Mjesto Immanuela Kanta u mišljenju ideje univerziteta
The Place of Immanuel Kant in the Thinking of the Idea of the University

Summary/Abstract: The idea of the university is taken as fundamental in the articulation of the concept of the university and the possibility of its institutional realization. In such a context, Immanuel Kant is in the forefront as an unavoidable thinker of this idea. For easier understanding of Kant’s articulation of the idea of the university, at the beginning basic features of Humboldt’s vision of the university are presented, and this enables us to follow Kant’s contribution and influence upon the articulation of these features. Thereby The Conflict of the Faculties is the central Kant’s text in which he did not just offer the concept of the university as an institution fundamental for the development of scholarship, but he was the last thinker, according to some authors, of the very idea of the university. As the analysis shows, this idea is, in a historical sense, the articulation of classical idea of the modern, Humboldtian university, but there are also a number of interwoven elements inwrought in this idea which possess the lasting actuality (e.g. jurisdiction of the particular fields of knowledge, pretensions of the particular sciences, autonomy of the sciences and the faculties, relations between the faculties etc.). It is shown that if we take the whole Kant’s opus into consideration, The Conflict of the Faculties can be seen as an extension of his enlightenment project, supplement of his philosophy of politics and law (private and public use of reason) and his philosophy of history (universities as an important link in the progress of the mankind in general), addition to his philosophical anthropology (universities as a medium of the progress of human capacities) and philosophy of education (universities as an indispensable dimension of education of man as a person, citizen and human being in general). On the other side, the necessity of all those other parts of his philosophical opus is demonstrated as needed for the complete understanding of his thought of the idea of the university. Instead of the conclusion, the results of the previous analysis are evaluated in the context of an attempt of answering the question of Kant’s permanent actuality and his special place in the history of ideas, considering the thinking of the idea of the university.

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