University. The keeper is ideal

The publishing house "New Literary Review" represents the book of Sergei Zuev "University. The keeper is ideal. Uncood essays written in solitude. "

The discussion about the fate of academic institutions in the modern world concerns not only issues of science and education, but also the change of elites and the gap of generations, freedom and critical thinking. In his book, written in a prison cell, Sergey Zuev reflects on the utopian project of an ideal university. What is its ontological basis? What traditional concepts need to be reviewed in today's conversation about the university? How does this project correlate with relevant social reality? The book simultaneously summarizes the author’s experience as chief administrator of one of the best universities in the country and marks the space of problems and prospects of academic transformations. Sergey Eduardovich Zuev - rector of the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences (MVSHSEN, Shaninka), professor, candidate of art history.

We offer to read one of the sections of the book.

Academic freedom as an institute

Steve Fuller, the intellectual and the author of the book with the subtitle “Career of the mind inside and outside the academy”, asked the adultery question - “Does the Academics have a soul?” (Bearing, of course, a university professor). In general, answering this question in the affirmative, he begins his next argument by appeal to freedom. “At the end of 2006 , British academics formally discovered the concept of“ academic freedom ”, forming the organization“ Academics for Academic Freedom ”(Academics for Academic Freedom, Afaf).” The organization appeared as a reaction to a number of excesses, which testified to the fact that “the spectrum of those taught and studied is limited (for reasons, S. Z. ): 1 ) Fear of insulting students who, in the light of increased rates for training, began to think about themselves as the“ clients ”of the university (in the sense that the client is always right); 2 ) Fear of scaring real or potential external customers of university research ” 1 . In the manifesto, which was published by the “guild” recreated according to the ancient tradition, it was emphasized that “academics both inside and outside the educational audience have an unlimited right to question and verify common views and put forward controversial and unpopular opinions, even if they can be considered insulting” 2 .

And although many media, as usual, shifted the emphasis, calling it “the struggle for the right to insult”, it was certainly about and is about something else. The appeal to one of the oldest European traditions tried to restore the workshop, corporation, guild in its rights, whose original professional task was and remains one thing: production and reproduction of thinking. In no other case, “unlimited right to question” simply has no application, although it does not guarantee in itself the quality of “guild products”.

A logical question: what is a guarantee of reproduction of the standard and the quality of any (intellectual) product? Most likely, it should be admitted that no system guarantees a complete probability of cases of thought. Moreover, unlike natural scientific experience, even the most scrupulous repetition of the conditions of “production” can leave the venue “empty”, so to speak, sterile for thinking. (Which, by the way, once again indicates precisely the humanitarian nature of the university.)

But still ... in general, in human culture, the machine of reproduction is the “institute”-in its sociological, socio-cultural, etc. Understanding. The social outlines of the university as an institution from the very beginning of its existence were built on the presumption of the isolation of this “aliens corporation” from associations of others from the point of view of their social status of citizens. It is not even about a specific set of rights and obligations distributed depending on the position in the public hierarchy. This position is outside the hierarchy, so to speak, “from the side” from it. It is isolated both by historical tradition, and, more importantly, by the type of “produced products” - thinking and knowledge based on it. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why not in the XIII, but already in the XVIII century, in 1734 , in the constituent literacy given by the University of Gettingen, it is said that in the framework of the jurisdiction of this university there are all city residents and, moreover, all “serving” groups: booksakers, printers with students and apprentices, servants and even servants and even servants and even servants and even servants. Tractors in the university area3. This situation was unprecedented from the point of view of today - it is quite possible - an important role in the rapid formation of Gettingen, one of the key intellectual centers of the Education period.

However, regardless of these assumptions, the following seems quite defined. Both from the outside (social status) and in its internal structure, which was discussed in previous paragraphs (“internal and external organization”), we are dealing with a stable institutional form sharpened for the reproduction of thinking - both as a source of knowledge and as an incubator of social innovation (education, social integration and mobility, organization of communication, etc.). At the same time, the very fact of its existence, with all its isolation, the university historically is a constantly experimenting model of a social structure, individual elements of which are seeping across the corporation’s border in the form of cultural norms for the outside world.

The meaning and role of academic freedom-as an institute within the institute (university)-is distinguished by its genealogy from other (universal) versions of freedom, which are more likely to socio-political, equalizing and redistributing contexts with their place of presence. This does not mean the fundamental heterogeneity of some and others, but indicates a more functional difference. The freedom of solitude, statements and social autonomy of the university is not maximum, that is, justifying itself. But at the same time in the historical unconscious, and in the reflection of individual thinkers and creators, it is a critical condition for thinking in the institute called the university.

This does not mean at all that the jurisdiction of the hetting innkeeper is an indispensable condition for thinking, but this demonstrates the ability of this institutional model to draw the most routine and social and economic practices into the orbit of its implementation. (But how, there is even more to drink!) And in this sense, the question of a “multi-vibrant” can, apparently, stand differently. It is not a matter of expanding economic and entrepreneurial functionals, a matter, as often happens, in horse and cart. As long as the university’s social expansion does not threaten its autonomy and, therefore, to academic freedoms, that is, as long as the jurisdiction of the university extends to new types of activities and partnerships (including in the format of joint leadership, as happened between the university and the city), it is possible to continue its existence.

The Institute of Academic Freedoms unites into one whole “right of solitude” (self -determination and development), the right of reasoned statements and social autonomy. In this composition, he finds his justification within the framework of the university and his main task for the production and reproduction of thinking. The mutual connectedness of freedom and thinking, therefore, is a condition for the existence of both member of this pair.

Any institution of reproduction is a “tourniquet” of the norms of different types along which the act of reproduction as such becomes possible. Or a little differently: the institute recreates the conditions under which the reproduction of the necessary product (including intellectual) took place in historical experience, but the “guarantee” in this case is very arbitrary. Thinking, both now and before, can rely on institutional conditions and norms, but each single act of thought remains unique and exclusive.

The same doubt is applicable to other institutions. For example, the family institution does not guarantee the success of any marriage, as the state institution does not guarantee the stability of social relations. Just in the case of the university, these risks are intensified by the "specifics of production." Moreover, with all respect for the institutional side of the issue (norms of behavior, communication, autonomy, etc., reflected in the corresponding formal and informal rules), the desired thinking may happen in the absence of any of these conditions. There are, in other words, factors of an extra -institutional nature that are not transmitted in the system of described norms and stem from a specific personal or historical situation. But I have no intention of lowering the meaning of the institutional background, which, I repeat, cannot “guarantee”, but can affect the situation at least from the point of view of statistical values.

For the reproduction of thinking (as well as the university as a whole), you can distinguish at least three types of norms based on academic freedom4. Firstly, the norms of thinking itself. In fact, the “right to doubt”, the “right to judgment”, “the right to oncoming critical and rational counter Weights”, etc. fall into this group, forming in their concentration and interaction “technology of thinking” - a popular research subject for a number of disciplines. The composition of individual operations, their synchronization, support and the conditions of launch, etc. - all this falls into the category of mental activity technologies.

Secondly, the institute imposes its requirements for communities or, in other words, on the norms of social interaction and social environment (see the paragraph on the “academic freedom of scientific communities”). There are norms and their internal rules in accordance with the “regulation” of academic communication - whether formal (for example, reflected in the rules of internal routine or corporate culture) or informal (“invisible colleges”, “cognitive networks”, etc., based on academic ethos as a whole).

Finally, and thirdly, any institute has its own anthropological ideal, its own “personality norm”, which, in the case of the university, is most adaptive to the use of mind-thoughts. In various historical periods of the university existence, the idea of ​​the “normativeness of the thinking” could change significantly, sometimes to the diametrically opposite (for example, the skeptical positivist of the Education and the poet-bureaucrat of German romantics). But in any case, this norm was presented in the university picture of the world. The unifying beginning for these “anthropological ideals” was - and is - the installation for personal development, the logic of which is subordinated to the design of the institute as a whole.

The idea of ​​academic freedoms, thus, provides institutional norms (creates conditions) The process of reproduction of thinking in the walls of the university. This is no longer the extraterritoriality and jurisdiction of the University of the previous era (freedom of social being and lifestyle), but freedom (personal) development and rational judgment, proposed as the foundation of the University of New Age.

At the same time, in the logic of institutional analysis, you can indicate three at least a group of norms:

- the norms of thinking itself, which are ensured by the relevant rights/freedoms (doubts, judgments, etc.);

- norms of personal development - in accordance with the "ideal of a person", which carries the university;

- norms of communication and social interaction of academic communities that have their own rights (and restrictions) of rational judgment in public and intracademic spaces.

All three meanings do not exist in the form of an arithmetic amount, but interact and affect each other - forming the space in which thinking may not arise and, therefore, the legitimate foundations of academic freedom may not arise.

The absence of the institution and its social privileges makes it impossible to open and rational critical judgment. The lack of critical judgment closes the space of personal development. The lack of demand and value of personal development makes the institute unnecessary.

But be that as it may, we can accurately say that there is no equality on this field. There is no equality of personal development (according to the concept of development); There is no equality (equal) of communities, each cognitive network is unique in its own way and does not repeat its analogues, despite the normativeness, equality of institutional conditions. Each event of thought is unique.

And most importantly: there is no equality in freedom. But you need to strive for this. Otherwise, why university?

1. Fuller S. Sociology of intellectual life. C. 83 - 84 .

2. In the same place. S. 84 .

3. DIE Privilegien und ältesten statuteten der Georg-august-universität zu göttingen / HRSG. Von W. Ebel. Göttingen, 1961.

4. Here I rely on the report of Vera Danilova “Medieval University as an institution of thinking” published in: Institute of Thinking. Sat. materials of the XVII and XVIII readings of the memory of P.P. Shchedrovitsky. Moscow, February 23, 2011/23 February 2012 Ed. V. G. Maraga and V. A. Proskurin. M.: Institute for Development. G.P. Shchedrovitsky. Part 1 (electronic edition).