Maybe the most certain of all philosophical problems is the problem of the present time, and of what we are, in this very moment. Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are, but to refuse what we are. … We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries. (M. Foucault, 'The Subject and Power', p. 216)
The current discussion on the role of the (European) universities often starts off with a perspective on the university as a scientific and/or pedagogical institution and consequently runs into a conflict between both logics in which each element is somehow devalued from the other perspective. Therefore, it may be productive to analyse the university from a standpoint in between, a perspective of knowledge as such. In order to conceptualise such a third perspective of knowledge, the history of the European university is reconstructed and interpreted as a process of reflection on the 'spiral of knowledge'. Before this background the idea of the university is renewed in terms of knowledge and summarised in the idea of a 'deliberate university'.
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