01/04/2024 • Daniel Sister
A law school should not train—or be concerned with training—lawyers, judges, prosecutors, or diplomats. A law school should focus all its attention and resources on training and forming jurists.
By the end of the fourth and final year of their Bachelor’s Degree, Law students know numerous articles of the Civil Code, the Penal Code, the Constitution, the Code of Administrative Procedure by heart... They are, however, incapable of discussing the concept of guilt, incapable of discussing the concept of incarceration, and—what should shock anyone the most—incapable of discussing the concept of Justice.
Getting a degree in Law without knowing what Justice is should be as impossible as becoming a priest without knowing what God is or becoming a physician who does not know what a brain is. All three scenarios are equally appalling.
The most perverse aspect of the higher education system is highlighted by the fragile humanistic guise created purely for aesthetic, political, and ideological reasons. The so-called "Socratic Teaching Method” (a term that has gained a new life and is endlessly repeated since the Bologna Process) is referenced, defended, and "applied" by those who have never studied Socrates and think he was a Prime Minister of Portugal.
The Bologna Process (BP) represents a significant shift in the higher education paradigm, driven by the immoral and promiscuous relationship between market forces and European institutions. It is the twenty-third blow against Academia. This initiative helped reinforce an old desire of the Market: replacing universities with training centers, where thinkers and scholars are not welcomed or formed, but where mere employees are created. By prioritizing employability as a central goal, the BP reflects and legitimizes the immoral nature of another relationship: the one between Market and Academia.
From the perspective of the ones who defend the BP, the knowledge transmitted by universities must be useful and applicable in the job market. Through this utilitarian notion of teaching, good knowledge is useful knowledge. In other words, good knowledge, worthy of being taught and learned, is that which the Market values—the knowledge that will earn you a job. Thus, anyone capable of establishing any kind of neural connections can infer that it is the Market that determines, that dictates, the syllabi of the different courses at different universities in different European countries.
We are witnessing the transposition of the capitalist logic of consumption and production into the academic realm. With the importation of employability as a permanent aspiration, the University loses its independence, even in determining its own concerns. Learning becomes a mere means to an end. The Bologna Process—being the twenty-third and final stab in the Academy—has killed the noble ideal of learning as an end in itself, that is, learning simply to satisfy intellectual curiosity, something that has always been at the core of Education.
The uniformity imposed by the BP extinguishes the plurality and diversity that once existed and were so important in the Academy. Even though it is a recent trauma, we could even classify as prophetic, if it weren't so obvious, the statement "No society can endure without its own system of education."[1]”
Another figure we must analyze is that of the Rector. We observe the abstract castration of the position of Rector, as those who occupy this role either willingly become Brutus or, cowardly, accept perverse impositions. According to the previously referenced Lucídio Bianchetti, “(…) from the condition of protagonists, [the rectors] become supporting actors, responsible and held accountable for the execution of decisions made heteronomously”, being bound, for example, to the Bologna Declaration of 1999, through the signatures of the Ministers of Education of their respective EU member states.
With this raw, violent, and destructive impetus, transforming into science what is Philosophy, or Sociology, or Anthropology (ultimately, more specialized branches of Philosophy), transforming the academic experience into something unrecognizable, the University achieves the goal imposed by the Market: the neutralization of Intellectual Freedom, Creativity, and the Curiosity of teachers—transformed into technocrat trainers—and students, transformed into technocrats in training.
The Process "materializes a betrayal of the Enlightenment, Humboldtian, and republican ideals of the university."[2] This betrayal will certainly pass unscathed through the critical analysis of future graduates due to the simple fact that this capacity to critically analyze the world is in extinction and the great probability that these future graduates do not even know what Enlightenment is, or who Humboldt was.
Thus, those who invoke the idea of "Socratic Teaching" as a contribution of the BP are either merely ignorant, true useful idiots, servants of the educational system that has the Market as king, or are bitter cynics.
In the 1960s, we had Foucault, Lacan, Althusser, Deleuze, Badiou, Moscovici, Rancière, Bourdieu, Sartre, Camus, and Beauvoir in one city. In the same century, we had T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, Hemingway, Didion, Sontag, Pound, Frost, and so many other geniuses. Today, we have a handful of thinkers around the world, and they are already in their seventies, eighties, and some are almost centenarians, like Chomsky. Even these few living intellectuals, of advanced age, produced their respective magnum opuses in the last century. It is not enough to be an intellectual and be alive to be a "contemporary intellectual"; it is necessary to produce knowledge in the present, to still have something to say and to say it. If one is no longer a writer, one should stop writing. magna opera no século passado. Não basta ser intelectual e estar vivo para ser um “intelectualda atualidade”, é preciso que produza conhecimento na atualidade, é preciso que ainda tenha o que falar e que fale. Se não for mais um escritor, que deixe de escrever.
In the face of this terrible scarcity of functioning brilliant minds, we should—not like mediocre romantics—simply lament and seek comfort in the dust accumulated in old books. We must categorically state that the fault lies with the universities and European institutions that submitted to the power of the Market, accepting the honor of delivering violent blows against the conditions that enable the emergence of critical spirit and intellectual curiosity.
It was the University that agreed to abdicate its own status status and become a gray factory of technocrats made to measure for the Market. It was the law schools that accepted training technocrats who can recite, by heart, articles of the Law and who use Excel spreadsheets like no one else.
In addition to the already analyzed idea that "good knowledge is useful knowledge," another notion that must be examined is that valid knowledge, credible knowledge, is only that which comes from science.
Esta ideia, que já se metastatizou como o câncer que é, transforma áreas da Filosofia e do Saber NaturalThis idea, which has already metastasized like the cancer it is, transforms areas of Philosophy and Natural Knowledge, such as Law and Economics, into sciences. These are not even branches of social sciences. No. Each area of knowledge now corresponds to a different science. Thus, Law is a legal science, and Economics is, of course, an economic science.
Knowledge, dear reader, is dead. However, I refuse to take the blame and complete the phrase with "and we killed it."
Where do legal goods come from? Where does the concept of crime come from? Where does the notion of perversity and cruelty, so important for Criminal Law, come from? Where does the Principle of Application of the Most Favorable Penal Law come from? Where does the idea that human life is inviolable, as stated in Article 24 of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, come from? Where does the idea that the citizen must have broad rights of defense come from? Where does the idea that the judge must be impartial come from? The answer to all these questions is: from Philosophy and its various fields!
With much intellectual legitimacy, those trained in the great Legal Science have not read Plato, have not read Aristotle, have not read Hegel, have not read Kant, or Foucault. A legal scholar, with their newly minted degree, when questioned about philosophical concepts, like those mentioned in the previous paragraph, responds, like Álvaro de Campos, “I am a technician, but I have technique only within technique,” not even having the decency to be “crazy with every right to be so.”[3]”
Those with genuine academic aspirations are quickly castrated by the Market, the University, and European institutions, acting in collusion, and even by their peers.
With this raw, violent, and destructive impetus, transforming into science what is Philosophy, or Sociology, or Anthropology (ultimately, more specialized branches of Philosophy), transforming the academic experience into something unrecognizable, the University achieves the goal imposed by the Market: the neutralization of Intellectual Freedom, Creativity, and the Curiosity of teachers—transformed into technocrat trainers—and students, transformed into technocrats in training. tecnocratas-formadores—e dos alunos, transformados em tecnocratas-em-formação.
There still are, however, some teachers and students who have not had such elements reaped. There are still students who are driven by curiosity and a desire to learn. There are still teachers who are driven by the desire to teach and produce knowledge. These figures, increasingly rare—and invariably cynical—sustain, like Atlas, the enormous weight of the moribund Academy. These figures constitute the “little thread of freedom and saving initiative” that allows for the existence, however diminutive, of hope that the Academy will reclaim, occupy, and fill the space that is rightfully its.[4] que faz com que possa existir, por mais que diminuta, a esperança de que a Academia reivindique, ocupe, preencha o espaço que é seu por Direito.
Studying what is useless has never been so subversive and revolutionary.
Long live useless knowledge!
Porto, 2024.
[1] MÉSZÁROS, I. (2006) apud BIANCHETTI, L. (2016).
[2] Ibidem.
[3] CAMPOS, A. (1923).
[4] BAPTISTA MACHADO, J. (1961).
This article was originally published by Católica Policy Society (CPS), on 01/04/2024, in Portuguese. This English version is an adaption made by the author.
Also available on the CPS's website.
