ABSTRACT

This chapter intends to be no more than an invitation to reconsider our understanding of the university, (re-)proposing the notion of studium as collective public study. The research university, including its self-understanding as an institution oriented toward a true idea, seems to remain the enlightening horizon for both defining what the university is and should be, and regretting what it no longer is in times of acceleration and capitalization. The universitas studii was disconnected from both the religious and civil authorities. The reaffirmation and reinvention of the universitas studii and the reclaiming of the notion of studium could offer a future to the university because it does not orient the university to a personal(ized) ideal or an empty signifier but points to the importance of its pedagogical forms as working through problems in a way that takes care of a shared future and regards or does justice to a shared world.