The Polytechnic University
21st February 2021
The university was once a unity per se that carried its end in its very practices of education and inquiry. It is now a unity per accidens, a contingent conglomeration of means that serve changing extrinsic ends, a knowledge corporation that sells goods of “know-how” in the service of ends determined by advanced techno-capitalist societies. The philosopher Benedict Ashley, educated in the early years of the University of Chicago’s remarkable undergraduate program, writes in his magnum opus, The Way toward Wisdom: “The very term ‘university’ means many-looking-toward-one, and is related to the term ‘universe,’ the whole of reality. Thus, the name no longer seems appropriate to such a fragmented modern institution whose unity is provided only by a financial administration and perhaps a sports team.”