LGS Blog
Andrew Benjamin on Democracy and the University
Professor Andrew Benjamin (Monash University) is the author of many books including most recently Of Jews and Animals (Edinbugh University Press) and Place, Commonality and Judgment: Continental Philosophy and the Ancient Greeks (Continuum). To read his recent essay on ‘Democracy and the University: Notes on Fichte’s “Some Lectures concerning the Scholar’s Vocation’, click here: Democracy_and_the_University
“For democracy to be defined in terms of the necessity for its reinvention and for the university to have a similar determination entails that a defence of the university is nothing other than a defence of reinvention itself. (A definition of that reinvention – a definition that entails the actualization of reinvention – is research.) Standing opposed to reinvention is the identification of the university with an already determined goal – e.g. its subordination to already determined research priorities. Once those priorities have a source that is external to the university then such a set up is itself counterposed to any envisaged democratization of the university.”