University versus academy: The essence of the university activity

Abstract

The Platonic Academy, of which the current university institution feels very proud, -- with the pride inherent to a high-origin glory --, was endowed with a spirit that is currently foreign to most of its immensurable offspring. A number of promoters, authorities, directives, faculty staff and students, lost nowadays in the
marvelously globalized confusion, not only ignore the existence and nature of Academy, but also understand it as an impossibility for our times, refuse it as a foreign entity for the interests of “majorities” and label it with pejorative “idealism” or simple they ignore it as its presence does not mean anything to them. When they do not scorn them – in an elegant, flowery, “wise” and erudite manner – they critique the possibility of truth, the very existence of knowledge, the hope that feeds searches that do not aim at material rewards,
prestige, position, power… This happens when the constellation of meanings about knowledge disinterest ad its contemplative end invade their minds, when the untiring prosecution of knowledge that only aims at comprehension – and maybe at beauty – of the Academy object, and when maybe they are dazzled by a grandeur they cannot understand and which turns out to be a novelty (university life appears to be very diverse).

The author is concerned with the need of loyalty to that teacher and with the search of those ideals that became foundations of the Western Hemisphere, maybe as a remedy to a diffuse, concrete and progressively corrosive malaise. He is also convinced that the betrayal to that noble origin results in misunderstandings,
frustrations, lack of hope and degradations in the “current university market.”