information to lay audiences who would then apply it. Only the academies of
scientists or artists were expected to create new works. But in fact the central-
ized structure of collective patronage did not stimulate creativity very well;
particularly in France, the great academies tended to be places for display of
honors, for ceremonialism and rather traditionalistic standards as to contents
(Heilbron, 1994). The centralized patronage system, lacking the internal auton-
omy and ongoing competitiveness of the university faculties, tended to degen-
erate into awards for the socially eminent and bastions of the intellectually
conservative.
The key battle, fought out in Germany from the 1780s to the early 1800s,
was to reform the position of the philosophical faculty within the university.
Traditionally it had constituted the preliminary or undergraduate training for
the higher faculties of theology, law, and medicine, and its teachers occupied
a correspondingly lower level of pay and prestige. The reform made the
philosophical faculty into a full-fledged higher faculty, claiming to teach the
most advanced subjects, and with autonomy from the restrictions formerly
imposed by the theologians.^20 This meant that the exercise of reason by its own
lights was to be free of the guidance of doctrine and orthodoxy. A similar battle
had been fought out in the medieval universities, and a good deal of creative
energy went into maneuvering between the rival claims of reason and faith.
The edict of 1277, which had enforced the superiority of theology and legis-
lated against the encroachments of the philosophers, had beaten back a revolt
of the philosophy teachers (i.e., the arts faculty) which was heading in the
direction later consummated by the German university revolution. A little more
than 500 years later, the arts faculty triumphed.
With the success of the university revolution, the university gradually
asserted its superiority over the alternative bases of research and innovation.
Scientific research, carried out by wealthy amateurs or under the support of
patrons, was upstaged as soon as universities underwent sufficient internal
differentiation to provide bases for the scientific specialties.^21 In philosophy,
which is our central concern here, the university-based competitive structures
quickly established a level of sophisticated conceptualization that dominated
the attention space over the cruder argumentation of lay-oriented intellectuals.
Since the German academic revolution, virtually all notable philosophers have
been professors. The generalization is a loose one; a more precise way to say
it is that within each national culture, as soon as it underwent a German-style
university revolution, the academic philosophers took over the center of atten-
tion from philosophers outside the university.^22
In England, the universities did not undergo the reform until 1872. Prior
to that time dons had to be clerics, and higher research topics were subordi-
nated to an undergraduate-oriented instruction in the classics. Independently
644 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths