IDEA OF THE UNIVERSITY

by Jaroslav Pelikan

The crisis in university education has been the subject of vigorous debate in recent years. In this eloquent and deeply personal book, a distinguished scholar reflects on the character and aims of the university, assessing its guiding principles, its practical functions, and its role in society. Jaroslav Pelikan provides a unique perspective on the university today by reexamining it in light of John Henry Cardinal Newman’s 150-year old classic The Idea of a University and showing how Cardinal Newman’s ideas both illuminate and differ from current problems facing higher education. Pelikan begins by affirming the validity of Newman’s first that knowledge must be an end in itself. He goes on to make the case for the inseparability of research and teaching on both intellectual and practical grounds, stressing the virtues―free inquiry, scholarly honesty, civility in discourse, toleration of diverse beliefs and values, and trust in rationality and public verifiability―that must be practiced and taught by the university. He discusses the business of the university―the advancement of knowledge through research, the extension and interpretation of knowledge through undergraduate and graduate teaching, the preservation of knowledge in libraries, museums, and galleries, and the diffusion of knowledge through scholarly publishing. And he argues that be performing these tasks, by developing closer ties with other schools at all levels, and by involving the community in lifelong education, the university will make its greatest contribution to society.

Genres: Education, Academia, Nonfiction

238 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Jaroslav Jan Pelikan was born in Akron, Ohio, to a Slovak father and mother, Jaroslav Jan Pelikan Sr. and Anna Buzekova Pelikan. His father was pastor of Trinity Slovak Lutheran Church in Chicago, Illinois, and his paternal grandfather a bishop of the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches then known as the Slovak Lutheran Church in America.

According to family members, Pelikan's mother taught him how to use a typewriter when he was three years old, as he could not yet hold a pen properly but wanted to write. A polyglot, Pelikan's facility with languages may be traced to his multilingual childhood and early training. That linguistic facility was to serve him in the career he ultimately chose (after contemplating becoming a concert pianist)--as a historian of Christian doctrine. He did not confine his studies to Roman Catholic and Protestant theological history, but also embraced that of the Christian East.

In 1946 when he was 22, he earned both a seminary degree from Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis, Missouri and a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago.

Pelikan wrote more than 30 books, including the five-volume The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (1971–1989). Some of his later works attained crossover appeal, reaching beyond the scholarly sphere into the general reading public (notably, Mary Through the Centuries, Jesus Through the Centuries and Whose Bible Is It?).

His 1984 book The Vindication of Tradition gave rise to an often quoted one liner. In an interview in U.S. News & World Report (June 26, 1989), he said: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide.

"Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition."

Reviews

[Summer Bohannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic resource! This is, by far, my favorite of my recent reads on intellectualism, the university, and educational philosophy. I am tempted to say, "I wish I'd read this when I was starting college," but I think the beginning of grad school might be the perfect place to first encounter it. In this volume, Pelikan uses Newman's Idea of the University as a structure for his own reflection on the topic of the university. He brings excellent critiques of Newman, as well as relevant connections of 19th-century Newman to the state of education in the late-20th-into-21st-centuries.

While Pelikan dives heavily into the philosophical background of the university, he also makes frequent connections to the practical outworking of those ideas. He often does this by considering the relationship between undergraduate, graduate, and professorial work, which all happen simultaneously in the university. Success and health in each of these categories, he will argue, is closely tied to the relationship between teaching and research, as well as one's moral and philosophical understanding of a university. Too often an incredibly thoughtful book then falters by offering trite practical solutions, or vice versa. Pelikan has avoided this fault! As I begin graduate studies, I will be taking many of these practical tips and ideas with me.

It is a great resource, as well as a fitting tribute to Newman.

[Thomas Grosh IV · Rating 5 out of 5]

Explores the crisis of education, in particular the inseparability of research and teaching, the crisis of confidence in higher education today, and the preservation of knowledge through university libraries, galleries, and museums.