atic of the old church-dominated intellectual base and ideological target of
attack from the new intellectual base. Secular bases, close to lay audiences or
lay patrons, brought about a de-differentiation of the intellectual role; the
philosopher (or specialist in abstract ideas) now tended also to become the
writer of literary entertainments and the political partisan. In contrast, the
specialized role of philosopher within the medieval university had been to take
charge of a technical portion of the curriculum. Because of the institutional
change toward the popular literary market in combination with lay patronage,
during this period one finds the predominance of the literary intellectual.^18
Revolt of the Philosophical Faculty
The academic revolution pioneered in Germany marked a revival and reform
of the medieval organization of higher education. The medieval university was
a stronghold of the church, training priests and theologians; it also combined,
in lesser or greater degree in various places, with guilds monopolizing the
teaching of law and medicine, under the legitimation and control of the church.
Given that after 1700 the church had lost its monopoly on the production of
culture, what significance was there in reviving the university? To understand
the question, it is desirable for us as modern intellectuals, and hence products
of universities, to divest ourselves of hindsight which makes us take for granted
the inevitability of this institution.
In the 1700s the university was nearly abolished. The ideological tone, es-
pecially among self-consciously progressive intellectuals, was to regard univer-
sities as outdated and intellectually retrograde.^19 Leibniz in 1700 had proposed
that universities be replaced by government-regulated professional schools,
with academies taking over the preservation and extension of science and high
culture. The same proposal was made by the Prussian reform minister von
Massow in 1806. This is in fact what the French had done in 1793, replacing
universities with a system of academies together with government écoles for
engineers, teachers, and other specialists.
To abolish the university would not have meant abolishing education. What
significance, if any, could there have been to preserving the organization whose
main distinction was that it was traditionally under church control? The 1700s
were a period of expansion in secondary schools: in Germany, Gymnasia for
classical subjects, Ritterakademie for aristocratic manners; in France, the Jesuit
colleges which spread widely to serve the middle classes or even lower; in
England, the elite Public Schools. Here again we must guard against anachro-
nism. Today we take it for granted that there is a sequence, that one attends
secondary school in order to prepare for the university. Before the German
university reform, however, these two types of schooling were alternatives or
640 •^ Intellectual Communities: Western Paths