Original scientific paper
John Henry Newman on University: Actuality of a 160 Year Old Discourse
Anton Mlinar
; University of Primorska, Science and Research Centre, Koper, Slovenia
Abstract
Newman’s famous treatise on university written during the spring in 1852 was originally a set of lectures dedicated to the founding plan of a new Catholic University in Dublin. While he was having a hard time because of judicial accusation in the so-called Achilli case, Newman defended with his treatise two major ideas of integral university education necessary for whichever autonomous incipient of scientific knowledge as well as its development. My intention here is to investigate these two aspects. As first, it is the knowledge as its own end in its relation to learning, and second, his defence of the position of theology (and religion) among other disciplines within the university’s curricula. They belong as key footnotes to a much more important question regarding the autonomy of university education and the collegial character of knowledge. Newman’s original discourse is an episode of his total dedication to the collegiality of educational process. Because the university is a civilizational achievement and not a question of political or of some other hierarchies, the reflection on education might (or should) be the turning point of the change of university’s institutional life. The question is not of how many subjects must be included in the curricula for education to be universal, but what the relation among them is. With some other accentuation, the paper is interested in happenings in the development of European universities in recent decades.
Keywords
autonomy; collegiality; education; functional systems; liberal knowledge; religion; theology; university; John Henry Newman
Hrčak ID:
120138
URI
Publication date:
17.2.2014.
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