The Idea of University as a Discursive Political Project: an Essay on Theoretical Interpretation

The main purpose of the article is to identify a fundamentally important critical points of modern discussions, which aim is to find new theoretical arguments to substantiate the validity of the assumption that classical university idea, its projective dynamics and discursive resources today continue to have a huge impact on the formation of university communities in most regions of the world, despite a large number of obstacles and signs of crisis. The highest priority is to expand the range of sources related to those areas of research of the classical idea of th university, which today play the most important role in its theoretical interpretation. Much attention is paid to various aspects of the concepts of University by W. von Humboldt and J. H. Newman and their analysis in the modern Western scientific and political philosophical tradition. An attempt is made to present all the variety of approaches to the analysis of the idea of university in Western European and North American political theory in the second half of the 20th - early 21st centuries. The structure of the analytical review includes a philosophical analysis of the traditions and principles of university education in the works by M. Oakeshott, M. Adler, J.-F. Lyotard, A. McIntyre, J. Pelikan; sociological concepts of M. Weber, T. Veblen, N. Luhmann, Z. Bauman; political science ideas by A. Flexner, K. Kerr, F. Ringer, M. Hofstetter, S. Fuller, M. Blyth, V.A. Schmidt, R. Sassower, K. Offe, R. Barnett, S. Bengsten, Sh. Rothblatt, B. Wittrock and other scientists. It is very characteristic of modern educational discourse that many discussions around the university idea reproduce similar philosophical and ideological disputes of early modernity, as well as of comparatively recent decades. According to the authors, this trend does not look random: an analysis of the nature of the university and the complex structure of university communities does not always allow one to come to consistent results that can satisfy everyone.