Otechestevnnye zapiski 2004, №1

http://magazines.russ.ru/oz/2004/1/index-pr.html

SUMMARY


This issue of OZ is an eclectic collection of articles from international
and Russian publications of contemporary and classic works. This issue, just
like our regular end-of-the-year one, is polythematic. On this occasion, we
have switched the focus from Russia to the world. We present multiaspect
view of the primordial and actual economic, cultural, and philosophical
problems that are pertinent for people all around the globe. The themes
touched upon are purposes, ways and means of the university in the
postmodern world, the relationship between Europe and the United States,
American foreign policy, the quality of the mainstream analytical discourse
on this policy, its alternative interpretations, internal problems of today’
s democracy, the emerging European identity, existential self-perceptions of
the modern man as opposed to the reality around him, possible models of
global government, etc. Examination of the Russian themes is confined to the
perceptions of the domestic media market and reforming the Russian military.

It is impossible to forecast if the international community at some point is
going to come to form a “world government.” A number of governing bodies,
both regional and global, economic and ecological, government and
non-government, may be a better alternative, as Robert Wright points out.
Supervising these governing bodies by the United Nations, which already has
authority over numerous evolving institutions, is yet another — and not
unreasonable — option. Whereas various scenarios can be envisioned, it is
most likely that the new supernational level of government will make nation
states provincial. This shift of concentration of the power seems to be
conditioned by distinct thousand-year-old technological tendencies which do
not tend to slow down. The vaster the body of empirical phenomena that have
been entered into the “hard disk” of the world, the faster the pace of
change in the world. Almost everything around us gets outdated at an
evergrowing speed, which includes our own experience. According to Odo
Marquard, this makes us alienated from the world. The German philosopher
diagnoses conditions and malaises of the modern man and provides necessary
prescriptions.

Associate Professor in the Literature Program at Duke University, Michael
Hardt and Italian philosopher Antonio Negri in their Empire give an outlook
of today’s cultural, economic, and legal transformations taking place all
over the globe. The new emerging empire is different from those of the past;
it is also not merely a development of international capitalism.

The war on terrorism which officially started after 9/11 and building the
European community as a new type of supernational unity are the key
processes that have started the new century and that will long determine its
main tendencies. Ruslan Khestanov questions whether the crisis of
European-American relations is going to become a historic schism of Western
civilization.

Expert of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Robert Kagan aims
to uncover the deep roots of the strategic discord that is clouding the
today’s relationship between the USA and Europe. Whereas the current
American policy is determined by the “psychology of power,” the European
one, on the contrary, is conditioned by the “psychology of weakness.”
According to Kagan, the West could regain its lost cohesion if Europe
started developing its own military potential and the USA launched a more
flexible approach to solving international riddles, which would take into
account the interests of their partners.

The belligerent past of all European nations used to sow the seeds of yet
more bloody encounters. Analyzing this experience of military and
ideological mobilization against each other made the nations welcome new
supernational forms of international cooperation. The successful history of
building of the European Union convinced Europeans that renunciation of
exercising state violence requires corresponding limitation of state
sovereignty on the global level. With the decline of colonialism, former
empires received an opportunity to reflect on the fruit of their
imperialism. They got to learn to look at themselves from the viewpoint of
the “defeated.” From this new perspective, they reconsidered their own
dubious role of “winners” accountable for the modernization that they had
forced upon peoples while depriving them of their traditions. According to
Jacques Derrida and Jurgen Habermas, the change of perspective gives the
European nations a chance to give up their Eurocentrism and give another
life to the Kantean idea of global internal policy.

What is today’s Europe? According to the Swiss writer, literary critic, and
historian of literature Adolf Muschg, it is a fact that is becoming such
because it is being created as such, and because people aspire to create it.
The “European Federation” is not just a new artifact in the history of
mankind; the phenomenon is a source not only of inspiration but also of
great caution. Muschg ponders the issue of evolving European identity. He
states that Europe in the process of self-organization must be as smart as
life itself understood as a constant search for an unsteady equilibrium.

The war in Iraq almost drove a wedge between Europeans and Americans.
Umberto Eco in an essay on the appropriateness of the war argues that
Western intellectuals must not allow the conflict to bring ultimate disunity
to the Western world. Respect for American people, culture, and tradition as
well as sympathy for the pain caused by the tragedy of 2001 should not ban
people’s critical thinking about politics and government actions. Eco shares
a European intellectual’s viewpoint of the situation.

Jean Baudrillard wrote his “La Masque de la Guerre” not long before the
start of the military campaign in Iraq. He thinks that the conflict was a
phantom event programmed to induce the establishment of the secure world
order based on preventive terror.

Speaking of the common ‘European house,’ Italian philosopher and member of
European Parliament Gianni Vattimo aims to find common values that would
mold Europe on the deep level of culture. Vattimo finds such values while
juxtaposing Europe and the United States. Europeans are less religious and
trust the state more than the Americans. Hence the greater disposition of
the former as compared to the latter to the social welfare state.

Entrepreneurial practices that have been introduced to American higher
education by the early 1900s became unprecedented in their size and scope by
the end of the century. However expedient earning their own money in order
to solve various institutional needs may seem to the universities, a vast
body of evidence shows that the tendency erodes not only subtle values of
higher education but also weakens the foundations of the democratic society.
Derek Curtis Bok, lawyer, Harvard law Professor, former Dean of Harvard Law
School and Harvard University President (1971-1991) reveals the mechanism
that corrupts morality and curtails freedom of university officials,
faculty, students, and broader society.

In his University in Ruins, Bill Readings analyzes the reasons of the
pitiful state of the contemporary Western university as a social
institution. The condition, as Readings discerns, has grown out of the
succession of the three main concepts underlying the institution: the
Kantian concept of reason, Humboldt’s concept of culture, and today’s
techno-bureaucratic notion of excellence. Readings testifies that the
university has outlived its raison d’etre defined two centuries ago as a
molding force of national culture, “be it an ethnic essence or republican
will;” it has lost its immunity against the outer world and become enmeshed
in the global capitalism.

The advent of “tech-science” ruined the margin that Kant used to demarcate
“technical” and “architectonic” domains of the university when he was
elaborating the general systematic organization of knowledge that was to
become a model of the university organization. Jacques Derrida aims to
define the rational grounds and the idea of the university as seen by its
alumni. He calls for a new type of responsibility that implies commonness of
thought at large, not of a philosophical, humanitarian, or scientific
pursuit. This common thought addresses its questions to the essence of mind,
rational argument, and to the fundamental and primordial values, i.e., to
arkhe. This thought aims to scrutinize all the consequences of such
questioning. This thought has to rethink the substance of a community and
the substance of an institution. Another infinite task of this thought is to
bring to light all the contrivances of the applied and expedient mind that
ventures to entrap and expropriate the most disinterested and unselfish
investigations in order to reinvest them in all sorts of projects. This is
not to say that there is anything wrong with applied research per se, and
that any expediency should be opposed. What Derrida is arguing for is the
necessity of advances that would pave the way for the new kinds of analysis
of one’s ultimate goals and, if possible, for taking one’s own decisions.

While opposing Jose Ortega Y Gasset who asserted that any research activity
must be cast outside the ivory tower, Herman Heimpel argues for the Humboldt
’s model of the university that unites teaching and research. Science is not
merely research and free investigation; it is also a tradition. Any
discovery – even if it aims to undermine the tradition – is in fact a part
of that tradition. Research needs the university not only as a receiver of
its product but also as a nutrient. Not only does research instruct its
university – the university also instructs the research. Research is
revolution whereas the university is a tradition. These two tendencies
should not be associated with different types of people; they must not be
understood as a need to expel revolutionaries while resorting just to
teachers who stick to the tradition. On the contrary, the university is the
main, though not the only, institution of science that combines in itself
analysis and synthesis, revolution and tradition, conservatism and freedom.
Hence the high-tension university atmosphere created by the poles of
revolution and tradition.

In his The University: An Owner’s Manual, former Harvard dean Henry Rosovsky
gives an animated and witty account of the work routine of today’s
university administrator.

We publish a speech by Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz on his
assumption of the office as a rector of the Friedrich Wilhelm University in
Berlin on October 15 1877. The scientist praises German universities as
compared to British and French ones. The main merit and distinctive feature
of the German university, according to Helmholtz, is academic freedom and
bringing together lectures and research by the teaching staff.

We publish a lecture by Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890) on
Christianity and scientific knowledge. With rhetorical splendor, Newman
states that the pursuit of truth is an essential responsibility of the
university under the auspices of which both laymen and clerics must join
their efforts.

Clarence J. Robinson Professor at George Mason University and former
Professor of Government at Harvard University, Hugh Heclo argues that
although political life in the United States has become extraordinarily open
and democratic, average Americans become ever more conspicuously alienated
from politics. Heclo supposes that, in order to draw the “hyperdemocracy”
back under the control of the society, Americans must do their best to
enhance the dialogue between social strata. This dialogue has to be made
more honest, meaningful, and responsible.

Professor at the University of Maryland and former editor of the Northern
Virginia Sun newspaper, Herman J. Obermayer pictures the decadence of the
Russian market of daily newspapers. The reasons for the stagnation, as
Obermayer reveals, are of psychological (enduring Soviet-times prejudices
against advertising, etc.), political, and economic nature (such as the
bondage between most regional periodicals and their respective regional
administrations). Obermayer notes that the country’s editors and reporters
will go on upholding traditions of their Soviet predecessors until the
standards of the journalistic education are changed. Today, graduates of 65
Journalism Departments that are state-licensed start working without having
any notion of the Western concept of objective reporting, journalistic
ethics, financial independence of media or their role in monitoring
activities of authorities.

Professor of the Sorbonne and editor of the Arabica journal, Mohammed Arkoun
in his article “Islam et democratie. Quelle democratie? Quel Islam?” states
that analytical discourse on the global political situation that was
launched by the events of 9/11 lacks objectivity. While trying to explain
the puzzle, the authors of discourses on today’s Islam are not really
looking for ways of solving it and stick to ready-to-use images of both
Western and Islamic traditions. The author aims to discern what is today’s
democracy and what is today’s Islam everybody is talking about.

Expert on Russian defense issues, Roger McDermott writes on the priorities
of President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin in reforming the
Russian military. He overviews the symptoms of the current crisis in the
army, such as low funding, lack of accommodation, the decline of morale,
along with authoritative measures and rhetoric in the period 1997-2002. The
author concludes that radical military reform is not feasible without
creating a professional army that should be based on corporate and
professional ethics embedded in the system of military education.