The university as a public space: an analysis departing from two debates about pragmatism

Abstract

This paper provides arguments for the discussion about the aims and meaning of university at the present time. To do so, it formulates the analysis in terms of continuity or discontinuity between the university and the world, following two of the main debates in contemporary history on university and education. Both of them coincide at the key figure of pedagogical pragmatism. This is the debate held by Robert M. Hutchins and John Dewey in the thirties of last century, and the critique made by the German thinker Hannah Arendt of the progressive pedagogy represented by Dewey. Between the thesis of continuity and discontinuity maintained by Dewey and Hutchins, Arendt’s proposal to understand education as a form of transition provides a way to reinterpret the role of the university in relation to the world and to consider it as a public community. Through these confrontations, the article concludes with a number of proposals regarding current universities, which should: 1) establish a balance between sciences and humanities, between theory and application, between foundation and professionalism; 2) recreate their communitarian relevance as public spaces which promote the dispositions, knowledge and skills required by participation in an open society; and 3) reinterpret the pragmatic perspective behind the current university reforms from the point of view of its axiological and political aspects, the commitment to equality and democratic values.