Abstract

In part I of this essay, the author reflects upon the meaning and the idea of the university in order to set up a discussion, in part II, of what a Catholic university might be. He understands the university to be the institutionalization of a fundamental human interest: the interest in knowledge as such, more precisely in knowledge of the whole of reality. In a world in which practical concerns are predominant, the university is a refuge wherein openness for the whole can be practized. This status not only determines the sometimes paradoxical relationship between the interests of universities and the interests of the societies that establish them. It also implies that a university, in order to teach universal knowledge, should not only welcome different types of knowledge and meaningful discourses but that it should consider it as its duty to further a conversation between these different disciplines. Only in this way can it hope to provide its members with an education of the faculty of judgment which must provide them with the ability to assess the truth of different kinds of knowledge and locate their place within the whole of knowledge. In light of this understanding of the university, a Catholic university can understand itself as a university which welcomes in a special way Catholic religious discourse and consequently, the Catholic Church as a privileged guest and conversation partner.