The Historic Constitution of the Modern University and the Heritage of the Humanities

The historical examination sets out by describing the major reorganization of Western knowledge institutions and disciplines that laid the foundation of the modern university roughly 200 years ago. With the establishment of the Humboldtian university, the human sciences, for the first time in history, assume their modern shape and become recognizable as what is perceived as humanities today. Concomitantly, the retrieval of knowledge concerning the human and its development, a core and defining issue for the disciplines located at the philosophical faculty or the faculty of arts, is granted a central and unifying role for the organization of the university. The study and development of the distinctively human becomes crucial for science and its knowledge production in general. From this outset, the study articulates the development of the organization of knowledge and its central disciplines up to the present. Focusing on the development of the human sciences and the establishment of knowledge concerning the human, the study describes the major phases in the history of the sciences following their modern constitution. Since the acquisition of knowledge concerning the essentially human, as well as the latter’s refinement and cultivation, acquired an overarching role and assumed a crucial position for the organization of the modern university, a dynamic development has taken place. This creative development has decisively questioned the initial organization of the university and the classical heritage of the humanities.