The Idea of the University: Learning Processes

In the inaugural issue of Die Wandlung [The Transformation], ajournal founded shortly after the war by Karl Jaspers, Alfred Weber, Dolf Sternberger and Alexander Mitscherlich, there appeared the text ofalecture byJaspers entitled "The Renewal of the University." It had been held in 1945 to mark the reopening of the University of Heidelberg upon the philosopher's return from inner immigration to reassume his Chair in Philosophy. Emphasizing the opportunity for a new beginning, Jaspers took up the central theme of his 1923 book "The Idea of the University," which was republished in 1946. Fifteen years later, in 1961, the book appeared in a revised edition.' In the intervening period, Jaspers saw his hopes disappointed. Yet hereJaspers still proceeds from the premises of that sociology which had been implicit to German Idealism: An institution remains functional only so long as it vitally embodies its inherent idea. Should its spirit evaporate, an institution will petrify into something merely mechanical, like a soulless organism reduced to dead matter. Not even the university can continue to form a whole once the unifying bond of its corporative consciousness dissolves. The functions the university fulfills for society must preserve an inner connection with the goals, motives and actions of its members. In this sense the university should institutionally embody, and at the same time motivationally anchor, a life form which is intersubjectively shared by its members, and which even bears an exemplary character. What since Humboldt has been called "the idea of the university" is the project of embodying an ideal life form. Moreover, this idea does not limit itself to one of the many particularized life forms of early bourgeois society, but thanks to its intimate connection with science and truth to something universal, something prior to the pluralism of social life forms. The idea of the university points to principles of formation according to which all forms of objective spirit are structured.