Университетът между фактите и нормите
The University: Between Facts and Norms

Summary/Abstract: This article deals with the present legitimization crisis of the University institution and the position of the Bulgarian University in it. In the first part of it are investigated the related debates in France, the USA and Germany. It demonstrates, on the basis of texts by Lyotard, Derrida, Richard Rorty, Ronald Dworkin, Bill Reedings, Karl Jaspers, Juergen Habermas etc., the doubt in the profound values of the University: the justification of its foundations as a "selfless search of the truth"; the Humboldtian ideology for an organic relation of education and research, the philosophical synthesis of particular sciences, the binding between education and social enlightenment, etc. The second part outlines the cultural and social reasons for the lack of a similar debate in Eastern Europe and especially in Bulgaria (on the background of dominating practical, "experts" and "managerial" debates). Their origins are searched back in the history of the Bulgarian University which was established at unsecured conditions and in a lack of public consensus, without any critical philosophic reflection on its reasons. My thesis is that it was constituted in a centralized administrative way as a patriotic institution intended not to implement the Humboldtian ideals (although the German Humboldt's University was one of its modv •!,-;) but to satisfy socio-practical and patriotic needs (to prepare personnel for the school system and the bureaucracy but also for the "self-respect of the Bulgarian people" who wanted to see the building of its education completed). Through analysis of documents, regulations, appeals, University declarations etc., the Bulgarian University is considered as a typical institution of the "self-colonizing cultures", transferring and adapting prestigious institutional models, without any concern about the problematic values on which they are based. A difference is made between the public legitimacy of the University and its "epistemological" legitimacy.

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