Visual Practices Across the

University

Jim Elkins, History of Art

jelkins@artic.edu (use this for general correspondence)

j.elkins@ucc.ie (use this for class correspondence)

www.jameselkins.com (use this to buy books, and retrieve this and other texts)

www.imagehistory.org (use this to see History of Art public events)

 Lecture 1
History of the Separation of the Faculties
 Purpose of this lecture

This course is principally focused on the visual as a possible

lingua franca for the university.

To discuss that, it is necessary to have some background

about the organization of universities,

and the reasons why no universities have such a course.

 Organization of this lecture

1. Five principal theorists of the interdisciplinarity and

structure of universities

2. The current state of interdisciplinarity in universities

3. Four questions to bear in mind in this module

 1. Immanuel Kant’s idea of the university

At the end of the 18th c. there were four Faculties in universities:

Philosophy, Law, Medicine, Theology

Kant privileged the Philosophy faculty, identifying it with intellectual

freedom and research.

The other Faculties were ‘vocational’ and regulated by state interests

Included in the Philosophy faculty:

-- science
-- literature
-- classics
-- philosophy
 2. Wilhelm von Humboldt

Participated in the foundation of the University of Berlin in 1810

The ‘Humboldtian model’ became influential later in the 19th c.

Two following slides: how Humboldt was received in the 19th c.; how he
was received in the 20th c.
Elements of the 19th c. Humboldtian ‘model’:

1. Emphasis on Bildung [education, but literally ‘picturing’]

2. Bildung privileges the search for ‘truth and understanding’

at the centre of a general, liberal education

This is what was taken into U.S. universities

3. Kantian stress on the Philosophy faculty, which was the

crucial stage between the gymnasium (language skills,
established truths) and the professional faculties

4. Romantic stress on the unity of all knowledge

(Wissenschaft)

This was against the French division between ‘letters’ and

‘science’ and against the French specialization as in the
École Polytechnique (both Enlightenment innovations)
Elements of the 20th c. Humboldtian ‘model’:

1. Humboldt’s programme is identified with research

2. Teaching is a secondary purpose of universities

This is conventionally debated and denied; eg. the Times

article of January 3.

Hence the expression, ‘research university’ = first-rank

university, which stresses original research over teaching

(This is false: Humboldt stressed the unity of teaching and

research)
Humboldt:

‘So the university is no longer a teacher, the student no

longer a learner, but the latter carries out research himself,
and the professor directs and supports his researches’. (von
Humboldt, cited in C. Menge, Die Bildungsreform Wilhelm von
Humboldts [1975])

This is the origin of the 20th c. idea that ‘the university is a

community of scholars and students engaged in the task of
seeking truth’ (Jaspers, Idea of the University [1960])*

* In R. D. Anderson, European Universities from the Enlightenment

to 1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
 3. Cardinal Henry Newman, Idea of a
University (1852)

A common starting point on this side of the Atlantic.

This is still widely read, but contains some inapplicable ideas:

1. There should be no research in universities (only in a academies)

2. There should be no moral or ethical content to university instruction

3. There should be Christian (i.e., Catholic) purpose to the university

4. Teaching and research are incompatible except in rare cases (Socrates)

Newman probably did not read German, and so was largely ignorant of Protestant
universities in Germany, which were the model for most 20th c. universities
Newman:

‘The view taken of a University in these Discourses is the following:—

‘That it is a place of teaching universal knowledge. This implies that its

object is, on theo ne hand, intellectual, not moral; and, on the other, that it
is the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement
[of knowledge].

‘If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a
University should have students; if religious training, I do not see how it
can be the seat of literature and science. ‘ [Preface]
 4. Robert Maynard Hutchins,
The University of Utopia (1964)

A common starting point in the US.

Hutchins was one of the theorists of the University of Chicago

1. Universities should teach only philosophy

2. There should be no secondary knowledge or applied knowledge

3. Universities should teach the ability to reason

Hutchins:

‘I do not concede that torpor of mind is the natural and normal condition
of the mass of mankind, or that these people are necessarily incapable of
relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, or of conceiving
generous, noble, and tender sentiments, or of forming just judgments
concerning the affairs of private or public life.

‘If they are so, and if they are so as a result of the division of labor, then
industrialization and democracy are fundamentally opposed; for people in
this condition are not qualified to govern themselves.

‘I do not believe that industrialization and democracy are inherently

opposed. But they are in actual practice opposed unless the gap between
them is bridged by liberal education for all’. [The Great Conversation
(1952)]
Books influenced by Hutchins:

Clark Kerr, Uses of the University (1963)

Kenneth Minogue, Concept of a University (1973)

Also argues for the difference between academic

research and pragmatic research.
 5. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Idea of the University:
A Reexamination (1992)

Pelikan taught Christian doctrine at the University of Chicago

1. Argues against Newman’s exclusion of research (78-88)

2. Is only partly accepting of utilitarian, professional training (148-49)

3.Virtually no interest in science, except as a term denoting “study” (87-88)

Pelikan:

‘In all of these ways it does seem necessary to propose a revision and
expansion of Newman’s opening sentence in the preface to The Idea of a
University, to make it read:

‘“The view taken of a university in these discourses is the following: that it

is a place of teaching universal knowledge, but also of advancing
knowledge through research and of diffusing knowledge through
publication, as well as of relating such advancement, teaching, and diffusion
to the training of professionals.”’ [Idea of the University, 88]
 Appendix: Some books on the deeper
history of universities

Charles Homer Haskins, The Rise of Universities (1957?)

Excellent source for the history of medieval universities

George Makdisi, Rise of Colleges

Tells how Islamic universities invented departments, faculties, oral

examinations, even mortar boards…

William Clark, Academic charisma and the Origins of the Research

University (2006)

The book was not out at class time. (University of Chicago Press)
Current condition of interdisciplinarity in universities

1. Interest in interdisciplinarity currently comes from at least four sources:

(a) Attempts to emulate American and German models
(b) Attempts to reorganize to increase efficiency
(c) Interest in the humanities in transdisciplinarity
(d) Attempts to conform to EU goals of mobility

2. It does not seem to come from:

(a) Kant’s (or Hutchins’s) idea of philosophy as a formative Faculty
(b) The Romantic notion of Bildung, or the unity of the ‘sciences’

3. American and German-model universities involve one or two years of

undergraduate education in Faculties other than one’s own, and are influenced
mainly by (1b) and (1c)

4. U.K. and Ireland-model students do not often cross Faculties (or Schools),
but are influenced by (1a), (1b), (1c), and 1(d)
 Four questions for the course

1. Should a university education involve fields outside of one’s specialty?

Outside of one’s Faculty or School? And, assuming the answers are yes, what
principle might limit that expansion? Why not attempt a university-wide
education at the First Year level?

2. Are Trinity’s ‘Broad Curriculum’, UCD’s ‘New Horizons’, UCC’s University-

Wide modules, or the Bologna Accord’s emphasis on interdisciplinarity,
enough to ensure that a university education crosses faculties and fields?

3. What should the ideal First Year course be? Should there be a First Year
course shared by all students?

4. Could such a course be based on visuality?