectualists, he mentions Tappan, Eliot, Gilman. Urofsky (1965) refers to a survey made in the early nineteenth century of colleges from Maine to Tennessee, in which uniformity was found in the texts and subject matter of courses. In content, method and general objectives, the average American college did not differ radically from the Harvard of 1636. Harvard was actually based on a curricular program initially sketched out by the Elizabethan Statutes for Cambridge in 1570, reaffirmed in the Laudian Code at Oxford in 1636. And it was this program that was “carried over to the New World” by the Puritans. This is not to underestimate the importance of the teaching of William Ames (1576–1633) for the Bay Colony Puritanism and its institutions. Yale’s motto Urim and Thummin [lights and perfections], and Harvard’s motto Christo et Ecclesiae [Christ and Church], together with Veritas [truth] were, according to Lytte (1936) taken from addresses given by Ames. The British style of residential colleges was a means for students to develop well-rounded individuals through communal living. Wardenship of college halls was a post of high status and carried representation on university senates. The education was based on a paternalistic tutorial method of teaching,

The American Reception of Humboldt ♦ 145 where teachers and students formed personal relationships, and where tutors were in loci parentis toward the students. One assumed that discipline would enable the student to act in an appropriate manner in the absence of external supervision. In the German tradition, as mentioned in the previous chapter, the professors took no pastoral interest in students, who were regarded as junior partners. The emphasis on research, particularly on cultivating the intellectual and creative potential of individuals as researchers (and citizens), was a consequence of the new focus on scientific knowledge (Wissenschaft). In other words, focus was on in-depth investigation of particular subject matter rather than trying to “determine” a universal order. The German education was, in the spirit of Kant and Humboldt, secular and strongly opposed any interference from the church, while the British colleges and their American copies rested upon a religious foundation. From this attachment, I argue, divergent views developed on the aim and purpose of liberal education. 56. In some cases, the dismissal was justified as a necessary “reorganization” of the German department. In other cases, dismissal was made possible simply by allowing individual contracts to expire. There were of course several cases where dismissals were not that easy. Wilcox mentions, for instance, the case of Ewald A. Bouche, who was a full professor in a permanent position at the University of Michigan. At the time, Bouche held a national reputation as an authority in comparative literature and had written several influential books on Goethe. As a native German and an instructor of the German language, he was soon to be viewed as a potential infiltrator. 57. The Midwestern universities, which relied on support from the federal state through the Morrill Act of 1862, were expected to serve the state by providing instruction in useful skills, such as in agriculture and the mechanical arts. Yet, the notion of “useful service” remained somewhat ambiguous, which may have something to do with a still unclear or not yet recognized distinction between “society” and “state.” References to “service” were on the one hand frequently made by those who demanded more practical studies and vocational training, on the other hand, “service” was also used by those who assumed that the university did service to the state by way of cultivating citizens and scholars within special academic fields. Eliot, for instance, resented the sharp division made between an educated and practical man, and saw the university as a democratic institution for the promotion of a civic attitude—a democratic citizenship, in the spirit of Jefferson. The idea that the university should respond directly to the demands of the people (i.e., society) only gradually evolved at the end of the nineteenth century, as I explore in my next chapter. 58. Wilcox argues that the 1915 statement on academic freedom was outdated at the time, arising, as he says, from an institution consisting primarily of middle- to upper-class WASP (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) males. These men, he implies, were consequently unable to recognize censure based directly or indirectly on ethnic, national, religious, or gender identity. However, there may be more to this story. The reactions may also have been colored by the anti-German attitudes at the time.

146 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 59. Fallon (1980: 50) notes that of the thirteen of the signatories of the 1915 Report, eight had studied in Germany. 60. Wilcox (1993: 78). 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., 84. On this point, see also Schrecker (2009). 64. Thayer (1920). 65. James T. Shotwell, shortly after America’s entry into the war, was appointed chairman of the National Board for Historical Service, a semi-official branch of the Committee on Public Information, which served as the American government’s war propaganda organ. In late 1917, he served as advisor on foreign affairs to President Woodrow Wilson. See also Shotwell’s review of the works by the German historian Heinrich von Treitschke in Political Science Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 1 (March 1918). 66. Shotwell (1916: 617). 67. Ibid., 618. The reference is from Guilland’s (1915) book. 68. The reviewer Thomas Reed Powell’s assessment, but the quotes are from Thayer’s book. 69. Thayer (1917: 56). William Roscoe Thayer, who became president of the American Historical Association in 1919, was known as a fierce critic of German historicism. Clear evidence of this fact is his inaugural address from 1919 entitled “Fallacies in History.” It is perhaps necessary to keep in mind that Leopold von Ranke had received an honorary membership of the same association in 1885. 70. Thayer (1917: 104). 71. Ibid., 170. 72. Ibid., 115–116. 73. I refer to Robieson’s (1918) review of the Spanish political theorist, Ramiro de Maetzu’s book: Authority, Liberty, and Function in the Light of the War: A Critique of Authority and Liberty as the Foundation of the Modern State and an Attempt to Base Societies on the Principle of Function. London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1916. 74. The Political Science Quarterly is the oldest and perhaps most widely read political science journal in the United States, published since 1886. According to the journal information, it has “no ideological or methodological bias and is edited to make technical findings clear to political scientists, historians and other social scientists regardless of sub-field.” 75. Phelan (1989). 76. The Psychology of the Great War is the title of a book published in 1916 by the French psychologist and sociologist Gustave Le Bon. Le Bon became famous for his view that history is the product of racial or national character, with “emotions” as the dominant force in social evolution. Bernard (1917) presents Le Bon’s book as “an attempt to get at the psychological factors which brought on the present war and to explain the conduct of the various peoples—particularly the Germans—engaged in the war.” The main cause of the

The American Reception of Humboldt ♦ 147

77.

78.

79. 80.

81. 82.

83.

war was, Le Bon presumably contends, mystical or unconscious, because “mysticism dominates both the affective and the rational process” (1916: 348) The German people’s mystical ideal, which constitutes their readiness for war, is that of race superiority and Kultur. The author admits, what he refers to as German superiority and attributes it to “an exceedingly strict discipline and a meticulous organization which is well adapted to the needs of the modern era” (465) and speaks of “patriotism as being an instinct” (469). S. Cohen (1983). William James’s works (e.g., on psychological types and “temperaments”) was very influential both in the United States and on the Continent. James was a friend and intellectual admirer of Henri Bergson, but after having listened to Freud’s first lecture in America (at Clark University in 1909, at the invitation of G. Stanley Hall), he is said to have declared: “The future of psychology belongs to you” (Hughes 1958/1961: 113). Brill (1939: 324) argues similarly that James was impressed by Freud, but that he was “too old and weak to take any attitude about these new doctrines.” Freud’s influence at the time is a matter of dispute. Until the late nineteenth century, Americanism referred to peculiarities of the American syntax, pronunciation, and vocabulary, as opposed to the British language, referred to as Briticism. Later, especially during and after World War I, Americanism gradually became a concept referring to a set of values that is assumed to characterize the American people. See Aronovici (1920) or Hill (1916). For an answer to the question: “What is Americanism?” see a special edition of The American Journal of Sociology, vol. 20, no. 4 (1920). See the assessment made by Morgan (1942). Hill (1916: x). David Jayne Hill was president of the University of Rochester from 1889 until 1896. He later pursued a political career (e.g., ambassador to Germany 1908–11) and wrote extensively on political science. The general goal was to transform the alien immigrants into culturally and morally loyal American citizens. I refer to the Mental Hygiene Movement, which was part of the Progressive Reform movements that provided the inspiration for what S. Cohen (1983) calls the “medicalization” of American education. Mental illness was seen as disorders of the personality that had to be prevented. Emotions, in contrast to intellect, were seen as the essential core of personality and as the most determining aspect of mental life in general. The Mental Hygiene Movement formulated a medical and therapeutic model of schooling. According to S. Cohen (1983: 127), this meant the infiltration of psychiatric norms, concepts, and categories, and the opening of new vistas for understanding dependency, juvenile delinquency, crime, and deviant behavior. Childhood was seen as the conditioning period of personality, which of course made the schools responsible for guidance and personality development. They were convinced that it was possible to spot mental illness in what was interpreted as symptoms of psychiatric disorder, such as evasiveness, seclusiveness, passivity, and introversion. Gerstle (1994: 1052).

148 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 84. Ibid., 1044. The Progressive movement lasted from 1890 to the mid-1920s. The movement embraced a wide array of social and economic programs, including women’s suffrage, black equality, prohibition, shorter work-hours, elimination of child labor, adoption of social welfare programs, conservation of natural resources, etc. Whereas in matters of education, the Progressive movement was intent on reforming individuals and improving character (moral science), yet the New Deal reformers of the 1930s—presumably driven by the crisis of the Depression—were more concerned with economic issues and reforms that would provide security and equal opportunities. 85. Cywar (1969a). 86. Gerstle (1994: 1047). 87. There are somewhat divergent opinions on Dewey’s attitude toward the state and state-regulation, as I will address in the next chapter. Some argue that Dewey, after the war, thought it necessary to retain a large governmental apparatus. Cywar (1969a: 395) argues that Dewey in 1918 believed that the trend of events was in the direction of what he designated ‘”state capitalism” (i.e., nationalization of the mechanisms of production/distribution, the substitution of a bureaucracy of government officials for corporate managers). 88. Horne (1939). John Withers was dean of New York University’s School of Education, 1921–1939. The school was founded in 1890 (as the School of Pedagogy) and was the first school devoted to the education of teachers in the United States. In 2001, the school was renamed The Steinhardt School of Education. 89. Withers (1934). 90. Withers (1934: 548). The quote is from the report. 91. Ibid. The citations are borrowed from a document issued by the Progressive Education Association in 1934, entitled “A Call to the Teachers of the Nation.” 92. Higgins (1940) mentions some of the most noticeable trends in the individualization of teaching. Increased amount of conference time devoted to individual students, reduction of the study program from five or more courses to four or fewer, effort to help the student realize the interrelations of subjects, avoid the narrow specialization of over-departmentally organized subject matter, and an increase in the variety of subjects offered. Furthermore, she states, “there is an increasing emphasis on the relationship of education and democracy.” She remarks, “Interpreting the meaning of democracy involves the intelligent study and appreciation of American civilization and its social, economic, and political principles and aims” (309). 93. Ibid., 308. 94. Cowley (1938: 470). He mentions, for example, Tappan of Michigan and Gilman at Johns Hopkins. 95. He refers to Professor Robert Hutchins at the University of Chicago. 96. Wilcox (1993: 61). 97. Cowley (1938: 471). 98. Ibid., 472. 99. Warren (1944).

The American Reception of Humboldt ♦ 149 100. The article was re-issued in a special anniversary issue of Journal of Higher Education in 1999. 101. Neureiter (1934: 264). It is perhaps helpful to keep in mind that the Nazi book burning campaign took place on 10 May 1933 in many cities and college towns. In Berlin it took place on the Bebelplatz square in front of the Humboldt University. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid., 265. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid. 106. Ibid., 266. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid., 267. 112. Ibid., 268. 113. Ibid., 267. 114. Ibid., 269. 115. Ibid. 116. Ibid. 117. Ibid. 118. Reitz (1934: 407). Reitz was an educational researcher at the University of Chicago. 119. Ibid. 120. Ibid. 121. Ibid., 408. 122. Ibid., 409. 123. Ibid. 124. Ibid.. 125. Ibid. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid., 410. 128. Ibid. 129. Ibid. 130. Ibid. 131. Ibid., 412. 132. Neureiter (1946: 171). 133. Ibid. 134. There were many other expressions of this trend, such as Edelmann (1945). 135. Neureiter (1946: 174). 136. Ibid., 172. 137. Ibid., 171–72. 138. Ibid., 172. 139. Ibid.

150 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155.

156. 157.

158.

159.

160. 161.

Ibid., 173. Ibid., 174. Ibid., 175. Ibid., 176. Ibid., 177. The italics are mine. Ibid. Ibid., 178. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 176. Ibid., 179. Ibid., 174. Ibid., 179. See, for instance, Duggan (1947) and Kapp (1948). For instance, Sidney Hook’s book Education for Modern Man (1946). Hollinger (1995). He argues that the postwar period was the setting for a new universalistic or cosmopolitan construction of the cultural meaning of ‘science,’ which was set against the authority of blood and history. He refers to “a widespread assertion that science and democracy were expressions of each other and that both were threatened by Nazism.” (Robert Merton first gave shape to this assertion.) I will return to this in the next chapter. I am more concerned, however, with the effects of the debate concerning the purpose of liberal education, and how “science” and “the scientific” increasingly are understood as the agents of “cosmopolitan liberation.” Hawk (1954: 22). I refer to General Education in a Free Society: Report of the Harvard Committee, published in June 1945. The report, which I will analyze in more detail in the next chapter, was of great importance for the debate that followed. I refer to the eleventh printing of the report. Agard (1945) may serve as a good example of the trend. He stresses three maladjustments: provincialism (“there is a need of thinking in global terms”), overspecialization (“the more [students] are masters of one trade, the less they may be masters of themselves”), and emotional escapism (“people tend to follow some leaders who would save them from the burden of making up their mind”). The General Education Movement is often associated with the reorganization of the curriculum at Harvard in 1945, which resulted in the report General Education in a Free Society mentioned above. The movement was older and claims as its founders such university presidents as Lowell at Harvard and Harper at Chicago. Brown (1950: 202). This is a review of President Conant’s book Education in a Divided World (1948). This is particularly the case for the human sciences: classical philology and history. Tendencies to question the scientific status of philology can be felt much earlier. See, for instance, Kelsey (1908).

The American Reception of Humboldt ♦ 151 162. Before World War I, only sporadic references to “the humanities” can be found, and there is no clear distinction made between the humanities and the sciences. Higham (1966) argues that it was only in the twentieth century the Americans began to speak about “the humanities,” which then referred narrowly to “those subjects, which represent the culture of the past.” History had acquired a prominent position in the nineteenth century due to the German influence, and other subjects such as literature and philosophy were also considered historical disciplines. Historians were increasingly regarded as conservatives, primarily preoccupied with continuity and tradition. As preservers of a cultural heritage, they were judged “out of touch with modern society.” 163. Brown (1950). 164. Biddle (1945: 374). 165. Ibid., 375. 166. Ibid. 167. Ibid. 168. He suggests, for instance, one conference for mechanical abilities, another for literary interest. 169. Biddle insists that conferences may bring the student “face to face with the ethical imperatives, the religious tradition which is central to all civilization worthy the name. And it would also cover other experiences, such as social adjustments, a healthy attitude toward the opposite sex, and experiences in citizenship” (1945: 376). 170. Biddle (1945: 376). 171. Ibid., 376–77. 172. Ibid., 377. 173. Ibid. 174. Ibid., 377, 398. 175. Ullmann (1946). 176. Ibid., 303. 177. Ibid., 307. 178. The article is a direct response to General Education in a Free Society, mentioned above, which states that languages are primarily tools to teach tolerance and thereby disregard how a scientific “knowledge of the language of another people gives us a more intimate glimpse of their minds and souls” (Ibid., 305). 179. Ibid., 307. 180. Tresidder (1946). He refers to a book by Frank Aydelotte, Breaking the Academic Lock (1944). 181. Tresidder (1946: 125). He refers to an article by T. R. McConnells entitled “Liberal Education after the War” (1944). 182. Tresidder (1946: 125). 183. Ibid., 127. 184. Ibid. 185. Ibid.

152 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 186. Ibid. He quotes from an article by Irwin Edman in New York Times Magazine, 2 June 1944, 16. Edman is described as one of the “followers of Dewey.” 187. Tresidder (1946: 128). 188. Ibid. The citation is from Dewey (1944: 57). 189. Lankard (1951): 185, 188. 190. Ibid., 185. 191. Ibid. 192. Ibid., 186. 193. Carmichael (1951: 145). 194. Ibid., 146. 195. Ibid., 147. 196. Ibid. 197. The examples he uses are honors courses, preceptorial and tutorial plans, and the “Great Books” idea. 198. Carmichael (1951: 148). 199. McGrath (1951: 236). 200. McGrath (1953: 121). 201. McGrath (1951: 237). The article reflects the new conservative shift of opinion in the 1940s and 1950s, when America came to represent a stronghold of stability in a revolutionary world, as Higham (1994) phrased it. 202. McGrath (1951: 241). 203. Ibid., 242. 204. Ibid. 205. McGrath (1953: 121). 206. Ibid. 207. Ibid., 122. 208. Ibid., 123. 209. Ibid. 210. Ibid., 124. 211. Berkelman (1951: 20). Berkelman was on sabbatical leave at Columbia University in the fall of 1951. 212. Ibid., 19. 213. Ibid., 21. 214. Schueler (1951: 91). 215. Ibid., 92. 216. Ibid., 93. 217. Stewart (1946). 218. Ibid., 32. 219. Ibid., 32–33. 220. Ibid., 36. 221. Ibid., 39. 222. Benjamin (1949). I refer to Avey (1951). Harold Benjamin became very influential, and I will return to him in the next chapter. 223. Benjamin (1949: 53). 224. Ibid. 225. Ibid.

The American Reception of Humboldt ♦ 153 226. Schueler (1951: 93) is particularly concerned with what in German universities are called Vorlesungen. 227. Humboldt (1821/1967: 57). 228. Without digging further into this, I refer to the works of Hayden White (1973/1975, 1978/1985), who approaches historical writings as being narratives conveying meaning through the application of tropes that generate particular images or thought patterns. 229. O’Boyle (1983: 10). 230. Ibid. 231. Ibid. She refers to Henry Hatfield, Aesthetic Paganism in German Literature: From Winckelmann to the Death of Goethe (1964). 232. O’Boyle (1983: 10). 233. Ibid. 234. O’Boyle admits that the use of the word ‘profession’ is controversial. However, she provides a tentative and general list of the uniform characteristics of the professions that illuminate the German experience: the emergence of an occupation as a full-time endeavor; the occupation’s differentiation from other occupations; the acceptance by society of the claims that the occupation rests on a body of abstract principles mastered only through prolonged study; the belief that a practitioner can be judged only by his peers; at least partial control over the training of successors; and the development of an occupational culture. 235. O’Boyle (1983: 8). 236. Ibid., 9. 237. Ibid., 8. 238. Ibid., 9. 239. This interpretation is better known as the German Sonderweg or the Sonderweg thesis. It is a well-known belief that Germany’s political problems derived from its failure to partake in the process of “bourgeois revolution” during the nineteenth century. Hiden (1987: 463) explains the logic as follows: “The resulting survival of pre-industrial elites in a state, which was at the same time rapidly industrializing, exacerbated the social and political conflicts inside the Wilhelmine Empire. In order to preserve their favored position, the German elites adopted a manipulative strategy that retarded political progress. Because the German revolution of 1918/19 failed to change the socio-economic structures of Germany, forces were nourished which ultimately led to National Socialism.” 240. The reference is from Lepenies (1992: 56). The quote is from Elias (1939/2000: 9). 241. It is tempting to argue that this is an example of what might be lost or even distorted when Bildung is translated into cultivation. The understanding of Bildung as a process in which individuals are enabled to transform their “capabilities” into expressions, “images” (Bild), or products is lost when cultivation, as it presumably does here, connotes a particular kind of (class) behavior or conduct. Elias (1939/2000: 6) has, in fact, pointed out that the concept cultivated is linked to the French and English concept of civilization,

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242. 243. 244.

245. 246. 247. 248. 249. 250. 251. 252. 253. 254. 255. 256.

257.

258.

259. 260. 261. 262. 263. 264. 265.

and refers to the attitudes or behavior of people (manners, housing, etc.). Although the Germans have an equivalent word, kultiviert, this is of minor importance compared with the concept of Kultur. Kultur, as I have mentioned previously, finds it clearest expression in its derivate, the adjective, kulturell, used to describe the value and character of particular human products or accomplishments. Ringer (1969/1990: 87). Ibid., 3. To show that reactions varied, Ringer makes a distinction between conservative or orthodox mandarins and the modernist mandarins (i.e., scholars such as Max Weber and Karl Mannheim), yet he insists that both types shared a conviction of their superiority and extraordinary status in German society. Ringer (1969/1990: 3) Liedman (1986) has criticized Ringer on this point. See also Kalberg (1987). Ringer (1969/1990: 162–63). Ibid., 150–51. Collins (1987: 58) Ibid., 97. Ibid., 98. He refers to the writings of Ernst Troeltsch and Friedrich Meinecke as “the basic works on German historiography.” Ibid., 85. Ibid., 86. Ringer borrows his definition of Bildung from the encyclopedia, Der Grosse Brockhaus. Ibid., 102. Gesinnung is described in German as “Art des Denkens (Als Grundlage für das entsprechende Handeln): Denkart.” Gesinnung is translated into English as “disposition,” “temper,” “temperament,” “sentiment,” or “opinion.” McClelland (1973: 3). It should perhaps be noted that he focuses primarily on the German historians in the generation after Ranke. He singles out four prominent historians from this period for analysis, among them, Gustav Schmoller and Max Lenz. I have previously mentioned that Albion Small, who set up the sociology department at the University of Chicago, was influenced by the political economics of Schmoller, whom he became acquainted with while studying at Leipzig and Berlin from 1876 to 1879. Such issues were, for example, the matter of supporting the building of a modern German fleet, arguing in favor of colonies as an outlet for population surpluses and the “civilizing mission.” McClelland (1973: 11). Ibid. Ibid., 33. Ibid., 5. All quotes are from the article although not all are given page reference. Ibid, 5, 6. Ibid., 6. Ibid.

The American Reception of Humboldt ♦ 155 266. 267. 268. 269.

270. 271. 272. 273. 274. 275. 276. 277. 278. 279. 280. 281. 282. 283. 284.

Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 33. Jarausch refers to Weber’s “Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland” and Dahrendorf (1967) to validate his claim that “the elitist practice of cultivation created one of the crucial status barriers in German society.” Note my reference in chapter 1 to Sweet’s (1978) critique of Dahrendorf. Jarausch (1978: 613). Ibid., 609. Ibid., 611. Ibid., 612. Ibid. Ibid., 617. Ibid. Ibid., 618. Ibid., 619. Ibid., 620. Ibid. Ibid., 621. Ibid. Ibid., 622. I refer to Stuart Hughes (1958/1961). Ringer draws heavily on Hughes’s book.

CHAPTER 3

Liberal Education beyond Bildung 

Introduction John Dewey regarded education an important remedy for transforming a culturally divided America into a modern democracy. He was convinced that individuals were capable of intelligent judgment and action, if only the proper conditions were furnished. It was this faith in the individual’s ability to take control that set him apart from many other liberals, who believed in the necessity and authority of elites. As part of the Progressive movement, he was preoccupied with domestic social reforms, and thought education was an important instrument in reconstituting the American tradition by applying the past ideals in the reconstruction of contemporary society. Dewey’s early works were influenced by German Idealism, and his reactions against idealism in the early 1890s in favor of what later became known as “instrumentalism” provided, as Joseph Blau (1960) argues, “the groundwork for all his later works had been laid.”1 This chapter addresses the American reception of Humboldt from the viewpoints of some influential scholars and educational reformers. Special attention is devoted to John Dewey and the Progressive movement, which were mentioned, but not adequately treated in the previous chapter. There, I tried to show how the German influence provided many young American students and later reformers in the nineteenth century with new grand theories and insight into the skill of doing scientific research. At the close of the century, new debate on how to transform a poor immigrant society into a democratic nation awakened scholars to the potential use and social utility of education and research in the engineering of society. As in the previous chapter, I show how the wars had profound impact on the German ideas relating to education. In the latter part of the chapter, I return to the debates on the nature and purpose of liberal education, particularly on General Education, and show that the union of two positions, or the educational doctrines that emerged from these postwar debates on liberal

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education, bears witness to the disappearance of Humboldtian ideals from the American educational scene.

I. THE CONSTRAINTS OF AUTHORITIES John Dewey and German Idealism In 1882, Dewey enrolled at Johns Hopkins University to do graduate work in philosophy.2 He believed, as did many other social thinkers at the end of the nineteenth century, that knowledge and its uses evolve throughout history. In later re-interpreting his own work, he moved on to combine his Hegelian idealism with a more biologically based functionalism3—which eventually became known as his experimentalism.4 In the 1890s, he firmly believed that the developmental course of history had changed the conceptions of knowledge and the individual, “endowing the individual with the capacity to discover knowledge and the right to use it through participation in government.”5 With a historical, “evolutionary” understanding of the nature of knowledge, Dewey saw a close relationship between knowledge and social action. And according to Michael Buxton (1984), a characteristic feature of Dewey’s future application of knowledge was his new view on logic; his theory of inquiry, particularly the view that “concepts and theories are instrumental toward the production of future facts, and that a hypothesis is a step toward solving a felt problem by means of concepts translated into action.”6 However, although he believed that science and the scientific method were important instruments for changing society, Dewey feared the role specialists would have in a democratic nation. It is this optimism, as well as fear of the utilization of knowledge, that we, according to Laura Westhoff (1995), see as a paradox in the culture of the Progressive Era. Dewey’s skepticism of specialization, or what he termed ‘specialism,’ can perhaps best be understood in relation to his Darwinian, naturalist ethics: his recognition of the continuously changing human nature and his attempt to liberate the individual and cognitive capabilities of the individual from any reliance on authorities.7 His appropriation of the Renaissance as an exemplary era8 illustrates his view of “the modern individual” as being active, dynamic, and versatile: one who has managed to free himself from the constraints of external authorities as well as from the constraints of his own ignorance and superstition. In a number of essays from the 1890s, Dewey explains how, throughout history, knowledge has been capitalized on and appropriated by

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elites and thus become abstracted from life. He argues that philosophy from ancient times had become divorced from life and thus trapped in useless epistemological discussions. By the end of the Middle Ages, the status given to “pure” contemplative reflection made people believe that “truth presents itself to the individual only through the medium of organized authority.”9 This belief strengthened the authority of the Church, and through it, the state. Only during the Renaissance and Protestant Reformation could the individual claim the ability to discover knowledge and truth. At that time, the conception of progress as a ruling idea; the conception of the individual as the source and standard of rights, and the conception of knowledge are all born together. Given the freed individual, who [is] called upon to create a new heaven and a new earth, and who feels himself gifted with the power to perform the task to which he is called:—and the demand for science, for a method of discovering and verifying truth, becomes imperious. The individual is henceforth to supply control, law, and not simply stimulation and initiation. What does this mean but that instead of . . . receiving or assimilating truth, he is now to search for and create it? Having no longer the truth imposed by authority to rely upon, there is no resource save to secure the authority of truth. The possibility of getting at and utilizing this truth becomes therefore the underlying and conditioning problem of modern life.10

At the end of the nineteenth century, Dewey believed that through American democracy, the goal of philosophy would be fulfilled and that in the course of history, individuals would come to think for themselves and decisively partake in organizing society. Through the practical use of science, men and women could “ward off the uncertainties of historical time and the disorder of history.”11 Thus, it was necessary to intervene and direct the course of history to desirable ends. Yet to sort out ways to predict and control social and economic forces, one needed to gather, analyze, and apply information. Scientific methods thus became increasingly important as instruments for social inquiry, which then carried the ambiguous label “efficiency”12 and were later described as “social engineering.”13 Although Dewey, along with the other progressive reformers, regarded science and scientific methodology as necessary instruments for change, they also feared specialists and what they came to see as a devotion to lofty speculations. Their fear was expressed as ambivalence toward the role of “pure science” and “specialization.” On the one hand, their views were considered

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impractical; on the other hand, they were thought of as old-fashioned and belonging to an agrarian, provincial, or feudal social order, insofar as they relied on the governance of authoritarian elites. Hence, neither was fit for a modern society. Dewey feared that people would become dependent on experts and that such dependency would undermine each individual’s ability to actively participate and act, an ability that he regarded as necessary in a popular democracy. He argued in favor of an extensive popularization of knowledge and saw it as a means by which to avoid any such dependency, since the spread of simplified and easily accessible knowledge would help people make informed decisions based on independent judgments. Both adequate information and individual independence were necessary to preserve a democratic community and build a new social order.

Speculators, Monks, and Merchants of Thought As stated in the previous chapter, the Americanization movement evolved not only out of a desire to modernize society, but even more so, out of an effort to integrate and unite a culturally divided country. The movement for national integration was, above all, an attempt to foster a unified American identity and strengthen Anglo-Saxon values and ideals among the many immigrants who had entered the country between 1880 and the outbreak of World War I.14 Advances in science and new scientific methods of inquiry were needed to engineer a collective identity—the Americans—out of a culturally divided society. Educators were given a particular responsibility for working toward new integrationist politics through which immigrants were to be freed from the constraints imposed upon them by “dead traditions.” It was passionately believed that the success of a new political order relied on abandoning involvement with the past and being freed from the network of one’s origins. Those who continued to indulge in the past and who apparently bemoaned all changes were soon to be regarded as enemies of progress and were labeled “conservatives.”15 This was particularly the case as progress increasingly became associated with a “release of energies,” or a state in which “the fixed has given way to the mobile; the settled to the free.”16 This of course meant that many an immigrant’s source of identity—be it familial, cultural, or socio-ethnic—was judged to be a structure from the past; one that segregated society and prevented the fullest possible realization of individual human potential.17 The promise was that the “wheels of progress” would free individuals from the

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constraints imposed upon them through affiliation with special groups or particular interest associations. Dewey’s essay from 1891, “The Scholastic and the Speculator,” reveals some of his profound skepticism toward any tendency in the direction of segregated or specialized knowledge. Here he juxtaposes medieval scholasticism with the research tradition of the late nineteenth-century universities, when the monastic cell . . . (had) become a professional lecture hall: An endless mass of “authorities” have taken the place of Aristotle . . . monographs, journals without end occupy the void left by the commentators upon Aristotle.18

In the same way the Scholastics were locked into a system (i.e., the divine order), so were the late nineteenth-century scholars locked into specialized disciplines. As was generally the case for philosophical and political thought in the late nineteenth century, Dewey’s understanding of history rested on evolutionary theories: the historical process was explained as a continuous process of growth in which man drives toward fuller self-realization. The impression we get from his narrative of the scholastic and nineteenth-century scholars is that both groups belong to the past, when knowledge was still separated from society and individuals were still dependent upon authorities. In this narrative, Dewey employs metaphors borrowed from economics and commerce to describe a need for a new and freer distribution of knowledge in the current state of democracy. In fact, knowledge is metaphorically described as a commodity or “good” to be used and shared by all. What characterized the Scholastic was that he did not enter into an exchange with others but collected knowledge and kept it to himself. Thus, he is presented as a miser or a selfish egotist who abstracted knowledge from life to “monopolize it.” However, in contrast to the Scholastic, who gathered the wealth of human intelligence “from the wreckage of time,” there is another protagonist in Dewey’s narrative, namely the Speculator, who in the nineteenth century came to substitute the Scholastic. The Speculator was willing to “venture his savings” in the hope of finding “profitable” solutions to real problems but had yet to “venture his savings against the pressure of facts.”19 In opposition to both the Scholastic and the Speculator, Dewey’s new ideal was the Merchant of Thought, who both “saves and spends, yet neither embezzles nor gambles.”20 The merchant is the hero because he uses knowledge intelligently for social ends.

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Richard Rorty (1999b) insists that Dewey was fond of telling “inspiring and fuzzy” stories,21 yet each story had an educational or socializing purpose. I suppose the lesson drawn from them is that if knowledge is sought for its own sake and not for practical purposes, there is a danger of continuing the stingy practice of the Scholastics, or of prolonging the Speculator’s aimless search (for intellectual profit). This danger was considered more pressing than ever before since knowledge had become divided into specialized disciplines and thus apparently became more fragmented. Dewey insisted that philosophy was the proper “method” for understanding the problems of society and urged his fellow philosophers to enter into the social exchange and become “merchants of thought” in practical matters. Philosophers had a responsibility in acknowledging life’s uncertainties and thus also an obligation to share their knowledge and engage actively in the social reconstruction and transformation of society.22

The Practical Use of History Dewey was concerned with history and regarded the past as a repository of experiences useful for the construction of a new and better future.23 In his instrumental version of experimental thinking, history is considered useful because it is understood within a frame of temporal progress or an evolution of human experiences in time. In fact, he rejected the claim made by traditional historiographers (e.g., the historicism of Ranke) that it is possible to reinstate the events of the past, “as they actually were” yet he refuted the consequences drawn from this recognition, namely that historical writings or historiography as such are merely subjective and relativistic. Historiography is neither objective nor subjective. History has a dual sense; it is about what has happened in the past, but it is also our reconstruction—our interpretation—or “translations” of these happenings at a particular time. And as such, history can be used as means of changing human life in the present. Concrete suggestions arising from past experiences, developed and matured in the light of the needs and deficiencies of the present, employed as aims and methods of specific reconstructions, and tested by success or failure in accomplishing this task of reconstruction, suffice.24

Dewey believed it was possible and necessary to develop hypotheses about the past, yet he admitted that these hypotheses could not tell

162 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

us anything “factual” about specific events at any point in time but would be a “narrative” proposition about a course of events in time. The course of events constituted a temporal order or a relation that could become an object of knowledge.25 However, for a historical judgment to be warranted as acceptable historical “evidence,” it had to satisfy or fulfill the requirements of a warranted scientific judgment, for instance, rely on a random selection of observable facts (documents, books, etc.), be guided by a set of hypotheses and work from a systematic conceptual structure. Historical inquiry could thus only be distinguished from scientific inquiry by its subject matter, but not by its method. In other words, Dewey admitted that all historical reconstructions are necessarily selective and based on interpretations. Historical evidence is a reconstruction of a segment of the past from a present perspective, with an “eye to control the future possibilities.” His own tales of the ancient philosophical speculator or the medieval scholastic monk are perhaps easier to understand while keeping in mind his view on history and the mind’s operations. Both figurations rely on a selective reconstruction of the past and on his hypotheses of the past made at a particular time. Finally, his reconstruction or hypotheses have the effect of evoking in the reader a new vision of future possibilities: the serviceable scholar or “the merchant.” There can be no doubt that Dewey regarded as wasteful the pursuit of “pure” science and the sort of research solely oriented toward subject matter. The emphasis on specialization in the university was assumed to be old-fashioned and mirrored an unhealthy dependency on authorities (i.e., disciplines). As neither the scholastic scholar nor the speculator had any regard for future ends, they were unable or unwilling to deal with the demands made by a rapidly changing modern industrial society. Moreover, isolated from the real world, they were not able to assist in solving “present” uncertainties and problems, for instance, to help handle the social frictions in American society caused by immigration and a multicultural population. Thus, the defenders of specialized studies were subsequently regarded as antiquated conservatives who merely defended remote, aimless scholarship; “collectors of wreckage”; upholders of ancient hierarchical structures; and the “worthless inventions” of the scholarly mind. Because of this “progressive” view of “history as useful,” anyone who protected the need for “pure” thinking was—by way of association—a preserver of premodern social structures in which knowledge was only accessible to

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a small elite of philosophers (antiquity), priests (Medieval times), or bureaucrats (the German research model). As already mentioned, Dewey insisted, however, that the notions of the individual from the Renaissance and the Reformation were usable examples that provided us with alternatives for our modern age. Drawing inspiration from them could help us design future possibilities and prospects. Both events were recognitions that everyone has the need and right to realize his own potential and shape his own life, and both were examples of ages in which knowledge was independent and liberated from the authorities of the state governments and the Church. It may be argued that both the movement for Americanization and Dewey’s wish for reconstruction were founded upon the same pragmatic appropriation of this kind of individualism.26 According to George Morgan (1942), Dewey took the abiding moral truth of individualism to be equal freedom and opportunity for all to participate “in the development of a shared culture.”27 Thus, the transformation of individuality to individualism was embedded in Americanization, and thus simply described as “the only solid foundation for our duty to respect the other man’s rights.”28

Dewey’s Attack on Kant It is often assumed that Dewey, in his formative years, was attracted to the philosophy of Hegel and Kant29 most of all because he desired the completeness or unification that idealism promised. His early infatuation with idealism, however, was soon to be exchanged for something that appears to be more of a fierce attack. Early in World War I, in 1915, Dewey gave three lectures published as German Philosophy and Politics in which he tried to explain the character of German political life in terms of the influence of German philosophy (particularly Kant’s variety of idealism), now regarded as “Germanic absolutism.”30 In these lectures, he charges the idealists of falsely separating the actual, everyday world from the ideal, and thus privileging the interior or metaphysical world of pure ideals and morals.31 This, Dewey claims, resulted in an overly intellectualist system unchecked by any moral ideal. He seems to be particularly concerned with the disposition toward the world that such a system of pure thought breeds and repeatedly refers to how the “gospel of duty”32 tends to gag intelligence and foster a submissive personality: obedient, disciplined, and subordinate.

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The text may, of course, be understood in relation to the early heat of World War I and as an effort to retrospectively link German philosophy with “the disastrous militarism of the Kaiser.”33 And surprisingly, it is Kant, the philosopher of the Enlightenment, who is held responsible for molding the German national mind, since Kant, more than anyone else, “helped formulate a sense of national mission and destiny.”34 The lectures have thus been regarded as Dewey’s farewell to German Idealism and as his declaration of allegiance to the American ideal of “promoting the efficacy of human intercourse irrespective of class, racial, geographical and national limits.”35 Any philosophy, which should penetrate and particulate our present social practice, would find at work the forces which unify human intercourse. An intelligent and courageous philosophy of practice would devise means by which the operation of these forces would be extended and assured in the future. An American philosophy of history [as opposed to the German philosophy of Nationalism] must perforce be a philosophy for its future, a future in which freedom and fullness of human companionship is the aim, and intelligent cooperative experimentation the method.36

Later, in what is regarded as his autobiographical sketch, “From Absolutism to Experimentalism” (1930a), Dewey reaffirmed his rejection of idealism, particularly the Hegelian demand for unification (which he now labeled “absolutism”) in favor of experimentation. Despite this rejection, he recognized in himself this demand as “an intense emotional craving,” yet “a hunger that only an intellectualized subject matter could satisfy.37 Dewey also regarded German Idealism’s offer of a “release of the spirit” as self-righteous and irresponsible—and the result of “an authoritarian cast of mind.” Instead, he turned to the “ethical” empiricism of William James, who he felt recognized the kind of humane sensitivity (i.e., emotions) missing in German thought.38 In a letter to a friend in 1915, the same year the lectures were held, Dewey described his own text on German philosophy and politics as a matter of “discharging my long-accumulated bile”: The gigantic complacency of German Idealism, their contempt, their condescension, their patronizing of English empiricism and of such American philosophy as there is wore on my nerves—and I worked it off.39

His hostility toward German thought, which he now decried as “a chronic quest for certainty,” also affected his response to Freud, whom,

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despite their many similarities of thought, he essentially considered to be a “dealer in instincts and myths.”40 With his unfortunate tendency to stereotype, he also criticized the Freudians for having a typical German weakness for grand abstract generalizations. Due to this hostility, Alan Lawson argues, Dewey was never able admit how the Freudians had great success in appreciating the subtleties of human nature (i.e., focus on drives and the sub/unconscious).41 Dewey always thought in terms of the relationship between the individual and his social surrounding, thus in terms of attitudes, habits, and dispositions. It is perhaps necessary to keep in mind that Dewey’s strongest statements on psychoanalysis came during World War I, a time when Freudianism was popularized throughout the United States.

World War I and Its Aftermath Dewey supported America’s entrance into the war in 1917. However, his support was not a result of an unrestricted patriotism. It was rather the result of his belief in democratic individualism or the possible fulfillment of a new individuality on a larger scale. His relentless optimism and his conception of the relation of thought to action made him envision a greater peace: world improvement in the quality of life. Since he believed that America was the most valuable political and cultural model the world had to offer at the time, the country had a special role in world reconstruction. For this attitude, obviously, he was strongly criticized.42 In the aftermath of World War I, as hinted at in the previous chapter, when high tides of nationalism and the fear of communism raged, the advocates of in-depth studies on subject matter were no longer seen simply as old-fashioned scholars lagging behind in the historical evolution, nor were they ridiculed as being merely diligent bureaucrats to a system of pure thought. Now they were suspected of being perpetrators of German nationalism, through their invocation of such grand ideas as Kultur.43 In an era influenced by moral-psychological theories and incessant anti-German war propaganda, many scholars were suspected of acting from a certain temper of mind, inclination, or disposition for “absolutes” and thus of promoting politically suspect ideas.44 Even though it is easy to detect a general disregard for the Germans in many journals, there was still a great deal of admiration for the German people,45 in particular their efficiency, systematization of community life, and their work ethic. This ambivalence is reflected in the following quotes: first an ambiguous description of the chief

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characteristics of the German mentality, and next, what appears to be an attempt to explain “German superiority” on account of their institutions. the passion for intellectual theory, and the final obsession with general ideas, theory and system; and the modifying effect of industrial changes in the nineteenth century, beginning with the invasion from America of an intense individualism at the beginning of the century.46 an exceedingly strict discipline and a meticulous organization, which is well adopted to the needs of the modern era.47 in no other nation was education so widely diffused. But then the very persons entrusted with the lead—the professors in the German universities—were foremost in advocating the doctrine of autocracy and inhumanity. . . . The remedy exists in giving [education] a right direction. . . . In American publications Germany’s institutions were represented as a menace to democracy. And yet where was the pursuit of knowledge conducted with greater energy and success? Where was there greater business and industrial development? Where was property more widely diffused or security of life more firmly established? Indeed before the war what country more admired Germany than our own America? German example was copied and cited everywhere.48

Another peculiar fact of the era is that the state becomes increasingly associated with egotism (e.g., state-egotism), submissiveness, and even slavery.49 Nevertheless, the 1920s are often regarded as a period when reactions against idealism and reform signaled a downfall of the liberal, social progressive’s efforts, and when representatives of big business and Wall Street, “execute a relentless campaign in state and nation to subvert the reforms and regulatory structure that had been built up since the 1870s.”50 The period is also associated with the revival of anti-Semitism, as exemplified by the Ku Klux Klan, and the “Negro question,” which was heavily debated by the American public between 1920 and 1930.51 Despite the Progressives’ downfall, Dewey wrote many of his most important contributions to social philosophy between 1920 and 1930, among them: The Public and Its Problems, where he opted for a reconstitution of “the public” as a “cooperative aggregate of face-to-face civic groups.”52 He had also paid a visit to the Soviet Union and wrote a series of articles in which he actually praised the Russian Revolution for bringing about “a release of courage, energy and confidence in

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life.”53 Some have argued that Dewey, after the Depression of 1929, saw the possibility of a new individualism to replace “the fallacies of economic individualism.”54 Others insist that Dewey argued in favor of a socially planned democratic socialism, a social democracy based on a widespread distribution of power and responsibility, one that was public but not state-capitalistic.55 Lawson, for instance, argues that Dewey saw the need for democratic experimentation in a society that was not planned but continuously planning, and that this need was “a close partner to his philosophical concern for unity of method without specifying subject matter or desired ends.”56 A prerequisite for this experimentation to take place was the “scientification” of the arts as well as social studies, or rather, the unification of the sciences and the arts. [I]f I read the cultural signs of the times aright, the next synthetic movement in philosophy will emerge when the significance of the social sciences and arts has become an object of reflective attention in the same way that mathematical and physical sciences have been made the object of thought in the past, and when their full import is grasped.57

The above quote may illustrate Dewey’s life-long effort to engender a synthesis of his psychology of habits and his philosophy of practical reasoning. In what is generally regarded as his crowning work, Art as Experience (1934), he insists that a league between artistic imagination and scientific intelligence offered such a synthesis.58 It was not an appeal to pure and ideal truth that would hold the system together, but rather an open, experimental approach guided by what he refers to as a search for temporary “truths” or “warranted assertability.” He recognized that knowledge always and essentially will be contextual, and knowledge, or “truth” is simply that which “satisfactory terminates inquiry.”59 Pragmatism, however, was losing ground as existentialism and logical positivism gained support. The end result of Dewey’s battle against the German quest for certainty was the proclamation of a new faith in the scientific method of inquiry—an experimental scientific attitude.

II. SCIENTIFICATION OF SOCIAL STUDIES The emergence of a new social studies concerned with the contemporary world grew rapidly into institutionalized science. This happened in spite of the growing anxiety over specialization and the fragmentation

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of scholarship.60 World War I had affected the progressive’s effort to reconstruct society, and Dewey saw the need to develop and improve methodology in order to keep pace with the techniques of the applied natural sciences.61 Even though Dewey initially regarded the emerging social studies as “agencies for healing divisions between past and present” and as “mediators between science and culture,”62 Higham claims it was Dewey’s program, designed to put all judgments on an experimental basis that, “prepared the way for the emergence in the 1930s of a still stricter logical positivism.”63 To some extent, this may well be true, but with some modifications: Higham claims that the emerging scientism not only excluded the normative (i.e., orientation toward reform for social improvement), but also tended to expel the historical from the center of interest, or, as he expresses it, “scientism and anti-historicism frequently went hand in hand.”64 The desire to free oneself from outmoded (autocratic) forms coincided with a doubt as to whether history continually evolved. Instead of relying on “classic political science,” which Dewey already in 1918 had described as a “recluse” or an “idle speculator” of world-changing events, one was to develop a new experimental political science, a “science of ideas in action.”65 Thus, the new focus on immediate experience and presentmindedness was “dictated by the methodological quest for rigor” and became a way to eliminate the problem of historical knowledge in theoretical work, for instance in the study of politics.66 The emphasis on method meant that the humanities and social studies, now social sciences, parted company. Higham refers to this separation as a schism in American scholarship; a schism that, as I elaborated in the previous chapter, would gradually render the very idea of humanistic sciences obsolete.67 This schism held consequences for those educational ideals “imported” from Germany in which human sciences, especially history, had a prominent position. These ideals were seen not only as outmoded “wreckage,” but also as promoting an educational system in which different disciplines provided narrow, one-side commitments to single partisan points of view.68 Furthermore, with the development of refined methodological devices, the old (German) educational ideas were soon to be synthesized and abstracted into a distinct type with specific features; for instance, they comprised particular teaching methods, recruitment policies, and learning practices. Thus, these features could be analyzed and evaluated to ascertain whether or not they were usable. For instance, were they able to meet the demands currently

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believed to be most important, namely the individual’s needs? This issue resurfaces repeatedly throughout the debate on education, and I will return to it again toward the end of this chapter.

World War II: The Need for a Scientific Approach to Life With the outbreak of World War II and particularly in the years that followed, “to be scientific” was more than an empirical claim; it was assumed to be evidence of the moral integrity or ethos of the individual researcher. The United States had received a large number of immigrant-scientists starting in 1933, many of whom were refugees from Europe.69 This intensified stress on science and technology marked the period, and science was to become the defining “sign of the times.” Science gradually became the basis of an international competition between nations, especially during the Cold War. However, the new stress on science meant that the “scientific attitude,” which Dewey in 1902 had proclaimed to be the crucial determining factor for the future of American society, was now given a new twist of meaning. Dewey’s use of “the Renaissance merchant” as a metaphor for the modern liberal individual was steadily linked first with Christian values,70 then with Christian virtues, such as the ascetic work ethic associated with Protestantism. The scientific norms of neutrality, precision, universality, and disinterestedness were no longer simply understood as analytic neutral tools to guide the scientific process of inquiry, but they were increasingly regarded as general “values” and as effective agents of liberation, necessary for enhancing a free and democratic society. In the postwar General Education movement, science was supposed to supply the means for implementing a higher ideal: the humanistic outlook of Christianity. And as Christian values or rather humanistic norms were also inculcated through “the scientific attitude,” they could be learned though adequate “secular” educational measures and methods. Education thus became more important than ever and, as was illustrated in my previous chapter, it became a crucial part of a large-scale mission to save humanity from totalitarian terror.71 Judging from the texts from this period, there are many attempts to distinguish the new educational methods, which were believed to help the individual shape independent yet objective judgments, from those old educational methods that did not offer this so-called scientific approach to life. It was believed, for instance, that the

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traditional method of pouring out knowledge in a carefully planned and organized lecture . . . fails to stimulate reflection and independent thinking.72 . . . In order to arouse interest and a sense of responsibility, assignments are announced for large units—in place of the formal lectures in the old recitation question-and-answer method, informal interpretative lectures are interspersed with cooperative “give and take” discussions based on individual findings on the part of the instructor and student.73

However, the formal lecture is only one of the “techniques” no longer believed to convey the new and modern egalitarian ideas of liberal education. Other features normally associated with the German influence on American education are now disguised in concepts such as sterile specialism, etatisme, state planning, anti-rationalism, fixed dogmas, consent, and by force, and more, which immediately evoke associations of inefficiency, social hierarchies, and egotism. However, after the postwar General Education movement, these very same concepts were seen in yet another light, as they increasingly became linked to other concepts such as aristocracy and totalitarian regimentation. Tellingly enough, in 1942, the second edition of Dewey’s lectures German Philosophy and Politics were republished, with a new introduction by the author and with a new title: “The One-World of Hitler’s Socialism.”74

III. THE HARVARD REPORT ON GENERAL EDUCATION The famous Harvard Report, officially titled General Education in a Free Society,75 also mentioned in the previous chapter, was published in 1945 and became very influential in defining the terms for much of the discussion of American higher education from 1945 to the 1960s. For that reason, it is perhaps necessary to explore some of the main viewpoints conveyed in this document. The report, known as “the Harvard red book,” presented new ideas for the restoration of liberal education, yet at the same time, it gives clear evidence of whom and which educational doctrines were considered worthy, and subsequently—by way of negation—not worthy of future attention. The report aims at providing a response to what is described as a lack of a unified educational policy in America. The heart of the problem is expressed as “the continuance of the liberal and humane tradition.”76 The apparent lack of order and coherence is attributed to two major sources, both of which are related to the diversity of modern society.

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One source of diversity is the different individual needs and wants that flourish in a modern and more advanced society. The second significant source of diversity is the growth of the educational system, which leads to the expansion of knowledge and the complexification of modern society. Democracy encourages individual diversity, but with diversity, it is argued, there is also the danger that confusion may prevail unless unity is consciously checked. The expansion of knowledge in modern times has similarly reduced our ability to see things as a whole. The diversification of knowledge due to “specialism,”77 has, according to the authors, made a unified program for the individual student next to impossible. The result of both trends toward diversity is a great handicapping of the purposes of liberal education. Hence, to create a unified pattern out of the educational chaos and great individual variation that currently exists, it is necessary to “provide the young with a common core of experience, thought and values, in other words, a general education.”78 Surely it is God who created individuals with different abilities and different degrees of talent, and placed them in different regions. Nevertheless such a diversity would not necessarily have been recognized as a problem needing a solution if our society were aristocratic, caring only for the homogenous few; or the diversity might have been counteracted and conceivably been greatly reduced by totalitarian regimentation.79

The report is adamant that the desired coordination should not exclude diversity, rather, it seeks both unity and variety: unity in aims and variety in the means to achieve the aims. They claim that the current problem of educational philosophy can be understood in terms of two conflicting types, or, as the authors argue, two schools of educational doctrines: the “traditionalism” associated with Robert Hutchins80 and the “scientific temper” of John Dewey. To avoid the disaster of dividing the educational world into two camps, they offer a bridging solution by reconciling these two.

Medievalism and Modernism: Moral Order and Individual Freedom The solution the report offers results from an effort to reconcile the two educational positions or theoretical trends. Despite the differences between the two, they are nevertheless perceived as complementary solutions to the same problem.81 The differences are perceived more as

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differences within the American educational heritage itself: between medievalism and modernism. To understand the two positions addressed in the Harvard Report—and the proposed synthesis—Raphael Demos (1946), one of the Harvard committee members, invites us to reflect on the intellectual background of the larger conflict: What are the main differences and similarities between medievalism and modernism, and how is it possible to synthesize them? He insists that in their impact on the present situation, the educational doctrines of medievalism and modernism are relatively simple and represent two different forms of culture—two different forms of paideia—which have governed the Western world. Medievalism as conveyed by the traditionalists operates in the mode of synthesis, while modernism operates in the mode of analysis. To gain a better grasp, Demos explains the basic philosophical differences between the two doctrines as follows: Medievalism refers to a historical period when individual thinking and doing “were pooled together into an impersonal reservoir.”82 Each individual contribution was fitted into a general pattern with the sole aim of attaining a common outlook in valuation and doctrine. Work in all fields was collaborative and the results bore less the imprint of individuals than of the collective.83 It was beyond the power of any single individual to obtain a comprehensive view of the universe, for such a view could only be accomplished by the unified effort of a great number of individuals making a special contribution “to the total divine plan.” There was also the unity of time—uniting the past with the present. Thought was conceived of as a continuous development in which novel insights completed older truths. The advance of knowledge was viewed as the growth of a cumulative tradition in which were integrated ideas and discoveries from scattered periods of time. . . . The search for knowledge was less for particulars than for large, all-encompassing principles; and the temper of medievalism was speculative and philosophical. What was known was explained; reasons were sought for facts.84

The whole universe was a disclosure of reason, and reason was thus understood as the unfolding of a divine plan. The conception of natural law introduced by the Stoics and later “reaffirmed in Christian thought,”85 was the doctrine that physical events could be brought under general formula and there “are real moral principles independent of human violation and artifice.”86 Natural law is “objective and real”87 as it is found in nature, and universal in the sense that it is “the same at all places and times and common to all minds.”88 It is moral

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law in the sense that it is natural, that is, neither created nor declared nor invented, but found in the nature of things. Natural (moral) law is a law both for man and for the universe at large; it is both prescriptive and descriptive—the latter in the sense that it is a condition for survival as well as of worth. Natural law is a principle of order setting bounds to the movement and behavior of all things, whether heavenly bodies, or inanimate earthly bodies, of living things, or persons. . . . Natural law defines and limits the place of every individual in relation to himself, to the family, to society, and to the state.89

Modernism, on the other hand, is described as “the revolt of the individual.”90 In politics, it has meant liberalism and democracy. The conception of the natural rights of the individual and the doctrine that political action ultimately should spring from individuals making their choices based on their private wishes and reflections. In economics, modernism is the doctrine of laissez-faire and of capitalism: property should be in the possession of private individuals and business should be a private enterprise. Furthermore, this enterprise should be the outcome of spontaneous action, as independent as far as possible, of antecedent and centrally conceived plans. Laissez-faire means “non-planning.” Finally, in religion, modernism means the reformation, which stressed the appeal to private conscience. What the Reformation did for religious belief, the Renaissance achieved in the sphere of secular truth. The Renaissance was an appeal away from the past, from great names, from the collectivity, to the authority of individual reason. The outlook in learning changed almost completely. Induction from experience took the place of deduction from a priori premises.91

As a consequence of modernism, Demos argues, “the seamless garment was torn in a thousand pieces”92—in learning, in religion, and in politics—“chaos replaced cosmos.”93 Learning was broken up into a multiplicity of specialties, and of specialties within specialties, quite unrelated to one another. Whether in the field of individual conduct or in that of knowledge, spontaneous peripheral activity was substituted for planning and centralized action.94

Whereas medievalism made for fixity, modernism encourages fluidity in thought. In the scientific mode of thought, conclusions are reached,

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but these are tentative because “data may be enlarged indefinitely.”95 Thus, Demos argues, the effect of the scientific and liberal outlook has been to weaken and even to eliminate the idea of natural law from the Middle Ages. Since science is empirical, it only grasps particulars. Thus, we are led to believe only particulars are real and “universal laws are inventions, convenient and useful to be sure, but still fictions.”96 The moralist pattern of the hierarchy of values and even the scientist’s pattern of physical laws are declared to be convenient fictions. All this led to subjectivism and to relativism, as exemplified in the pragmatic and sociological schools of the day. The price that has been paid is inconsistency.97

Still, to create a synthesis, it is necessary to identify some similarities. Both medievalism and modernism adhere to the essential worth of man, of his dignity and claim for respect. The scientific view of a natural order “in which every event is relevant to every other surely is not unconnected with the Christian doctrine of a divine plan.”98 The Harvard Report asserts that the doctrines inherited from both medievalism and modernism are necessary for knowledge, for knowledge advances by the interplay of reason and experience, from both tradition and innovation. Demos insists that the lesson to be drawn from the report is that education must “at once impart heritage and convey the sense of adventure in knowledge.”99 The true task of education is therefore so to reconcile the sense of pattern and direction, deriving from heritage with the sense of experiment and innovation deriving from science that they may exist fruitfully together.100

Liberal Education of “The Whole Man” How should fixed truths be taught to the student? Indoctrination is obviously excluded, even though the report (without specifying exactly) states, “there is at present a school which upholds authoritarianism in education.”101 Even though the report opposes such authoritarianism and insists on “following the clue of freedom,”102 the authors are worried about “falling into relativism, and the eclectic menu of the variegated curriculum.”103 The reformers reject any educational commitments based on indoctrination, for instance, idealism, in which, it is argued, the premise of the good life would be incorporated into

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the laws of the state, or a theocratic view of education, where culture would be conveyed through formal religion. Similarly, they reject what is referred to as etatism in education, “according to which education consists in molding the individual to the pattern of the state.”104 Finally, the authors reject the notion that education consists in the inculcation of any philosophical synthesis, whether it be Thomistic or naturalistic. The primary aim of education is “commitment without indoctrination,” which the report proposes as “the compulsory exposure of the student to the conception of the good life—known as humanism.”105 Thus: It is wrong to speak of “moulding” the student’s mind to the ideal pattern in any sense comparable to that in which the sculptor is said to mould his clay.106

The ideal of liberal education is to equip man for free and responsible living by fostering his reason.107 Thus, as Demos argues, the report takes the position that science continues the humanistic outlook of Christianity, in which humanism proclaims the ideal and science supplies the means for its implementation, as can be illustrated by the following quote: [S]cience has done more than provide the material basis of the good life; it has directly fostered the values of humanism.108

And because liberal education is concerned with “the whole man,” it cannot merely focus on reason, but “on desires, sentiments and drives as well.”109 The passions must be civilized, however, and the Harvard reformers propose that this can best be done by subjecting the passions to reason. For the whole man to be a good man as well, the innate drives and sentiments must be directed by reason to good ends. Dedication to duty—in simpler words, character—no less than understanding, is the objective of education. What is wanted is not only knowledge of values, but commitment to values, the commitment of the will to ideal ends.110

Yet the report clearly counters the view that the purpose is to train the mind alone, because the authors insist (alluding to James) that it is impossible to separate effective thinking from character. In order to think soundly, one must be devoted to the truth, one must have intellectual integrity, one must suppress wishful thinking.

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Thinking has its own moral code served by an appropriate intellectual conscience.111

The function of education is to equip the mind with concepts, thus the need for a concentration on the dialectical abilities. Thus, the essence of what is said in the report is that the aim of liberal education is conceived of as the training of abilities to reason: to enable one to make connections between ideas and experiences, to appreciate values, control passions, foster a good life and a commitment to the good. It is to enable man to reach out of his occupation and humanize his practical activities. The essence of the above list of qualification is that reason is not a human faculty, but a way in which all human powers may function. Intelligence is that leaven of awareness and reflection, which, operating upon the native powers of men, raises them from the animal level and makes them truly human.112

General Education is thus differentiated into three areas: natural sciences, social studies (including philosophy), and humanities. Each of these relies on a particular mode of thought and has different functions in education. Science deals with what is stable and recurrent. By reducing the present into a small number of variables, it can predict the future with accuracy. The rewards are simplicity, rigor, and certainty. Social studies embody a mode of thought that is relational, “which searches for cross-bearings between areas, and which deals with fluid and novel situations.”113 It is the mode employed in historical study and a mode appropriate to economics and to philosophy. Insofar as General Education looks to people and their relations with other people, it may be defined as an education in the mode of relational or contextual thinking. The third mode of thought trains the imagination and is appropriate to the humanities. The humanities fill several functions in education, one of which is the “revelation of values.”114 The report furthermore emphasizes that generality by no means indicates a summation of specialties, nor does it refer to a dispersion of alternatives as opposed to their concentration. A student who combines various specialties in a college curriculum becomes more of a specialist. Hence the change from Special to General Education is as follows a change in the mode of thinking: it is a return of the mind from the isolated properties into the complex situation out of which they have been abstracted.115

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Short Summary The Harvard Report, which today is considered an educational classic, clearly reflects the postwar anxiety over social disintegration and constitutes an effort to restore order. It proclaims that to avoid moral confusion and chaos, a new educational policy needs to be erected on the old foundations. The effort to create a synthesis of the seemly opposing doctrines of medievalism (traditionalism) and modernism— which now is referred to as a new “educational philosophy”—reflects this profound need for social reconstruction: the medieval sense of unity, order, and plan would provide modern society with the sense of general and collective values that were necessary to move forward; meanwhile, modernism would provide society with reason and an orientation toward secular truth. The origin of modernism is in the Renaissance, when individuals made independent choices and no longer accepted truths dictated by authorities “from the past, from great names, from the collectivity,”116 but relied on reason and critical judgment. In this period, induction from experience took the place of deduction from a priori premises.117 The Harvard Report maintains that what unites the two modes of education is their acknowledgment of the essential worth of man: humanism. Consequently, to encourage free spontaneous human activity, it is necessary to avoid narrow specialties, planning and centralized action. Instead, one must recognize the sense of order deriving from one’s own Western heritage. Thus, in education, it was important to foster free and responsible good living and avoid any effort to indoctrinate or mold the individual in accordance with any speculative idea or authoritarian system. From these recognitions and reservations, however, a new understanding of academic freedom gradually evolved: one of “self-governing scientific communities” and another of “self-governing students” within a system adjusted to the student’s particular needs and wants. Both of these could be properly governed by the “invisible hand” of reason. I return to this in section V.

IV. GERMAN EDUCATION AND DENAZIFICATION Naturally, much of the debate among scholars in the 1950s revolved around domestic issues such as the anticommunist purges and the insidious attack on suspects and viable accomplices with security checks and demands for loyalty oaths. However, some discussions were concerned with the efforts made in 1945 for a denazification of Germany,

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and the “projected reconstruction of German political and cultural life aiming at the creation of a peace-loving, law-abiding, and democratically administered Reich.”118 And since it was generally believed that National Socialism and militarism were deeply rooted in Germany’s cultural and political tradition, it was thought necessary to examine the evolution and perpetuation of this tradition through schools, particularly the universities. Thus, to help enforce a new educational program was considered one of the most important instruments in the re-orientation and reconstruction of German culture. Probably no institutions in Germany sinned more grievously against the democratic way of life and the spirit of disinterest inquiry than its universities during the heyday of National Socialism. Even before the advent of Nazism they had deteriorated greatly. They failed to keep abreast of the progress of foreign scholarship and science and became increasingly bent on narrow specialization. . . . [T]he universities needed to be basically reformed, not only with respect to the content of the courses, but also in the entire spirit and attitude of classroom and laboratory work, in student welfare and administration, and in student-faculty relationships.119 Instead of producing well-integrated personalities with an appreciation for the cultural heritage of European civilization, German education, especially during the twentieth-century, often produced narrow specialists, who not only failed to appreciate the cultural heritage of their time, but who because of this, were easily carried away by the totalitarian negation of democratic values and ideals.120 . . . [T]he most urgent reform of German education is to be found in measures designed to overcome the arid specialism of the past by means of a proper integration of general education and specialized training. . . . Of special interest is the general philosophy in the humanities and the social sciences developed at Columbia University. . . . In the course of this analysis the student becomes familiar with the intellectual and oral attitudes of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the period of the development of modern science.121

Yet other thinkers saw the need for political re-education in Germany to de-militarize or de-Prussianize the country. This could best be achieved by creating a new ideology, “better adapted to their central role in Europe and more in conformity with the spirit of their millenary history than the Bismarck ideology.”122 And to find that ideology, Friedrich W. Foerster (1945), suggests Germany must reach back to the

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Middle Ages “when German culture and Germany’s influence on the world was at its highest.”123 The constructive phase [of German history] was the federative era inaugurated by the Pope who crowned Charlemagne and entrusted the German nation with the responsibility for the secular unity of Europe. . . . This constructive role, which made Germany the bridge between the East and West, the North and the South, enlarged the German soul and gave to it a lasting supranational universality, an impulse which even survived the destruction of the Holy Roman Empire, and inspired all the great political authors of the nineteenth century.124

Wissenschaft and Studium Generale In the 1950s, a delegation of American scholars was sent to Germany to observe and report back on the effect of the investments made in German universities. The aid was not only aimed at economic recovery, but “also to the more difficult task of acquiring a different attitude, a different set of values.”125 The universities had previously been ignored but were now included, since it had become clear to the Americans that “to the German—more than to the American—the university is a symbol of the national mind at its best,”126 and that the “professor in Germany is not an object of ridicule, he is a man with prestige.”127 Marjorie Carpenter’s report from 1953 is interesting, since it gives a clear indication of the radical changes that were expected of the German universities. In 1951, J. J. Oppenheimer, dean of the University of Louisville, was asked by the Higher Commissioner for Germany to go and see what could be done to bring teaching in the German universities “in line with the problems of the day and the best of the methods of the Western world.”128 He immediately assembled a group of professors to discuss the problem of studium generale. In the summer of that same year a conference was held. Carpenter remarks that this was the first meeting of professors that cut across fields of specialization, and it was the first time since the occupation that the Germans themselves worked jointly with American consultants to make plans for the conference. Moreover, she remarks, “[I]t was their first experience with discussion groups rather than scholarly lectures.”129 In reforming the studium generale, the German professors recognized the specific conditions that might deter its successful development: too many students, inadequate exams, overworked instructors who tried to develop new ideas but were expected to publish, a vicious

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system of promotion that left the young instructor without means of livelihood or much hope of advancement, and postwar pressure on students to complete their degrees quickly for financial reasons. Interestingly enough, the American consultants recognized other quite different problems. Carpenter reports that students had a great fear of propaganda and of tag-words which we would accept as summarizing desirable values; such words as “duty,” “good citizenship,” “responsibility for others” and “patriotism” had been used by Hitler . . . [T]hose who had served in youth groups [were unable] to have [anything] but a cynical reaction to them.

It also came as a surprise to the Americans that the German professors did not regard political science as a science and both sociology and psychology were viewed with suspicion. The concept of guidance or counseling, she remarks, has no equivalent in German. The American specialists regarded the German concentration of Wissenschaft as a “big barrier to any change,”130 a difficulty somewhat outweighed by “the fact that many professors believed that a return to studium generale was essential to the true progress of research.”131 An additional block to progress was the German “tendency to consider any change as difficult to the point of impossibility.” And no matter how tactful the consultants were, [t]he fact remains, that there was inevitable resistance to the ideas of the occupiers and to the programs of a new country about whose culture and civilization the Germans are very poorly informed. (In the German universities, there is usually a department of Egyptology but rarely one of American studies).132

Carpenter reports, however, that progress had been made in the previous year. A series of follow-up conferences had been held to discuss the following issues: female students and dormitory leaders, social psychology, political science, studium generale, pedagogy, and American studies. As she reports, the process in thinking out problems resulted in the identification of a set of problems and themes that were treated at two conferences on “Reform of the German Hochschule” in 1952. Some of the themes discussed were: examinations and the advancement of students, public relations, programs of studium generale, and the institutions of higher education as a community. The recommendations that came out of these conferences focused on exams, student living quarters and social life, the need for programs in connection

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with experiments with General Education, an increase in the number of professors, and a need for a sense of community within each institution.133 Meanwhile, Carpenter notes that there were discussions on the dueling corporations or fraternities that had resumed activities, some of which were considered harmful. Her report states that the policies encouraging the community life of students were working: the professors and students were working together in small groups, housing facilities had improved, and discussion groups were formed. Yet, “it is hard for the German professor to agree that this emphasis on student life is important.”134 Nevertheless, student government was improving in spite of the fact that there were still a few universities that considered students to be “too young to take responsibility.”135 German students are fine persons—hard working and perhaps overly serious. They want more discussion of current affairs than the professors realize; they want to know about American life and culture even though there are no courses offered.136

From Carpenter’s report, we learn that an attempt was also made to make lectures available to the general public, and that Max Horkheimer (who had been a refugee in America during the war), now installed as rector of Frankfurt University, had attempted to include political science and sociology in the curriculum. The Institute of Education Research established at the University of Hamburg by UNESCO was in the process of planning its next conference on adult education. Carpenter remarks, however, that more needs to be done on the integration of General Education courses: the students are not held responsible for the material, they often see no point in attending lectures, and their choice of department for special study has no relation to the market that will employ them. Furthermore, there is a resistance to trained counselors, more student housing needs to be built, and more attention must be given to the leadership provided by these houses. The numbers of teachers must be increased, and adult education must be investigated as part of the university’s task in training responsible citizens. The universities, she concludes, must always be aware that they also have a primary responsibility for the development of persons who can make intelligent decisions about problems of citizenship, about choice of profession, about matters of right and wrong, and about what is beautiful and what is not beautiful. Subject matter is necessarily the material of the university professor who wants to create this

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responsible citizen who knows how to live wisely; but existing subject matter is to be sifted with the student’s needs and the society’s needs in mind. At the root of the problem for reform of the German university, however, is “the fear of accepting American ideas.”137

V. A FAREWELL TO HUMBOLDT IN AMERICA By the end of the 1950s, the battle over the identity and function of the American university was almost over. The Harvard Report of 1945 had made it quite clear that a synthesis between the modernism of James and Dewey and the scholasticism of Hutchins and his followers was the only possible alternative for the future of a free society. A broad general education in core Western, humanistic values was necessary to cope with the confusion and chaos the war had brought about. The only way to ensure a democratic and peaceful future existence was to teach people how to become morally responsible individuals, that is, individuals with a scientific attitude and a sense of direction derived from the Western heritage. Dewey’s ambition to educate the individual through the acquisition of a continuously inquiring and experimental scientific attitude was no longer adequate. It was necessary to direct “the whole person” by reason to good ends. Knowledge of common values was not enough, as the war had necessitated a more profound commitment to core values. Hence a general education based on a synthesis of the two major educational doctrines could provide the young with a common core, yet at the same time preserve respect for the individual and preserve the necessary diversity. From medievalism, one could learn collaboration and how to participate in the collective effort of bringing society in accordance with the “laws” of nature. And from Dewey’s modernism, his notion of the individual, at least as the Harvard Report understands it, one could learn to honor and respect each individual’s right to make choices based on one’s own reflections and out of one’s own conviction and conscience.

A New Gentlemanly Ideal? Education was more than ever before understood as an important remedy for solving the problems modern society faced. Higher education now had a special mission: to pursue in a more substantive way a gentlemanly citizen ideal, previously described as the “well-rounded man.” This could be done by training clear and rational thinking,

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effective communication, and moral qualities, such as candor.138 Even though the new goals were made with explicit reference to the educational doctrines considered most prominent at the time—the progressives and the traditionalists—the Harvard Report implicitly refers to other doctrines that are no longer considered worthy in a free society.139 As it appears, the new policy is more or less founded upon an opposition to German educational principles, ideas now understood to promote narrow specialization and to endorse a remote and passive attitude, thus threatening the future survival of democracy. And even though the Harvard Report gives implicit references to the educational features ordinarily attributed to the German influence on American universities (e.g., specialization, idealism, etatism), it can sometimes be difficult to determine whether it is Germany the war-aggressor they refer to, or the educational ideas themselves, as references are sometimes intertwined. The report argues, for instance, that American society is privileged in regarding diversity as a problem to be solved, compared to other societies where diversity is “greatly reduced by totalitarian regimentation.” The authors similarly claim that the development toward diversification and “specialism” of knowledge has destroyed the main purpose of liberal education, which aimed to create a unified program. They argue, perhaps even more seriously, that the “spontaneous peripheral activity” associated with individual conduct or knowledge has been displaced by “planning and centralized action.” Any educational doctrines, whether directed by centralized planning, or leading to standardization or “specialism” are considered illegitimate; they are not simply ineffective but dangerous, as they in fact could lead to totalitarianism. By making an implicit reference to totalitarianism (and thus implying Nazism and communism), the insistence on the need for General Education to restore liberal education is conveyed with a new urgency and persuasive force. Thus, the new appeal for a unified General Education is not only presented as a fruitful solution to the confusion and chaos in American society, but it is justified as a necessary “bulwark” to deter dangerous anti-democratic forces. However, the image of the conflicting German “system” of education as it was conceived originally (i.e., as an organic relationship between lower and higher levels, between secondary schools and the university, teaching and research, etc.) is tainted by this reinterpretation. And although the General Education movement aimed at creating a synthesis between the two “doctrines” or schools, it seems to be the “scholasticism” of the old collegiate culture that is given prominence of place. In other

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words, the pastoral education, modeled after the medieval monastic schools, is reintroduced as the exemplary model that America’s educational program should follow. The war naturally caused a profound skepticism toward anything German. This may be the reason why the educational “doctrines” of Humboldt were not distinguished from, but rather connected to, the rise of Nazism. As the German university, and thereby also the German influences, became associated with totalitarianism, it seems as though a new opportunity was created for the Anglo-American model of liberal education to dominate the academic scene, as David B. Hawk recalls in 1954: The influence of the German scholarship in American universities helped to displace the humanistic ideal of the educated man of broad liberal learning by the ideal of the competent scholar or professional practitioner. As the broader cultural training was assigned to the undergraduate art colleges, the attitude came to prevail that the broader type of education was unimportant as compared with specialized research and training. . . . The international situation highlights the urgency of the assimilating and synthesizing need.140

The Provincial Arrogance of the Germans The mocking tone some observers of the academic scene in Germany used to describe the institutions they visited indicates that the doctrines previously praised as superior and ideal no longer needed to be treated with any respect or reverence. After a visit to nine universities, among them prestigious Marburg, Freiburg, Tübingen, Heidelberg, and Berlin, the American observer Walter Cerf (1955) reports to the American public that the German professors are unable to “prepare students for a reflective life”; he bears witness to boring lectures where teachers never spoke freely but “stick to their prepared text.” He furthermore reports on professors who never “addressed questions to the class,” and how German students are passive listeners who never “dare to ask questions.” Seminars are similarly described as uneventful presentations of historical papers, without “any independent effort at sustained reflection.” The teachings in both philosophy and history are ridiculed as obscure and incomprehensible, and the German philosophers are caricatured as “muddle-headed and anemic.” Neither the professors nor the students can “grasp the problem” but instead are entangled in endless interpretations. Even though the arrogant behavior of Herr Professor

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gets the most attention in Cerf’s report, the total picture conveyed of the German universities speaks for itself and can be illustrated by citing some of the most common descriptions used: arrogance, contempt, prejudice, intolerance, dependency, authoritarian, neglect, boredom. It must be noted, however, that Cerf is pleased with the new program of courses built up after the war, designated studium generale, since the courses are specifically designed to meet student needs. However, the “outlook” on German education conveyed by the American observers may have been influenced by debates going on in the United States at the time, particularly the discussion on how education could best equip individuals with the capacity for responsible living.

Re-Interpreting Academic Freedom The Harvard Report’s abstract reference to etatism in education was an indication that educational institutions governed by the state, such as those of the Germans (and the Soviets) were a potential threat to democracy. This recognition, together with the extensive immigration of many refugee scientists, brought forward a new awareness and subsequent debate about the meaning of academic freedom in a free society. When James B. Conant, readdresses the question, “What is a university?” in 1947, the answer was as follows: A University, to my notion, can more or less accurately be described as an independent, self-governing community of scholars concerned with professional education, the advancement of knowledge, and the general education of the leading citizens.141

However, many of the subsequent debates revolved around another aspect of the notion of academic freedom, namely how a liberal education could best equip individuals with the capacity for responsible living. This became a debate about curricular content. Some argued in favor of allowing individuals to develop their personalities and argued against students taking the same curriculum. Harold R. Benjamin,142 who was a renowned critic of the educational establishment,143 became a major proponent of the notion that any kind of education should be encouraged to the extent that society demands it. He insisted upon the need to develop an educational system founded upon the individual’s native gifts, and a system that was able to foster “the unique and original contribution the individual is naturally equipped to make to society.”144

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This would minimize the construction of curriculums, reject the listing of series of great books, and do away with other procedures in the spirit of Hitlerism and the Japanese system. The real function of education is to develop personalities. The individual is the thing.145

Benjamin insisted that the goal of education in a free society was determined by “all the people,” not just those who were educated. He thereby denied any fixed absolutes in education and maintained that all education, to be effective, had to be “self-operated.” The educators’ task in a free society was to promote the “Bill of Rights sense of freedom.”146 Only through a free education could the individual’s needs for fulfillment and the societal needs for innovation be met. Such an education was, as Benjamin later stated, “a bulwark of human rights.”147 A self-operating education could best be enhanced by a “science of education” that would help teachers arrange experience and thus “teach each learner differently to make them all come out the same in the end—good citizens.”148 The defenders of traditionalism, in particular Robert Hutchins obviously agreed with Benjamin that the fundamental objective of education was to equip students with the capacity to lead a responsible life, yet he insisted that this could best be done by helping people to think for themselves. He objected to the “mere spread of education without regard to what goes on at the schools.” What he saw as Benjamin’s irresponsible relativism was countered by a claim that we can have no educational goals without any acknowledgment of “absolutes” or moral standards. He insisted that we first must determine the proper relationship between the individual and society before we can determine what education is going to provide. Both Hutchins and Benjamin, in a remarkably interesting manner, apply the example of Germany to convey their respective views. Hutchins: Let us suppose now that the German student at work in imperial Germany were prepared for that society—to fit into it or perhaps to improve it. He is to work, Mr. Benjamin says, for the society we hope for, but why we should hope for one rather than another remains unclear. That society is swept away, another takes its place, a third follows that, and now there is a fourth. What should we have said to the young people growing up in this period? All we could say to them is: Learn to think for yourselves. And as the new facts of life, the new problems are presented, you will be able to wrestle with these problems and solve them if you have learned to think.

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Benjamin: Mr. Hutchins was making a very good argument until he used the German school system as an example. Here was a system, above all, [that] followed the notion that if teaching were done on a high-toned, philosophical, scientific level, it could turn out students who would operate successfully in any society. A few months before the Nazis went into power, a [person from the] University of Munich told me that the German educators were not endeavoring to turn out a certain kind of citizen—that was left to politics. He said they were trying to organize good German schools, to teach the pupils reading, writing, arithmetic, mathematics, and science; to teach them to do what an educated man can do; and then to leave them to make their own political decisions. And they made them shortly after. Now I should have said that by studying the old imperial community and the community after the First World War in Germany, German educators might have envisioned a society not like the Nazi society, for which they could have better prepared their pupils.149

Hutchins insisted that Benjamin was making a wrong inference that since some people had “the wrong absolutes, anybody who has any absolutes must be wrong.”150 He furthermore refused to accept Benjamin’s claim that the Nazi system was an educational system, rather than a “vicious system of indoctrination”151 that would have been exposed if students had learned how to think for themselves. However, such arguments no longer seemed to receive much attention or support. In fact, in the 1950s, there seems to have been an agreement that a devotion to ideas and the cultivation of the intellect through the reading of “great books” could neither provide society with adequate “human resources” nor serve as a guarantee for a democratic future. On the contrary, such education was seen as inadequate if not dangerous because it was not related to actual human experiences; it had no regard for practical applications and thus removed scholars from the “facts” of life. Based on the new psychological insights, it was thought that proper democratic values could best be inculcated through the educational methods of teachers who would no longer impart knowledge to a passively receiving learner, but rather help arrange experiences and set the stage for students to do something differently—to be something different.152 And with the new “psychological facts” and the didactic methods emerging alongside these facts, educational methods, such as recitation or lectures used to expose students to “eternal ideas,” were generally regarded as inadequate, because they were not cooperative and

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could not “make each learning situation the one most appropriate to the learner.”153 Lectures, for instance, were described as an “invitation to mental passivity, if not downright inaction”;154 recitation was seen as a technique that reduced the activity of learning to a “series of unmotivated exercise repetitions”155 and made professors act as “drillmasters.”156 The teacher should instead make skillful use of different techniques, such as repetition, illustrative examples and “problems tied as far as possible to the student’s interest and experience.”157 The new method of learning diminished the authority of traditional professors, but it also meant that institutions had to reconsider their program of study; this pertained not only to their course descriptions and subject matter syllabi, but also to evaluating “its implications for the nature of the learning situations and its proper guidance.”158

The Knowledgeable Society In the postwar years, as briefly mentioned above, academic freedom became tantamount to a freedom from government interference; it was justified as a means to avoid the threat of control associated with research and educational endeavors in totalitarian regimes (etatism). The freedom of free enterprises to “sell” their programs to prospective “customers” did, however, make many educational institutions dependent on private corporations and trustees, which, as some warned, could pose a potential threat to the freedom of students and professors to “follow the truth wherever it may lead them.”159 And soon, academic freedom was to be re-interpreted by some as “the freedom which trustees and parents exercise when they insist that their special beliefs be inculcated by the faculty.” From this, it followed that “any disloyalty on the part of trustees and parents to this faith” 160 was tantamount to academic treason. And as Edward Tenney (1952) realized, in the midst of the McCarthy Era, this reinterpretation could not be taken as an absurdity or as “the eccentric expression of an eccentric person,” but rather as [a] clear expression of an all too popular and extremely dangerous modern fallacy, the fallacy that truth is majority opinion. This fallacy is the basis of democratic totalitarianism, a totalitarianism that can be as tyrannical in its way as other modern forms of absolute government.161

Obviously, the ability to think effectively, according to the sober and neutral procedure of science became even more acute as the Cold War and the paranoia of a communist conspiracy evolved into blacklisting,

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trials, and other forms of public prosecutions. The spread of the capacity for scientific reasoning was perhaps the only possible “bulwark” against any kind of political irrationalities in the name of freedom on either side of the political divide. However, this implied that it was the individual scholar who was eventually to become the carrier of the new ethical norm for the culture. The postwar period has been characterized as the “triumph of the scientific attitude.”162 This was particularly the case in the social sciences, when intellectual innovations such as “modernization theories” in the 1960s were followed by a renaissance of science studies. Modernization was understood as the gradual progress from superstition, religious beliefs, and irrational metaphysical speculation to a society guided by “objective” science. A democracy guided by scientific knowledge was what Robert E. Lane called, in 1966, the “knowledgeable society.”163 And as David Hollinger (1995) has pointed out, the debate during the 1960s over the knowledge-society fitted well with the belief in science at the time. It added to the notion that scientists were the most vital policy resource; the scientific ethos was the sign of true democracy. Now it was generally believed that academic scholars had an obligation to form general theories of society and that universities, as Clark Kerr expressed it in 1963, thus could be “of use.”164

Notes 1. Blau (1960: 93). 2. Dykhuizen (1961). The title of Dewey’s doctoral thesis was “The Psychology of Kant.” 3. Buxton (1984) calls it “instrumental Hegelianism,” while Dewey himself, in 1895, used the term “experimental idealism.” Buxton as well as Krikorian (1970) argues that Dewey, in the early years, was under the influence of both the neo-Hegelian George Sylvester Morris and the experimental psychology of G. Stanley Hall. There is some controversy on whether Dewey made an attempt to reconcile these positions, or whether he, as Buxton argues, ceased to be an idealist already in 1891, and from then on went on to systematize his functionalism. 4. Experimentalism emphasizes the continuity of human thought and natural conditions. It is, in short, based on a claim that man does not merely have experiences, that is, he does not passively perceive his environment, but tries to use his experience and control his environment. It thus involves the radical possibility that man can not only discover, but also remake (i.e., reconstruct) the nature of things through the application of his intelligence. 5. Westhoff (1995: 32). 6. Buxton (1984: 456).

190 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 7. Many have stressed the anti-absolutism and anti-authoritarianism of Dewey, for instance Rorty (1999a). 8. The American dream of Renaissance Italy and attempts to recapture the Italian past as a fixed model of perfection was not unique to Dewey. See Salomene (1968), Muir (1995). 9. Westhoff (1995: 33). The reference is from Dewey (1897/1969a). 10. Dewey (1897/1969a: 13–14). 11. Dorothy Ross describes this as Dewey’s belief in Origins of American Social Science from 1991. The reference is borrowed from Westhoff (1995: 29). 12. Already in 1893, Stanford social scientist, George E. Howard (1893/1905) called upon the university to “adjust to the changing needs of an advancing civilization.” His urge for a new humanism, defined in terms of practicability and not aesthetics, was taken up by Dewey, who later, in On the Educational Situation (1902), insisted that higher education had to meet public needs. Although Lawrence A. Cremin, in the book The Transformation of the Schools from 1961, argues that efficiency was introduced already in 1888, by Charles Eliot. Efficiency, for Eliot, was, as pointed out by Veysey (1965/1970: 118), an appeal to individualism: to do the task “with brains and energy, with deftness and taste, with courage and consciousness.” It was not until the mid-1890s that “efficiency” appeared as a slogan relating to educational values. However, in the following twenty years, Veysey argues, it was to become one of the most frequently used nouns in the rhetoric of university presidents. One of the reasons why it became popular may have been that ‘efficiency’ connoted a union between the scientific and the practical. This does not, however, permit us to disregard the fact that Taylorism was beginning to have an impact on academic management. Some went so far as to argue that ‘efficiency’ had replaced ‘character training’ as the chief aim of college education. William James had already in 1899 spoken of “dynamic scientific efficiency” in relation to education, a phrase that, according to Veysey, announces the coming Progressive Era. 13. See Dewey (1916). 14. Higham (1955/1988). 15. Dewey (1916). 16. Ibid., 312. 17. Buenker (1988). In this period, Dewey (1890, 1893) had begun to re-examine the concepts of self and self-realization. In the latter article, Dewey (1893: 663–64) argues the self must be conceived of as “a working, practical self, carrying within the rhythm of its own process both ‘realized’ and ‘ideal’ self.” He states his position in opposition to “the current ethics of the self (falsely named Neo-Hegelian, being in truth Neo-Fichtean),” and which is “apt to stop with a metaphysical definition, which seems to solve problems in general, but at the expense of the practical problems which alone really demand or admit solution.” 18. Dewey (1891/1969: 150–51). 19. Ibid., 152. 20. Ibid., 154.

Liberal Education beyond Bildung ♦ 191 21. Rorty (1999b: 120) defends Dewey against accusations of “fuzziness,” in particular when Dewey talks about “growth itself as the moral end,” and claims that the chief ideal of education is “to protect, sustain and direct growth.” Instead of criteria, which would only “cut the future down to the size of the present,” Rorty argues that “Dewey offers inspiring and fuzzy utopias.” 22. An important, yet often neglected source of inspiration for the young Dewey was the social novelist Edward Bellamy, in particular the time utopia, Looking Backwards, published in 1888. The book is a legend about a man who falls asleep in Boston in May 1887 and wakes up in the same city one hundred and thirteen years later, on 10 September 2000 to discover a society transformed. The book reflected a new passion for social reform and a belief in the abilities of the common or ordinary man, which were in tune with Dewey’s own convictions and ideas. See Levi (1945) and Lawson (1975). 23. As hinted at above, Blau (1960) argues that Dewey regarded the study of history as instrumental to the future. We do not learn from history, but we employ history as a means of changing human life in the present. 24. Blau (1960) cites from Dewey (1920: 94–95), Reconstruction in Philosophy. 25. Dewey (1920: 97). Dewey, Blau argues, sought “to find a place for historical judgment as an example of tentative, hypothetical reconstruction of a temporal order.” He insisted that every temporal proposition was a narrative proposition, not about facts but about “the course of sequential events, that is, a matter of relation of definition, dating, placing and describing.” Blau refers to Dewey’s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. 26. Morgan (1942). 27. Ibid., 435–36. Morgan insists that Dewey not only recognized the uniquely human quality and the forces that tended to suppress its development, but that he “aimed to revise the whole philosophy of individualism in order to encourage the development of individuality and to circumvent the forces which opposed it.” Morgan refers to Dewey (1930b) in which he “conveniently blames the standardization of modern life on the non-democratic past and its cultural lag, plus intoxication with newly discovered machines.” 28. Hill (1916). 29. Buxton (1984). I have mentioned that Dewey wrote his doctorate thesis on Kant. Dewey had studied at the University of Vermont under the tutelage of Henry A. P. Torrey, who was known to be a Kantian all through his career as a philosopher. Dewey (1930a) paid tribute to Torrey in his biographical sketch, although according to Feuer (1958: 41), he erroneously “characterized his teacher as a follower of the Scottish philosophers of common sense.” 30. Anyone unfamiliar with the content of Dewey’s text will probably, as Hook (1915/1979: xxvii–xxviii) argues, “experience a profound intellectual shock on reading it.” Although the vantage point of Dewey’s attack is Kant and idealism, the text seems at times to be more of an attack on what he perceives as German self-righteousness. Dewey even insinuates that “the Capitalization of Nouns in the written form of the German, together with the richness of the language in abstract nouns” has a “deeper meaning.” He calls [Heinrich] Heine a “false prophet,” and insists that “since the state is an organ of divinity,

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31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41.

patriotism is religion.” Moreover, he claims that the German word Kultur denotes “a conquest of the community won through devotion to duty.” See also Tufts (1915). Some have attempted to explain Dewey’s apparent “yearning for moral unity” as a substitute for the loss of evangelical religion. Lawson (1975: 41) argues that Dewey was less willing to envision a final state than his philosophical ally (and Episcopalian) Charles Sanders Pierce and that Dewey instead chose “the path of resistance—in order to gain as much self-controlled freedom as possible and carry on the search unencumbered.” Blau (1960: 90) also argues that Dewey was more susceptible to new thought, particularly Darwinism, because he did not “have to fight his way out of a belief in the inerrancy of the Bible.” Dewey (1915/1979: 164). Lawson (1975: 41). Dewey (1915/1979: 152). Ibid., 204. Ibid. Dewey (1930a) quoted in Lawson (1975: 42). Dewey’s change from relying on a philosophy dominated by absolute idealism to his orientation toward functionalist theories is often attributed to the influence of William James, particularly Principles of Psychology from 1890. Wilkins (1956) argues that Dewey found in James a new foundation for his belief that science and morality could be reconciled. Others, such as Buxton (1984), argue that this “change of heart” started already in the late 1880s, when Dewey “independently reinterpreted his previous works by applying an early interest in the concept of biological function to his idealist concerns.” In an early text such as “Knowledge as Idealisation” (1887), Dewey is apparently still an idealist. Lawson (1975: 47). Dewey in a letter to his friend, Scudder Klyce, 19 June 1915. Ibid., 51. There were also reactions against, what many saw as Dewey’s “neglect of instincts.” McDougall (1924: 659), a renowned critic of behaviorism within psychology, reacted against Dewey use of the word ‘habit’ to cover all mental structure built up through individual experience. He argues that this neglect almost made Dewey an “orthodox stimulus response behaviorist, set upon substituting for psychology a study of mechanical reflexes and deducing his physiology of reflexes from the mechanical dogma.” His hostility to Freud may have affected his understanding of history and education. Was past experience significant only insofar as it could be used to solve problems by adjusting behavior in accordance with probable future consequences, or was past experience (as Freud claimed) the “origin” and thus also the cause of behavior? If the latter is the case, was it possible to search for a corrective remedy in history or a person’s background? Lawson (1975) points out that Freud’s emphasis on origin created a great controversy about whether humans were preprogrammed creatures (bereft of free will). Freud relentlessly claimed that the American misconceived his focus on drives, and

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42. 43.

44.

45.

46. 47. 48.

49.

that there was a mistranslation of the German trieb into the English ‘instinct’ thus connoting inborn impulses, not socially motivated drives. Cywar (1969b). As mentioned in the previous chapter, the war resulted in an assault on German intellectual life, particularly the human sciences and Germanic historiography. I have mentioned how William Roscoe Thayer, who was president of the American Historical Association in 1919, attacked historicism in his presidential address, “Fallacies in History.” According to Muir (1995: 1103), Leopold Ranke, Theodor Mommsen, and Heinrich von Treitsche “stood before the bar charged with complicity in the diabolic plan of German imperialism.” In addition to his German Philosophy and Politics, Dewey (1916/1980) wrote an article in Atlantic Monthly, CXVIII: 251–262, 1916, “On Understanding the Mind of Germany,” in which he defended the libertarian nations (the United States, England, and France) against German absolutism. Cywar (1969b) described the text as Dewey’s “dissection of the mind of Germany,” yet claims that he was not completely unsympathetic to the Germans and identified many similarities between the two views. In any case, the questions of “character” received increased attention. Before America entered World War I, educational reconstruction was seen as the most important aspect of remaking the social order. An important purpose was to develop socially responsible individuals and cultivate a civic or community ethics. In 1916, due to industrialism, Dewey even proposed that the state governments were responsible for the service of municipal education. According to Cywar (1969a), he was not alien to the notion of a nationally centered educational program. Although Dewey admired the Germans for their systematization of community life, he realized that the “pioneer” aspect of the American character would hinder the realization of “a society as comprehensively organized as Germany” (1969a: 392). Cywar furthermore argues that Dewey insisted on an education that would “discover and form the kind of individual who is the intelligent carrier of a social democracy.” His aim was thus to make each individual responsible for the welfare of the community, “to socialize America by transforming the psychology of its populace.” The social changes caused by the war, however, turned Dewey away from traditional reform techniques as means by which to reconstruct society, and he focused more attention on the problems of government, industry, and labor. M. J. (2017). Review of Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s The German Soul, in Its Attitude towards Ethics and Christianity, the State and War. Le Bon (1916: 465). No author is mentioned, but the article is entitled “The Example of Germany” (quote from page 226). The article is not actually about Germany, but a contribution to a debate on how to cope with the mass immigration from the South after the war. However, it reflects a new trend in which the South is connected to Germany. See also, for instance, Tyler (1919). We have to keep in mind that the Civil War ended in 1865, and with it, slavery was abolished. Yet, words, metaphors, and modes of speech associated with political debate about slavery seem to influence the discussion on the role

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50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

61. 62. 63.

64. 65.

66.

of the Germans in the World War I. This may have something to do with the large number of race riots in the United States in 1919. These riots are often explained by tension caused by the great influx of black migrants from the South to the northern cities after World War I. Link (1959). A new journal, The Journal of Negro Education, was founded at Howard University in 1932. Lawson (1975: 54). Feuer (1962: 122). Dewey’s articles on the Soviet Union were published in The New Republic in 1928. Lawson (1975: 54). The notion of individual character and personality was much debated at the time. A whole issue of The Journal of Educational Sociology (vol. 4, no. 4, 1930), for instance, was dedicated to the question of character education. Cywar (1969a) Lawson (1975: 55). For a critique of Lawson view, see Karier (1972). Lawson quotes from Dewey (1930a: 26). Lawson (1975: 55). Kaufmann (1959: 830). Higham (1966: 14–15) lists a series of measures that were implemented in the 1920s to distinguish the social scientists from humanistic scholars, such as defining interdisciplinary research as co-operation between social scientists, and forging a common social-science identity exclusive of students from literature, art, etc. In order to create what he refers to as “a pure science of behavior,” science had to “rid itself of any taint of the European ‘humanistic’ propensity toward speculative thought or normative judgment, and even though there were ‘soft’ approaches in each discipline (e.g., among anthropologists and among most major figures of American sociology), the primary goal was rigor and the refinement of methodology. He wrote about this improvement already in 1902, in The Educational Situation. Higham (1966: 11). Ibid.,16. This of course has become a truism in the critique of Dewey. Farr (1999: 524) counters the thesis and argues that Dewey’s effort to “rouse a reclusive political science entailed a critique of positivism.” Dewey criticized reductionism, physicalism, and laws, as well as unreasoning devotion to physical science. This is not to disregard the fact that Dewey, perhaps as a consequence of his battle against “the quest for certainty,” (i.e., German idealism/ absolutism) came to believe strongly in the scientific method. Higham (1966: 15). Farr (1999: 523). Dewey’s “inspection” of “classical political science” or extant “political and legal science” was first published in The New Republic in 1918, later republished in Dewey’s (1929) Characters and Events. See also Bourke (1975). Fries (1973). As previously mentioned, before the end of the nineteenth century, politics was taught largely as institutional history (i.e., Verfassungsgeschichte) by historians, most of whom, had received graduate training in Germany.

Liberal Education beyond Bildung ♦ 195 67. Higham (1966: 15) argues, however, that it was not only the organization, but also the aim that separated social scientists from humanistic scholars. In order to create “a pure science of behavior,” it would have to eliminate the normative/values from the actual process of inquiry, though [such values] might properly guide the initial selection of problems and the utilization of conclusions.” 68. See Martindale (1976). 69. Veysey (1985). See also Coser (1984). An estimated 25,000 refugees of professional and academic status arrived. Many remained a long time on the US Immigration’s waiting list for immigration visas. 70. The whole man is no longer adequate. The complete man is a man directed by reason to good ends. 71. The focus on America as “the leader of the free world,” is linked to what Higham (1994: 1296–97) argues was a conservative shift of opinion in the 1940s and 1950s, calling for recognition of the continuities in American history. It was now important to show how American democracy differed from the others, by upholding the myth of American newness (against a generalized image of “Europe”) as well as to show that America represented a stronghold of stability in a revolutionary world. However, the pressure to present a unified American history had a devastating effect on progressive scholars, who made an effort to convey the diversity of the American people, thus focusing on “the ceaseless interactive movement of particular types of Americans; farmers, working men, business-leaders, women, inventors, immigrants and so on.” 72. Higgins (1940: 304). 73. Ibid., 305. 74. It is perhaps necessary to note that at this point others made similar inferences. Hayek (1944) tried to show that the political philosophy of German nationalism had its roots in the teaching and doctrines of German socialists, and Arthur Lovejoy (1941) inferred a close link between Romanticism and Hitlerism. Lovejoy (1941) was actually invited by the American Historical Association to contribute to a symposium held in New York in December 1940, on “The Romantic Movement in Europe in the First Half of the Nineteenth century.” The title, suggested by the committee, was to be “The Meaning of Romanticism for the Historian of Ideas.” In this contribution, Lovejoy claims that the particular combination of three reigning ideas of the Romantic period in Germany was an important factor “in the production of the state of mind upon which the totalitarian ideologies depend for their appeal.” These three ideas were Ganzheit, Streben, and Eigentümlichkeit (organicism, dynamism, voluntarism/ diversificationism). He furthermore argues that the same ideas can be found in Hitlerism, although their application and affective concomitants have changed. In Hitlerism, Ganzheit came to represent the state, Streben to mean a state that strives, while Eigentümlichkeit has remained the same. The philologist Leo Spitzer (1944) reacted strongly to Lovejoy’s assessment, in particular to the way ideas conceived and applied by the Romantics were abstracted into analytic entities labeled Romantic, and how Lovejoy, through these entities,

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75.

76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83. 84. 85.

implies continuity between Romanticism and Hitlerism. This is only possible, Spitzer argues, because Lovejoy has “adopted the analytic method of the chemist, who isolates elements from their compounds.” Since Lovejoy does not take into consideration the different climates in which the ideas evolved, this method, Spitzer claims, is bound to lead to the erroneous conclusion that “present events can be blamed [on] the great Romantic thinkers.” Conant (1946), General Education in a Free Society: Report of the Harvard Committee. Special attention is devoted to the second section of the book, Theory of General Education, which focuses on the principles in new philosophy of education. I rely on the committee member Raphael Demos’s (1946) resumé and evaluation of some of the philosophical aspects of the report published at Harvard in December 1946. See also Brandser (2011). Conant (1946: viii). Ibid., 5. See also Demos (1946: 192). Demos (1946: 191). Ibid., 191. The quote makes explicit what is implicit throughout the text, namely reference to features associated with German education. One of Dewey’s chief opponents was Robert M. Hutchins (associated with St. John College), who, throughout the 1930s, repeatedly called for unified liberal learning. Hutchins had been appointed president of the University of Chicago in 1929, which at the time was ranked second only to Harvard, as the leading research university in America. The university hosted a number of influential scholars (e.g., George Herbert Mead and Harold Lasswell), and is now considered the institution where the social sciences found their modern form (i.e., Chicago departments of sociology and political science). Although it was a strong research institution, influential investors such as John D. Rockefeller wanted it otherwise and pushed for the university to become primarily a collegiate institution. In the 1920s, the university strengthened the position of its college to become “less ivory tower and more . . . the Western expansion of Ivy League culture.” More attention was thus given to the quality of instruction, and improving guidance programs, plans for new residential halls, curriculum change, etc. With the appointment of Hutchins, larger questions concerning the idea and purpose of scholarship came under debate—a debate from which a major dispute on the content of the curriculum ensued. Hutchins, who was influenced by Mortimer J. Adler, was skeptical of the increasingly specialized social science research and the neglect of an intellectually essential question (i.e., the purpose of existence). His idea of a classical curriculum consisting of “great books” was implemented at St. John College after 1937. St. John had been founded already in 1696 and was the third oldest college in America. The new policy meant only a restoration of its initial offer of a classical curriculum (McArthur 1990). See also Dzuback (1990). Demos (1946: 200). Ibid., 195. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 196.

Liberal Education beyond Bildung ♦ 197 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114.

115. 116. 117. 118.

119.

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 197. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 198. Ibid., 199. Ibid. Ibid., 200. Ibid., 201. Ibid. The quote is from the Harvard Report. Ibid., 202. Ibid. Ibid. I assume “eclectic menu” alludes to Lernfreiheit, designated by others as “curricular anarchy.” Ibid. Ibid., 203. Ibid. Ibid., 204. The phrase by Jesus—“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32)—is mentioned in relation to the joining of reason with freedom. Ibid., 204. The quote is from the report. Ibid., 205. Ibid., 206. Ibid. See also the Harvard Report, chapter II, section 4: Traits of Mind. Ibid., 208. The quote is from the Harvard Report. Ibid., 210. The abilities to think effectively, to communicate thought clearly, to make relevant judgments, and to discriminate among values—corresponded to what is referred to as a threefold division of learning among the natural sciences, the social studies, and the humanities. Demos (1946: 210). Ibid., 197. Ibid. Pundt (1948: 350). The Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) was established in October 1945 to administer the denazification and democratization of post-war Germany. Fisher (2007: 65) argues that the Allies considered reeducation one of the primary tasks of the occupation. Changing the orientation of German youth was a key concern. Pundt (1948: 356–57). The influence of American social science in Germany in the postwar period has later been pointed out by Walter Erhart (1999: 6), who argues that “there is one science that not only draws on American

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120. 121. 122.

123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133.

134. 135. 136. 137. 138.

139.

traditions but is supported if not completely established by the American military government: namely, sociology or social sciences.” Kapp (1948: 395). Ibid., 396. Foerster (1945: 497–98). The article was published in a special issue on “Philosophies underlying European Nationalist Groups.” In opposition to a political re-education based on direct educational action, he suggests a new ideology based on “constructive stages in German history.” Such a reform would de-Prussianize the country, yet also “be a return of the German people to themselves and to the spirit of their history.” Ibid., 497. Ibid., 498. Carpenter (1953: 70). Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 71. Ibid., 72. Ibid. Ibid., 73. Similar examinations with less of a requirement for detailed facts; students should have more time for studium generale; the establishment of a group whose duty it was to consider matters of student living quarters and social life, “all of the institutions of higher education were advised to pay more attention to the maturing and development of students as people.” It was repeatedly made clear that students find this growth through activity in student affairs. A committee was to be set up to investigate the possibility of having specially trained personnel workers, the need for better planned and integrated programs in connection with the various experiments with general education was emphasized, the number of professors should be increased, the need was recognized for a sense of community within each institution, as well as for the universities as a unit. It was emphasized that some official was needed to relate the student problems more directly to the university (Carpenter 1953: 74). Ibid., 75. Ibid. Ibid., 75. Ibid., 107. Conant (1946: 68). The abilities to think effectively, to communicate thought, to make relevant judgments, and to discriminate among values—corresponded to the three divisions of learning: the natural sciences, the social studies, and the humanities. Most of the references are embedded in general remarks in the report (Conant 1946): “there is a sterile specialism which hugs accepted knowledge and ends in the bleakest conservatism” (55); “some people have gone to the opposite extreme of setting up fixed dogma and imposing them by sheer authority”

Liberal Education beyond Bildung ♦ 199

140. 141. 142.

143.

144. 145. 146. 147.

148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159.

160.

(61); “A young man who has been nourished with ideas exclusively will be tempted by the sin of intellectual pride, thinking himself capable of dealing with any problem, independent of experience” (71); “There is the danger of identifying intelligence with the qualities of the so-called intellectual type— with bookishness and skill in the manipulation of concepts” (75). Hawk (1954: 21–22). Conant (1947). I refer to Avey’s (1951) review of Harold Benjamin’s book, The Cultivation of Idiosyncrasy (1949). He is known as the editor of The McGraw-Hill Series in Education. In 1939, Benjamin published a satire on the educational establishment under the pseudonym J. Abner Peddiwell, entitled The Saber-Tooth Curriculum (1939). In this he outlines the patterns and progression of education from practical responses to necessities to a rigid system of prescribed norms and procedures. The aim is apparently to encourage a redesign of the curriculum. The first printing was given away as a gift to superintendents and professors of education. It became very popular and was reprinted eleven times during the next twenty years. Avey (1951: 53). Ibid. Gideonse (1952: 57). He refers to and comments on the debate between Benjamin and one of his chief opponents, Robert Hutchins. Benjamin (1951). Most of Benjamin’s postwar work focused on international education, while he served UNESCO. In 1946, UNESCO’s first task was to improve textbooks for international understanding, paying particular attention to the teaching of history and civic education. A mutual revision of history textbooks was encouraged by UNESCO in order “to eliminate biased presentation of facts and nationalistic prejudices.” In 1948, “the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” followed. Benjamin and Hutchins (1952: 29). Ibid., 34–35. Both quotes are from the debate. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 34. Gideonse (1952). Schueler (1951: 95). Ibid., 91. Ibid., 94. Both quotes. Ibid. Ibid., 93. Ibid., 95. Seymour (1952: 493). Furthermore, he argues: “Everlasting vigilance and courageous resistance to threats from any quarter are the sturdy shield of academic freedom. But without strong organization, professorial defenses will remain puny. Fear of dismissal feeds timidity.” Tenney (1952: 291). The references are from William F. Buckley’s book, God and Man at Yale: The Superstition of Academic Freedom, published in 1951,

200 ♦ Humboldt Revisited

161. 162. 163. 164.

the same years during which Buckley was recruited by the CIA. Buckley, who is known as the godfather of modern conservatism, attacked the faculty at Yale for forcing liberal ideology on its students. The book got mixed reviews and many underestimated the impact the book eventually would have on American society through the rising conservative movement. Tenney (1952: 291). Hollinger (1995). Lane (1966). I refer to Kerr (1963), The Uses of the University.

CHAPTER 4

The University in the Knowledge Society 

Introduction The current academic debate concerning the identity of the university is shaped by a large set of contributors from quite separate theoretical fields, such as the sociology of scientific knowledge,1 social theories of modernity and, to a lesser extent, philosophical debates concerning the idea of the university from the Enlightenment to the present age.2 One common point of departure for many of the contributions is an acknowledgment that, due to changes in society and in the economy, an older mode of knowledge production has collapsed and a new mode has emerged. More particularly, it is often assumed that the traditional mode of knowledge, stemming from the Enlightenment, collapsed after World War II and the expansion of higher education in the 1960s contributed with a series of reforms in the 1960s and 1970s.3 These reforms were primarily concerned with the institutional organization of the university and were largely responses to democratic forces in civil society aimed at including a broader spectrum of the population. The current challenge is understood as different and more dramatic, because it “stems from changes within the structure of knowledge and its relation to cultural production.”4 Since knowledge has become an intrinsic part of society, more people are concerned with questioning it. It has often been suggested that this has induced a different kind of “cognitive structure” and a “reflexive” role for knowledge. I do not intend to summarize different viewpoints or counter any claims. My overall concern in this chapter is to present two seminal texts that illustrate some of the main issues and central concerns in the present debates. These texts are not subjected to a critical investigation but are regarded as collections of “statements” that may help capture the intertwined set of “rules” that provide order and logical coherence to the present discourse on “knowledge society” and to which “speakers” (reformers, politicians, etc.) unwittingly conform. In other words, I have chosen these well-reputed contributions to the field—often quoted by

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academics and policy reformers—as a means by which to reveal the discursive order that furnishes the new “service university” with meaning and which, I suspect, subsequently dismantles the “Enlightenment university.” The texts include some of the most common discursive elements: references to changes in late modernity, the world economy, the global diffusion of ICT (information and communications technology), cultural pluralism, and the wide availability of higher education due to democratization, in the texts referred to as massification of higher education. Finally, the assumption of a co-evolution of science and society or democracy provides meaning to key signifiers in the text, such as attention to user, marketability, reflexivity, social accountability, flexibility, and risk, among others.

I. THE NEW PRODUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE One of the most debated contributions in the discussion during recent decades about the role of the university is the influential, and remarkably persistent, work The New Production of Knowledge by Michael Gibbons and colleagues (1994).5 This text is an exploration of the changes occurring in the social production of knowledge and a prediction relating to how the changes will affect the university. The authors’ main claim is that we are now witnessing the arrival of a new mode of knowledge production, and that this new mode “has evolved out of the disciplinary matrix of the former and continues to exist alongside it.”6 The changes are presented as total in the sense that they are occurring not only in the domains of science and technology, but also in the social sciences and humanities. The book is an attempt to “specify the new mode and its principal characteristics”; it is an effort to “indicate the imperatives of the new Mode of knowledge production for policy.”7 Meanwhile, its primary concern is to determine how the university can adjust to the new conditions imposed by the postindustrial transformation of the socioeconomic order, and what the authors regard as a welfare state in deep crisis.

Mode 1 and Mode 2 The key concepts introduced in the text are Mode 1 and Mode 2. They signify a distinction between the new and emerging mode of knowledge production—Mode 2—and what the authors consider to be the traditional mode of knowledge production—Mode 1. The book’s focus

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is mainly on changes concerning “the problem-solving context,” that is, the access and organization of the production of knowledge, and the distribution and quality control of research “products.” One of the main characteristics of knowledge production in Mode 2, as opposed to Mode 1, is that it is carried out in proximity to the user, where problems are identified and solutions are sought simultaneously. The proximity implies that everyone—scientists, technologists, engineers, designers and technicians, anyone who is working in the context of application—is more involved in the process and is thus more sensitive to the broader implications of what they do. This also points to another characteristic trait of the new mode emphasized in the text: it is more inclusive than the old. Individuals and groups that have traditionally been disenfranchised from the scientific and technological system are included in the production process and can thus “become active agents in the definition and solution of problems as well as in the evaluation of performance.”8 Integrating the user and producer in the definition of and solution to a problem, as well as evaluation of performance, is expressed in the demand for greater social accountability. It also expresses an awareness of the risks or effects that advancements in science and technology may have on the public. “Operating in Mode 2 is therefore assumed to make all participants more reflexive,”9 since individuals themselves cannot function effectively without reflecting—trying to operate from the standpoint of all actors involved. This participation brings about “the deepening of understanding,” which “has an effect on what is considered worthwhile doing and hence, on the structure of research itself.”10 This new focus on “reflexivity,” the authors argue, has given the declining humanities a new sense of purpose and meaning. Reflection of the values implied in human aspirations and projects has been a traditional concern of the humanities. As reflexivity within the research process spreads, the humanities too are experiencing an increase in demands for the sort of knowledge they have to offer. Traditionally, this has been the function of the humanities, but over the years the supply side—departments of philosophy, anthropology, history—of such reflexivity has become disconnected from the demand side—that is from businessmen, engineers, doctors, regulatory agents and the larger public who need practical or ethical guidance on a vast range of issues (for example, pressures on the traditional humanities for culturally sensitive scenarios, and of legal studies for an empirically grounded ethics, the construction of ethical stories, and the analysis of gender issues).11

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Whereas knowledge production in Mode 1 relies on the established consensus of a particular discipline and its problem-solving activity is organized around a particular application, production in Mode 2 is guided by criteria of relevance, such as the product’s utility and applicability. However, to carry out research in the context of application does not necessarily signify a radical transformation of knowledge production, because, as the authors argue, the applied sciences are already well integrated into the old system. What is presented as significantly new in Mode 2, as opposed to Mode 1, is the complexity of the context of application. This complexity means, among other things, that science can no longer be understood according to the dichotomy of the pure versus the applied; the science now is constructed “in action.” Whereas Mode 1 merely “responded” to the “largely academic interests of a specific community,”12 there is, in Mode 2, a new recognition of the diversity of intellectual and social demands that need to be met. As well as operating within a context of application, the new mode deploys a dynamic interdisciplinary framework. One of the key terms in the text is “transdisciplinarity,” which signifies moving beyond separate disciplines to dynamic inter- or cross-disciplinary collaborations. It implies that the shape of a solution is found beyond the confines of any single contributing discipline and their integrated “methods.” In Mode 2, knowledge production starts from practical problems, and not from theoretical speculations, as in Mode 1. Since the process of production is problem-oriented, the “producers” will consist of transient teams, who develop their own distinct “design” of theoretical structures, research methods and modes of practice. Research is thus not produced, as in Mode 1, by way of a “design,” developed first theoretically and then applied to a context by another group of practitioners later on. Nor does the production process in Mode 2 rely on a permanent structure such as a department or an institute. In Mode 2, the production unit is temporary and dissolves as soon as the “mission” is accomplished. Moreover, because the production process implies solving problems, it includes both empirical and theoretical components. The production in Mode 2 contributes, as in Mode 1, to the ‘storage’ of knowledge; it is, the authors argue, “undeniably a contribution to knowledge though not necessarily disciplinary knowledge.”13 The changes in production have consequences in terms of how “results” are communicated. The results of research are not, as in Mode 1, communicated through institutional channels, for example, “reporting” results in professional journals and conferences; they are distributed

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directly and immediately to those participating in the course of action. In contrast to Mode 1, it is not the institution that becomes the most important “carrier” of knowledge in the market, but the individuals involved. The diffusion of research results is guaranteed by the competent researcher’s traveling, as he or she moves on to new problemsolving contexts. Furthermore, the demand for a more flexible and mobile problem-solving capability has displaced what the authors refer to as the “solitary speculation” of individuals, who, in Mode 1, were expected to be the wellspring of original ideas. In Mode 2, it is crucial that problem-solving capabilities are mobile, to produce the required knowledge in specific problem contexts. The new production of knowledge also has implications for the how the quality of research is evaluated and judged. When research is the result of transdisciplinary cooperation and temporary teams, the “product” is hybrid; it neither fits into any of the disciplines that contributed to the solution, nor can it be recognized as the specific contribution of a new discipline. It is thus no longer necessary to return to a particular discipline to achieve validation of the produced knowledge. Instead of disciplinary control, communication is crucial to the process, a communication maintained through both formal and informal channels. The transition from Mode 1 to Mode 2 is, as mentioned above, marked by heterogeneity in terms of the number of potential sites where knowledge can be created (e.g., research centers, government agencies, industrial laboratories, etc.). The increase in sites has partly to do with the diffusion of technology and the greater number of actors involved. What is more, although the electronic and organizational linkage of knowledge-producing sites varies, they are, in most cases, conditioned upon functioning networks of communication. It is this differentiation or combination and recombination of ever more finely specialized subfields that establishes the basis for the new forms of useful knowledge and that moves the production of knowledge away from traditional disciplines and into new societal contexts. The demands for flexibility and quick solutions in a rapidly changing technological reality have reduced the need for stable and permanent institutions. New organizational forms have emerged to “accommodate the changing and transitory nature of the problems.”14 The traditional hierarchy is thus substituted by heterarchical alliances, in which people connect in temporary teams and networks that dissolve after a problem is solved or redefined. Moreover, even if problems are transient and groups short-lived, the patterns of organization and communication will persist as matrixes from which additional groups and

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networks, dedicated to different problems, will be formed. As such, the experience gathered in this process is transferred to new contexts. Mode 2 knowledge is thus created in a great variety of organizations and institutions, including multinational firms, network firms, small hi-tech firms based on a particular technology, government institutions. Research universities, laboratories and institutes as well as national and international research programmes.15

However, a new characteristic trait of Mode 2 is that, with an increase in the number of groups wishing to influence the outcome of the research process, as reflected in the varied composition of research teams, a morass of questions concerning values and ethics arises: What is the public relevance of the project? Is it socially accountable? What will the impact of the project be? Does one derive good value for the money? What are the effects of its science and technology? Social accountability permeates the whole knowledge production process. It is reflected not only in interpretations and diffusion of results but also in the definition of the problem and the setting of research priorities.16

Questions pertaining to values cannot be answered in scientific or technical terms but must be discussed more deeply. In the disciplinary science of Mode 1, the quality of research by individual contributors is controlled through peer review. This implies that previous contributions to the discipline are important for determining who is deemed competent to act as a peer. The authors argue that this results in a situation where judgments of quality and control mutually reinforce one another. It has both cognitive and social dimensions, in that there is professional control over what problems and techniques are deemed important to work on as well as who is qualified to pursue their solution. In disciplinary science, peer review operates to channel individuals to work on problems judged to be central to the advance of the discipline. These problems are defined largely in terms of criteria, which reflect the intellectual interests and preoccupations of the discipline and its gatekeepers.17

By contrast, in Mode 2, where research takes place within the context of application and thus is closer to the user, there will be an additional set of criteria for quality control. These criteria reflect the

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Table 4.1. Knowledge production in two modes Mode 1

Mode 2

Knowledge is produced within the context of an academic community and its interests.

Knowledge is produced in the context of application.

Knowledge is discipline-based, e.g., in a university department.

Knowledge is transdisciplinary.

Knowledge is homogeneous.

Knowledge is heterogeneous.

Organization of research: Hierarchical, stable, and permanent.

Organization of research: Heterarchical, flexible, and transient.

Quality control of knowledge: By peer review.

Quality control of knowledge: Evaluated through reflexivity and social accountability.

Researcher: A solitary problem solver who communicates only with a particular disciplinary community.

Researcher: A problem-solving capacity, mobile, communicates through both formal and informal channels.

broader composition of the review system (i.e., the many experts). The criteria include that of purely intellectual interest, which dominates Mode 1, and then there are the questions as mentioned above: Will the solution be competitive on the market? Will it be cost effective? Will it be socially acceptable? Meanwhile, the authors admit that when quality is determined by a wider set of criteria, it will become more difficult to determine what “good science” is. Quality control in Mode 1 operates through disciplinary structures organized to identify and enhance creativity, while the collective side, it is assumed, “including its control aspects, is hidden under the consensual figure of the scientific community.”18 In the trans-disciplinarity of Mode 2, the individual contribution is subsumed as part of the process, and creativity is mainly a group phenomenon. Quality control is thus exercised as a “socially extended process which accommodates many interests in a given application process.”19

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To briefly sum up some of the differences, in Mode 1, knowledge is primarily accumulated through the professionalization of specialization (i.e., social and cognitive control within disciplines), and its production is largely located in permanent institutions such as universities. By contrast, in Mode 2, knowledge is accumulated through the repeated configuration of human resources, in flexible, essentially transient organizational forms. This implies that Mode 2 science is more socially accountable and reflexive. Although the two modes are ostensibly distinct, they nevertheless interact sometimes. Specialists trained in the disciplinary sciences may enter Mode 2, and as they return to their disciplinary base, “some outputs of trans-disciplinary knowledge production, particularly new instruments, may enter into and fertilize any number of disciplinary sciences.”20

The Implications of Mode 2 for the University The New Production of Knowledge is an attempt to address issues relevant for policymakers. Its focus is on the emerging new mode of production caused by a historical transition of society from an industrial to a postindustrial phase. The text provides a convincing presentation of the new and emerging reality, with statistics and examples that support and validate the proclaimed need for a reorganization of the knowledge production in the university. The need for transformation is conveyed in an imperative, if not optimistic tone, as providing new opportunities for the university. The new demands for greater flexibility will increase the social relevance of the knowledge produced, and thereby enable the university to meet the demands of the knowledge users they are supposed to serve. However, the new demands are presented as “natural” consequences of a co-evolution of social and economic forces, partly driven by globalization and a diffusion of information-technology. The retreat of nation states as “pastoral” providers of educational goods and services has been replaced by a diversity of “competing” knowledge producers.21 The proliferation of new and competing non-academic knowledge producers has challenged the monopoly of knowledge that universities previously enjoyed. The need for transformation is thus also posed as a way for universities to ensure their future survival in the face of new competition. To survive and become a “player,” universities have to respond to the new demand for “practical” expertise and for a mobile and adjustable workforce. By representing the university as a mode of production, it is consequently reconceptualized and identified as an organization with a

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particular formal structure, goals, and human resources. This allows one to approach the university as any other corporate business or public organization operating in a market, rather than as an institution intimately linked to the nation-state. The “new reality” is transposed into a set of demands that all knowledge producers must adjust to in order to be “useful.” To be socially and economically efficient means to produce “knowledge for use” in close alliance with a context, be it industry, government, or society more generally. The focus on “production for use” projects a backdrop on which the present university can be visualized and perceived as a production mode primarily devoted to “knowledge for its own sake.” It disparagingly implies that the university has gradually removed itself from society and is primarily oriented toward producing “objects” for the narrow concerns of an academic community (“niche”). Therefore, the new goals of “marketability” and “application” provide the criteria for questioning the university’s production in relation to its role as provider of service to society: What is the social relevance of knowledge generated from individual speculation, developed through communication between scholars within homogeneous disciplines?

Impractical Objects The new production process is presented as a social process in which discovery, application, and use are tightly integrated—a process that demands diversity and interdisciplinary collaboration. The new orientation toward applicability contrasts sharply with the Mode 1 university, understood as promoting and reinforcing the production of special or exclusive objects (i.e., specialization) of relevance only to other intellectuals. Yet it is not merely depicted as an institution that has isolated itself from society; it is also depicted as a social system designed to control the production and distribution of knowledge by determining which problems are important and by controlling the qualification of scholars (through what the authors refer to as “disciplinary gatekeepers”22). It is thus presented as an institution that reproduces hierarchical relations and forges a distinction between the “elite” and “masses” (i.e., the professions). Set in contrast to a “global” democracy, where the masses are given the right to appear and be represented on equal terms, the Mode 1-university thus appears as a democratically dubious institution, in terms of both its internal organization and its social role within society. Arguments are presented and validated from the vantage point of changes in society. The spread of knowledge skills to the masses in

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the new “knowledge society” forces universities and other knowledge producers to provide “knowledge” that is understood as “relevant” and “usable.” With mass education and the greater availability of knowledge, knowledge claims are increasingly contested. Products such as “good education” and “good research” are judged and evaluated increasingly by “the public” (i.e., consisting of a diversity of people) and according to the norms of relevance and application, the “quality” of education can no longer be determined by peers within closed disciplines. In other words, the demand for social accountability has changed the norms for how we evaluate the “goods” universities produce, in terms of both research and education. There is an implicit claim that the democratization of society forces universities to answer to norms other than those provided by the traditional disciplines. Thus, to maintain their legitimacy in society, universities must take other norms into consideration when determining, for instance, the objective of research, the appropriate curriculum, and the content of courses. Moreover, as internal, cognitive control has become less influential, the traditional academic hierarchies have lost their “purpose,” as it were. This implies that the academic professions no longer have the means to function as “gatekeepers” within the academic community, and individual scholars have attained autonomy and become “free” to pursue their own problems.

Individual Creativity By emphasizing context and applicability, the conditions are laid for deeming the university’s social role (its educational function) and management of human resources inadequate. In a rapidly changing world, there is less need for specialization than for flexible expertise. As educators of future citizens and scholars, universities have a social responsibility to ensure “employability,” that is, to provide students with social skills and problem-solving capabilities, rather than to protect and support the cultivation of “solitary” problem-solvers. Thus, the new production demands flexible and transient organizational forms that foster transdisciplinary cooperation and new curriculums. The new reality also demands a new type of researcher. Since knowledge is designed in proximity to the “user” and through “creativity in groups,” there is a demand for individuals with communication skills and who are flexible and able to interact and cooperate, who can engage in dynamic teamwork. Therefore, social knowledge, political insight, and

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personal traits such as the ability to communicate and cooperate are more important than the curiosity of the individual researcher. Involvement is assumed to be equivalent to the spread of reflexivity, meaning that all actors become responsible for evaluating the potential use and abuse of the “product.” The spread of reflexivity guarantees consensus concerning the “methods” and results and secures legitimacy to the process. This also means that any attempt to “control” the process is brought within the range of the judgments and decision-making of all who are involved. Furthermore, since knowledge is generated in “local” contexts for the purpose of solving specific problems, and not for the reinforcement of a nation-state’s cultural identity, the potential for professions—occupations requiring specialized knowledge and long, intensive academic preparation—to exercise social control is presumably diminished.

Universal Truth Since the “research product” is designed to solve a particular problem, it cannot be guided by a particular disciplinary method or a limited set of practices. The research process rests upon a kind of experimentation in which tools from many disciplines are tested to solve the problem. Collaboration and user orientation gives the impression of a more efficient, open, and egalitarian research process, where “methods” are practical tools. This significantly contrasts with Mode 1, where methods function more like “rules” to sanction and control the product’s validity, in accordance with abstract, universalistic categories. The assessment that all graduates will become “practitioners” and that no one will henceforth fit the label of “scientist,” and no practice of producing knowledge will fit the label “correct science”23 supports the impression that Mode 2 is more open and egalitarian than the more conventional Mode 1. What is right and proper is determined through persuasive argumentation and agreement within the “field,” and in relation to a specific situation (i.e., “the rules of the game”), rather than through legislation by disciplinary “gatekeepers” and a prescribed method.

II. THE DYNAMICS OF MODE 1 AND MODE 2 The purpose of introducing the two modes is proclaimed as “essentially heuristic”: to establish a common ground of references; “to clarify the similarities and differences between the attributes of each and

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help us understand and explain trends that can be observed in all modern societies.”24 The distinction summarizes differences between two modes of production. Yet it also proves to be a means for supporting the claim that the new mode of production eventually will render the university in its current form obsolete. The claimed need for transformation is particularly persuasive, because it is presented as part of a natural process, one that is neither forced nor planned; rather, economic forces and democratization are the motors by which it evolves. This evolution is not only occurring in science and technology, but also in the social sciences and in the humanities. Therefore, due to the “totality” of the changes, there is an urgent need for policy makers to address them. Meanwhile, although Mode 2 is assumed to emerge out of Mode 1 (i.e., an “outgrowth”), it often appears as if the two modes actually conflict with one another. As the title of the book also indicates, Mode 2 represents the new production of knowledge, while Mode 1 consequently is constructed as the old. Thus, Mode 1 serves to illustrate a set of barriers, hindrances, or, perhaps even, dysfunctions that need to be addressed and removed to secure the new “flow of knowledge, products, persons and ideas” associated with Mode 2. To sustain “a worldwide system of science, technology and research,”25 the authors insist on moving beyond the traditional production of science, which implies a removal of these barriers—referred to as “a complex of ideas, methods, values and norms” that determine “what shall count as a significant problem, who will be allowed to practice, and what criteria are to determine what constitutes good science.”26

Abstractions from Selective Assertions The question that remains to be answered is why Gibbons and colleagues devote so much energy to providing a comprehensive representation of the Mode 1 university, given the fact that this mode is no longer considered adequate in the course of the evolution? Why is there so much space devoted to describing Mode 1 and to the reiteration of a claim that Mode 1 universities were essentially “elite institutions”?27 Why is there so much attention on the values and norms of “the old” mode of production when it has apparently become obsolete? After all, Mode 2 constitutes the state that is emerging, the ideal state, so to speak. I presume that Mode 1 and Mode 2 are abstractions, artificially constructed to serve a particular political purpose.

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The modes are a simplification of a complexity, presented as heuristic tools to aid our mutual comprehension of the university. As such, the modes serve the obvious need for making the authors’ claim more generally applicable. However, they are abstractions made from empirical facts or interpretation of such facts. This means that Mode 1 is constructed by projecting certain features of the “traditional” university that the authors consider to be key features into an abstract yet coherent miniature model. These features, when combined, allow us to identify how the “old” university functions, yet without requiring us to ascertain the details about each proclaimed feature, or drawing attention to empirical examples or historical cases. The extraction of features that constitutes Mode 1 aids comprehension and helps us to schematically conceptualize “facts” about our working conditions. Mode 2 provides the necessary contrast that helps us realize, so to speak, the “truth” about the present university’s main functions, to validate the perceived need for transformation. The two Modes, in other words, are intimately linked because they structure our perception of the university, and create a consensus concerning the necessary changes that need to be made. After all, it is necessary to present some features that everyone can agree are fundamental, so that policymakers will realize the problems of the present university. With the temporal markers “old” and “new,” Mode 1 and Mode 2 function as instruments for comparison and measurement. The purpose is to compare an underdeveloped or “impure object,” Mode 1, with an “ideal construction,” Mode 2, so as to measure the deviations of the former in light of the latter.28 By using the two modes, policymakers can compare the “old knowledge production” to the new, in relation to social and economic changes. From this comparison, adequate measures for change or renewal can be implemented. The abstract and generalized modes direct our attention toward measures and means and, as such, they help to design instrumental reforms that can be justified as necessary for efficiently meeting social needs of the emerging new reality. Since the references to the university are “condensed” into an orderly set of abstract features and presented in terms of a model, it is difficult to determine the empirical references for Mode 1. The subject matter that provides the conditions for erecting it are silenced or hidden from view. We are presented with a selective interpretation, reified, and transformed into a generally applicable model. As such, we are deprived of the facts that would enable us to reveal and perhaps

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question the assumptions or hypotheses that underlie the constructed Mode 1. The fact that the text provides us with a convincing image of the university without historical contextualization (i.e., references to specific universities), and refers to Mode 1 comprehensively through “common characteristics,” suggests that Mode 1 is “anchored” in assertions or interpretations that are well-known, widely accepted, or “paradigmatic” However, any abstraction or “common understanding” can be lifted out of a petrified state and rehabilitated as an interpretation or hypothesis: What is the “truth” about the university conveyed by Mode 1 that demands with such persuasive force that the university needs to be reformed? It seems to me that there are two large yet intertwined hypotheses about the university conveyed through the text: first, the university is inefficient because of its bureaucratic form, and second, its production of knowledge is stymied through excessive institutional control. These two hypotheses rely on several detailed assumptions.

Rehabilitating Mode 1 as a Hypothesis of Organizational Inefficiency The dichotomy between “old” and “new” is not simply descriptive, but also normative. Mode 2 helps us identify the “old” university as consisting of a set of barriers that ought to be adjusted or restructured. When the university is interpreted as a “production site” rather than an institution with a particular history, it can be understood in the same manner as a goal-attaining organization. This means that the historically situated set of ideas and practices that once provided the basis for “the university” (and made it possible to identify different kinds of universities) can now be reapproached and analyzed as a set of organizational features: goals, work-flow, social structure, leadership, control-systems, and so forth. Thus, the university can be understood as a particular organizational form or system that can be restructured or re-engineered. The features condensed into Mode 1 make it possible to identify the university as an organization with a traditional bureaucratic form: disciplines, specialization, experts, control by hierarchical peer review, stable and permanent locations (i.e., departments)—these all suggest that the university relies on a traditional, yet obsolete “Fordist” paradigm of production, which must give way to a more flexible work structure. The university suffers from institutional conformity, time-consuming activities, disciplinary conservatism (“academic guilds”), slow or reluctant adaptation to change, and thus an “inability

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Table 4.2. Schematization of the various components leading to the assumption that Mode 1’s production process relies on a traditional bureaucratic form Knowledge produced: Academic products.

The knowledge is related to the context of the academic community and its interests.

Formalization of production: Discipline-based.

Specialization occurs though standardizing skills by way of disciplinary procedures and “rules.”

Knowledge production site: Homogeneous.

Production within permanent institutional sites: departments.

Organization: Stable and permanent hierarchy of authority.

Each worker is controlled and supervised by a higher authority within the institution.

Quality of products: Controlled by peer review.

Peer reviews determine the quality each individual researcher’s contribution, including their qualification for recruitment and advancement.

Human Resources: Individual problem-solvers, whose communication is limited to a particular community.

The solitary researcher is understood as the originator of unique ideas, and whose authority is based on the criteria of professional competence.

of funding sources to keep up with growth and the rapid increase in the costs of traditional forms of science.”29 It is a mode of production ill-suited to today’s postindustrial economic reality, characterized by the proliferation of competing knowledge producers. With the current “global” emphasis on rapid problem-solving and flexibility, the university needs to be restructured in line with other corporate enterprises, to provide its services in a more efficient way.

Rehabilitating Mode 1 as a Hypothesis of Power and Social Control The second main hypothesis about the university concerns its social or societal function. This hypothesis is embedded in a representation that renders the demand for transformation particularly convincing.

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Although not explicit, it can be detected through negations, ambiguities or tensions in the argumentation, all of which are related to questions pertaining to power: internal hierarchy, control of access and quality, the distribution of opportunities, as well as its societal function as reproducers of social elites. The new forms of knowledge production are assumed to be correlates of a broader societal evolution. Mode 2 is thus regarded as a university better adjusted to the new social reality, in which the masses are given free access to the educational market and have equal opportunities to produce knowledge. The expansion of higher education to encompass the masses has resulted in a social transformation, by creating a growing market for new cultural products, as well as underpinning the widespread distribution of initiative and innovation in the economy. Another effect has been the creation of a market for continuing education and an increase in the capacity of the labor force to respond to rapid technological changes.30

References to “massification,” social protest, and the rise of new social movements throughout the 1960s and 1970s all serve as important justifications for the transformation; they indicate that the university, in its present Mode 1, is elitist and functions much as did the medieval guilds (under the patronage of the state acting as Prince,)31 and as such lags behind democratic development. By contrast, the new market for education has evolved due to scientific progress and the introduction of more producers. It has provided society with multifunctional knowledge production and thereby with a “pluralization of the elite functions.”32 In contrast to Mode 2, the production in Mode 1 is “designed” for the preservation and reproduction of academic professions, thus social elites. By referring to mechanisms of “control”—cognitive, social, and institutional—it is suggested that the university is a traditional, if not authoritarian, institution that descends from a premodern time when society was differentiated into “elite” (masters) and “mass” (serfs). However, such a representation of the Mode 1 university, combined with enthusiastic proclamations of a “more democratic” Mode 2, hold a set of hidden or implicit assumptions, some of which can be described from the following perspectives: The flexibility of Mode 2 knowledge production impinges on their [the universities’] institutional structures and procedures, including the maintenance and change of quality control, how they cope with the strains of multifunctionality, what is entailed by what we call the pluralisation of the elite function.33

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Assumption 1: Mode 1’s institutional hierarchy (its structures, quality control) will be replaced with the equal participation of all actors. Since it is no longer self-evident which institutions or centers have elite status, labels of excellence are coming to depend on the judgment of bureaucratic committees.34

Assumption 2: Mode 1’s elitist evaluatory practices and quality controls will be replaced by bureaucratic standards for fair judgment. On the individual level, the definition of what makes a good scientist is now much more pluralistic. The freedom of individuals to make innovative choices and design their own intellectual itineraries is sharply increased.35

Assumption 3: Mode 1’s disciplinary consensus concerning problems of structure will be replaced by the individual researcher’s freedom of choice. Conformity is encouraged by disciplinary collegiality, by expectations and rewards from the disciplinary peers. The capacity to cooperate with experts from other fields, to come to see the world and its problems in a complementary way and to empathize with different presuppositions, involves the capacity to assume multiple cognitive and social identities.36

Assumption 4: Mode 1’s conformity and collegiality within the confines of specific disciplines will be replaced by cooperation and a diversity of views.

III. REASSESSING MODE 1 When trying to dismantle an abstraction such as Mode 1, one soon discovers that it also communicates a particular interpretation. Mode 1 is, in other words, constructed from selective assertions about how the university functions as a site for economic as well as social production. Seen in this light, we are prompted to ask: Does it fulfill its obligations to serve economic progress? Does it meet its obligation to democracy by providing equal opportunities? Clearly, when “facts” are projected into abstract models, we “forget” that abstractions are based on interpretations of specific, historically situated and qualitatively unique practices made up of integrated principles, hypothesis, plans, and ideals. As such, abstract models are instrumental in defining a particular “field of memory”; they are techniques for determining how we are to “remember.” Mode 1 determines not only what should count

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as our “common memory” of the university, but also the questions that are appropriate to ask about it. It may therefore be argued that Mode 1 serves an important purpose in helping to create and reinforce a consensus concerning one particular interpretation, or set of interpretations, of the university. As pointed out, the one interpretation that immediately comes to mind pertains to the university’s function as a key driver of economic progress: the university is old-fashioned or bureaucratic, and consequently an inefficient work organization.

Rethinking Science To further examine the other interpretation of the university, the one pertaining to its social functions hidden within Mode 1, it is helpful to look more closely at the next book written by Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott, and Michael Gibbons, entitled Re-thinking Science (2001), especially their treatment of the role of universities in the new production of knowledge. This text is partly a response to the criticism of The New Production of Knowledge and an attempt to clarify the viewpoints. While less attention is devoted to scientific and technological changes—Mode 2 science—more attention is focused on what the authors refer to as “socio-cultural changes in the affective and aesthetic domains”—Mode 2 society.37 The book’s arguments start from the same premises as its forerunner, namely that there is a growing contextualization of knowledge and that the demand for “applicability” has changed the constitution of science as well as traditional research practices. The authors’ vantage point, in other words, is that science no longer exists in an autonomous space, separated from and “external” to society, but has become internal to or intertwined with society at large. The text does not represent a new or more radical articulation of the changed relationship between science and society; instead, it is a “more radical vision of society” based on the idea of contextualized science.38 The new and transformed society is presented as an evolutionary move beyond “high modernity”: The climax of high modernity with its unshakeable belief in planning (in society) and predictability (in science) is long past, even if the popularity of ‘evidence-based’ research demonstrates the stubborn survival of the residues of this belief. Gone too is the belief in simple cause-effect relationships often embodying implicit assumptions about their underlying linearity.39

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The Scientific and the Social Function From the vantage point delineated above, science can no longer be regarded as “an autonomous space clearly demarcated from the ‘others’ of society, culture and (more arguably) economy.”40 The transition from Mode 1 to Mode 2 science indicates a departure from the “traditional view of the university and [its] engagement with science—its scientific role as producer of scientific results (i.e., research products) and trained people and it social role as producer of ‘knowledgeability.’”41 The main concern in the book is to rethink the university as a scientific and a social institution, particularly the relationship between scientific “production” and the social reproduction of scientific or professional elites. The traditional view was that: [t]here was a close correspondence between the discourse of Mode-1 science and of elite education. Under the regime of Mode-1 science, the universities exercised hegemony through their production of “pure” research, which was the foundation on which society’s capacity for innovation, and the economy’s ability to exploit technological advances, ultimately depended. On the other hand, stimulating “knowledgeability” was the key task of an elite system of higher education. The university played a leadership role through its formation of future elites, social and technical.42

As conveyed by this quote, “pure” research or scientific production is thought to be intricately linked to the rise of academic professions.43 A more “practical” science is thus assumed to lead away from professionalism (“we are all practitioners”). Thus, it seems that Mode 2 represents a release from a time when the universities had as their key leadership role the “formation of future elites, social and technical.”44 However, distinguishing between the university as a “producer/educator” and a “social reproducer” may be an implicit reference to the tension often associated with the German university: between Ausbildung (occupational training) and Bildung (reproduction of a cultivated class, Bildungsbürgertum). This suggests that it is perhaps the “German university”—or a particular interpretation of it—that constitutes the empirical foundation for Mode 1. In Mode 1: [t]here always existed a tension between the university’s aim to reproduce a cultivated elite, often associated with anti-scientific (or, at any rate, anti-positivistic) notions of liberal education or Bildung, and its development as a scientific institution. . . . Any alignment,

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therefore, between Mode 1 science as a model of knowledge production, and the elite university as an ideal social institution is difficult to reconcile with the historical record.45

The university’s social system and its system of knowledge were “clearly demarcated so long as the latter was defined largely in terms of Mode 1 science.”46 Yet, the authors argue, if the Mode 2 definition of knowledge is accepted, the two systems will overlap. This statement indicates that Mode 2 carries the promise of being a more democratic institution, presumably because the university’s social role as reproducer of elites is removed together with a dismissal of “pure” science, and only its scientific role as producer of practical or “applicable” knowledge is preserved.

Rescuing Science from Politics? In Re-thinking Science, the main concern, it seems, is to separate the scientific function from the social function and thus rescue science from politics (understood as the reproduction of a social elite). They counter the common claim that scientification is necessarily aligned with the reproduction of elites and insist instead that the university’s scientific hegemony was never complete and is “a comparatively recent phenomenon,” culminating after 1945 with the expansion of the post-1960 system of higher education “when the elite university had already come under attack.”47 Hence, they assume that scientification is aligned with its massification, which, again, they argue, “may indicate unexpected strong affinities between scientific and democratic cultures.”48 Massification and scientification, it is claimed, are aspects of the dynamics of the university, and thus connected in Mode 2. Both [massification and scientification] are connected in two senses. The first is inherent; both are fundamentally critical, even radical, movements, skeptical of received truths and orthodox interpretations in the case of science and hostile to social exclusion and traditional hierarchy in the case of democracy. The second is contingent; only by implementing a democratic agenda, and expanding opportunities for higher education could universities generate the additional resources they required to fulfill their scientific ambitions.49

Thus, in the emerging “knowledge society”50 where knowledge is suffused with the social, the social and scientific roles of the university are no longer in tension but have started to overlap. This means that

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“quality” no longer needs to be restricted to “the scientific activities carried on inside the university but can and should inspire the social function by binding the two to each other.”51 But the social space in which such an overlap can actively be pursued, experimented with and tested, is not the administrative structures, nor budget systems and certainly not anything at the rhetorical level, rather, the place to look for it is the curriculum—with its diversity, tolerance for “otherness” and willingness for future-oriented reforms.52

The authors admit that policymakers find it hard to acknowledge this possibility, since they generally see a contradiction between the university’s role as a producer of knowledge and “its responsibility to satisfy democratic or market demands for mass participation.”53 Such skepticism is thereafter opposed, by arguing under the slogan: “More of the same—only better”; more and larger universities are needed in order to “train a sufficient number of ‘experts’ to sustain a worldwide system of science, technology and research.”54 The response to reformers, who complain about students being unprepared for scientific careers, about PhDs becoming training programs, and about scientific careers becoming fragmented and less attractive, is that “standards” are adjusted to the present situation: A democratic mass-society with new and plural demands. Besides, they argue, “[t]he social selectivity of elite institutions in the past was no guarantee of high academic standards.”55 Furthermore, “the new demand for more generic research skills”56 is the reason for the decline in “the demand for narrowly focused Ph.Ds.”57 The growth of new disciplinary taxonomies of knowledge, together with the “pull” from the labor market, has opened PhD programs with broader goals. Likewise, scientific careers, they argue, have faded along with all other careers, which, before the present era, enjoyed prospects of long-term, linear professional employment.58 To those who complain that the expansion of higher education has led to an irreverent and antiscientific spirit, and that the university is “failing in its wider social responsibility to spread ‘knowledgeability,’”59 the authors argue to the contrary: The growing proportion of graduates in the general population has also increased the number of people who are qualified to take part in public scientific debate. And after all—why should the spirit of criticism, so dear to internal scientific debates, have no place in the public arena?60

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From Elitism to Egalitarian “Excellence” The Mode 2 university is presented as a new kind of university in which the social and the scientific roles of the university no longer are in conflict.61 The argument supporting this view is that the development of higher education and research policies in many countries has “been based on the belief that it is necessary to insulate the scientific function of the university from its social function, often equating the former with ‘elite’ and the latter with ‘mass’ education.”62 The institutional differentiations (vocational, scientific, etc.) of the past are explained as products of historical variation, yet, as they insist, a variation that was closely aligned with social-class hierarchies: Universities typically enrolled students from more socially privileged groups than did higher vocational or teacher training institutions.63

Institutional variation today is, by contrast, “more likely to be driven by the perceived need to protect, and enhance, research excellence.”64 This means that “excellence” is no longer defined in terms of “broader cultural and social-class consideration,” but in terms of scientific quality and research productivity, as well as the “need to satisfy popular pressures for increased participation.”65 The attempts to segregate higher education systems into research-led universities and accessoriented universities “have met with only limited success,” because of “the difficulties any selective public policies encounter in open societies; they appear to go against the democratic grain.”66 Thus, it is insisted that traditional elite universities have been market-reluctant, more focused on their scientific functions than on their wider social responsibilities. The reluctance is explained partly by the need to mobilize and maintain public support, but also on account of “the stubborn persistence of archaic notions of universality.”67 The spread of knowledge and the increase in the number of researchers since the 1960s, along with the proliferation of non-academic sites, has made it difficult to “contain research within the elite sector.” Therefore, [f]or those, for whom Mode-1 is the touchstone, these difficulties and failures are merely contingent. They can only be attributed to political timidity, a refusal to acknowledge that the claims of “science” must take precedence over the clamour of the “social.”68

Although it is admitted that some scientists inhabit both modes simultaneously, the authors emphasize that there “is an underlying

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tension between the two which cannot be completely removed.”69 The new knowledge production marks a departure from the production in the elite universities, for Mode 2 production transcends disciplinary boundaries70 and weakens the processes of cognitive institutionalization, which typically has taken place in and through elite universities. Mode 2 expands the number of research, or knowledge, actors,”71 and makes the producers of research less of a privileged group, even a problematic category. When scientific communities become diffused, the university’s institutional structures—its faculties and departments— become less important. Furthermore, by shifting the focus from Mode 2 science to Mode 2 society—the knowledge society—a wider range of activities (e.g., social, economic and cultural) will have “research components.”72 These changes will have an important consequence: The distinction between research and teaching will break down. This is partly because the qualities of a researcher are less clear, and that reflexivity transforms “closed communities of scientists into open communities of ‘knowledgeable’ people . . . not just the minority in elite universities who have been specifically trained as researchers.”73 A “knowledge economy” depends on “dissemination and even popularization; on PhD training but also on continuing education and research ‘activism.’”74 This suggests that research-driven universities will no longer play a central role in the new economy but will be overshadowed by mass institutions. The impact of Mode 2 may help to explain why elite universities are reluctant to abandon their wider social responsibilities, and why mass institutions cannot be discounted as research organizations.75

The Mode 2 University: Beyond Futurism and Nostalgia In Re-thinking Science, the future Mode 2 university is set in opposition to key characteristics such as narrow specialization, elitism, institutionalization, controlling disciplinary “peers,” and social reproduction. It is argued that the Mode 2 university will delineate, and thereby demarcate, its activities, “according to anachronistic divisions between research and teaching, scientific and social roles.”76 This entails a commitment to being an open rather than a closed institution, to being comprehensive rather than niche-oriented. The Mode 2 university has to take on the challenging process of de-institutionalization, since the “boundaries between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ make no better sense

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Table 4.3. The Mode 2 university Key features of the Mode 2 university

Dilemmas resulting from Mode 2’s features

Challenges

Suggestions for how to meet the challenges

Open (non-elitist) and comprehensive.

Without the quality controls provided by peer review, how is it possible to demand clear priorities and thwart “anythinggoes” relativism?

To structure the university so as not to create a dichotomy between teaching and research.

Re-engineer the university in such a way that it will be accompanied by re-enchantment and an open life-world.

The university needs to find the right kind of synergies between its functions.

Base virtual, corporate, and entrepreneurial universities on corporate–academic partnership.

Because of the values currently attached to innovation, the Model 2 university must remain an incubator of the next generation of researchers.

Provide academic centers of vitality and excellence.

How is it possible to reconcile open, intellectual engagement with the need to retain a normative focus? How is it possible to simultaneously provide academic leadership and managerial coherence? De-institutionalized.

Supplies welltrained and talented people.

Neither the “futurism” of virtual, corporate and entrepreneurial universities, nor the “primitivism” of universities modeled according to past structures, can offer valid guidance for the universities of today.

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Key features of the Mode 2 university

Dilemmas resulting from Mode 2’s features

Challenges

Suggestions for how to meet the challenges

Generates a society in which components of research are obtained, in the form of cultural norms.

When faced with the many uncertainties, prospects and ominous signs of de-differentiation, the university will become unstable; it will be forced to constantly re-invent itself.

The university must maintain a culture of liberal rationality. it needs to construct norms that are less substantive and more procedural.

Create new curricula to supplement, and perhaps supersede traditional research and teaching structures.

Monopolizes the allotment of academic awards.

The university must retain its legal monopoly of making academic awards.

Ensure that formal certification remains important.

Is a site for the “storage” of knowledge.

The university needs to remain the most important side where knowledge can be consolidated, stabilized and, in some cases, institutionalized.

than those between research and teaching.”77 It is suggested that the emergence of so-called corporate universities may be examples of such de-institutionalization.78 An alternative response to the development is to “revert to a more ‘primitive’ model of the university, based on networks of researchers, students and teachers, . . . connected with the facilities offered by the latest high technologies.”79 Nevertheless, the authors doubt the realism in this, as “futurism and nostalgia provide equally invalid guidance.”80 The Mode 2 university must continue to fulfill what is referred to as any university’s two enduring functions: First, it must be an “incubator of the next generation of researchers”81 and ensure a longterm supply of “well-trained and talented people.”82 As such, it will be boosted by the value attached to innovation. The university’s second enduring function is its role as a generator of cultural norms. These

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norms may be less substantive and more “procedural—concerned for example with standards of intellectual conduct and the maintenance of a culture of liberal rationality.”83 This means that the Mode 2 university needs to be both adaptable and resilient: “[It] will have to be resilient, because it must be able to provide a sufficiently stable environment to enable new researchers to be trained and culturally specific norms to be generated and maintained.”84 One way to do this is to create new curricula and their correlates of subinstitutional forms, in order to supplement, and perhaps supersede, the more traditional structures of research and teaching. It is assumed that the Mode 2 university will retain a legal monopoly of making academic awards, since formal certification remains important. The Mode 2 university must remain the most important site where knowledge can be consolidated, stabilized and, in some sense, institutionalized.

Conclusion It has not been my intention to simply summarize the quest for the university’s transformation, nor to delineate the complaints of skeptical policymakers to the proposed transformations and the responses given to them. Rather, I have tried to detect the assumptions or hypotheses about the “old” and partly also the “new” university or universities that underlie the proclaimed need for transformation. The new university is assumed to provide the flexibility that is needed in a postindustrial market, as well as provide a better response to the present social situation in which more people are demanding equal opportunities as “consumers” and “producers” of knowledge. In the quest to distinguish the Mode 2 university, Gibbons and colleagues and Nowotny and colleagues present Mode 2 as a better adjusted solution to the socioeconomic and social changes that have evolved “naturally,” and this makes the distinction somewhat resistant to criticism. One prerequisite for the university to become a “player” in the market of knowledge production and to “serve society” is that the “old Mode 1” arrangements must be dismantled. Mode 1 serves to illustrate a set of institutional barriers or dysfunctions that need to be addressed, and preferably removed, to ensure the new flow of knowledge, products, persons and ideas. To move beyond a traditional production of science is tantamount to removing the “controls” on what shall count as a problem, over who are allowed to practice, and the criteria that are to determine what constitutes good research. A prerequisite for sustaining “a worldwide system of science,”85 is to “re-engineer” the

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production processes, for it is assumed that “institutionalization in the political realm, specialization in the cognitive realm and professionalization in the social realm”86—the production processes of Mode 1, which made it so eminently successful for an earlier era—now make it eminently unsuccessful.

Notes 1. I allude to scholars influenced by Karl Mannheim and also Merton’s functionalism, as well as those who hold a more constructivist stance of phenomenological sociology. Delanty (2001) provides an account of some positions in the ongoing debate on the university. 2. See, for example, Habermas and Blazek (1987). 3. Delanty (2001: 2), for instance, refers to the period between the Enlightenment and the postwar years as the period when “the institution of knowledge existed in a space outside the flow of communication.” Knowledge was, he argues, “located in the university, not in society, in “institutions primarily designed to serve the nation state with technically useful knowledge and the preservation and reproduction of national cultural tradition.” This implied that “the university formed a pact with the state: in return for autonomy, it would furnish the state with its cognitive requirements.” The great social movements of modernity (e.g., worker movement, antislavery movement, colonial liberation), he argues, had little to do with what he refers to as “the ivory towers of the academy and its posture of splendid isolation.” 4. Delanty (2000: 2). 5. Since its publication in 1994, this highly influential text has received more than 1,900 citations in scientific journals (Hessel and van Lente 2010). Hessels and van Lente (2008) note that approximately 80 percent of the citations appear in the introduction or conclusion, suggesting an “accepted account of the current transformation” (749). The text has been the subject of many special issues in journals, and has, as also noted by Bresnan and Burrell (2012), had an impact on funding bodies and shaped research policy and practice indirectly though the “impact” agenda in research assessments. 6. Gibbons et al. (1994: 17), sometimes referred to as NPK. 7. Gibbons et al. (1994: viii). 8. Ibid., 7–8. 9. Ibid., 7. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., 8. 12. Ibid., 3. 13. Ibid., 5. 14. Ibid., 6. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 7. 17. Ibid., 8.

228 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

Ibid., 9. Ibid. Ibid. Thus, a new regulatory politics of self-governance (i.e., decentralized authority to subunits, and a strengthening of leadership functions) has emerged to replace sovereign government. Gibbons et al. (1994: 8). The authors refer to control as having both a cognitive and social dimension; there is professional control over what problems and techniques are deemed important to work on, as well as who is qualified to pursue their solution. Nowotny et al. (2001: 89, 115), Re-thinking Science. Gibbons et al. (1994: 1), NPK. Nowotny et al. (2001: 83), Re-thinking Science Gibbons et al. (1994: 2–3), NPK. Italics are mine. In addition to the proliferation of the designation “elite institution,” which is particularly pronounced in Re-thinking Science, there are other descriptions in both texts that insinuate or allude to the elite function of the old university, such as reference to “Mode 1” as a research production that is [devoted to individuals and thus] “curiosity-driven” (Nowotny et al. 2001: 78), a science that stands outside of society, “dispensing its gifts of knowledge and wisdom” (22), and an institution in which resistance to change is rooted in “the power of academic guilds (151). As is well-known, Weber regarded this kind of abstract type as a “purely ideal limiting concept with which the real situation . . . is compared and surveyed for the explication of certain of its significant components” (Watkins 1952: 25). Gibbons et al. (1994: 151). Ibid., 70. Ibid., 96. The reference is from the chapter on the humanities, where they refer to certain forms of cultural production like national theaters and museums and metropolitan orchestras, which depend on public subsidies. They argue that this kind of subsidization is not seen as an investment, whether in the context of economic growth or social welfare, but as “old-fashioned patronage [where] “the state behaves much like the Renaissance Prince.” This seems to suggest that state-funded cultural production (similar to traditional state-funded research-production), are, in effect, means through which the state (in the guise of the prince) controls and maintains power vis-à-vis the masses. Ibid., 145. Ibid., 137. Ibid., 145. Ibid. Ibid., 149. The considerations of these domains remain largely unexplored (except in the chapter on the humanities) in their first book, which is more technically oriented toward distinguishing the two modes of production.

The University in the Knowledge Society ♦ 229 38. Nowotny et al. (2001: 4), Re-thinking Science. The arguments presented rest on the assertions made in NPK, namely “that Mode-2 science has developed in the context of a Mode-2 society; that Mode-2 society has moved beyond the categorization of modernity into discrete domains such as politics, culture, the market—and, of course, science and society; and, consequently, that under Mode-2 conditions, science and society have become transgressive arenas, co-mingling and subject to the same co-evolutionary trends.” 39. Ibid., 5. Italics are mine. 40. Ibid., 1. 41. Ibid., 80. The term, “knowledgeability” refers to, “a more highly educated, and presumably more scientifically rational population and, more generally, a more enlightened society and elevated culture. 42. Ibid., 80. 43. Ibid., 53. They argue, for instance, that “in the latter part of the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth century the purity of science was insulated from its technical utility, by the invention of a category labeled “applied” science. 44. Ibid., 81. 45. Ibid., 81–82. Although it is the tension between Bildung and Ausbildung that provides the paradigmatic case, they argue that this tension took the form of “culture wars” in many other countries: Arnold vs. Huxley (in England), the “higher” humanities challenged by the rise of natural sciences (in Germany), Leavis vs. Snow in the 1950s and, in disputes over the organizations of universities, colleges vs. departments, general education vs. specialized study. 46. Ibid., 82. 47. Ibid., 80. 48. Ibid., 81. 49. Ibid. 50. The authors refer to Nico Stehr’s (1994a) Arbeit, Eigentum und Wissen: Zur Theorie von Wissensgesellschaften (Work, property, and knowledge societies). Stehr is considered a pioneer in the theory on knowledge society, known from several publications, such as Böhme and Stehr’s (1986) The Knowledge Society and Stehr’s (1994b) Knowledge Societies. 51. Ibid., 82. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. Complaints from policymakers are listed: Bright students do not receive sufficient preparation in mass institutions, rivalry and struggle between institutions for resources, the PhD has become more of a training program than an apprenticeship for careers in research, scientific careers are fragmented, etc. 54. Ibid., 83. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 84. 60. Ibid.

230 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 61. The universities’ social and scientific roles are assumed to be in tension, as reflected in policy responses, such as when research funding divides the staff into teachers and researchers (Ibid., 87, 88). 62. Ibid., 85. Three main strategies are mentioned, which have been pursued to protect “science” from the “social” and/or to preserve limited access to higher education. The first strategy is stratification, which means that only a few universities are granted a monopoly over PhD programs. The second is segregation, or creating a binary system of higher education, separating institutions for vocational education from universities, as is the case in Germany and Austria. The third is diversity, where unified higher education systems’ institutional diversity is encouraged “through selective funding policies, especially for research, and through market pressures.” 63. Ibid., 87. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., 88. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid., 89. 70. Ibid., 89. The italics are mine. 71. Ibid. The italics are mine. 72. Ibid. The italics are mine. 73. Ibid., 90. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid., 91. 77. Ibid. 78. They mention, for instance, virtual or entrepreneurial universities, based on the principles of corporate, academic, and generally private-public partnership. 79. Ibid., 93. 80. Ibid., 91. 81. Ibid., 93. 82. Ibid. 83. Ibid. This is a reference to Martha Nussbaum (1997). Italics are mine. 84. Ibid., 93, 94 85. Nowotny et al. (2001: 83), Re-thinking Science. 86. Ibid., 10.

CHAPTER 5

A Genealogy of the “Service University” 

Introduction The existence of a text like The New Production of Knowledge (Gibbons et al. 1994) proves that there is a new way of talking about the university. One could even claim that the text illustrates that a new set of norms for evaluating the university and higher education has attained status and legitimacy. The text fits well into an associate field of similar texts that encompass the current discourse on the university, many of which offer suggestions for policy changes, or simply compare changes (e.g., divergence/convergence) occurring in higher education in various countries and along different variables. I am not concerned with why such policy changes occur or how they are diffused, but rather with identifying some of the conditions that make it possible to state and debate such policy suggestions in the first place. I argue that the conditions that make The New Production of Knowledge (heretofore referred to as NPK) and similar texts meaningful are brought into play and made manifest through the text and are thereby detectable. These conditions are not necessarily available to the speakers through selfreflection; instead, the conditions constitute different discursive layers in the text. I argue that these layers have their origin in the historical realities sketched in chapters 3 and 4. One of the striking features of NPK is its abstract, technical vocabulary with a profusion of complex words such as “transdisciplinarity,” “multi-functionality,” “hybridization,” “design-configurations,” and “heterarchies.” These and similar terms constitute the conceptual architecture of the text and suggest that something new is happening in the field of higher education. The technical terms connote complexity, in the sense that they create an image of a new reality with experiences and needs demanding a new set of words. Although the terms, at first glance, seem somewhat strange and obscure, they are easily recognized as compound words deliberately constructed from simple and familiar words, such as ‘disciplinary,’ ‘functionality,’ ‘pure, ‘hierarchy,’ and more. Since

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their roots are so easily detected, I assume they serve a specific purpose, namely, to provide a persuasive code for the text’s proclaimed message: The social transformation from old to new knowledge production. The way in which the word ‘transformation’ runs throughout NPK indicates that more is at stake than simply to present changes in the mode of scientific knowledge production. The prefix ‘trans-’ is often translated as “crossing,” for example a border or a limit (i.e., to transit), to move beyond (to transcend), to overstep (to transgress), or to convert (transform) something. In other words, there is a will or intentionality present in the text, an implicit political message conveyed by a subject trying to mobilize support and create enthusiasm for a change from one state of existence to another. The text may thus be regarded as a verbal attempt to act, or as Dewey would perhaps argue, a will to use knowledge pragmatically for social ends. The word “transformation” indicates advancement, something moving forward or progressing, yet at the same time it hints at tension or perhaps even conflict between opposite or different perspectives. This tension is made manifest in the text by the simplistic typology of Mode 1 and Mode 2. These codified modes are important tools to “help” readers, first, to identify one state as old, second, to convince us of the necessity for transformation—for crossing, transiting, transcending, transgressing—into the new reality. Since transformation also involves possibilities, as indicated by the word “new,” there is a promise implicit in the text, or what I prefer to call a utopian vision. I will return to this issue toward the end of this chapter. As hinted above, NPK clearly reveals that a new way of talking about the university has attained normative justification. The reference to “knowledge” as a product of a mode of production, and the profusion of related concepts, such as capital, human resources, marketability, customer service, indicates that what we are able to say about the university—now referred to as “scientific knowledge production”—is subject to a new set of rules, as it were.1 These and similar concepts indicate that the particular mode of speech, often referred to as managerial rhetoric, has gained sovereign authority. However, what may seem like a hostile takeover by managerialism or more moderately put, the public sector’s gradual adaptation to a corporate-enterprise ideal, may be a much more profound replacement of one discursive formation— one way of representing the university—by another. The change may be characterized more accurately as a change in “the order of things”2 in which old concepts are re-appropriated and imposed with new meaning, new objects are generated, and different limits are set for what is regarded as interesting, true and appropriate in our approach

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to issues concerning higher education. This change indicates that a new set of norms now determines the questions that are relevant and important, and the questions that are not. Meanwhile, a discourse is not an iron cage, even though it may be compared with a process such as institutionalization, or perhaps an institutionalization of thought and experience, it is still a process infused with values.

Historical Conditions: Traces of the Past in the Present To say that a new set of rules governs our talk about the university is not to say that there is a radical break or discontinuity from one discursive formation to another. As a text like NPK clearly conveys, many of the traditional questions concerning the university are posed, and the university is still referred to as if it were an important institution in society. This gives the impression of discursive continuity, even of an inevitable natural evolution, from an old way of thinking and talking, to a new, presumably better, way. We are steadfastly reminded that profound changes have occurred in our reality, and that the university needs to adjust to “the widespread shift in the rationale of scientific inquiry.” Still, concepts such as the state, science, culture, and autonomy have by no means lost their relevance; these are still crucial components or key reference points in debates, conferences, seminars, and journals, which now center on the relationship between the university and the proclaimed “knowledge society.” The concepts used and the objects referred to are not new; rather, they are embedded in a different order, which imbues them with a different meaning and status. The new order provides unity, coherence, function, and sense to what is stated, yet makes other orderings seem awkward or strange. This strangeness needs to be addressed to identify the different strands, matrixes, or underlying patterns of regularity that provide the current system of heterogeneous statements with logic and meaning. As I intend to show, the “new” cannot simply be reduced to a new phase or advanced level in the gradual improvement of the university in its relation to societal changes, although it often is presented thus. Instead, the current discourse produces an intertwined network of meaningful objects and actions by drawing together elements from other discourses that are integrated, modified, or translated into a new, logically coherent order or pattern of regularities. This means that traces of other, prior discourses are embedded in the present “talk,” where they may function as important references or justifications for action and can be detected in transformed editions.

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Inclusion and Exclusion I argue that the prevailing discourse on the university conveyed by NPK and similar texts is constructed and stabilized through mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, that is, through a process in which the “new” (Mode 2) is given an identity in relation to something different and other, namely the “old” (Mode 1). The text does not simply convey a difference; it displays a hierarchical relationship wherein the new acquires its identity by excluding and depriving the old of meaning. This exclusion implies that the other is forgotten or silenced; it no longer constitutes an alternative for thought and action. I argue that the processes of inclusion and exclusion work in tandem: The articulation of the service university is made possible by simultaneously excluding and furthermore depriving the enlightenment university and the heritage from Humboldt of meaning. Although the play between inclusion and exclusion determines the discursive order, this order remains unstable unless it is aligned with other discourses that can provide it with legitimacy and authority. The present discourse may be regarded as the outcome of a series of contingent processes of detachment and re-appropriation of prior practices, or as an effect of a mobilization of discursive resources in which various elements—objects, concepts, and modes of speech descending from past discourses and alien “archives”—are assimilated into the present order or regime of truth.3 I argue that the American reception of Humboldt constitutes this archive of elements; it dictates what is possible as well as impossible to say about the university at present. In the following, I intend to show how the American reception of Humboldt and the German university ideals, which resulted in a set of experiences or “truths,” provide some of the conditions of possibility for the present discourse on the university. By digging into the historical layers of these experiences, I intend to recapture and elucidate some of the movements by which our present discourse on the university may have become possible. I thus argue from the vantage point that a concept such as the service university is a privileged sign or “nodal point” that underpins the dominant, if not hegemonic discourse on the university.4 This and related expressions are not new; they have been detached from other discourses and reappropriated in the new order, which is now used to justify the present educational policies (in Norway and other European countries.) This chapter addresses how NPK represents the university and argues in favor of transformation. The text is treated as a lead to reveal the

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historical line of descent of those rules that presently govern what can be said about the university. The chapter is organized in accordance with the key components previously referred to as mythos Humboldt. These components concern the aim and purpose of a university (section I); the relationship between the university and society (section II); the university’s role as educator of future citizens and scholars (section III), and issues that more generally address the status of the concept of science and the specificity of academic activity (section IV). There will be some overlap in time, since some discursive elements from the American reception appeared on the scene early but did not come into play until later, while others appeared rather late but were not strategically important until they were aligned with other elements descending from other discourses.

I. THE AIM AND PURPOSE OF THE UNIVERSITY The confidence with which the term “production” is used in NPK indicates that this is not a completely new way of representing the university, but rather one that has become normalized. It gives us an awareness of what a university is and what scientific work is all about. Framing the university in terms of production allows us to compare the old with the new mode of production, and likewise, to evaluate the two modes in terms of a previously given standard of goal attainment or efficiency. The profusion of words like ‘marketability,’ ‘wealthcreating potential,’ ‘competition,’ ‘customer-service,’ and ‘strategic planning,’ among others are clues that the university can be treated as analogous to any other business corporation. The description of the present complex state of existence serves as an important reference point from which we are expected to identify and thus evaluate the university in its current mode.

The Serviceable University Although the current transformations are justified with references to the emergence of a new social and economic reality, the specific rhetoric of use and production echoes a well-known and legitimate way of addressing the university, which may be a descendant from late nineteenth-century America. I have already pointed out how John Dewey, in the 1890s, introduced a new way of representing the university that countered the one voiced and highly esteemed by early university reformers, especially those influenced by the German ideals.

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Dewey and the progressives insisted that the university had a responsibility for the reconstruction of society and needed to be transformed in order to become a viable instrument of social change. The new representation of the university in terms of service was embedded in a particular historical context, and constructed, in part, as a reaction against the German influence on American education, or what Dewey more generally regarded as a university devoted to a futile search for unattainable truth (i.e., idealism). Academics were “serviceable men,” who were supposed to take orders from the non-academic mass of citizens to help design the future of American democracy. It will be recalled that Dewey justified the transformation by reference to new demands posed by the transition from a predominantly agrarian to a modern industrial society. From his vantage point in late nineteenth-century America, academics had a particular responsibility for transforming a poor immigrant society into a modern, industrial nation. In his view, a university informed by German intellectualists’ ideals had no concern for society and was thus incapable of being an instrument for social progress. Their “aimless quest for certainty” warranted replacement by a more usable, constructive and practical quest for temporary truths (i.e., beliefs), which would enable the university to provide usable knowledge. The notion of perpetual search was to be replaced by the notion of warranted assertability. This transformation of the concept of truth implied that science was transfigured into knowledge products that could be simplified and consequently made available to the great mass of non-academics. Bits of knowledge were thus regarded as goods to be exchanged, shared, and utilized as remedies for social change.

Progress: From Social to Economic Efficiency Informed by the ideas of William James, Dewey firmly believed that schools could be used as agencies or laboratories for social change, or rather, that social reconstruction could come about most efficiently by developing emotionally self-reliant, independent and flexible individuals. Education was thus regarded as an important tool for converting those immigrants who were tied up in networks of family and ethnicity into modern, independent, and socially committed decision makers. Their opinions, attitudes and habits could be reshaped through new pedagogical methods, and this would eventually change the social order into something new and better.5 Progress was understood as a natural, evolutionary, or kinetic process of change, dependent upon

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the dynamism and flexibility of individuals. However, the kinds of loyalties the immigrants were purported to have were thus regarded as vestiges of a static and pre-modern authoritarian social order (e.g., tribal, familial, clannish, ethnic) from which a modern society would liberate them. The focus on social reconstruction subsequently introduced a new distinction: those who were reluctant to change or eschewed modernization and those who embraced change and modernization. The former were singled out as enemies of progress or as deniers of modern complexity. Thus, a new experience emerged, of the “unprogressive,” the “traditionalist,” or the “conservative.”6 The current transformation of the university is justified in a similar way, by reference to the evolving postindustrial era, which gives knowledge an increased importance for economic and social progress. In much the same Deweyan manner, the “new” is accorded an identity in relation to—or in opposition to—the “old” university, which in this case is referred to as Mode 1. However, the university that is now under attack is presented as an abstract, general, or ideal type, consisting of certain characteristic traits: pure science, specialized knowledge, discipline-based control, hierarchical in its structure of authority, and homogeneous in its knowledge-production sites. The abstraction is a crucial tool in NPK, since it provides us with the necessary information to identify the essence of the university and subsequently, to realize the urgent need for reform. The selected array of traits suggests that the university can be best understood as a bureaucratic organization and thus, implicitly, as an outmoded or inefficient mode of production. The dichotomy, Mode 1/old–Mode 2/new, forces the reader to question the legitimacy of the university, yet the empirical referent and value judgments from which the modes are abstracted are hidden from view. The representation of the “old” university as a bureaucratic mode of production is alien to the representation of the university initiated by Humboldt and cannot be an extension of the discourse performed by the later European reformers in the German-Continental tradition. Meanwhile, the selected traits bear a strong resemblance to those traits that American progressive reformers singled out and attributed to the German university. I have tried to convey how the new construction promoted by Dewey—“the serviceable university”—was created in opposition to the old university. It acquired meaning by being different from his interpretation of the German university ideals. Transforming the university into a usable instrument for progress was made possible, in other words, by depicting the education enforced by the German

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“new university education” as well as the tradition-bound colleges as old, narrow, and remote. The so-called product these institutions turned out was seen as wasteful and intellectually useless and was consequently dismissed as being “knowledge for its own sake.” The serviceable university, by contrast, was an institution that promoted progress by providing the independent and dynamic individuals that the industrial society demanded. The current discussion about “the versatile and flexible personality” seems far removed from the educational Bildung of Humboldt, yet it suggests a deeper continuity between Dewey’s discourse and that of the contemporary reformers. In fact, the American appropriation of the Renaissance, which the progressives saw as the most “usable past,” seems, paradoxically enough, to be reborn in the discourse of contemporary European reformers.7 I will return to this in the third section. The present talk of context applicability and efficiency cannot be a continuation of the preceding discourse on enlightenment as the aim and purpose of the university in society. The emphasis on use and applicability does, however, find an echo in Dewey and the progressive reformer’s discourse. I have tried to convey how the progressive’s discourse on practicability tended to exclude the “other” university by redescribing it as impractical, nonprogressive, and residue from a premodern social order that was static and hierarchical. The “other” university was not merely different and alternative but was described as outmoded and inefficient for modern living. However, the progressive’s slogan of efficiency, at least in the early phase, connoted a collective effort and a moral response to social needs; thus, it was geared toward social efficiency more than economic efficiency. Efficiency in the present discourse is more ambiguous, as it is linked to economic efficiency (i.e., wealth-creating potential) and to social efficiency (i.e., democratic participation and response to social needs). The link made between economic and social efficiency in the present discourse suggests that economic efficiency and a laissez-faire individualism have become important aspects in the justification for social reconstruction, provoking a semantic slide in which the market is synonymous with democracy. The crucial question is this: Does the present discourse on the knowledge society effectively justify the spread of a large-scale economic free market, masquerading as a democratic response to social needs? I will return to this question in the concluding part of this chapter. The conspicuous similarity between the early American deliberation about the need for a free and independent individual, and the current norm of the flexible producers and consumer suggests that there might be an inherent continuity between the two discourses, despite their

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temporal and spatial distance from one another. Meanwhile, the present orientation toward practice, service, and economic efficiency does not necessarily indicate an absolute break with the preceding continental European discourse on the university. The effort to increase educational capacity in the 1960s and 1970s, which was the major justifying principle for the education reforms of the decades, was indeed couched in terms of efficiency. These efforts were seen first as a response to the demands for industrial manpower, second, as meeting the democracy’s need for a more just distribution of educational opportunities. Yet the present reference to research as production in alliance with users expresses a discontinuity from the preceding European discourses, in which research was referred to as a free and independent critical investigation, protected within state universities. This suggests that the European reforms of the 1960s and 1970s were in line with the Humboldtian ideals of Lehrfreiheit, and discontinuous with a discourse that represents research in term of context applicability.8

Humboldt and the American Enlightenment University I have tried to convey the way educational reforms instituted by Humboldt in the early nineteenth century provided the conditions for the questions that the early American reformers attempted to answer. In fact, the new identification of the university, particularly after 1890, as a site for knowledge production made it difficult, if not impossible, to continue the discourse on the university as a public space of enlightenment initiated by Humboldt and promoted by the early reformers, even though the concept of service was just as important for the early reformers. Service, in other words, was embedded in another discursive order and understood as “the desire to serve the democratic community.”9 For many of these reformers, scholarship was “always placed at the service of humanity”10 and never for the sake of learning alone. Moreover, it was the “enlightened attitude toward life” embodied in the educational ideal of Humboldt that was considered most useful and that also made a lasting impression on the early American reformers. For them, the German university represented a step beyond the passive instruction, moral discipline, and educational paternalism of the old Eastern colleges.

Academic Freedom I have hinted at how the German influence in the mid-nineteenth century contributed to a series of comprehensive curricular reforms in many American universities. At the time, these reforms were considered

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large-scale improvements, since they were geared toward bringing old institutions in harmony with the democratic ideals of a modern, enlightened society. The introduction of the free-elective system was seen as a “a deliberate means to foster individuality,”11 and the establishment of graduate faculties implied a transition from instruction and discipline to free, independent research. In fact, the university was described much the same as Humboldt described his ideal of the university, as “a voluntary cooperative association of highly individualistic persons,” yet an association that was “thoroughly democratic in spirit.”12 The federal state was likewise understood as a protector of academic freedom and a means for securing the solitude and freedom that was necessary for scholars to serve “real life.”13 The German university did not, in other words, connote remotefrom-everyday-life, non-applicable, and impractical knowledge. Quite the contrary: The German influence was seen as a step beyond the scholasticism of the Anglo-British colleges, which had dominated American higher education since the sixteenth century. The new university was understood as an autonomous, independent institution, responsible for creating and perpetuating free and enlightening debate and research, and above all, for the citizenship training necessary in the new democracy. In 1868, Ezra Cornell insisted that the university he founded was an institution “where any person can find instruction in any study,”14 and for the Midwest reformers, the new university education was seen as a way to combat any social and intellectual snobbery.15 Thus, the university was seen as superseding the old puritanical college, of which the sole purpose was to educate well-rounded gentlemen. The university, currently subject to transformation, is represented as Mode 1: a curiosity-oriented center of research production that occurs within homogeneous communities in permanent and stable institutions. This description corresponds neither to Humboldt’s understanding and presentation of the aim of a modern, enlightened university nor to the underlying rationale behind the reforms promoted by later European reformers. Dewey’s disparaging portrayal of his intellectual enemies—the scholastic “monk” and the German “bureaucrat,” are more convincing metaphors. To put this another way, the depiction of the university as a site for the production of narrow, curiosity-oriented, impractical knowledge, has little affinity with the experiences handed down from Humboldt. Thus, it can hardly be a continuation of the preceding discourse on die idée der Universität, a discourse that partially continued well into the 1960s and 1970s. Humboldt’s vision for the

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modern university was, as I pointed out in chapter 1, a continuation of Kant’s proclamation that the university should be an autonomous institution within society, guided by the principle of reason. As I tried to convey in chapter 1, the university instituted in Berlin was “modern” in the sense that it represented liberation from having to serve old authorities: the absolute state, the Church, and utilitarian attitudes. The Prussian reformers assumed, as did the early American reformers (who later integrated and reappropriated the ideals), that the freedom to generate new insight depended on an autonomous space such as the university, where critical questions could be voiced freely. Humboldt realized that for knowledge to develop without interference, the idea of reason had to be institutionally embodied. The responsibility of the modern state was to provide protection from any interference, so that scientists could engage in the unceasing process of inquiry for the long-term benefit of society.

The Enlightenment University under Attack Dewey’s attack on the university, as mentioned above, was directed against the Scholastic monk and the German bureaucrat, both of whom he regarded as residue of a premodern past, when knowledge was separated from society and the university’s sole mission was to seek knowledge for its own sake. Dewey’s attack on educational scholasticism seems to have been largely forgotten, while his attack on the German bureaucrats has sustained its discursive force—now in the image of Mode 1. This discrepancy remains to be explained, especially since it seems to be the same medieval Church doctrine (i.e., anthropocentrism),16 that serves as the axiomatic basis for the pragmatism that is enforced through the current reforms. The progressive’s understanding of the German university as narrow and remote became very influential, although there existed many other interpretations that were equally true. The reactions against Dewey’s narrow understanding of idealism,17 his interpretation (or what some regard as his misconception) of Kant’s idea of duty,18 and what some, even as late as in the 1960s, saw as Dewey’s neglect of the introspective or contemplative aspect of education (referred to as “the quiet dimension of experience”19), have mostly been forgotten, lost, or reduced to issues of little importance. As indicated above, the abstract typology, Mode 1, constitutes an array of different elements that are assembled in a certain way to evoke a particular image of the university in its present state. Since the

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imperative of NPK is change and improvement, the typology “helps us” identify what is wrong with the university, yet without revealing what kind of university we are confronting. We are told that the university has become an ineffective organization characterized by narrow specialization, homogenous production, and specialized or inflexible skills, guided by disciplinary rules, and supervised by a hierarchy of professional peers. The purpose of Mode 1, in other words, is to help us realize that the university can no longer serve the public and fulfill its primary responsibility, namely, to be an effective instrument for further social and economic progress. The typology of Mode 1 serves as an important discursive tool, because it makes us question the legitimacy of the university in terms of productivity or efficiency. Is the university an effective instrument in the service of economic and democratic progress? The problematic aspects are thus condensed into a trinity of “hindrances” to a more rational production, and described as specialization in the cognitive realm, professionalism in the social realm, and institutionalization in the political realm.20

Specialization in the Cognitive Realm Dewey’s assumption that the German university enforced narrow specialism rested upon his conviction that a science subjected to idealism (sometimes referred to as “idea-ism”) was unable to generate knowledge that could be of immediate use. As mentioned above, his reaction needs to be understood in relation to his and his contemporaries’ conception of progress and the proclaimed need for usable knowledge. Progress was understood as an evolutionary process that afforded opportunities; thus, it was a social process that could be deliberately engineered and controlled, managed, and measured.21 A main accusation against the “German specialists” was their inability to bring about any change in human affairs. Their supposed quest for certainty was subordinated to a higher authority—an objective, general, or metaphysical principle—divorced from motives and consequences of action. Thus, the metaphor of the bureaucrat came to connote a subordination of human consciousness or cognition—the human intellect—to external laws, provided by a rigid and doctrinaire method. The expectation that academics should contribute to progress and provide usable knowledge is echoed in the present discourse’s emphasis on service. In fact, NPK suggests that the knowledge production in Mode 1 is subordinated to disciplinary laws, such as specific scientific methods. Since the production is subordinated to pre-established

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“criteria,” any of its products, whether “pure” or “applied,”22 are assumed to be essentially the same in kind. And since the production is generated by curiosity and thus divorced from motives and the consequences of action in any particular context, the product will consequently correspond to a homogeneous or uniform disciplinary standard.23 In contrast to Mode 1, knowledge production in Mode 2 is subject to the criteria set by each individual or unique context of application. This implies that what is deemed true in Mode 2 is determined by what is relevant or socially accountable. In other words, truth is whatever can be warrantably asserted within the context24 rather than by what conforms to some preset criteria of truth as judged by a particular method. We are left with the impression that the production of science in Mode 1 is subordinated to disciplinary laws and unaffected by context. The way scientific production in Mode 1 is presented makes it obvious to the reader that this kind of production is incapable of meeting the plural demands of a continuously changing society. With its adherence to an abstract method—principles, categories, supposed necessities—Mode 1 is portrayed as static or inflexible, thus it is an inefficient mode of production.25 And since the context—the purpose at hand—determines what is true, scholars do not need any particular method, but rather the ability to use whatever devices and techniques are appropriate for solving the problem. I will return to this issue in the fourth section.

Professionalism in the Social Realm: Disciplinary Control The description of the university as a hierarchical institution in which disciplinary peers exercise cognitive as well as social control indicates that the texts hold another, more hidden layer of meaning. This can perhaps best be decoded when set in contrast to Mode 2. The university in Mode 2 is described as “heterogeneous and consists of a plurality of elites,”26 which suggests that the university in its present mode is less egalitarian or democratic than is desirable; it is basically a social institution governed by a disciplinary elite.27 The representation of the university as a “hierarchical and controlled through discipline mode of production” is alien to Humboldt’s discourse, who actually emphasized the egalitarianism of the new university.28 Such a notion also indicates a radical break with the discourse of the early American reformers, who described the university much in the same way as Humboldt: It was to be an association of equals,

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whose ranks corresponded to different levels of competence. In fact, the early American reformers explicitly stressed the liberal or egalitarian nature of the new university as being opposed to intellectual snobbery, tutorial hierarchies and the “mental discipline” exercised in the old colleges.29 As far as I can tell, this assumption finds no immediate resonance in Dewey, at least not in his prewar denouncement of remote-from-real-life intellectualism. Linking discipline-based specialization to social and cognitive control recalls professorial power, a key concept in discourses on professionalism deployed by sociologists and historical-sociologists from the 1960s and onward. However, the meaning generated by this link could perhaps not have made sense until the 1960s, when there was a settled agreement that the German university not only represented an inefficient organization, but also a potentially dangerous (social institution) system of education. Dewey recognized the prominent role researchers attained through the German influence on American education, yet he did not launch attacks on the disciplinary peer system nor did he single out professors as a particularly powerful subgroup.30 Dewey himself enjoyed the privileges of the professorial chair in the new university and took advantage of the academic freedom to develop and further his visions. And it was the same intellectual freedom and relief from routine work, enjoyed by students and professors alike,31 that made the most lasting impression on the early American reformers who visited Germany in the mid-nineteenth century. I have mentioned how the new Humboldtian ideals of scholarly research—a process of collaboration and voluntary association, on equal terms between students and professors—were embraced and implemented in the new American universities.32 The emphasis on independent, yet collaborative research, in accordance with a systematic method of inquiry, induced a series of changes in educational practices, among them, displacing oral recitation with lectures and research seminars.33 Many regarded the academic freedom enhanced by the new learning practices as an improvement over the obedience and submission that was expected of students in the old colleges. Adequate methods for in-depth inquiry into empirical subjects demanded a specialization that went far beyond the memorizing and merely mechanical recitation of religious or classical texts; it went beyond an education primarily devoted to inculcating moral order and universal harmony. In fact, some even regarded the collegiate, tutorial system, with is sacrifice of teacher to pupil, as “immoral and injurious to both.”34

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Institutionalization in the Political Realm: Nationalism As previously mentioned, Dewey reacted against the strong emphasis on subject matter or what he regarded as “life-remote specialism.” He worried about the consequences of obedience to abstract ideas, not only on the products that were generated but also on the learner’s habits, dispositions, and attitudes. The new socio-psychological awareness of social interaction—of the relationship between the self (i.e., temper, sentiments) and action—provided the possibility that philosophical ideas perhaps were the very product of “situated attitudes” or particular cultural temperaments. In fact, Dewey came to associate idealism more with a conviction, an emotional disposition or even a temper of mind. Thus, he saw idealism as the exact opposite of pragmatism and eventually dismissed it as “absolutism.” However, it was not until the war years, in 1915, that Dewey actually linked German philosophy to German politics, and by way of association, to the sovereign state.35 “To be bureaucratic,” which previously connoted a subordination of the mind to the abstract laws of reason, was now associated with philosophers’ obedience to the laws of another absolute authority: the state. With the new awareness provided by psychology, it became possible to describe the German soul or mentality36 as an effect of state egotism—often characterized in psychological terms as obedient and submissive attitudes—unable to withstand the disastrous militarism of the Kaiser.37 A reference to the state, which is similar to Dewey’s, reappeared after World War II: etatism in education, “according to which education consists in molding the individual to the pattern of the state.”38 I will return to this shortly. In his notorious lectures, Dewey warned his fellow Americans against the dangers that arise when philosophers behave in a manner similar to priests, “think[ing] of themselves as special instruments and organs of Deity.”39 For him, history had proven how dangerous it was when philosophers willingly surrendered their authority to “whatever commandment, tradition or public law.”40 Whether it was caused by Dewey’s warning, or simply the social unrest of the time, a new suspicion seems to have emerged during and after World War I that perhaps it was not only the German philosophers, but even more so, the German historians who actively promoted harmful ideas. The fierce attack on German historians and historicism41 during World War I indicates that the German notion of Kultur had become synonymous with a semireligious idea of nationalism42 and as such, intimately linked to the German war actions. German historians and, more urgently, their

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Geisteswisssenschaften were suspected of perpetrating nationalism and were thus partly responsible for the war. This recognition may have affected the attitude toward the human sciences in general and reinforced an anxiety that a university with close ties to the state could become a dangerous political instrument. The anxiety this engendered was, as I will return to, further enforced throughout World War II and its aftermath, when state universities were regarded as potential threats to international peace and democracy. I believe Richard Rorty grasps an important trait, if not the essence of Dewey’s pragmatism, when he narrows it down to a deepfelt conviction: anti-authoritarianism.43 Dewey’s well-known aversion to dogma may explain his conspicuous hostility to any system, be it idealism, evangelical religion or socialism.44 This rejection may also have caused the indeterminate character of his philosophical thought concerning “grand ideas,” whether universality, moral order, or the collective state.45 His relentless defense of democratic individualism46 and his faith in the American’s instinct for democracy may have been an effect of his antipathy to dogma, although the same attitude may also have blinded him to the forces that would utilize his and the progressives’ visions for other political purposes.47

The German University: A Democratically Dubious Educational System Dewey’s attack on German philosophy, which was re-issued during World War II, was primarily launched against Kant (not Hegel, Nietzsche, or even Wagner, whom others saw as more obvious targets) and what he saw as the devastating effect of the obedience expected from scholarly “servants.”48 Dewey’s reaction may also be read in light of his more general fear of any abuse of philosophy, since he always “stressed the important role philosophy plays in civilization”49 and was convinced that “philosophy of an epoch both reflects the culture and society in which it arises and re-directs its interests, ideals and developments.”50 Whatever his intentions were, Dewey introduced the possibility that there might be a causal link between (German) politics and (German) state education. This possibility was not fully realized until much later, when the discourse on scientific communities gained increased popularity in the 1960s. The discovery of Germany’s “intellectual feebleness” during World War I made it obvious, particularly for the defenders of liberal culture, that it was not enough for American universities to educate narrow

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specialists. Society needed well-rounded individuals and leaders51 who were able to make independent judgments. The dangers involved in an education failing to teach the great mass of individuals to think for themselves became even more evident as the Nazi regime came to power by popular vote. I have tried to convey how evocative descriptions of German students “filling the ranks of the Brown Army as storm troopers,” while “professors have to take the back seat in the political arena”52 shows how the war affected the American discourse on higher education.53 Dewey’s initial warnings were repeated, yet further accentuated by the new and frightening awareness of the dangerous effects such an education could have on large masses. The German emphasis on specialization was no longer regarded as merely a sign of an old-fashioned “temper of mind,” but rather as a symptom of a dangerous educational system.54 The German system not only failed to provide individuals with “the liberal opinion, which would make them adaptable to the ever-changing situation of modern life,”55 but fostered passive and submissive individuals, who were easy victims of manipulative leaders. The faculty was partly responsibility for the maladjusted student; they did not fulfill their responsibility as leaders, but sanctioned the neglect of students’ well-being (i.e., poor and inadequate undergraduate life, understaffing, no credit-system, etc.) to protect their own interests. In fact, the very idea of specialization was suspected to be merely a façade behind which the faculty could hide their indifference to student needs. The impact of two wars made it obvious that the German system was a potential threat to American democracy. These assumptions were further entrenched in the 1950s, when specialization and lack of leadership were linked to other perilous tendencies, now depicted as dangerous flaws. The mocking portrayal of the German university, in terms of dreary seminars, dry and dusty lectures, neglectful training, arrogant professors, among other things, indicates that there was now a settled agreement that these ideals were no longer worthy of serious attention, let alone options for further reform. The German university was not simply the embodiment of a set of old-fashioned and impractical ideals; it had proven to be a dangerous educational system, one that nurtured antidemocratic attitudes and illiberal modes of behavior. I have tried to convey how the postwar portrayal of the German university, which perhaps can best be described as a caricature of the ideals praised by the early American reformers, indicates that the traditional liberal education had been restored as the ideal. The references to “neglect of students” and “disregard for religious

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values and virtues” suggest that the competing collegiate, pastoral liberal education now provided the norm against which German education was to be evaluated and measured. There seem to have been no serious reactions against the claim that German secular learning was equivalent to a neglect of religious values. Yet from the viewpoint of Kant and Humboldt, as well as the early American reformers, all of whom made a strenuous effort to liberate learning—the university— from ecclesiastical control, this claim presumably would have been regarded as an absurdity.

Professionalism in the Social Realm: The Power of Social Elites The current references to the university as an elitist institution56 and an instrument for cognitive as well as social control, suggest an influence from more contemporary discourses on the university. I have already pointed out how the defenders of collegiate education pinpointed the German faculty as partly responsible for the war, due to their preoccupation with research to the neglect of students. Yet, the way specialization is linked to professionalization in a text like NPK also suggests an influence from more recent discourses on education and social control, particularly issues pertaining to the role of scientific communities in the science studies that appeared in the late 1960s.57 I have tried to convey how representations of the German university in narratives by historians and historical-sociologists in the late 1960s and 1970s reveal assessments like the ones found in the American postwar discourse. Their description of the German university as having made impracticable learning into a norm and of having justified the professors’ superiority in the social hierarchy constitutes a diagnosis quite similar to that of American postwar reformers. Their reference to a German mentality, mindset, or attitude seems to be supported by the same sort of sociopsychological explanations that made it possible for Americans to identify a German soul, mentality, and emotional disposition during World War I.58 The statement, or what appears to be more of an accusation, that the “[German] liberal model treated the students as if they were future scholars and consequently did not take their emotional and social needs into consideration,”59 is hard to understand without the American tutorial college education as a reference point. However, the reference to professors as a social elite dominated by a bourgeois mentality (Gesinnung) and a specific anti-industrial spirit (Kulturpessimismus) indicates that other discourses have had

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an influence on NPK, particularly the predominantly European discourses dealing with “modernity, mass-society, and class relations.”60 Both representations of professors or “senior researchers” as a powerful subgroup or social elite may be linked to Thomas Kuhn’s influential account of scientific communities that appeared in the 1960s. In fact, the reference to cognitive control exercised by disciplinary peers is remarkably similar to Kuhn’s reference to scientists as being a community that tries to preserve control and protect their own scientific paradigms. However, oft forgotten is the fact that Kuhn’s conception of scientific communities61 was a response to American postwar debates on scientific autonomy about fifteen years earlier, although that debate, as I will return to in the next section, revolved around questions of control posed by the state on the free trade of ideas.

II. UNIVERSITY AND SOCIETY In this section, I address the relationship between the university and society, and how the university is presented as a generator of a democratic culture. As indicated in the introduction, the current quest for transformation is justified by reference to large-scale changes in society, resulting in an increased diversity of demands and needs. The standard assumption, frequently repeated in NPK at similar texts, is that we live in a knowledge society characterized by a growing demand for scientific knowledge and a massification of education.62 In other words, the coevolution of socioeconomic and politico-economic processes has forced the university to reconsider its utility. The profusion of technical terms indicates that the emerging reality is radically different from the old reality. The new reality is more complex, dynamic, and uncertain, thus in need of a more practicable, user-oriented research approach, and workers with flexible skills and collaborative abilities. The new complexity causes an uncertainty that places new demands on liberal education to secure economic and social progress. The references to evolutionary change indicate progress and provide a perspective from which we are able to identify the university devoted to specialization as an institution out of tune with its own time. The temporal markers, 1 and 2 support this assumption by suggesting that the transformation is a natural progression from one stage to another, a move from a primitive and less developed institution into one that is more modern and advanced. The allusion to temporal continuity bolsters the text’s imperative request for transformation with legitimacy

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and persuasive force by implying that Mode 2 is a natural continuation, albeit a progression or a modernization, of Mode 1. Thus Mode 2 is presented as a renewal, even a revitalization of the existing university, presumably the university promoted by Humboldt and adjusted by reforms in the 1960s and 1970s.

Humanization However, to present the university (Mode 1) as an institution primarily aimed at narrow specialization within the confines of disciplines is discontinuous with the assessment of the university made by the early American reformers. These reformers argued, in agreement with Humboldt, that the task of the university was to “wrestle with problems whose answers are not known,”63 and thereby to engender new insights for the long-term benefit of society. Individual cultivation was important because it allowed independent thinking—a clearer vision— to become an integral part of each scholar’s character or ethos. The main consideration for a university was to cultivate Wissenschaft to engender general theories or Weltanschauungen. This, of course, also explains Humboldt’s critique of the “scientism” of the Enlightenment, and his fear that the tendency to reduce in-depth scholarship to a mechanical application of laws (i.e., reason) could transform universities into vocational schools. The overriding purpose of a university was humanization, to facilitate a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of mankind. Professional qualifications and civic responsibilities were merely by-products. The emphasis on new insight and in-depth learning (i.e., into cultures, civilizations, languages etc.) demanded a “specialization” of the human sciences.64 The discourse dealing with the university’s enlightening, critical role in society continued in Europe well into the 1960s and 1970s and engendered harsh disputes on admission regulations for integrating a larger proportion of the population. However, the questions and demands were basically regulated in accordance with the very norms and rules that defined and justified the existence of the university as an autonomous institution within a democratic society. The university was still seen as a public space for critique and as a free-standing institution operating in accordance with egalitarian ideals. In fact, what constituted the raison d’être for new demands of liberalization was the (Enlightenment) belief in the common man’s potential for intellectual maturity as well as a belief in the capacity of knowledge to facilitate new understanding of the human condition as such.

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Equal Opportunities The relationship between scholarship and humanization seems to be lost in the current discourse. Now the focus is primarily on satisfying the needs of customers and fulfilling the demands of a postindustrial economy. The assumption that the university has a responsibility to provide social efficiency and respond to social needs resonates with Dewey and the progressive reformers’ initial claim that the university had a responsibility for reconstructing society. Yet, the effort to transform the university into what appears to be a corporate enterprise in a global market for a free trade of ideas (i.e., economic efficiency) seems far removed from the intentions of Dewey, who argued in favor of a continuously planning, dynamic state.65 Dewey and the progressives’ efforts to transform the university were a response to social needs. His puritan morals, with their emphasis on diligence and social discipline, and his stress on the experiences of the common man66 as being more valuable than lofty speculations may also have been appealing to those who, in the formative years, defended the Anglo-British college education of “common sense” against the German Geist.67 As previously pointed out, Dewey resented the idealists’ attempt to reduce the world of experience to a mirror image of ideas. Some even claim that he devoted his career to combating dualism in all its guises—including those dividing mind from body, science from art, the city from the countryside, and the elite from the common people.68 In his view, idealism69 rendered scholars insensitive to the actual; they were unable to recognize and appreciate the mundane experiences of everyday life.70 He even described the idealists’ tendency to spiritualize the world as “a purely compensatory doctrine,” a consolation for those who “held back through lack of courage from making their knowledge a fact in the determination of the course of events.”71 Idealism was the expression of a premodern or even feudalist mindset, one that would gradually disappear along with the progression or modernization of society. However, the mobilization of the great masses of “common men,” which took place in Germany under the banner of Volk before and during World War II, generated a fear that grand ideas were more than the mere expression of a premodern, naïve spiritualism, as Dewey initially believed. The reference to ideas as “glittering generalities,”72 hints at a new awareness. Ideas, in fact, could be dangerous weapons of indoctrination capable of stirring up abnormal emotional responses in the masses.73 In other words, there was a growing fear that an

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education devoted to “pure ideas” could be morally fatal to the large uneducated masses of people “baffled by the complexities of modern life.”74 To the minds of many educators, the German experience had demonstrated that mass education (Volksbildung), which rested on a “mystic faith in a higher whole,” could be dangerous to the large crowd of people who might easily surrender their judgment and think “with their blood, to follow some leader who would save them from the burden of making up their own mind.”75 To further encourage such “emotional escapism” could therefore threaten the American democratic order. It was a combination of economic breakdown, governmental weakness, frustrated morale, and propaganda which made pre-Nazi Germany ready for fascism. A similar combination could bring fascism elsewhere.76

The defenders of traditional liberal education insisted that the emphasis on specialization, which now more urgently was referred to as “over-specialization,” caused fragmentation of learning, and with fragmentation, moral confusion followed. And since the old accusation of narrow specialization now was integrated into a new recognition of the irrational/abnormal psychological effect of ideas on collective behavior or “groups dynamics,”77 new opportunities for how to experience German education—informed as it was, by such grand ideas—were rendered possible.

Illiberal Education: The American Diagnosis of the German University I have discussed how the devastating experiences of war engendered a desperate search for causes. The educational ideals associated with the German influence, and which previously had been praised as progressive, tolerant, and egalitarian, were now subjected to scientific investigation and measured by their assumed consequences. I have pointed out how freedom and solitude, which the early reformers assumed were necessary to generate in-depth understanding, gradually became associated with isolation and self-enclosed remoteness. The lectures and research seminars that had substituted recitation and rote learning were, in a similar way, soon linked with passivity and psychologically unhealthy subservience. The free elective system (Lernfreiheit), initially introduced to liberate thinking from external demands, was similarly referred to as

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“curricular anarchy.” Furthermore, the academic freedom embraced by professors (Lehrfreihet) was now suspected of being a false front behind which faculty could hide their indifference to students’ well-being and progress. The voluntary association between teacher and student, previously regarded as the very mark of the new egalitarianism, was now seen as a relationship of subordination that strengthened rather than counteracted antidemocratic attitudes. In fact, the effort to separate education from its subordination to moral order and discipline and to promote academic freedom beyond paternal control, were now interpreted as being the final proof of a secular educational system lacking in moral values. All in all, the liberal ideals, which at one time were praised as innovative, were now diagnosed as symptoms of a system where “no pretense is made of giving a liberal education.”78 The German system was therefore unable to foster the democratic ideals needed to withstand totalitarian regimes. In fact, the ideals were themselves considered to be the very cradle from which Nazi-ism79 had sprung.

General Education: The Culmination of a Hundred-Year Struggle These and similar accusations had an immediate appeal in the postwar years and served as the dramatic background that justified the reintroduction of General Education into the curriculum, and with this, the college model. The assumption that the German university fostered narrow and remote-from-life research, divorced from the practical needs of the so-called common man, finds an echo in the present discourse: The allusion to the masses and the “need for a diversification of function” suggest that the new mode of production is better able to satisfy the postmodern plurality than the elitism and specialism of the old. In fact, the present transformation is justified in much the same way as the American postwar reformers justified the promotion of General Education, namely, by reference to the diversity of social and economic needs and demands of a modern society. Whereas General Education in postwar America was justified as a response to the needs brought about by the war, the current reform suggestions are also justified by reference to the emergence of a new and technologically complex mass society. However, the American discourse on General Education was even more so, a response to moral disintegration and antidemocratic tendencies, which now had become synonymous with the German university. The postwar educational policy may in fact be regarded as an attempt to eradicate all remaining elements of the German influence in American education.

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The impact of two wars may have provided the defenders of collegiate liberal education with sufficient fuel to discharge any of the stillremaining ideals and practices of the German university. For one, the ideals were attributed to a provincialism characterized by “regional pride and nationalism,”80 alien to the American heritage. Furthermore, it embodied a set of old-fashioned ideas that belonged to an authoritarian past and was thus unable to foster the independent and socially responsible individual demanded by modern society. Moreover, the proclaimed devotion to ideas furnished an emotional escapism with disastrous outcomes. German education was eventually linked—by way of suspicion if not actual proof—to the totalitarian regime of the war aggressors.81 More than anything else, it was the fear of moral disintegration that enabled the defenders of collegiate education to justify and build their case against secularism. The movement for General Education, in other words, was a culmination of an almost hundred-year struggle over the “true” identity of the North American university.

New Goals: The Spread of Traditional Liberal Education I have tried to show how North American texts on higher education from the 1950s reflect an overriding ambition to secure freedom and protect democracy at home and abroad. There was now, it seems, a settled agreement that these goals could best be met by a spread of traditional liberal education on a larger scale. I have pointed out that one of the tasks was to aid Germany in fostering well-rounded personalities; another task was to persuade Americans to assume their responsibility as “leaders of the free people of the world.”82 It was no longer enough to direct individuals, by reason, to good ends. The war had necessitated a more profound commitment to core values. The Harvard reports reflect the view that to foster a scientific attitude, now understood as a procedure, was tantamount to the spread of Christian-humanist values. And with the new focus on science and a commitment to scientific reasoning, there followed a new optimism concerning scientific knowledge as a means to further democratic and economic progress.”83 The same optimism concerning scientific knowledge can be detected in the current discourse.84 In fact, the frequently used term ‘knowledge society,’ which eventually replaced the label ‘information society’ sometime in the 1980s, indicates a similar effort to ensure democratic progress through the spread of knowledgeability. The current effort to transform the university into a more efficient producer of goods

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and services is justified as a means for fulfilling a democratic promise. Knowledge is thus understood as culture—or as the formation of a new symbolic order through equal participation of all. Yet, for universities to contribute to the process, they need to adjust their production to a more efficient managerial mode and enter into the exchange of goods and services with other non-academic knowledge producers (i.e., consultant firms, corporate laboratories, other universities, etc.). The democratic promise embedded in the knowledge society serves an important incentive to promote and justify the current transformation of the university into an academic enterprise. Subsequently, it is this promise that makes the current service rhetoric seem so natural and inevitable. NPK’s allusion to the market as a “democracy” and to the university as an “enterprise” signals a radical break with the European discourses on the university as an autonomous, critical institution within society. However, Dewey’s vision of a society where scholars could enter as “merchants of thought” in an exchange for the commonweal85 points to an underlying continuity with a deep-running American discourse.86 The optimism that currently revolves around the knowledge society evokes associations to a global-village marketplace, like what Dewey imagined. However, the link between market and corporate efficiency suggests a departure from the town market of Dewey’s visions. The proclaimed need for academics to become more flexible, and for the institution to become less bureaucratic and more competitive, suggests that the university is measured by other criteria than merely the common good, unless one assumes that economic efficiency is equivalent to social efficiency. In fact, the current discourse on the knowledge society as a free market, in which groups and individuals can enter as independent consumers and producers, finds a more immediate echo in the American discourse on self-governing communities and the free trade of ideas that followed in the wake of the Harvard Report.

Academic Freedom: Self-Governing Communities As the Harvard Report shows, the postwar faith in science was partly an effect of the war and the disillusion with the German state-“controlled” university. The massive increase in the number of scientists, due to immigration and political unrest, prompted a new debate on the meaning of academic freedom in a free society. The autonomy granted the university by the state, previously regarded as a novelty introduced by the German university, was now seen as an authoritarian, if not an

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undemocratic arrangement, which posed constraints on the scientific communities to freely govern their own pursuits. In fact, when James B. Conant, who appointed the university committee for the Harvard Report, addresses the question “What is a university?” in 1947, the answer was as follows: A University, to my notion, can more or less accurately be described as an independent, self-governing community of scholars concerned with professional education, the advancement of knowledge, and the general education of the leading citizens.87

Conant’s statement reflects the general distrust of institutionalized (German) state education that had evolved during the war. The abstract reference in the Harvard Report to “etatism in education”88 was but a portent of what was to come. In fact, the assumption that scientific autonomy was tantamount to politically independent, self-governing scientific communities, was soon taken up and developed further by a group of Californian science professors, who stated that “a true university is pre-eminently a company of scholars,” and “professors are not hired to execute policies determined by others.”89 These and similar statements illustrate that the war had contributed to strengthening an old hypothesis, namely that universities governed by the state, (i.e., “controlled” though centralized planning,) were democratically dubious institutions. Furthermore, the general disregard for the German system that now prevailed (and increasingly also that of the Soviets), also provided the possibility that this hypothesis could be reified as an objective “fact,” which could be repeated and used to justify economic liberalization and deregulation.90

Academic Freedom: The Right of Individuals Another purpose of liberal education proclaimed in the Harvard Report was to equip man for free and responsible living. To curb totalitarian tendencies, it was necessary to foster independent, self-reliant, and flexible personalities that were able to resist the temptation of wishful thinking, and who would not easily surrender their judgment to grand ideas and manipulative leaders. I have tried to convey some of the viewpoints that followed in the wake of this debate, especially the dispute that emerged between the traditionalists and the new pedagogues91 concerning the use of higher education to promote democratic values. While the traditionalists argued in favor of the intellectual development

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of “the whole man” through an education in traditional Western values (i.e., the classic canon), the new pedagogues insisted that the future of democracy was best secured by avoiding any attempt at uniformity or regimentation in education. It was not enough to provide the great mass of students with a universal guide by studying “the great books.”92 To secure democracy, one had to promote a “self-operating education,”93 flexible enough to accommodate the changing economic demands and the social and existential needs of all the people. The best guarantee against regimented behavior or uniformity in attitudes was to eradicate any fixed absolutes in education and to “do away with other procedures really in the spirit of Hitlerism and the Japanese system.”94 A democratic education was synonymous with a free education, where individuals could think for themselves and act as rational decision-makers. Some even pointed out that America is not a democracy, but a “Bill of Rights republic,” of which the essential characteristics are . . . the protection of all the crucial freedoms, our constitution begins with the provision that there shall be no legislation, that is to say, no majority control.95

The ambition to “develop well-integrated personalities” and “cultivate idiosyncrasy”96 was justified with reference to individual needs and societal demands for innovations. Yet the responses indicate that a “self-operating education” was more urgently understood as an inevitable bulwark against the dangers associated with educational regimentation.97 Based on this fear, it followed that practically any liberalizing measure could be justified as an expansion of democracy— away from totalitarianism, now associated with rigidity, repression, exclusivity, and etatism. The reference to free inquiry and freedom of choice, in other words, was important for the new laissez-faire policy that emerged. The freedom of individuals to develop their idiosyncrasies was an effective argument to promote new private educational enterprises—detached from government control, and to provide the new knowledge industry with flexible human resources.98 Although the arguments in favor of a free education were justified as a response to social and economic progress, a close reading of the texts suggests that the postwar policy of deregulation was constructed as a response to the dangers that were now associated with totalitarianism, whether the reference was the German university, the Japanese, or communism. The justification for autonomous “scientific companies” was made with reference to the dangerous effect of an educational

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system, where “the state itself is regarded as being an end in itself.”99 The autonomy of each individual to pursue educational opportunities, and thereby develop their own individuality, was similarly justified as a response to the dangers imposed on society by a rigid and hierarchical mass-education that fostered “parrots and automatons.”100 The measures necessary for enhancing competition and providing economic expansion, in other words, were justified as necessary bulwarks against totalitarianism—to protect democracy. Although the “demand for freedom” prevails, the references to totalitarianism were gradually replaced by a new and more positive defense of a free “education as [the] bulwark of human rights.”101 The rhetorical move from “freedom from” to “a human right to freely chose,” made it obvious to many that “the Americans can and should lead the way in implementing the Declaration of Human Rights.”102

Knowledge Society The current effort to transform the university into a competitive enterprise rests upon a similar rhetoric of freedom. And as I have already mentioned, it reflects a similar trust in science and scientific knowledge as that conveyed by the American discourse on free education in the 1950s. In fact, the justification for promoting privately funded schools and commercial scientific enterprises in the 1950s rested, paradoxically perhaps, upon a new faith in science as a cultural force and as a “self-correcting procedure.”103 The assumption that universities could best serve democratic society when communities of scientists were allowed to freely pursue their own interests was based on the conviction that logical or scientific reasoning provided a stable foundation to protect society against irrational forces. Furthermore, encouraging individuals to develop their own idiosyncrasies presumably rested on a conviction that the human ability to reason and make independent and responsible judgments would serve as a buffer against the passivity, insecurity, and dangerous wishful thinking that was now synonymous with any solitary contemplation, metaphysical ideas, abstract theories, or remote-from-life goals. References to freedom, for obvious reasons, did have great public appeal in the postwar years. However, since the only guarantee that this freedom would prevail was science and sober reasoning, there was an underlying assumption that any problem, social conflict, or threat could be solved by rational thinking—a scientific method. The advent of the Cold War and the entry of refugee scientists, many of whom

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(e.g., belonging to the Vienna Circle, arriving in the 1930s) had been persecuted by the Nazi regime, contributed to an even stronger reliance on science. The scientists’ battle against communist purges, censorship, public prosecution, and loyalty oaths in American universities in the 1950s, which, in fact, were justified by a similar reference to freedom,104 were more evidence to prove that science—and the critical thinking exemplified by the empirical scientist—was the only countervailing force against any perverted outlook on freedom.105 Against the “danger of popular hysteria,”106 it also became clear that educators had a particular “responsibility to make clear the contributions colleges and universities make to the welfare of society.”107 However, the trust in science also engendered a belief that the values and norms that guided the scientific enterprise (i.e., tolerance and honesty, neutrality, universalism, disinterestedness, testifiability, detached reasoning, etc.) could, in fact, provide the ethical foundation for other disciplines, apart from the natural sciences, and even for an entire way of life.108 One of the perhaps inevitable consequences of this new and apparently desperate reliance on science in the late 1950s and 1960s, was a new public concern about the moral integrity of the individual scholar. The discourse dealing with the humanities’ relevance to contemporary society indicates that scholars in general were expected to be the carriers of an ethical norm in society. Moreover, it was thought reasonable that science should be safeguarded from any immoral and irrational attitudes or disorderly conduct.109

The Knowledgeable Society The contemporary discourse on the knowledge society is supported by a similar faith in the ability of science to provide an ethical norm for a new global culture, and likewise, to provide an invisible hand, as it were, in the economic exchange of goods and services. Science—both as product and as attitude—is assumed to be the energy that drives the engine of democracy in the direction of ultimate freedom and equality. In fact, the present enthusiasm that surrounds references to a knowledge society may indicate the triumph of a scientific outlook, much like the one conveyed by the American discourse on science and democracy in the 1960s. The introduction of the modernization theory, which was one of the intellectual innovations in the social sciences in the 1960s, has often been regarded as a consequence of the postwar faith in the power of science to provide progress on a large scale. And since science or

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effective reasoning was the expression of democracy and vice versa, any further development of democracy had to be analyzed in terms of the spread of the “scientific spirit” (i.e., knowledgeability) to all segments of the population in countries worldwide. The reformers in the 1960s, as Hollinger has pointed out, regarded the spread of a scientific attitude to the great masses as the dawning of a new era, when actions were no longer guided by superstition, ideologies, or special interests, but by “neutral scientific knowledge.”110 However, by the word ‘triumph,’ I also refer to the underlying assumption, if not promise, reflected in the present discourse, that scientification or the spread of knowledgeability will render conflicting interests—politics—obsolete. This assumption is similar to the assumption held to be true in the 1960s.111 And like the new era projected by the current reformers in their reference to Mode 2 or the knowledge society, the social scientists of the 1960s also imagined the dawning of a new democratic era governed by scientific knowledge. In 1966, Robert E. Lane named this new era a “knowledgeable society.”112 A knowledgeable society is one in which its members . . . inquire into the basis of their beliefs about man, nature, and society . . . are guided (perhaps unconsciously) by objective standards of veridical truth, . . . follow scientific rules of evidence and inference in inquiry; . . . devote considerable resources to this inquiry and thus have a large store of knowledge, . . . collect, organize, and interpret further meaning from it for the purpose at hand; . . . employ this knowledge to illuminate (and perhaps) modify their values and goals as well as to advance them.113

III. THE UNIVERSITY: EDUCATOR OF CITIZENS AND SCHOLARS In the previous section, I addressed the question concerning the role of the university as generator of a democratic society. In this section, I address the role attributed to the university as educator of individual citizens and future scholars. In the introduction of this chapter, I pointed out that there is an imperative present in NPK and similar texts, which insists that the university must respond to the society’s new demand for flexible academic workers.

Flexible Producers The present transformation is justified with references to an emerging new reality, in which knowledge production is an on-going process, and where there is a continuous need for producers who are able to

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re-enter new and different contexts of application. To contribute to progress, the researcher needs to be skilled in the ability “to put things together in unique ways.”114 The frequent references to “flexibility” and the “ability to learn new skills,” indicates that education is understood as a lifelong process of adjusting one’s abilities to society’s changing demands. Thus, the skills that are best adjusted to the new demands are the cognitive skills associated with problem solving. The message is that universities need to inculcate this problem-solving capability in all segments of the population. The new ideal scholars are flexible and dynamic; they travel fast and light, can engage in interdisciplinary work, enter into formal and informal communicative exchanges, take part in transient teams, and have the capacity to get involved in multiple sites of knowledge production. Intellectual and geographic mobility is, in other words, the new measure of good scholarship. Modern mass higher education teaches people not to become too closely devoted to one occupation or a single set of skills. It prepares them for the likelihood that both will change often and that they must travel fast. To travel fast, one must travel light, in skills as well as attitudes. The only skill that does not become obsolete is the skill of learning new skills.115

The emphasis on mobility makes it obvious that “old” curiosity-driven researchers within stable homogeneous disciplines are outdated, and the transformation of old-fashioned researchers into flexible producers is inevitable. The new Mode 2 scholars are presented as liberated from disciplinary constraints, free to use their cognitive skills creatively in dynamic, intersubjective relationships. The flexible and multitalented academic scholars are thus synonymous with entrepreneurs: neither subordinated to any intellectual discipline, authority, or field, nor subject to the commands of peers. The Mode 2 scholars are free to pursue any goal and use their skills for the benefit of society. The flexible academic workers that currently constitute the norm of academic identity represent almost the exact opposite of the character and abilities that conventionally, at least within the European context, have been associated with academic scholarship, such as intellectual maturity and having a critical ethos. Formerly, the ability to generate independent and critical assessments was thought to depend on an indepth understanding of the subject at hand. Such abilities could only be cultivated in freedom and solitude, by multifaceted learning, within stable disciplines, in intellectual collaboration with competent peers. In fact, to portray the university as a training ground—a laboratory for

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the training of cognitive skills—indicates that a different set of rules, as it were, now determines how we are to approach the question of scholarship and citizen education.

Citizenship Training—Bildung I have tried to convey how the early American reformers insisted that the university’s goal was to provide citizenship training. This was not a training of cognitive skills, but a training of the will, thus a training that could be done only in freedom. The student was supposed to cultivate the ability of free and independent thinking by being exposed to a large variety of books, thoughts, customs, current events, and such. In accordance with the ideals and principles of Humboldt, they believed that independent and free thought could be fostered but never forced (e.g., through discipline). The following words expressed by Harvard President Charles W. Eliot, on the goal of the university as a training ground of wisdom, could just as well have been uttered by Humboldt: [T]he highest end of the highest education is not anything that can be thought directly, but is the consummation of all studies. It is the final result of intellectual culture in the development of the breath, serenity, and solidity of mind, and in the attainment of the complete self-possession which finds expression in character.116

However, to train the ability to think critically and independently is not the same as utilizing the university as an instrument for the conscious production of individuals skilled in solving problems. Although the early reformers clearly assumed there was a relationship between one’s motivation and one’s actions and judgments, and they insisted that higher education was a way to foster certain human qualities, such as determination or calmness, the deliberate training of flexible and cognitively skilled academic workers was yet unknown. And although they were concerned with adjusting education to the new demands for vocational training, they tried to prevent reducing the quest for truth to being the mere application of a scientific norm or procedure. Knowledge was more than deduction from a rule. Their conviction— that the university was a training ground for citizenship—was closely tied to the discourse on individual cultivation, and to Humboldt’s notion of Bildung. I have argued that the German educational ideal of Bildung was patterned on the Greek idea of formation (paideia); thus, it was assumed

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to be a process by which the scholars were gradually equipped with the ability to critically investigate facts and apply their imaginations to transform insight into definite expressions or interpretations. Bildung was the result of interplay between two processes: the cultivation of inner capabilities (individuation) and the outer interchange of one’s individuality with others (collaboration). The purpose of the university was to provide the ground from which Wissenschaft, in the deepest and broadest sense of the word, was cultivated.117 In other words: [the university was to] congregate students in a community devoted to learning (Wissenschaft), and to vouchsafe their total freedom to interact with their peers in an environment which, saturated with learning, proffered numerous models of consummate cultivation.118

Inasmuch as the university was expected to foster moral men and good citizens, Humboldt was clearly inspired by the Greek polis, where the individual and citizen were one, and where paideia was a way to train “temperate and energetic citizens.” He believed that freedom within the university would create the social bonds or associations necessary for cultivating each individual’s interests and intellectual dispositions. His idea of individual Bildung was intimately related to a more fundamental cosmopolitan belief in universal humanism. The overriding goal was to provide new insight into the diverse and polymorphous nature—spirit—of mankind; professional qualifications and civic responsibilities were merely by-products.

Training Cognitive Skills Today’s efforts to transform the university into a producer of flexible, service workers, indicates a radical break with the discourse on Bildung. The assumption—that universities can be used to provide certain practical proficiencies, or in this case, cognitive skills—resonates better with the discourse on practicability introduced by American progressives in the late nineteenth century. For these reformers, education was regarded as an important remedy in transforming “static” individuals, those embedded in ethnic networks and old family clans, into dynamic and flexible decision-makers a modern world demanded. I have previously mentioned Dewey’s conception of the new academic scholar. He was one who acted not as the remote-from-life speculator119 or the pious monk, but one who, in a similar manner to the Renaissance merchant, was involved in society and used his skills

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intelligently for social ends.120 To participate in civic life was a sign of independence and a well-functioning modern society, relived from the traditions and authorities of the past.121 The versatile yet civic-minded merchant thus became an imitable example for a new sober-minded and practical attitude associated with one who “saves and spends, yet neither embezzles nor gambles.”122

The Pioneer on an Endless Frontier However, with the social unrest and socioeconomic changes following World War I, freedom of trade was increasingly regarded as the most efficient way to combat social friction. And soon, the commercial market substituted the Renaissance town market as the model for how democratic freedom could be explored and exercised; thus, it was cast in terms of material self-interest and a “quest for success.” This development eventually made the “pioneer”—interpreted as the industrial entrepreneur and the mobile and flexible consumer—into the new democratic and eventually scientific ideal.123 Hence, the present-day references to mobility and flexibility indicate that it perhaps is this American pioneer, that is the primary source of inspiration for the current reformers. In fact, George Mead’s metaphorical description of the pioneer fits well with the image of the scholarly ideal currently promoted, although Mead uses the pioneer as a metaphor for the history of the American community. He travels light, and what he carried with him had to be useful enough to justify its transportation. Most utensils had to serve more than one purpose, and this was as true of the institutions which he carried with him as of other tools, and as true of the ideas which lay behind these institutions.124

As elaborated in my previous chapters, for the progressive reformers, the purpose of education was to train independent decision makers, yet also individuals with a distinct “we-feeling.” The concept of socialization that came into common usage in the early nineteenth century, hints at the additional role given to the university, namely, to generate a civic spirit and a collective American identity.125 This was known as the Americanization movement. However, the preoccupation with analyzing the relationship between the mind (i.e., temper, sentiments, emotions, attitudes, etc.) and action, which eventually endowed “We, the Americans” with a more definite content, may also have provided new possibilities for those who disapproved of the German influence,

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and who opted for restoring the “well-rounded gentleman” and community leader. The diagnosis of “a German soul,” during and after World War I, previously mentioned, suggests that a new repertoire was available for those who sought to separate American education from any seemingly foreign influence. The attack on German immigrants, the large-scale dismissal of scholars of German,126 and the general discontent regarding German scholarship (particularly historicism) suggests that efforts to separate the conception of an American university from that of the German university had garnered wider support.

Bildung Reconsidered: “Building the Mind” I have mentioned that Dewey’s disregard for German philosophy may have fostered a suspicion that there could be a link between a German temperament and the atrocities of war. For Dewey, paying duty to abstract ideas was potentially dangerous because it made individuals subservient to authorities. He argued that German universities, which, “really and not just nominally, [are] under the control of the state and part of state life”127 fostered passive and submissive individuals who did not think for themselves, but merely sought goals assigned to them by superiors. The same signs of authoritarianism he had noticed among immigrants were now identified as traits in German scholars and researchers. As loyalties to any ethnic clan or group were signs of a premodern attitude, so were loyalties to a state similarly associated with a pre-modern, eventually antimodern and thus conservative attitude. The development of pedagogy as a science offered new means for evaluating, measuring, and qualifying different educational methods and practices. And with new psychological insights,128 it became possible to qualify the (German) educational practices as unable to provide individual students with the mental traits (self-reliance, independence, flexibility, etc.) necessary for handling the uncertainties of modern life.129 With the new “gospel of the mind,” the university under the German influence, in other words, was unable to foster the personality a modern society demanded, due to its obvious absence of guidance, isolation of students, boring lectures, and poor undergraduate life. Thus, it was deemed premodern. Bildung was no longer understood as a gradual maturing of the will, but instead as a deliberate effort to “build the mind.” And as such, Bildung was evidence of an educational system falling short of building a wholesome civic attitude. German education failed to produce the well-rounded individual who could enter into communication and engage himself in active

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interchange with others in his community. Instead, the German university fostered a passive, self-enclosed egotist, who “bethought himself of a faculty of judgment . . . exercised in Contemplation,”130 and who in private contemplation of the pure, remote from ordinary experiences, was devoted to useless knowledge for its own sake. Thus, the psychological road was opened leading to the ivory tower of “Beauty” remote from all desire, action, and stir of emotion.131

The tendency to link the German ideals to psychological maladjustment was reinforced during World War II, as it was feared that the claimed lack of guidance etc. could make masses of students easy victims to totalitarian movements, as they believed it had done in Germany. Overspecialization was the mark of an educational system where different disciplines promoted narrow partisan points of view. Thus, it lacked the all-important general view. Furthermore, the proclaimed devotion to abstract ideas was not merely deemed impractical; it surely fostered a dependency and passivity that could lead to dangerous antisocial behavior such as indifference, or worse, subversive activity.

General Education: “Well-Rounded Individuals” The Harvard Report from 1945 reflects postwar anxieties that gradually and more generally were directed at curbing what were deemed to be perilous tendencies in American education. The report was initiated and enhanced by the defenders of the Anglo-British collegiate system, and as such, it was marked by a general disregard for German educational ideals.132 The new educational policy for American universities—referred to as a new “educational philosophy”—was a synthesis of Anglo-British scholasticism and progressive modernism,133 and formed by what the reformers saw as a basic similarity between the two, namely their mutual adherence to the essential worth of man, for man’s dignity and his right to claim respect. And since they adhered to the scientific view of a natural order, “in which every event is relevant to every other [and] surely is not unconnected from the Christian doctrine of a divine plan,”134 they believed that to foster intelligent reasoning through a scientific attitude was the best way to continue the humanistic outlook of Christianity. Thus, the best way to nurture Christian values was to promote a secular liberal education devoted to the whole man. This implied that profound dedication to scientific truth and a commitment to values and ideal ends should be an integrated part of the new education:

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In order to think soundly, one must be devoted to the truth, one must have intellectual integrity, one must suppress wishful thinking. Thinking has its own moral code served by an appropriate intellectual conscience.135

Reintroducing Mental Discipline The new policy promoted by the Harvard reformers reveals a subtle effort to reintroduce discipline into education, to avoid any temptation of falling back on dangerous abstract ideas.136 In fact, General Education was described as a means by which to “raise humans over the animal level and make them truly human.”137 In order to civilize the whole man, it was necessary to subject the individual’s passions—his innate desires, drives, and sentiment—to reason. This implied that such an education was to be differentiated into the three essential “modes of thought,” which were provided by science, social studies, and the humanities. Each had a particular disciplinary function in shaping liberal individuals. They were directed by reason to good ends: Science provided certainty and accurate predictions, social studies enabled one to identify relations between men and historical context, while the humanities trained the imagination and provided a revelation of values.138

A Postmodern Code of Conduct The assumption reflected in NPK and similar texts that free trade in ideas can remedy any kind of educational elitism is echoed in the North American scholarly discourse on science in the late 1950s and 1960s. I have tried to show how the postwar trust in science engendered a new optimism that science, or rather a scientific attitude, was the essential foundation for a democratic culture, and could therefore foster “an ethics of human relationships and an ideal of personal fulfilment.”139 Science was thus privileged to supply society with the norms that generated culture, and with the rules for resolving any social conflict. Significantly, the reference to the Mode 2 university as a “generator of cultural norms” indicates an optimism similar to that conveyed by the postwar reformers concerning the university’s role as a provider of liberal culture. Reference to these norms as less substantive and more procedural (i.e., pertaining to “the standards of intellectual conduct and the maintenance of a culture of liberal rationality”140) indicates that the Mode 2 university can fulfill its function as generator of a democratic culture by teaching each student to think and act as a scientist. This suggests, paradoxically perhaps, that a postmodern

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liberal culture is best promoted by disciplining individuals into behaving scientifically in a routine manner. This routine is what NPK more commonly refers to as teaching reflexivity: to discipline one’s impulses by routinely considering the probable practical consequences of one’s thought and actions. The assumption that the new Mode 2 university can function as a generator of procedures of proper conduct is echoed in the postwar emphasis on the spread of the scientific attitude. The crucial question is: Are the current reforms similar efforts to suppress wishful thinking and to discipline individual attitudes in accordance with a scientific norm? The reference to procedure suggests that there is a particular moral code for how we are to think and act as flexible scientists in the new knowledge society. The present emphasis on standards of intellectual conduct and a common curriculum makes one wonder whether it is the “code” of the “well-rounded gentleman” that sets the norm for the current ideal: the committed, cognitively skilled, yet flexible academic worker. Thus, there is another crucial question: Is it a reappropriation of the sixteenth-century gentleman’s moral code of honor141 that is considered the most appropriate model for a postmodern education of the global masses? These thought-provoking questions prompt further critical concerns: If science is assumed to provide the ethical norms for a society and if the scholar is expected to act in accordance with these same norms, then the moral integrity of the individual scholar becomes an issue of public concern. The perhaps unintended effect of endowing scientists with such a responsibility may, in fact, be a loss of academic freedom and a sanctioning of intellectual conformity and compliance, a complacency commonly referred to as “political correctness.” The way American intellectuals and humanist scholars in the 1950s and 1960s were expected to act in accordance with the ethical code provided by scientific reason, and thus became targets of suspicion and critical scrutiny,142 may serve as an example of how academic freedom is actually jeopardized when science is elevated to the status of a cultural norm.

IV. THE STATUS OF SCIENCE AND ACADEMIC ACTIVITY This section addresses more broadly the status of the concept of science and the specificity of academic activity as conveyed by NPK and similar texts. As in the previous section, an attempt is made to pinpoint the possible historical origins of the present representation.

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Science: The Application of Practical Tools NPK clearly reveals that a new conception of science is operative, and subsequently, that a new understanding of academic work has emerged. In fact, the mutual interchanging of the terms ‘science’ and ‘knowledge,’ signals a break with the traditional way of distinguishing science from common knowledge by reference to systematic methods of inquiry. In Mode 2, no particular method is assumed to be more important than any other for determining whether an investigation is scientific. Science is synonymous with a set of capabilities or practical tools for problem solving, which are put into action and adjusted to the context at hand. The scientific quest for knowledge prevailing in Mode 1 is described in more reductive terms as “pure research,” regulated by a formal method, or as a set of practices determined by a pregiven set of methodological criteria. More specifically, Mode 1 is represented as a form of knowledge production that has grown up to “control the diffusion of the Newtonian model to more and more fields of enquiry and ensure its compliance with what is considered sound scientific practice.”143 In contrast to Mode 2, where practices are determined by the criteria set by the context of application, the practices in Mode 1 are founded upon the cognitive and social norms laid down in the Newtonian model and are “by definition scientific” if they adhere to these rules.144 The representation of Mode 2 provides a contrast on the basis of which we identify the nature of science or scientific knowledge in Mode 1. Mode 2 science is portrayed as a free application of devices and skills to a particular problem. Science is equivalent to a collaborative effort among the involved parties, who together determine the criteria for evaluating the result. Moreover, because it is the purpose at hand that determines what is true (in the pragmatic sense of warranted assertability), there is no longer any need for the specialist whose expertise is regulated by a preset disciplinary standard. Since knowledge production is an ongoing process—an endless frontier—what are needed are mobile, skilled individuals with adequate social abilities to enable communication and cooperation with others. The purported efficiency and egalitarianism of Mode 2 provides the contrast for helping us realize how rigid and inflexible the scientific knowledge production of the old Mode 1 is. The use of words like ‘pure’ and ‘curiosity’ associated with the research activity of Mode 1 suggests that the motivation for research is “knowledge for its own sake.” And since the aim and purpose of research is defined or located within a

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scientific community, it is assumed to be detached from the world of practical problems. Such descriptions make it obvious to the reader that the university in its present state is “a luxury and social nuisance and disturber,”145 unfit for solving the problems of a complex postindustrial society. In addition, the assumption that methods function as validating criteria for regulating conduct and determining the success or failure of individual scholars within the community, suggests that the university in Mode 1 science is a social system, where methods are means for controlling job performance, the quality of products, and for sanctioning the norms that reinforce a social hierarchy of masters and servants (i.e., academic guild).

Whose Science? Which Enlightenment? The representation of Mode 1 science as an activity subordinated to a preset method finds no resonance in Humboldt’s initial claim that in-depth research (Wissenschaft) and a perpetual search for truth are the guiding principles of a university. Indeed, the reference to science in Mode 1 is quite ambiguous. The assumption that Mode 1 science is a set of practices that controls the diffusion of the Newtonian model to evermore fields of inquiry indicates that the concept of science is understood quite narrowly, as the application of positivistic methods for facilitating explanations and predictions based on empirical observations. This may suggest that Mode 1 science is equivalent to mathematics and the natural sciences. For instance, in England, the term “science” has traditionally referred to mathematics and the exact natural sciences of a Newtonian kind, which were set against those not regarded as sciences, such as handicrafts, technology, industry, and so forth. In the Continental German tradition, however, sciences are defined by the nature of the subject to be studied, and not by a certain standard of scientificality. Thus, a distinction is drawn between Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften, or natural sciences and human sciences.146 However, the reference may also be an allusion to a more general diagnosis of “enlightenment rationality” as conveyed by, for instance, Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialectic of Enlightenment.147 The emphasis on Mode 2 science, on the other hand, as the capability to bring one’s flexible skills into transaction with that of others within a given context, finds an immediate echo in the pragmatic conception of scientific inquiry, sometimes referred to as “experimentalism” or a “laboratory habit of mind.”148 Thus, it appears that NPK and similar texts’ reference to “cognitive skills” is very

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similar to the pragmatic notion of science as an attitude characterized by practical problem solving.

Reflexivity: A Natural “Scientific Attitude” I have mentioned how Dewey insisted that scholars should not be like “speculators” or distant spectators but more like actors, who used their skills actively and creatively to produce usable and sharable knowledge. To do this, a new and more practical (i.e., particular) method of inquiry was needed. Joined with this was the term ‘warranted assertability,’ which denoted a new criterion to guide a scientific and instrumental inquiry toward an end. Scientific truth was thus determined by criteria established in relation to a particular situation, and not by its correspondence to external laws. However, for scholars to provide usable knowledge, the new mode of inquiry or mode of knowing (modeled from pragmatic philosophy) had to become second nature to the mind, outlook, or consciousness of the individual. Dewey eventually referred to this as a “scientific habit of mind” or a “scientific attitude.”149 The reference to reflexivity in NPK and its sister texts indicate a similar mode of inquiry rooted within the mind or attitude of the scholar; reflexivity is associated with sensitivity or an “emotional” awareness of the context in which one is expected to act.150 This notion is presented as novel, new, and better adjusted to a complex postindustrial society. Nonetheless, the problems of “how to render things intelligible” and “how to find an equivalent mode of inquiry” had already been addressed in a remarkably similar way by Dewey in 1910. His inquiry and subsequent solutions were the result of his specific attacks on idealism or what he referred to as the intellectualists’ theory of truth. Dewey rallied against this conception of truth and its determination of the intelligible and stated his own position as being one of “anti-intellectualism.” Like the present discourse’s reliance on science and cognitive skills, Dewey reacted not so much to the intellectualists’ emphasis on rationality or logic in determining what knowledge was. Rather, he reacted against the intellectualists’ isolation of the knowledge standpoint (in procedures and criteria), from its functional place and role—an isolation which is equivalent, of course, to making knowledge an ultimate and all-inclusive philosophic criterion.151

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Dewey insisted that the vice of intellectualism lay primarily in the false abstraction of knowledge and logic from their working context.152 Philosophy was, as he saw it, a mode of knowledge that “indeed may render things more intelligible or give greater insight into existence,” but these considerations were, subject to the final criterion of what it means to acquire insight and to make things intelligible, i.e., namely, service of special purposes in behavior, and limits by the special problems in which the need of insight arises.153

Dewey furthermore addressed the question of the “implication of the self” in the knowledge-event, or rather, the relation of an agent to an act (i.e., the assumption that the ego, subject or self, undertakes and is responsible for the cognitive act). The difficulties of conceiving the relation between the agent and the act (i.e., epistemology) would disappear, he assumed, since these difficulties did not concern a relation constitutive of a special discipline, but were “specific, concrete difficulties of the same sort that manifest themselves in the consideration of any function of any living organism.”154 The wholesale “ego-centric predicament” disappears and for it is substituted the concrete question of how an act in the way of knowing is related to other types of action.155

Thus, Dewey rejected the “ego-centric predicament” of intellectualism and replaced it with “reflective intelligence.” Moreover, in much the same manner as he referred to reflective intelligence, the contemporary practice of reflexivity is presented as an integrated or embedded mode of inquiry, where the act of judgment, more or less, is a reflex or automatic behavioral response, in which ‘ought’ and ‘is’ are inseparable. The assumption that there is an intimate relationship between ideas in our mind and action, suggests an influence from James and Dewey on the present discourse, especially from their early writings on reflex-action156 although it is considerably reworked and suited to a scientific method of logic, as signified by the present focus on specific analytic skills. However, the conflation of ‘ought’ and ‘is’ suggests a normative position similar to our determination concerning morals: What we ought to do is synonymous with what we do. The possibility of a moral judgment, or an assumption of the “good,” being an integral part of an appropriate scientific attitude, was further enforced in the much later debate on

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General Education, where the reformers obviously believed that fostering reason through a scientific attitude was the only way to continue the humanistic outlook of Christianity. This was the background for why a scientific ethic, or rather, scientific humanism157 became such an important part of the postwar policy of liberal education.

The Question of Values Reflexivity is assumed to be a scientific attitude, orientation, or selfawareness; thus, it is a quality more profoundly integrated into the personality and conduct of each individual scholar. Indeed, the contemporary “doctrine of reflexivity” is justified by implicit reference to ancient or purportedly eternal or universal virtues, such as intellectual sobriety and honesty, which are assumed to provide a code; or perhaps even function like a coordinating nervous reflex, which habitually or mechanically accompanies the application of scientific skills.158 Contrary to what one may expect, working in the context of application increases the sensitivity of scientist and technologist to the broader implications of what they are doing. Operating in Mode 2 makes all participants more reflexive. . . . [T]he deepening of understanding this brings, in turn, has an effect on what is considered worthwhile doing and hence, on the structure of the research itself.159

Intimately related to the conception of reflexivity in the contemporary discourse, is the conception of social accountability, which refers to the criterion that “forms part of the context of application.”160 The term refers to a sensitivity to the implications and outcomes of research that is “built in from the start,”161 including “the values and preferences of different individuals and groups that have traditionally been outside the scientific and technological system.”162 The promise is that these “outsiders” can now become active agents in the definition of problems and their solutions, as well as in the evaluation of performance.163 A prerequisite for this to occur is the reflexivity of scholars who try to operate from the standpoint of all actors involved. The conspicuous similarities between the aims and claims of the notions warranted assertability and social accountability on the one hand, and reflective intelligence and reflexivity on the other, suggest that the former may have provided the condition for the existence of the latter notions.164 The Deweyan terms denoted alternatives constructed from his reaction against pure science and German intellectualism,

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while the latter two contemporary notions point toward a more abstract target: the scientific practice of Mode 1. The reference to a new and emerging reality provides the justification for the current need for transformation, and not some troublesome, yet specific notions of truth or methods. But if we look beyond this difference of aims, the remaining similarities suggest that the old mode of thinking has been reappropriated into a new setting. However, the initial historical conflict—the American battle with certain German ideals, which was the immediate background for Dewey’s reactions—is hidden from view.

Humanities: From Investigatory Sciences to Ethics Dewey’s effort to place all judgment on an experimental basis has been regarded as having prepared the way for logical positivism.165 The scientism that gradually emerged served to expel the historical from political science,166 and thereby make it a more viable instrument for social change. The transformation of science from being understood as an in-depth examination into various and sundry subject matters, into being understood as a rigorous instrumental method, also rendered the very idea of human sciences obsolete. And, as I have tried to show, the World Wars contributed to giving Dewey’s scientific attitude—what he proclaimed was a crucial factor for the future of American society and what Charles S. Peirce similarly claimed for the international community167—a new and even stronger normative or moral basis.168 The spread of a scientific attitude was tantamount to the diffusion of democratic values; the Christian humanist values of a “liberal culture.” The present emphasis on “sensitivity to values” suggests an influence from the American postwar discourse, in particular, the Harvard Report’s justification for a threefold division between the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The resurrection of traditional humanities, now understood as a particular type of thinking, was made possible by prior and precluding reactions against any specialized human science. J. Douglas Brown’s (1950) ridicule of teachers in the humanities, who “under the lingering influence of the German tradition”169 went “scientific in the detailed analysis and classification of the anatomy of great literature and art,”170 may serve as an example of the efforts to restore a traditional liberal education in which the humanities are regarded as the repository of Western humanistic values: In [going scientific], they have in some degree dulled their sensitivity to the eternal values inherent in the living expression of the past, and

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have lessened their ability to transmit these values with enthusiasm and inspiration.171

However, Brown’s text also illustrates the growing anxiety among scholars concerning the spread of science, particularly the potential dangers involved in teaching science—without the aid of values—to the large and uneducated masses. To teach science with no regard for the purposes for which science should be used was to “put a high powered instrument for material progress or destruction into the hands of spiritual and moral adolescents.”172 I have mentioned how the postwar policy of liberal education promoted by the Harvard reformers was a response to anxieties concerning over-specialization and a subsequent lack of moral guidance. The aim was to equip man for free and responsible living by fostering his ability to reason. To foster a secular scientific attitude was thus regarded as the most appropriate means for implementing Christian humanist values, since “[s]cience has done more than provide the material basis of the good life; it has directly fostered the values of humanism.”173 A similar fear of disintegration seems to set a condition for the current discourse on education and values. The scientific attitude signified by the term “reflexivity” is assumed to bring about a deepening of understanding. This understanding, in its turn, affects “what is considered worthwhile doing and hence, . . . the structure of research itself.”174And since reflexivity within research process spreads among disciplines, “the humanities too are experiencing an increased demand for the sort of knowledge they can offer.”175 The assumption is that reflexivity corresponds to contextualization or reflection on values. If reflexivity is an activity, like the practices of the humanities, then it follows that the humanities are understood as being reflections on traditional Western humanist values (i.e., reference to Socratic virtues) with an eye to their relevance “for the entire human experience.”176 [R]eflection of the values implied in human aspiration has been a traditional concern for the humanities. . . . their reflexivity is expected to carry meaning for the entire human experience, to enrich the domain of signification.177

This assumption—that the humanities may offer instruction in values or human virtues that are helpful for each individual’s behavior in decision-making—indicates a radical break with the conception of independent human sciences. Yet, it may suggest a continuation of a traditional Anglo-British conception of the humanities as synonymous

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with the classics, understood as containing wisdom and virtues necessary for character building. I have shown how the human sciences within the American universities were gradually linked with the arts and were reduced to being “the humanities,” characterized by “a common concern for values.” As such, they were expected to assume their responsibility and fulfill their proper function in liberal education. A similar expectation can be detected in the prevailing discourse, where the human sciences are reduced to agencies responsible for instructing students in religious and philosophical concepts.178 The current focus, however, is on their moral relevance or use in contemporary life; since their obligation is primarily to enrich experience and foster understanding, thereby providing some sort of moral guidance for decision-makers and offering standards to validate individual choices. For universities to fulfill their responsibility to assist students “in thinking systematically about moral and ethical problems,”179 the content the humanities have to offer needs to be simplified or made general. This may indicate that the American postwar reaction once again diminishing the human sciences to “just another commodity in the general store of knowledge”180 is highly relevant today.

Beyond Kultur to Cultural Production The current depiction of the humanities—not as cultural producers, but as cultural transmitters (i.e., those working in higher education, publishers, magazines, broadcasting, theaters, museums, etc.)—illustrates that the notion of Kultur has been replaced by culture and made synonymous with any kind of production and social distribution of knowledge. The free production of cultural products, an assumed characteristic of Mode 2, is depicted as more democratic than the more restricted, if not controlled, production in Mode 1, which is described as elitist and reliant on an old-fashioned patronage (i.e., state subsidies), in which “the state behaves much like the Renaissance prince.”181 This representation of the state as a Renaissance prince might be an allusion to Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince and thus to his depiction of the state as a coercive force. The assessment serves to justify the assumption that the commercialization of culture is a natural move beyond the “feudal” to a more egalitarian social order, where the needs and demands of individuals, hitherto described as “a much greater cultural diversification”182 have replaced the old elitist cultural production. The commercialization of culture is similarly presented as more democratic because the criteria for what is deemed accountable

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(i.e., relevant/good) is determined by social practice rather than by reference to quality agreed on by expert communities supported by the state patron. Another Mode 2 characteristic, transdiciplinarity, is also endemic in the humanities, largely because arts disciplines have always lacked the robust construction typical of the sciences. . . . philosophy, history, literature and the others are much more loosely organized, professional micro-cultures held together by intellectual affinity but also marked by contradictory, even conflicting, interpretive communities. . . . The disciplinary frontiers have always been permeable in the humanities.183

The Problem of History: A Usable Past The new humanities are furthermore attributed with an intellectual energy to provide new, usable knowledge, described as “the ceaseless interrogation of the past by the present.”184 Although all the humanities contribute in this interrogation, it in only history, NPK states, that is constructed entirely on this premise. This notion echoes an instrumental understanding of the humanities, where particularly history is regarded as a source that can be simplified and used for specific purposes. However, the proclaimed free or ceaseless interrogation into the past is, as indicated by the following warning, not entirely free: Out of this interrogation of the past by the present, if it is not pursued with rigor and integrity, can come a demoralising relativism. The alarming tendencies in modern societies towards narcissism and atomism, the decline in civic participation, the increasing sense that all relations and commitments are revocable, and the growth of increasingly “instrumental” attitudes towards nature and society are all manifestations of a slide to subjectivism to which modern society is prone. The social contextualisation of the humanities, now more explicit and insistent than ever, carries with it this danger, although some would describe such contextualisation as reflexivity run amok. In its most radical and theorised form, as postmodernism, it can even be carried to self-contradictory extremes.185

The references in the above quote to “danger” in relation to “demoralizing relativism” and a “slide to subjectivism” indicate an underlying fear of a devastating future end, such as moral and social disintegration (narcissism/atomism) by a potentially “wrong” use of history. The quote reveals that the criteria of usefulness is determined by a notion of a future end, thus determined by a telos or underlying norm for what

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is good or true. There seems to be an underlying assumption in the text of a future reality—a utopia—that can be fulfilled,186 if only the proper means are furnished. And it is perhaps this underlying assumption, which provides the criteria for determining the kind of investigations deemed relevant or appropriate. The crucial question is whether it is an anticipated ideal end, presumably measured in ethical terms, that controls the interrogations and “products” that are considered useful and worth pursuing, rather than the plurality of needs and wants in the present multifaceted mass society.

Epilogue In this chapter I have tried to illuminate the possible historical descent of some elements that constitute the present discourse. I have argued that Dewey’s early effort to transform the university into a service institution may have established some of the historical conditions for the present norm for what a university is, yet I have insisted that his efforts were responses “in time” and rested upon a conviction that the university could be useful as an instrument to transform people’s attitudes and to engineer social change for the common good. In the last part of the chapter, I intend to re-approach Dewey’s “responses” and interpret these as “thought fragments” of an autonomous perspective that may have been excluded or reduced to minor importance in the present discourse on education, yet perhaps managed to survive in another form, presumably because they fulfill some unsatisfied needs. Thus, the purpose is not to determine the discursive effects of Dewey “theories,” but to briefly indicate the “critical potential” of his perspective in challenging the prevailing model—the “service university.” As such, this section is linked to chapter 2 (where the original Humboldt is recalled) and the next chapter, where Hannah Arendt’s ideas on education and “academic identity” are examined as possible elements of the original Humboldt that, though they have undergone change, may have managed to survive in another form. As I intend to show, Arendt’s ideas may thus call into question the established “truth” about Humboldt and thereby also challenge the prevailing “service university.” As I have tried to show, Dewey was convinced that the university could provide service to the “public and their problems.” However, the current emphasis on service in terms of “marketability” and “wealth-creating potential” seems far removed from Dewey’s intentions and appears to be at odds with his disapproval of utilitarian selfishness. Dewey’s attack on the German bureaucrats was not an attack

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on the state or the state university as such; it was an expression of his distrust of academic specialists, whom he saw as submerged in remote ideas, to the neglect of real experiences and social involvement. However, when the new university came to be understood in terms of service, the new researchers were referred to as “serviceable men,” and were given an identity antithetical to the “solitary speculators” found in the sort of university deemed remote-from-life and old-fashioned. Dewey’s metaphorical depiction of the new scholar as a “merchant” who could contribute with thoughts and enter into an exchange with others resonates with the current emphasis on a global knowledge market for the free trade in ideas. I have argued that Dewey’s merchant was an image borrowed from his invocation of the Renaissance as a usable past that could provide guidance for building a new present. The image of the current scholar as a “flexible producer and mobile pioneer” who contributes his cognitive capabilities and thereby increases the total wealth and prosperity of knowledge enterprises, seems to contradict Dewey’s image of the responsible scholar, who subordinates his own will to the welfare of society. For Dewey, a commitment to the common good implied a subordination of economic efficiency to social efficiency. In fact, it is difficult to understand Dewey’s fierce attack on idealism without taking into consideration his genuine faith in the possibilities for social change and democratic improvement through collective effort. His constant emphasis on the “social” as the condition that shaped the constitution and mentality of individuals made him conscious of the necessity of a state, yet a dynamic state that was continuously planning. And as David de Grood (1971) has pointed out, Dewey had experienced how “uncontrolled economic forces destroyed, for all practical purposes, many of the free institutions of America.”187 The best way institutions like the university, particularly the university’s philosophers, could serve democracy was to provide a backup or support for each individual’s basic desire for experience, growth, and self-realization; it was not to train individuals as flexible workers, adjustable to any situation and setting. Dewey’s distrust of universals of any kind, as some have pointed out, made him immune to influences that perhaps could have cemented a more solid foundation for his demand of equality and the common good.188 The revolution he envisaged was to be in the attitudes of people toward the needs and possibilities of life, which also explains his emphasis on creativity, interaction, on the “continuity of methods” and on continuous experimental inquiry.189 These were

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means to expanding the possibilities for action and thought. However, his apparent lack of universals or guiding ideological principles has led many of his readers to the conclusion that his radicalism “had no ideals, no goals and no theories”;190 and that it at best was guided by a vision of a future state, thus supported by a promise, a hope, or even a social utopia. The many labels used to denote his philosophy, such as ‘anthropological naturalism,’191 ‘naturalistic metaphysics,’192 ‘subjective pluralism,’ ‘organismic ontology,’193 ‘prophetic pragmatism,’194 and ‘objective relativism’195 may serve as evidence of the fact that ambiguity, if not indeterminacy, characterizes his works. Even so, one may also argue that, paradoxically enough, this indeterminacy is the very clue to understanding his account of reality—an ontology characterized by terms like ‘plasticity,’ ‘change,’ and ‘contingency.’ Some will perhaps agree with Sidney Hook, who in 1930, presumably as a compliment to both philosophers, stated that “part of Heidegger’s work sounds as if someone were trying to translate Dewey into a transcendental mythology.”196 Dewey and the progressives’ efforts for social reconstruction in the late nineteenth century were clearly shaped by the social conditions, unsolved problems, and concomitant disputes of their time. Their efforts were no doubt also inspired by the new Darwinian insights, and thus guided by a vision of a constantly or naturally evolving democracy. As mentioned earlier, Dewey was also particularly influenced by the social criticism of two heroes of his youth, the utopian novelist Edward Bellamy and the moralistic, social philosopher Henry George.197 Both had strong opinions about the need for a new social and economic order. The future democracy imagined by Dewey—a democracy where everyone can take part in the production and consummation of “goods”—bears some resemblance to the democratic promise embodied in the rhetorical construction the “knowledge society.” The “knowledge society” holds a similar postulate about a future end and as such, it rests on a similar utopian vision of a democracy in which “all those individuals and groups that traditionally have been placed outside the scientific system,” can finally “become active agents in the definition and solution of problems, as well take part in the evaluation of performance.”198 The arguments in favor of transformation are particularly effective when they are associated with such a powerful and enduring democratic vision as that of equal participation and individual empowerment. The managerial mode of speech that seems to have become normalized in the present discourse finds an echo in Dewey’s use of trade metaphors. I assume his choices of terms, such as ‘merchant’

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and ‘market,’ were meant as propositions or simple tools with which to evoke images of a future society where universities, together with other knowledge producers, could provide service to society and exchange thoughts for other goods on a common market. Some writers have pointed out that Dewey’s effort to ameliorate societal ills was guided by the same urge to reconstruct a (lost) unity, as can be found in the social prophecies of his contemporaries.199 However, the unity Dewey presumably craved, and which also provided the objective that would guide his own “quest for certainty,” was perhaps “Vermont village democracy projected upon the universe as a whole.”200 Although the global market currently emerging under the banner of the “knowledge society” presents us with a similar illusion of a large-scale village market, the references to economic efficiency and “wealth-creating potential” suggest that the mechanisms of supply and demand, rather than social needs determine how this new “democracy” is to progress. And because the “knowledge society” is presented as a “society” that does not exclude anyone, but rather invites everyone to participate on equal terms, any reforms that enhance the flow of “knowledge capital” (i.e., building down trade barriers, delimiting the role of the state, funding mechanisms to stimulate competition, common criteria for quality assurance, etc.) can be justified as necessary means to fulfill the promise of democracy. This is what makes the discourse on “knowledge society” particularly resistant to critique and the “service university” so compelling. I have suggested that the image of the “knowledge society” as a large-scale democracy is enabled by the displacement of any viable alternatives, such as that of the autonomous state university. The current “flow of knowledge” is appealing only insofar as it is presented as more democratic than the exchange of knowledge that has been customary between autonomous state universities. It presupposes a new interpretation of autonomy, one that simultaneously renders the old interpretation, descending from the Enlightenment, suspicious. The “knowledge society,” in other words, is appealing under the condition that academic autonomy is no longer understood as autonomy protected within state universities, but rather as the right of active agents—universities, as well as scholars and students—to enter into any exchange. For the new interpretation to acquired legitimacy, the state needs to be depicted as a hindrance or a threat to further democratic progress—not a protector of such. I have argued that this interpretation might be imported from elsewhere and has its origin in the American reactions against the German (and Soviet) university and the

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subsequent postwar debates on the ills of state-“controlled” universities. This again may be related to the Americans’ traditional reluctance to government interference. The new “knowledge society” is conditioned upon a new recognition of individual rights. And the discourse on essential or universal human rights was, as I have tried to convey, an important ingredient in the postwar policy to promote a free market of trade in knowledge. Furthermore, a focus on rights was a condition for the new service conception to be exported worldwide201 as a universal model of liberal education appropriate for all societies in the free world. Dewey, who sometimes referred to his own philosophy as humanistic naturalism, was obviously concerned with the protection of the worth and dignity of each individual. However, the foundation for Dewey’s humanism was Darwin, as he repeatedly insisted that there was no fixed, readymade self. In fact, he rejected the idea of natural, inalienable human rights, as handed down by Kant and Locke, much in the same way he rejected the assumption of any fixed essences of “the good society.”202 To suppose that human nature was already present in the individual, would, he argued, only provide leeway for “laissez-faire liberalism,” so that any interference (i.e., control, regulation, planning, etc.) could be considered a constraint on the individual’s “natural” freedom. He ardently insisted that the “self” is a creation of society, a result of participation and interaction. Thus, it was the social dimension—the fraternity more than the liberty—that he regarded as the most important condition for the growth and self-realization of each individual, as well as for liberalism. Again, this has led many to believe that Dewey’s ethical ideal of self-fulfillment and continuous growth is related to Nietzsche’s “ethical” project of “becoming what you are.”203 This ethics is important in Richard Rorty’s effort to reclaim the legacy of Dewey. The current conception of knowledge as a “commodity” in a market regulated by “social accountability,” or public opinion (of the common good), rests on a similar maxim as the one provided by Dewey—that each situation must determine its own concrete good. The question, however, is whether it is possible to break the social world into a number of atomic situations—contexts of application—each with a determinate good? And how are we to determine or evaluate what is best if we have no common unit by which to measure heterogeneous social values? Moreover, one may ask, is it better for scientists to deliberately choose to fall into half-truths or errors—any belief or opinion warranted by assertion, but which still may be partial and misleading—rather than to suspend their judgment by recognizing

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that the practical necessity for making a choice does not remove their ignorance? I assume that since Dewey’s psychology is social and behavioral, he placed much emphasis on action. Taking this into account may help explain why he insisted it was better to “err in active participation” in the living struggles and issues of our time, than to maintain an “immune, monastic impeccability.”204 Furthermore, to argue that scientific quality can be adequately regulated by social accountability is perhaps to underestimate the intensity with which people differ in opinion on specific, practical issues. Dewey’s optimistic view of scientific inquiry and human intelligence may explain why he perhaps exaggerated the willingness of people to compromise and reach consensual agreements. Moreover, one may argue, to be the judge of issues one has not had an opportunity to examine with sufficient care entails that the issues must be simplified to the extent that important differences of opinion are lost or eliminated. Simplicity may often only bring false clarity and leave real difficulties and embedded concerns unexplored. It is also worth asking whether simplification or popularization, which obviously are intended as a way to include more readers and avoid exclusiveness, in fact, may be at risk of underestimating readers’ intelligence, and thus engendering boredom and indifference, instead of active engagement. The issue of social accountability is a difficult one, particularly in relation to academic freedom, since concerns for public opinion or the contextually situated good may, in fact, hamper critical investigation and be a hindrance for a (perhaps necessary) revelation of unpleasant facts. A university funded on the basis of the “public good,” in other words, may invoke a new kind of censorship in which “what is worth doing” is policed, as it were, by reference to public opinion. The result may be complacency and politically correct research that only supports the status quo. Dewey’s naturalism is often regarded as a radical form of liberalism, one that is historicist and social, and one that takes the individual’s desire for self-realization into consideration. Yet, as I have tried to convey, the new philosophy may also have become trapped in its own negativity toward metaphysics. Dewey’s polemical attack on German idealism (as well as Theism and other -isms) laid the foundation for a new “temple of truths,” erected on the void left behind by rejected supernaturalisms. The crucial question is whether the invocation of the “principle of continuity” (a central aspect of Dewey’s philosophy) was a better device for combating old theories than it was for providing new ones to live by? And what can a negative philosopher do other than just expect the worst and hope for the best, that is, preserve

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the status quo by gradual piecemeal change? How can a philosophy that tries to avoid evil provide a new critical perspective for a world vision—Weltanschauung? Dewey’s radicalism, anti-authoritarianism, and aversion to dogma may be the result of his fear of a resurrected feudal past, which, for him and many of his contemporaries, connoted stasis, universal beliefs, social submission, and individual resignation. However, the assumption that Dewey’s naturalism was trapped in a negativity against “old” philosophies, may perhaps also explain his tendency to overcompensate in the direction of science and “instrumentalism.” It may have been the same distrust in universals that prevented him from formulating any theoretical guide for his philosophy that could have offered help in analyzing social problems “beyond the highly unsatisfactory generalization that everything is natural, or nature or part of nature.”205 The new philosophy he had to offer was, so to speak, a philosophy without metaphysics, namely a science or rather a scientific method. In light of this, it is worth recalling Dewey’s admiration for Bacon because this may provide us with some insight into how Dewey imagined the role of science in the future—perhaps not a science to control nature as Bacon insisted on—but a social science to engineer a new social reality. The suggestion that Dewey was leading the way toward logical positivism may have some truth to it, although philosophers have no control over the destiny of their ideas nor can they be blamed for possible future effects. As I have tried to show, Dewey’s initial emphasis on a playful, “experimental” scientific attitude was reinterpreted and underwent transformations in the historical process, eventually evolving into what appears to be a “method” of sober, critical reasoning. Thus, it evolved into a deductive or analytic procedure, a kind of Kantian “scientism” that I presume he would have shunned. Although the historical circumstance perhaps can explain Dewey’s reaction against idealism, his attack may have provided some of the conditions for the eventual displacement of the German educational ideals. A university that was not “instrumental to a control of the environment” was described as “a luxury and hence a social nuisance and disturber.”206 A philosophy that did not afford guidance for action was either a hindrance or a waste, and the philosopher who did not have a strong sense of social responsibility was described as worthless or even wicked. An interest in knowledge that was not instrumental to an identifiable social or moral end was condemned as irresponsible aestheticism. Dewey’s dismissal of idealism was perhaps necessary to engender a new awareness of “reality” as consisting of things owned, lived, and

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enjoyed, and not just a mirror reflection of an unattainable ideal. This also involved a new recognition of “the good life” as something to be achieved though ordinary people’s action and interaction. And in many ways, his new practical philosophy evolved from an attempt to bridge the Kantian gap (between the world of ideas and the world of experience) by refuting the dualism with an understanding of experience as interaction. If, as he assumed, the social aspects of sharing and of communication permeated all things, then pragmatism could provide a home—“at-homeness”—for man in the world, away from isolation and separation from one’s fellow man. Dewey ardently insisted that the desire to know did not arise from speculation or contemplation over abstract ideas; rather, it arose out of man’s situation in the world. However, as I have tried to show, these and similar opinions had consequences for the destiny of the educational emphasis on solitude. Many researchers have pointed out that Dewey’s polemics against idealism set the premise from which certain interests and “experiences” of knowledge came to be disparaged as irrationalities, dreams, illusions, superstitions, or wishful thinking. When purpose, doing, sharing, practical concerns, and social actions are given over solely to positive connotations, then the “private” experiences associated with sustained reflection, aloneness, and contemplation are henceforth negatively associated with lack of purpose, lack of doing and sharing, and lack of any immediate practical use. I have tried to show how such descriptions came to be attributed to the German ideals, thus imbuing them with negative meanings, which eventually, due to dramatic historical events, terminated their existence as exemplary ideals, and transformed them into “perilous tendencies.” Although Dewey neglected “private” contemplation, he did not condemn art and play as unimportant activities for the mental health and well-being of individuals. Yet despite this, because he apparently assumed that such “aesthetic activities” were non-instrumental luxuries, they were basically regarded as recreational and thus as “usable instruments” for further practical public activity. And as I have pointed out, Dewey was convinced that philosophy reflected the culture and time in which it arose. His dismissal of German idealism, and thus also the educational ideals of Humboldt, derived from his assumption that idealism was old-fashioned and merely a residue of a feudal social order that would disappear with modern progress. Yet I doubt he would admit that any other doctrine, for instance representative democracy, should be considered old-fashioned merely because it originated in a society that no longer exists.

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Notes 1. Foucault (1972). 2. Foucault (1970/1994). 3. I use the term ‘regime of truth’ as Foucault does, to refer to the rules or set of conditions a statement must satisfy in order to be susceptible of verification or falsification in the usual sense. A statement is true insofar as it conforms to these rules (i.e., addressing the university in a particular way, using particular concepts, etc.). This term also implies discursive control or policing of statements. 4. The expressions ‘nodal point’ and ‘hegemonic discourses’ are borrowed from Laclau and Mouffe (1985). 5. Church (1971). President Harper at the University of Chicago invited Dewey to become Chairman of the combined Department of Philosophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy in 1894. The inclusion of pedagogy was, according to Wirth (1964: 85), an important factor in Dewey’s acceptance of the offer. 6. Dewey (1916: 319) refers to conservatives as the disbelievers in the possibility of social engineering. “The hard and fast conservative is the man who cannot conceive that existing constitutions, institutions and social arrangements are mechanisms for achieving social results.” 7. References in NPK to versatility, the state as a “Renaissance Prince,” to academic disciplines such as “academic guilds” etc. suggest that the Renaissance (set against the feudal order of “guilds”) provides a “usable” historical point of reference for the present European reformers. It is perhaps no coincidence, paradoxical though it may sound, that the effort to create a more integrated arena for European higher education is referred to as “the Bologna Process.” 8. This is an empirical question that, of course, demands further investigation. My assessment is made based on secondary sources. In the 1960s, the West German Wissenschaftsrat produced various proposals for university reforms that were still “firmly based on Humboldt’s principles” (Sweet 1980: 71). In 1969, Helmut Schelsky stated (Abschied von der Hochschulpolitik, 152) that Humboldt’s idea of what a university should be remains “one of the few unbroken intellectual traditions of German culture.” For further documentation, Sweet refers to the German Universities Commission’s Report on German Universities. A similar trend can be found in Norway in the 1960s. In the struggles against the proposals of the Ottosen Commission (appointed in 1965), an alliance was formed between “radical students” and “value conservative teachers.” Their common goal was to preserve the freedom of the arts and social sciences faculties against state intervention. Humboldtian ideals of Lehrfreiheit and Lernfreiheit were heralded by both groups (Bleiklie et al. 2000: 91). 9. Harvard President Charles W. Eliot made this statement in 1908. Eliot does, however, grant equal access to artists, poets and investigators in his description of serviceability (Veysey 1970: 119, 191). 10. Röhrs (1995: 83) refers to the autobiography of the classicist, Basil Gildersleeve, Formative Influences. Gildersleeve was appointed professor of Greek at Johns Hopkins in 1875, where he spent the next thirty-nine years.

A Genealogy of the “Service University” ♦ 287 11. Whereas institutions like Princeton, according to Veysey (1970: 288), “clung to a prescribed curriculum,” Charles W. Eliot of Harvard became an eager defender of the elective system on the grounds that it fostered individuality. Eliot even declared that “democracy is a training-school in which multitudes learn in many ways to take thought for others, to exercise public functions, and to bear public responsibilities.” The purpose of the university was “citizenship training” (Veysey (1970: 94; see also H. Hawkins 1966). 12. Both quotes are from Eliot (1907: 11); Veysey (1970: 93). 13. President Angell of the University of Michigan stated in 1871 that “a great university like this is thus in one sense the most democratic of all institutions and so best deserving of the state” (James Angell, Selected addresses, 31, quoted in Veysey 1970: 62–63). I have previously mentioned how the American definition of “academic freedom” was identical with the German until World War I. 14. Ezra Cornell, “Address,” in Cornell University, Register, 1869–79, 17; quoted in Veysey (1970: 63). 15. It was assumed that the best way to combat snobbery was to secure equality of treatment among all students, which in many universities meant the removal of intellectual distinctions. In Wisconsin, for instance, students’ academic standing was not publicly printed, and in Michigan, the academic honor society, Phi Beta Kappa was banned for several years. Michigan followed suit, along with the Stanford experiment that abolished letter grades altogether. 16. I refer to the current emphasis on the individual and on the individuals’ rights (to choose, participate, and follow their own pursuits). As previously mentioned, there were many attacks on pragmatism, some of which aimed at disclosing the foundation or axiomatic basis for the principles. In an early, yet fierce attack on pragmatism, Schinz (1908) insisted that pragmatism was best understood as a handmaid of theology and the Church, thus it was an “up to date scholasticism.” Schinz regarded the pragmatist philosophy as a result of a deliberate effort to sustain the social order and safeguard belief in God, freedom and immortality—in order to restrain the masses or the “vile passions of the human animal” (see Schiller 1909: 424). Warbeke (1919a) referred more soberly, yet similarly, to the pragmatist doctrine as anthropocentric or as a man-centered teleology. He accused the pragmatists of awarding supreme authority to the ethical conception of Good. His article generated much debate. 17. E.g., Sinclair (1917). 18. Ebbinghaus (1954). 19. Mayeroff (1963). Veysey (1970: 127) argues that the contemplative implications of German Wissenschaft were missed by most Americans, who “almost always have assumed that ‘investigation’ meant something specifically scientific.” 20. Gibbons et al. 1994:10, NPK. 21. Dewey (1916). 22. The production is based upon a distinction between ‘pure’ and ‘applied,’ where ‘pure’ refers to research generated by “curiosity,” while ‘applied’ refers to a more practical or mission-oriented research activity.

288 ♦ Humboldt Revisited 23. The reference in NPK to Mode 1 as “niche” production indicates that the production is narrow and primarily oriented toward the interest of an academic community. The reference to “pure” does not merely refer to a “a scientific investigation guided by abstract principles,” but “pure” also implies a kind of knowledge that is external to society, in other words, based on an investigation that is not initiated or produced in close alignment with the user. This suggests that there is a “metonymic sliding” of meaning in which the old and familiar distinction pure/applied is infused with a new meaning as conveyed by the distinction between impractical/practical (“knowledge for its own sake”/“knowledge for use”). 24. In Reconstruction in Philosophy, Dewey (1920) insisted that every situation must determine its own concrete good. 25. Clearly, in a complex society with a multitude of needs, it is not enough to apply the same method to any given problem, nor to rely on a pre-given set of criteria to determine what is “true.” The urgent need is to transform the conventional work “practices” from being a mechanical application of “method” to being the flexible appropriation of a problem-solving capability that can be adapted and adjusted to any context. 26. Gibbons et al. 1994: 145, NPK. 27. Gibbons et al. 1994: 2–3, NPK. This is what in the text is referred to as disciplinary “gatekeepers” who determine what shall count as a significant problem, who will be allowed to practice, and what criteria shall determine what constitutes good science. 28. In chapter 2, I pointed out how Humboldt’s conception of education involved liberation from the barriers that previously segregated the estates and trained students for special functions. Humboldt removed these barriers and replaced them with an educational egalitarianism that could create new social bonds based on ancient Greek virtues. Nobility and commoners, future scholars and future artisans, were a community of equals; irrespective of social rank, they were to attend the same school. 29. See, for instance, Cornell president Andrew D. White’s description of the “truly liberal university” (H. Hawkins 1971). 30. The assumption made by O’Boyle and Ringer, that it was idealism or “metaphysics that raised the professors to their prominent status,” cannot be found in Dewey, although he reacted against idealism and Theism, regarding them as lofty speculation. 31. H. Hawkins (1966: 299). 32. The new egalitarianism engendered, for instance, a series of reforms at Harvard under the presidency of Charles W. Eliot. Among them, new admission rules opened the university to Blacks, Jews, women and “poor boys” (“boys from widely divergent social backgrounds”). The new policy demanded that all students were to be treated equally, with no favoritism. This of course, Veysey (1970: 92) argues, also meant that there were no artificially imposed restraints upon “the lavish display or the snobbish instincts of the more opulent graduates.” 33. B. Smith (1995); Webb (1955).

A Genealogy of the “Service University” ♦ 289 34. This is a statement made by Basil L. Gildersleeve after he came back from Germany to teach at a small American college (H. Hawkins 1966: 292). 35. Dewey’s lectures generated many counterreactions, for instance Muirhead’s (1915) attempt to explain the historical evolution of idealism in Germany, and Paterson’s (1915) collection of articles on “the contribution of Germans to knowledge, literature, art and life.” Farr (1999: 525) argues that Dewey reacted strongly against the reverential analysis of sovereignty in German writings. He denounced their “confusion of sovereignty with the organs of its exercise”—particularly government. However, Dewey did not want to limit the activity of the state, as others who insisted upon such a distinction, but he regarded the state as one of the many institutions (e.g., family, trade unions, business partnerships, etc.) that made up “the organized embodiments of the whole complex of social activities undertaken by the public.” 36. In Democracy and Education, Dewey (1902/1958: 391–92) argues that, due to the advances of psychology and physiology, the old dualism between soul and body had been replaced by that of the brain and the rest of the body—the nervous system. He insists: “no one who has realized the full force of the facts of the connection of knowing with the nervous system and of the nervous system with the readjusting of activity continuously to meet new conditions, will doubt that knowing has to do with reorganizing activity, instead of being something isolated from all activity, complete in its own account.” 37. Dewey (1915/1979: 152). Kantianism, he claims, helped formulated a sense of “a national mission.” 38. Conant (1946: 202), The Harvard Report. 39. Dewey (1915/1979: 132). 40. Ibid., 132. 41. I have mentioned several examples in the other chapters, such as Thayer (1917). There had obviously been a radical change of heart concerning historicism, since Leopold von Ranke received an honorary membership in the American Historical Association in 1885. 42. The German “historicism” was assumed to by colored by idealism (i.e., understood in terms of Hegel as a “lawful development” of the state) as well as by the emotionalism attributed to Protestantism (i.e., the stress of intense religious feelings, particularly in pietism). See Pinson (1935). 43. Rorty (1999a). 44. Lawson (1975: 45) argues that Dewey used Stalin’s totalitarianism to dismiss Marxism. 45. Ibid., 41. Although Dewey dismissed “grand theories,” he has been described as “genuinely seeking a common ground.” Lawson portrays him as a special kind of puritan, one who emphasized the “Puritan yearning for moral unity” more than a true believer in a “Holy Commonwealth.” 46. Morgan (1942) refers to Dewey’s Character and Events (1929). 47. Hollinger (1990); Karier (1972). 48. Dewey (1915/1979: 132). As pointed out in chapter 3, Dewey’s attack on German idealism primarily targets the idealist philosophers’ “duty” to an ideal, supra-human principle or “Deity.” He points to Kant, who, by divorcing

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49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

54.

55. 56. 57.

58.

Duty from what he believed to be the natural motives and consequences of action, and leaving particular duties indeterminate, virtually lent absolute authority to whatever commandments tradition or public law might impose. See Santanyana (1915). Hook (1915/1979: xxvi). Ibid. The emphasis on leadership needs to be understood in relation to what the defenders of liberal culture saw as the primary purpose of liberal education, namely, to educate social leaders of the community. The focus on leadership was based on an old institutional tradition growing out of medieval scholastic universities and appropriated by the early colonists. The Yale Report of 1828 was an expression of this tradition. Lane (1987) argues that the Puritans, in their community-building efforts, believed that colleges should serve the broader leadership needs of society. Education’s primary purpose was to provide social leaders who were “moral” role-models and had the same pastoral qualities as priests. Neureiter (1934: 265). Ibid. There is, for instance, and extended volume of Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 182 (November, 1935) devoted to the issue: Education for Social Control. The foreword is written by Harold Benjamin. A new orientation to ‘system’ may also be related to changes occurring in American social science in the 1930s, often depicted as a change from process (change and openness) to structure or system (continuity and limits): a focus on “the persistent elements in social situations, like classes and institutions visualized as stable arrangements of elements” (Matthews 1989: 88). He argues that a number of structural theories provided elements for the interpretive apparatus, most notably, Freud, Marx, and the models of culture offered by Columbia University anthropologist Ruth Benedict. Also worth mentioning is Robert Merton’s development of Durkheimian concepts, such as anomie, and “the equilibrium analysis of social systems” developed by Talcott Parsons. The concept of culture came to the fore, yet it was embellished with new meaning by the eve of World War II. Neureiter (1934: 267). The assumption that the university is “elitist” is alluded to all through NPK and made more explicit in Re-thinking Science. Hollinger (1995). The new studies addressed science’s social or cultural role, for instance Don K. Price’s The Scientific Estate (1963), Clark Kerr’s The Uses of the University (1963), and most notably, Thomas S. Kuhn’s, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Karl Popper’s work from the mid-1930s on the philosophy of science was published in English as The Logic of Scientific Discovery in 1959, and Merton’s works from the 1930s and 1940s, such as the essay “Puritanism, Pietism and Science” (1936) was reissued in 1968. In social psychology, this approach is sometimes referred to as “psycho-diagnostics” (Cottrell and Gallagher 1941a, 1941b). A similar historical approach is referred to as “psychohistory” (in which one tries to account for historical

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59. 60.

61.

62.

63.

64.

events, or system of ideas in terms of the motives and intentions of individuals and groups). See Izenberg (1975). Jarausch (1978). I refer to the theories of modernity associated with the writings of Weber, Marx, and, to some extent, Freud, especially on the erosion of bourgeois values and the rise of mass society. The erosion of culture has also been linked to terms like Kulturpessimismus, or what Lepenies (1992) refers to as “retreatism”: a longing for the past and apathy in the present. Terms like “the lonely crowd” (David Riesman), the postmodern age (Arnold Toynbee), and references to “post-industrial society,” “consumer society,” and “popular culture,” etc. were common in the 1960s. See Calinescu (1977). It is an interesting fact that Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is dedicated to James B. Conant, who was one of the chief architects behind the Harvard Report, and who later framed the concept of scientific communities. As Harvard president, Conant became one of the most prominent figures in the American public debate on science and society during the late 1940s and 1950s. His book Modern Science and Modern Man (1952) was very influential. Gibbons et al. 1994: 70, NPK. The reference for the emergence of a “knowledge society” is the massification of higher education, or the “rapid growth in the development of mass higher education following the Second World War.” In addition, societal changes or “technological changes demand an increase in the capacity of the labour force.” Sweet (1980: 67). Veysey (1970: 136–37) refers to John M. Coulter, who in Mission of Science in Education (1893) insisted that the “spirit of inquiry” was to believe that “the unknown was worthier of attention than the known.” The researcher was not to be content to use facts for illustrative purposes, but “must remain receptive, even humble toward the odds and pieces of evidence that came under his purview.” The university was “a place for the emancipation of thought” previously “fettered by ignorance and superstition.” The question of “specialization” is not an easy one in relation to the German university, but it is perhaps worth dwelling on briefly since it has come to connote positivism or adherence to scientific methods. The range that the specialization (eventually) had in Germany universities is often explained by the specific link the university had to the state. A genuine science was tantamount to a discipline inside the state university. The discipline was identified with the chair, and the domain of the chair was the specialty. It was the Minister of Education who had the authority to exalt a branch of knowledge to the rank of real science by giving the chair and thus also promote the individual scientist to be a genuine specialist or full professor. And, as Liedman (1986) has pointed out, it was this particularly inclusive way of defining science that favored specialization. To be a real scientist did not mean approaching a certain standard (i.e., disciplinary method) but rather to have one’s own field of competence and work. Iggers (1962: 18, 20) has, for instance, made an interesting observation that there exist two diametrically opposed views on the historian Leopold Ranke. In North America, he is seen as the “ancestor of an essentially positivist approach” (i.e., method), while in Germany, Ranke

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65. 66.

67.

68. 69.

70.

71. 72.

73.

was understood as “the historian resisting the rationalistic and positivistic approach to history” (i.e., idealist). One of the reasons may be, he argues, their quite different conceptions of the term ‘science’ (Wissenschaft), “which in Germany was never as closely related to natural science as in America.” A similar view is reflected in the Harvard Report, which distinguishes special education from general education in terms of method. Special education “means the employment of the scientific method, whether in the study of the physical world or in the humanities” (Demos 1946: 208). However, in conformity with what I have tried to convey, Iggers notes that early American historians, such a George Bancroft (who was educated in Germany) did not formulate (what was to become) the American image of Ranke, but “stood in the [German] tradition of narrative history dealing with broad themes.” Lawson (1975); Hollinger (1990). Dewey’s emphasis on attitudes, habits, and everyday experience has often been regarded as a more profound continuation of his puritan heritage. His emphasis on the experience of “ordinary peoples” and the belief in moral deliberation may hint at such a continuation, although it cannot be reduced to it. See Bock (1956). He describes the doctrine of “common sense” more generally as the root of English and American freedom and as the very center of the ideal of a gentleman who “is distrustful of all values beyond the average level, of originality and genius, and has instituted many conventional taboos to make social intercourse easier.” Thus, common sense attacks “all theoreticians who spend their lives brooding over principles and problems that are not of practical use, rejects all appeals to inner revelations, all expertism; all special research, unless it is of practical value; all trades and arts that are not useful in any way” (Bock 1956: 157,158). Singal (1987: 17). His reaction against idealism was not only directed at the German philosophers, but also at many of his former intellectual allies, such as the British idealist philosopher Thomas Hill Green. See Dewey (1892). He was concerned with things or experiences in their immediacy, not as a reflection of some abstract idea. His aesthetics was partly a response to the “art for art’s own sake,” which he assumed rested upon a notion of an ideal beauty beyond reach. Although he recognized the importance of science and in-depth research, his overriding aim was to find “common ground” by engendering a synthesis between artistic imagination and scientific (reflective) intelligence. A science (and art) founded upon empirical sensibilities or experiences rather than abstract ideas. Dewey (1920: 117) quoted in Hocking (1940). Yourman (1939: 150). The use of virtue words or “glittering generalities” (e.g., das Volk) is referred to as one of many propagandist devices used in Nazi Germany “to appeal to our emotions of love, generosity, and brotherhood.” In the introduction to the second edition of German Philosophy and Politics, published during World War II, Dewey (1942/1979: 425) is particularly concerned with the continuity of Hitler’s “spiritual redemption” (geistige) and

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74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81.

82. 83.

84.

the “idealist philosophers who were educators of the German people.” I have mentioned the inference by Lovejoy (1941) concerning continuity between Romanticism and Hitlerism, and Spitzer (1944) on subsequent reactions. The presentation of German culture in English lecture courses after the war may serve as an example of the new attentiveness to dangerous “ideas” and their possible effects. The teachers, as reported by Von Hofe (1948: 159), were explicitly told to discuss “the early nineteenth century fusion of liberalism with nationalism, especially how the two poles, the romantic and mystical individualism, conveyed by the concepts Innerlichkeit, Stimmung, Gemüt, Sehnsucht, and the stone-cold organization, autocracy, peremptoriness (Führerprinzip), were brought together into one concept in the nineteen-thirties, when Stählerne Romantik came into vogue.” Agard (1945: 58). Ibid. Yourmann (1939: 160). Italics in the original. Cottrell and Gallagher (1941a, 1941b). Neureiter (1946: 173). The reference to Nazism as “Nazi-ism” is not insignificant, but it reflects the prevailing social-psychological understanding of a mindset or sentiment, similar to the one supporting Dewey’s reference to idealism s “idea-ism.” Agard (1945: 58). I have tried to show that the spectacle of war engendered a widespread fear, which may have contributed to the gradual confusion or conflation of the liberal education of Humboldt with the political education of the Nazi regime. The National socialists’ attempt at remodeling education away from the liberal ideals of Humboldt, which, according to Reitz (1934), they saw as “the dream world of bloodless intellect” and the preoccupation with “abstract, wasteful, disorganized study” was in fact pointed out by many American commentators in the 1930s. This indicates that they recognized and acknowledged that there was a vast difference between the liberal education in the heritage of Humboldt and the political education of the Nazis. The pressure from the “competing” model of liberal education, along with new explanatory models, however, may have contributed to this failure to uphold such a differentiation, despite several attempts to reclaim the old notion of German liberal education. The distinction between political and liberal education gradually disappears after the war, as the movement for traditional liberal education rapidly gained ground. McGrath (1951: 236). I have tried to show how the new emphasis on transmitting (Western) virtues and values brought about a dramatic change in the nature and function of the human sciences, which were transformed into humanities and expected to help fashion morally committed individuals. Philosophers were, as Brightman (1947) argues, expected to serve the government or deal with the social relevance of their subject. This trend started already during the war. This is a science that is assumed to be reflexive, which means a critical self-awareness. A reflexive science (as opposed to being instrumental) is a

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85.

86.

87. 88.

89. 90.

91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98. 99.

science confronted with its own products, defects, etc. In Risk Society, which Nowotny et al. (2001) refers to, Ulrick Beck (1992: 156) speaks of “a process of demystification of the sciences,” in the course of which the structure of science, practice and the public sphere will be subjected to a fundamental transformation that opens up new chances for “a democracy without expertocracy.” It is a reality in which science is demystified. It is hard to see how this differs from a prospective view of science similar to Dewey’s, in the sense that consequences and not antecedents supply meaning and verity. “Common-weal” from COMMON: ME comun wele, commun: ME, commun < OFr. Comun < L communis, shared by all or many < IE kom-moini-, common (