ABSTRACT

‘Alongside duration through things, there is duration through reason’. With this statement, Gaston Bachelard (2000/1950) opens up the possibility that reason presents a certain stubbornness in relation to time. Universities are increasingly dominated, or so it may seem, by timeframes of speed, brevity and urgency. In turn, it may also seem that careful time, expansive time, watchful time, listening time – of the kind characteristically associated with the time of reason – is in jeopardy. But perhaps reason will present the university with its bill before long. Perhaps the university can only survive if spacious time, the time of reason, is given its due; and perhaps reason itself will insist on this reckoning. The time may come for the time of reason.