Abstract

Loosely drawing its inspiration from the movie “The Matrix,” the article first walks the reader through the seminal work of two philosophers not usually placed together—Stephen Pepper and Richard Weaver. Specifically, the paper draws from Pepper’s philosophical categories of knowledge and Weaver’s philosophical categories of argument to create an analytical matrix of twelve categories by which the varied formative institutions of higher education today, both in structure and exemplars, can be profitably compared both to the ethos of the “classic” university of the past. From within these competing historical models and their present-day reiterations, the locus of the often “disappearing” human being within them can be re-discovered by a reclaiming of a comprehensively self-reflective and critical reconstruction of meaning, a meaning which is often cloaked by a “secret” ideology governed by an unacknowledged worldview.