The Faculty of Letters and the Graduate School of Letters occupy a unique position not only in the history of universities but also in the history of culture. The university is a place where the most advanced research is conducted, and new knowledge is developed—this fairly commonsensical view of the university as a research institution is said to have been born in nineteenth-century Germany and is today called the “Humboldtian ideal,” after one of the original advocators of the concept. The first institution based on this ideal, outside Germany, was Johns Hopkins University in America, today boasting one of the world’s best medical schools. Then, what was the first one in the field of humanities and social sciences? This is a difficult question, but at least in Asia, Kyoto Imperial University (the former avatar of Kyoto University) must be one of the first cases. First, what later became the Faculty of Law, and then, what became the Faculty of Letters were established; they were among the first realizations of the “Humboldtian ideal in humanities.”
According to the Humboldtian ideal, students are not passive receivers of professors’ teachings; they are regarded as researchers in embryo who are going to be pioneers in their respective fields. For example, formerly, in many Japanese universities students were allowed to read books in libraries, but not to borrow them. The Faculty of Letters of Kyoto University, however, permitted them to do so from the date of its foundation.
The Humboldtian ideal also manifests itself in the form of teaching, namely, in what are called “seminars.” Professors give “general lectures” in which they present a broad survey of the field, and they offer “specialized lectures” in which they discourse on what they themselves are researching at the moment, thereby showing exemplary methods of study and sharing joys and sorrows of the actual research work. Then in “seminars,” students who have, by imitating professors, acquired various methods and approaches try them out and show the result of their learning. What is called “Zemi” in Japanese universities initially played the role of a cradle for future researchers. Our Faculty of Letters, from its inception onwards, has been assigning special importance to such seminars, and the dissertation developed from presentations in these settings.
The same can be said of our Graduate School of Letters. Presentations in seminars and theses developed from them have long been regarded as matters of utmost priority in students’ lives.
In the Humboldtian university, where from the beginning students are treated as researchers, motivated ones find themselves in rewarding, if “tough,” circumstances. In many, if not all, of the departments belonging to the Faculty and Graduate School myths have been prevalent in which the severity of seminars and oral examinations is overblown.
Beijing University in China was one of those institutions in Asia that followed us in having a “Humboldtian faculty.” The president Tsai Yuanpei, who had studied in Germany, made a radical reformation of the university, promoting the “Humboldtization,” to the extent of demolishing the department of Technology as mere “applied studies.” Such “Humboldtizations” bore remarkable fruits. The Faculties of Letters, of Kyoto and of Beijing, produced the Kyoto School and the Contemporary New Confucian respectively, unique philosophical movements of world renown.
Naturally, at present, Humboldtism in Kyoto is in contemporary guise. Students’ career paths are highly diversified, and the way professors think is significantly different from what it used to be when I was a student here. The Faculty, even the Graduate School as well, is becoming more and more like a place where students learn to make use of their knowledge in humanities and social sciences in various prospective spheres of life, rather than a place of narrowly specialized studies. Each professor is now aiming to be an accompanying runner, as it were, seeing to the needs of each student, rather than an all-too-severe training coach.
Currently, we may be living in a world of control and supervision, a kind of Orwellian dystopia where everyone is watching everyone else via smartphones. There are some tendencies in which established values are regarded as absolute, and attempts are made to tie people closely to these values by monitoring and mutual surveillance. Such tendencies affect institutions of higher education, and Kyoto University is no exception. And yet, in our Faculty and Graduate School, still breathing is the “Humboldtian spirit” that has been engaged in the timeless pursuit of academic excellence without paying heed to present interests and has been proposing new senses of value to society. Here we have an aspiration to defend to the end the Humboldtian tradition which was established here for the first time in Asia. Let me cordially invite all of you to participate in the “Humboldtian spirit” of the Faculty and Graduate School and thereby gain strength enough to repel the dystopian pressures of supervision and mutual surveillance.
Dean of the Faculty and Graduate School of Letters
DEGUCHI, Yasuo