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Udgivelsesdato: 9. oktober

Udgivelsesdato: 9. januar

Udgivelsesdato: july

This publication is a special issue in the journal Danish Yearbook of Philosophy (Editor in Chief: Finn Collin). The special issue is edited by Søren Bengtsen and Asger Sørensen. The university is one of those few institutions that, allegedly, can be encountered all over the globe. Philosophical questions about the university have in particular been raised in times of change and crisis, be that in science and education or society at large. Contemporary social acceleration, however, has made acute and almost constant these transitory states, and today the classical university is in a precarious situation.Hence, we see an increasing number of texts on these issues from emerging fields of studies, just as we see new scholarly disciplines with their own conferences, journals and celebrities. On the one hand, after centuries of existence, one may say that universities are finally on the way towards self-consciousness and self- reflexivity. On the other hand, one may fear that this only happens as they are on the verge of losing their traditional identity and raison d’être as the seats of science and education, hosting critique, truth and academic freedom.The Danish Yearbook of Philosophy invites the global intellectual community to join hands with the participants of the Aarhus University conference “The Purpose of the Future University” and submit papers to be considered for review and publication. All philosophical disciplines, schools and traditions are welcome, as are systematic and historical studies.The editors of the special issue are Søren S.E. Bengtsen and Asger Sørensen, both part of the Centre for Higher Education Futures, Aarhus University.

The article examines the opening of state reasoning towards public deliberation during the Enlightenment. Since the Enlightenment, a number of standards for public reasoning have been settled. These concerned the constitution of reasoning, freedom of speech and print, toleration, justice and other social and political phenomena as well. Following the lead of Immanuel Kant, these standards and procedures are often, for instance by Reinhart Koselleck, claimed to be forms of reasoning that follow the model of a tribunal. Accordingly, the paper analyses the self-descriptions, semantics and the thoughts constituting the public reasoning in the leading court of justice during the early Enlightenment, the Paris parlements. The yearly speeches from 1693 – 1715 as well as the philosophy of law, from 1727, by the royal attorney and later chancellor Henri-François d’Aguesseau (1668 – 1751) are subject to the analysis in the paper. It seems clear that a the Copernican turn in social reasoning took place at that moment according to the form of “Reason’s Empire”.