The End of the University

Tomorrow, Monday 5 December, Sussex University, Stefan Collini is to speak on “The Very Idea of the University”. This is the John Burrow Memorial Lecture,
18:00 until 19:30, Arts A1. Here is something I have recently written on that topic. It’s a reframed and revised version of the piece I wrote with Danny Hayward ‘Education Towards Heteronomy’, to whom I remain much indebted especially for the section on the Thatcher Era, which was Danny’s work.

The End of the University: Politics in Higher Education in Britain since 1979

1.Introduction
In one form or another, universities have been around for centuries. They existed before what is now known as the Westphalian world of sovereign states did. They survived through seismic shifts in the historical, social, intellectual and epistemic landscape, from the fall of the Aristotelian and Scholastic world view, to the rise of modern science and invention of modern academic disciplines Read more

To The Things Themselves Again:

To The Things Themselves Again: Observations on What Things Are and Why they Matter

‘πάντωνχρημάτωνμέτρον’ ἄνθρωπονεἰ̂ναι, ‘τω̂νμὲνὄντωνὡςἔστι, τω̂νδὲμὴὄντωνὡςοὐκἔστιν.’

Protagorus.[1]

(forthcoming with Oxford University Press)

1.Sometimes a child’s experience can uncover a dimension of reality that remains hidden to adult sensibilities, and to the prejudices, presumptions and ideologies common sense. I was a clumsy child. I used to break and to lose things. As a consequence I had a keen sense of the fragility of things, and of the badness or wrongness of breaking or losing them. I never stopped to ask: What is wrong with breaking things? Why does it matter if I break this thing? Read more

On Bullshit, The Big Society and other Bollocks

“One of the most salient features of our culture” observed the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt “is that there is so much bullshit.” Frankfurt advances a theory. The bullshitter’s statements reflect his indifference to the matter of their truth or falsity. That makes his deception distinct from, and in one respect worse than the liar’s. For the liar, who intends to deceive by presenting as true what he knows to be false, honours the truth in his own perverse way. Frankfurt observes that the realms of advertising and indeed “the closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept.” Politicians are prone to bullshit because they are required to have opinions about things they don’t know, and because they often say things merely for effect. Bullshit is among their chief weapons of mass distraction. Read more