Critical Humanistics Part II

The Idea of the University and Liberal Education

Approximate teaching hours 64 Hrs per semester                                              

The idea of the University and the nature of education, learning and knowledge that it embodies has been one of the most significant contributions of the West to the rest of the world. For the Western world, the university is the second oldest institution after the church and the institution understandably continues to evoke tremendous passion and reflection, which constantly work as a barometer of its health and vibrancy. The trajectory of this key institution of modernity in non-western contexts in India has been more fraught, with the institution constantly being berated for failing in the essential task of producing and transmitting knowledge traditions on the one hand and for producing unemployable students on the other. This course examines the contemporary debate around the institution of the university and the idea of liberal education that underpins it. Any investigation of the problem of education in India necessarily requires an understanding of the conceptual underpinnings of the modern, Western idea of education and its translation in non-western, colonial contexts such as ours. How best can we characterize the educational problem in India? From where have we inherited our contemporary ways of thinking about the university and education and what is their contemporary significance? In what way is the problematization of education by Indian thinkers similar and different from their Western counterparts and can we draw any implications about the nature of knowledge and learning from it? Lastly, what is the centrality of human sciences to the idea of the university and the project of education? – are some of the questions that the course explores.

• Unit I: The Idea of the Modern University:
• Newman: Selections from The Idea of University
• Knowledge Its Own End. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
• Knowledge Viewed In Relation To Learning. . . . . . 150
• Knowledge Viewed In Relation To Professional Skill. . 179
• Knowledge Viewed In Relation To Religion. . . . . . . 208
• Duties Of The Church Towards Knowledge. . . . . . . 242
• Bill Readings, “Introduction”, and “The University within the Limits of Reason” from "The University in Ruins".
• Unit II: Of Forms of Knowledge
• P. H Hirst’s “Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge” from Education and the Development of Reason, ed. R. F. Dearden, P.H. Hirst and R. S. Peters; London
• Heidegger’s The Age of World Picture
• Unit III: Self-study
• Michael Oakeshott, “Education: The Engagement and Its Frustration” from The Voice of Liberal Learning , 62-104. http://vstudyplace.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/w/images/9/9e/Oakeschott-A-Place-of-Learning.pdf.
• Martha Nussbaum, “Socratic Self-examination” from Cultivating Humanity.
• Alan Bloom, 'Our Virtue' from The Closing of the American Mind by Alan Bloom
• R. S Peters, “Education and the Educated Man”
• J Krishnamurthy on Learning and Education
• Unit IV: Extended Readings 
• Richard, Rorty, “Education as Socialization and as Individualization”, In Philosophy and Social Hope, 114-126
• Aristotle, Extracts from The Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, (The section on Episteme, Techne and Phronesis), translated and edited by Roger Crisp, 103-118
• Hannah Arendt, “Crisis in Education”, Between Past and Future, Penguin Books, 170-193