The university and the human sciences

The current malaise affecting the university in general and the human sciences in particular has a deeper origin than is usually recognized. It has to do with the gap between science and culture, between the scientific way of dealing with things and the ordinary-lifeway of dealing with them. The more the university is seen as the bastion of science, the less those sciences, which traditionally deal with human affairs as seen from the ordinary, common sense point of view, are taken seriously. It is particularly the Geisteswissenschaften which are de facto depreciated. The usual reaction is an attempt to ever more professionalism and methodological rigidity also in these sciences. This leads to disastrous consequences both for the Geisteswissenschaften and for the university as a whole. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.