“Cultural nation” and “university of culture”: experience in interpreting the ontological and political basis of unity

The connection between the concepts of “culture”, “nation” and “university” for the idea of classical “university of reason” appeared obvious to its creators, however, the nature of the necessity of the named connection needs to be clarified in the perspective of the modern university permanent reforming. The statement of the question implies a philosophical interpretation of the meaning of the connection being studied and the clarification of the meaning of the concepts included in it. It is established, that the necessity was based on the rationality of the Kantian subject, presented as absolute in classical German philosophy: the process of free self-determination of the subject is consistently carried out in the form of culture and nation and should culminate in the State. “University of reason” was the site of the formation of the will directed towards the realization of humanity as essentially civil. The nature of modernity (determined by the idea of technology, according to M. Heidegger), conditioned by subjec-tivity as a concern for security guarantees, removes the previous forms of self-determination of the subject, who now appears to be absolute in his presently given humanity as “historiographical man” (“last man” of Nietzsche, “historiographical animal” of Heidegger), that is as human capital “embedded in the machine”. The modern university-corporation is, therefore, a factory for the production of technical knowledge and human capital, which is builtinto the political order represented in the liberal version of the economic paradigm constructed in the horizon of “liberal metaphysics” (C. Schmitt).