Philosophers on the University by Ronald Barnett & Amanda Fulford

Author:Ronald Barnett & Amanda Fulford
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030310615
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The Influence of Ortega y Gasset on the Shaping of Higher Education

Any consideration of a philosopher’s contribution to thinking about the nature and function of higher education has at least two aspects. One is evidence of the philosopher’s direct influence on other thinkers. The second is the practical, actual impact of the philosopher’s thoughts on the higher education institution itself, and its position in society’s various communities. Both aspects of Ortega’s thinking in Mission and in subsequent initiatives have to be considered in the contexts of the world-wide massive changes in educational organisations and their functions which have taken place since the ending of World War II.

First, we may note the direct influence on those by whom Ortega’s philosophy of higher education was received and welcomed. As indicated previously, Ortega’s travels and communications, at first in exile and then after 1945 with other scholars and their institutions, were in three continents. Many were or had been citizens of Spain. Gradually, contemporary thinkers elsewhere identified their debt to him. One was Martin Heidegger. He too was influenced by the thinking of Edmund Husserl and the development of Phenomenology with its questioning about ‘what is it like to be human?’ or on Ontology/the nature of being. Heidegger’s own development of philosophy departed in a different direction from Ortega’s original inspiration, although in his later writing he developed an interest in the role of poetic understanding of human experience, which a key modern follower of Ortega also explored.

In the United Kingdom, there were widely circulated references, such as Walter Moberly’s Crisis in the University (1949) and J.H. Plumb’s Crisis in the Humanities (1964). I note too the acknowledgement of Ortega’s influence on the literary scholar, F. R. Leavis of Downing College, Cambridge. One influential study by Leavis which was relevant to Ortega’s theme is Education and the University: A sketch for an English school. It was first published in 1943, but revised and republished in 1979 in response to the major post-war university reforms, and in his rejection of the notion of ‘Two Cultures’, then being widely discussed (in which the natural sciences were being held up as having a cultural status equivalent to that of the humanities).

In the United States, there were influential translations of Ortega’s work in a range of fields, but all with attention to how the universities of a nation can create socially active individuals. I refer in the references to the translations by Marias (1970), Ferrater Mora (1957) and Kaufmann (see Ortega 1961) , as well as appreciative studies of his influence on universities such as the University of Chicago. Two good sources are by R. McClintock (1971) and J-M Terricabras (2003). As examples of the outreach of Ortega’s thoughts on philosophers’ roles and the university’s processes of individual formation, I briefly now select two thinkers, one a contemporary and one time pupil of Ortega and the other a developer of his thinking.

It is valuable for those studying Ortega’s impact to consider the work and life of Maria

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