Fragment from “Gelegentliche Gedanken über Universitäten in deutschem Sinn Nebst einem Anhang über eine neu zu errichtende“

Abstract

These are some chapters from the book by Friedrich Schleiermacher, the important representative of German romanticism, protestant theological thinker, and one of the founders of the contemporary philosophical hermeneutics. The book «Some Casual Notes about the Spirit of German Universities» was written in the special historical epoch of formation of the «Confederation of the Rhine». The consolidation question of German states was becoming acute which had acquired (except from the political one) also a cultural dimension of the language unity. The new forms of state organization required the reformation of the scientific and educational institutions. It posed the problem of the autonomy degree of Academies and Universities in Germany. One had to elaborate media of establishing such an autonomy. It assumed a more concrete form of the problem concerning relations between Academies and Universities at one side, and their responses to the needs of the state administration and the state construction (informational control over society) at the other side.