Critique of the “societas academica”. Knowledge and Communication between Vico and Habermas

This proposal focuses on the university reformism debate according to the antiphrastic dialectics (peculiar of our modernity) between university and anti-university, in order to deepen the heuristic as well as different and convergent approach fostered by Vico and Habermas. In the foreground there is the development of the reflection on the “commoda” and “incommoda” (advantages and disadvantages) of university. Both Vico and Habermas propose distant but synergic interpretations in the light of different social and cognitive patterns as well as the consideration of the attention paid by Habermas to Vico’s thought. As a matter of fact, some of the matters pointed out by Vico in the inaugural speech On the study method of our times given in Naples in 1708 (the didactic fragmentation, the excess of self-reference, the separation between humanism and scientism, the limits of the freedom of research, to name a few) characterize the social reflection about university. This happens in the hard years of the student protest (University in the democracy, 1967). Furthermore, it is worth noticing that the reflection on the destiny of universities is entrusted to the form of the oral speech as Vico and Habermas and other important thinkers (Derrida, Morin, McLuhan, Bourdieu) have done before. These are the ones who have dedicated some significant programmatic reflections to the university reformism, therefore, the critic discourse on university and the public analysis on the communicative act can be joined together, far beyond the self-reference limits of our universities.