Fans and Celebrities at
the University
Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
Giorgione, I Tre F ilo sofi
1
1
The Three Philosophers (c. 1505–1509) is an oil painting on canvas attributed to Giorgione (1477-1510),
whose real name was Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco. Giorgione was an Italian painter of the Renaissance
who lived in Venice and served his apprenticeship under Bellini. Only about six surviving paintings are
acknowledged for certain to be his work and the resulting uncertainty about the identity and meaning of his
art has made him one of the most mysterious figures in European painting. This is one of Giorgione’s last
paintings and it is now displayed at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It shows three philosophers one young, one middle-aged, and one old - who are standing near a dark empty cave that has been
interpreted as a symbol of Plato's cave.
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Fans and Celebrities at
the University
Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
2
"Cel ebr i ty i s a per son who i s wel l -known
for hi s well -knownness. "
Dani el Boor sti n
Inspired by Giorgione's famous p ainting enti tled The Three Philosophers in which the three figures are considere d to be repre senta tive of the three
stages of men 's though t, the Re naissan ce (the young man) , the Muslim
expansion age ( the man wearing a turba n) a nd the Middle Ages (the old man) - I
have chosen a s a topi c for this essay to refer to three famous university
professor s o f differe nt natio nalities, resp ectively Portuguese, American and
French wh o lived at the beginning of the 2 0 t h cen tury an d at the transi tion to
this cen tury. They are Henriq ue Vilhena, a medical doctor w ho was a pro fessor
of Artistic Ana tomy in Portugal , Lionel Tri lling, a notable literary criti c who
2
Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires is Full Professor of English and American Studies and Director of the on-line
review Gaudium Sciendi of Sociedade Científica at Universidade Católica Portuguesa. Among other academic
activities, there is: Tution of Studies of Culture, Cultural Management and American Culture at graduation, post
graduation and PhD levels; Coordination of Master's and PhD courses as well as the Section of Social and Political
Sciences at Sociedade Científica and several research projects for Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Cultura
("Epistemological Theories-Ways of Seeing the World", 2011--; "Cultural Wars, Public Intellectuals and the
Making of Citizenship", 2007-2009; "New York- From Topos to Utopos", 2003-2007) and at Universidade
Aberta, "European Studies" (1999-2002); the course What's Europe? for the European Association for
Distance Teaching Universities (1998-2002); at Universidade Nova, the Dept. of History of Ideas (1993-4). In
the USA, she taught at Georgetown and Brown universities, where she was Gulbenkian Fellow, "John Carter
Brown/National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship" (1991); Fulbright Scholar and Visiting
Researcher (1989-90). Publications: Intellectual Topographies and the Making of Citizenship, (co-editor) 2011,
Portuguese Public Intellectuals-The Disquieting Muses (2011); University Teaching-From Crisis to Innovation
(2007), Cultural Theory (2010, 22007, 12004,), Essays-Notes and Reflections (2000), American Culture and Society (1997), William Beckford
and Portugal (1987), History of Portuguese Children's Books (1982), Portugal Seen by the English (1980), Walter Scott and Portuguese
Romanticism (1979) .as well as several prefaces, articles and critical studies in Festschriften, among them The Reception of
William Beckford in Europe (Ready for publication),William Beckford and the New Millennium (2004), Literature of Travel and
Exploration-An Encyclopedia (2003), Engendering Identities (1996), Chronologic Dictionary of Portuguese Authors (1994) and Vathek and The
EscapefromTime(1990).
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Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
taught Lite ratu re a t Columbia University a t the City of New York an d Ber nard
Stiegler, the philoso pher and su persta r of th e French academy, who is one of the
most influen tial intellectuals of the 21 s t cen tury.
I have entitled this ar ticle "F ans an d Celebrities at the University"
because , although living in very differ ent ages, cou ntries and cul tures , they can
all be considered real celebrities and had fans that give contin uity to their ideas.
I have chosen them as case -s tudies due to the fact that, in spite of their
differences , they changed the way their diverse subje cts are ta ught a t the
university and the innova tive mark they have left in their respective fields sets
them apar t fr om o ther profess ors in their countries and even in the world. We
can say tha t they also distinguish the mselves among the star -profe ssors
because , in spite of their fame and visibility, they devote d themselves to their
studen ts and crea ted what can be conside red new ways of teaching in their
areas. Considering the ins titu tion whe re the th ree of them worked and for
whose transf ormatio n they co n tribu ted I will also make some references to the
University and i ts evolu tion.
John Mase field , wh o was the English p oet laureate fr om 1 930 un til hi s
death in 1 96 7, once wr ote tha t: "The re ar e few earthly things mo re beau tiful
than a u niversity: a place where th ose wh o hate ignor ance may s trive to kn ow,
where th ose wh o per ceive tr uth may s trive to make o thers see" 3. Nowadays, due
to the multiple debates a bou t the cen tral ro le of higher educa tion and the long term futu re of the u niversities, we still hop e that they will continue to be the
beacon s of wisdom a nd toleran ce tha t Ma sefield praised an d that they ma y
con tribute to sha pe the cons cience o f d emocrati c, civilized, and inclusive
societies 4. However, we als o kn ow that it is a field in transf ormatio n fo r, along
the time, there have been many changes to the cul tural and a cademic land scape
which now, in the wake of the presen t cris is, is facing various challenges and
3
Masefield expressed his ideas about the University in his address about the power of education when the
University of Sheffield awarded the then poet laureate an honorary degree in 1946.
4
Lord Dearing (1997), Higher Education in the Learning Society, National Committee of Inquiry into
Higher Education, known as The Dearing Report.
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Fans and Celebrities at
the University
Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
being urged to reconsider a nd re -conce ptu alise itself and to start developin g
partners hips a nd k nowledge transfer.
Concerning the ti tle of my essay, when we recall our university days we
all remember one or several pro fessors who left lasting impression s on our lives
as well as others who were considere d ce lebrities and had a co hort of fans
either because they were excellent teachers or their book , or books , sold slightly
better tha n everyone else’s. B ut in the early 21st cen tury , with the pr oliferation
of media channels , there are more celebriti es than previously in every field at
the university for their increased ex posure gives them "instant celebrity" an d
that transien t fame fascina tes their s tude nts - as celebrity wo rship is most
prono unce d in youth - a s well as the public in general for we live in a celebrity oriented so ciety, whi ch has been designa ted as the "Empire of Illusion" 5 and led
autho rs to write a bou t The Fame Monster 6. The well known Yale professo r e
literary critic William Deresiewicz says that the camera has crea ted a cultu re of
celebrity and the compu ter is crea ting a cul ture of con nectivity and that, as the
two technologies co nverge, bo th cul tures be tray a common impulse for they are
ways of becoming know n and the contemp o r ary self wants to be recognized and
to be conne cte d 7. We can thus con clude tha t as Lionel Trilling has taught us if
what groun ded the self in Roman ticism was sincerity, an d in modernism it was
authen ticity , then in p ostm odernism it is visi bility 8.
5
Chris Hedges in Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, New York: Nation
Books, 2010, describes how corporate entertainment encourages people to desire to be rich and famous, to
devote themselves to material things, reckless self-gratification and consumer spending, encouraging them
to care more about news relating to celebrities than about genuinely important news.
6
Tom Payne, in The Fame Monster: From the Bronze Age to Britney, London: Vintage, 2009 and Fame: What
The Classics Tell Us about Our Cult of Celebrity, London: Picador, 2010, studies modern fame in the light of
ancient myths and rituals.
7
We have only to think of Twitter or Facebook to conclude that the quality that seems to validate people
nowadays is not how they become real to themselves but to be seen by others.
8
References to Romanticism pervade Trilling's work, especially in his influential essays on Wordsworth and
Keats and in his well-known preface to the Liberal Imagination (1950), in The Opposing Self (1955), and in
Beyond Culture (1965).
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Fans and Celebrities at
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Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
On the other hand , we also know that the re have always been famous
people, an d tha t o ur obsessio n with celebrities and the symbolic meaning of our
percep tion of the famous d ate fr om the times of the Romans wh o stamped the
portrai ts of p owerful men on coins and that, later on, it was the turn of wo rks of
art to enhan ce their fame. In the 1 9 t h cen tury, wi th the increase of literacy ,
writers such as , Ramalho Ortigão , Alexandre Herculano , Walter Scott and Charles
Dickens b uilt up their p opularity by publis hing their work in newspapers and
magazines. Therefore , when we reflect on the topic o f the cult of celebri ty we
can say that it expresses a recen t way of see ing the w orld.
Relating the above mentioned to the main topic of my essay we see that
although univers ities have been defined as temples of educati on and , since the
Middle Ages, students prefer those th at clai m to have famous professors and an
excellent edu catio nal environmen t, nowad a ys some undergra dua tes choose the
instituti ons tha t assure them future jo b o pportunities a nd they overlo ok the
quality of the edu ca tion th at they minister. Thus , when we analyze the situation ,
we see that a p rofess or wh o is a celebri ty contribu tes to bo ost the ranking of a
university because the rese arch he con ducts increases t he re cognitio n of the
instituti on. It is als o evident tha t, with a h igh ranking, the investmen t in tha t
university increa ses, which means tha t its infrastr ucture is improved a nd it may
become a w orld class facility, and co ns equently a ttra ct the attentio n o f
employers thu s gran ting its s tude nts their cove ted be tter jo b op por tunities.
Therefore u niversities can declare that, fro m a job prospective as well as from
the point of view of the scientifi c level of the ministered educatio n, famo us
professor s indeed h elp in b uilding the caree r s of the studen ts.
This is the jus tificatio n why, ins tead of considering the qu ality of his
teaching , when hiring a profess or , universi ties seem to be more inte rested to
know how many book s he p ublished an d whether his w ork has been cited in
scholarly publica tions. In conclusio n, u niversities engage in competition to hire
star or super -star profes sors wh o they "hun t" and e ntice by offe ring them - even
when they canno t in crease their salaries - innovative forms of compens ation ,
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Fans and Celebrities at
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Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
like cheap loa ns a nd rese arch gran ts . As s chools gain visibility, s tar pro fessors
acquire
influen ce
that ex tends
beyon d
the
class room.
In this way
the
universities become active parti cipants in the process of redu cing public cultu re
to pu blicity as they di sseminate adver tising messages that celebr ate the
achievements of their aca demic su persta rs, in spite of the fact tha t their habits
of self-promotio n and egocen tric pos turing tend to isolate them from the rest of
the faculty, wh ose resear ch work - although it may not result in the prod uction
of best sellers and con sequen tly does no t m eet with media interes t - contrib utes
to the advan cement of the su bject they tea ch.
I will refer to each of my "celebri ties at the u niversity" separ ately,
ordering them chro nol ogically and s tar ting, therefo re, by men tioning Henrique
Vilhena and his original contrib ution to an interdisciplinary tuitio n o f Artisti c
Anatomy, pro ceeding then to relating h ow Lionel Trilling cha nged the way the
world saw and taugh t litera ture an d endi ng with referen ces to ou r contemp orary
Bernard Stiegler, w hose philosop hical way o f seeing the world is indeed altering
our in tellectual universe.
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Fans and Celebrities at
the University
Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
Henriqu e Vilh ena
"[A Uni ver si ty] i s a pl ace of tea ch i n g uni ver sal kn o wl edg e . Thi s i m pl i es
that i ts objec t i s , on the one hand , i ntel l ectual , not m or al ; and , on the
other , that i t i s the di ffusi on and extensi on of k nowl edge r ather than the
advanc em ent. I f i ts object wer e sci enti fi c and phi l osophi cal di scover y, I
do not see why a Uni ver si ty shoul d have st uden ts; i f r el i gi ous tr ai ni ng, I
do not see how i t c an be the seat of l i ter atur e and sci ence. "
Jo hn Henr y Newm an, Th e I d ea o f a
Un i v ersi ty
Henrique Vilhena (1 87 9-1 958) is considered one o f the mos t pres tigious
Portuguese ana tomists o f his time. He studied at the University of Coimbra and,
in Lisbon, a t the Escola Médico -Cirúrgica, where he obtained his degree in
Medicine an d be came "prosse ctor" of Anato my. In 190 5, he was app ointed Full
Professor of Artistic Ana tomy at the Higher Scho ol of Fine Arts of the University
of Lisbon. Later , he also taught Ana tomy an d Artistic Anatomy at the Fa culdade
de Medicina of the University of Lisb on, where he f ounde d the Por tuguese
Society of Histori cal Stu dies of Lis bon a nd the Institu te of Ana tomy ( 191 1 -1 94 8)
and the Por tuguese - Spanish-America n Ana tomical S ociety , of whi ch he was
nominated Hon orary Presiden t in 1 943. He was also the Pr ofessor -Librarian a nd
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the University
Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
created the first and o nly Portuguese scien tific magazine on Anatomy entitled
Arquivos de Anatomia e Antropologia (1912 -199 0). Between 19 25 and 1 926 he
was the President of the University of Coi mbra. He also had several political
functions be tween 191 5 an d 19 26 and was a m ember of the Nation al Assembly,
having been de cor ated with the Spa nish "Ordem Civil de Afonso X, o Sábio" in
194 3.
In 1949 , he was nominated Preside nt o f the Society o f Medical S ciences of
Lisbon; Ho norary member of the Anatomy Institu te of Coimbra; member of the
Academy of Scien ces of Lisb on , of the S ociety of Normal an d Pat hological
Anatomy of Argentina and of the Academy of Letters and S ciences of S. Paulo. He
founded the So ciedade Ana tómica Por tugues a and, in 1 939 , be came Profess or a t
the polemic Por tug uese P opular University 9. Between 1 90 5 and 19 43 , he
produ ced multiple publica tions , including, in 1908 , his PhD thesis, enti tled
Expressão Fisíca da Cólera na Literatura 10 (The Physical Expression of Anger in
Literature), in whi ch, in a very inn ovative fash ion, he interse cted scien ce a nd
art, medicine and literature a nd re ason and emotion.
He was a knowledgeable and cultivated scholar b oth in the area of
sciences and of the humanities , h aving, b esides his exte nsive knowledge o f
anatomy , a vas t culture i n the fields of art, literature, anthrop ology and
psychology. D ue to his s trictness
11
, he wa s fe ared and respected a t the a cademy
but, tha nks to his pers onality, he ha d many followers and fans 12 and succee ded
in asserting himself in a very elitist enviro n ment in which the pr ofessors and the
studen ts ha d an e qually excep tional so cial and cultural s ta tus. Together with
9
The Universidade Popular Portuguesa was founded in 1919 by a group of de intellectuals and workers,
with the objective of disseminating education and culture in Lisbon following the idea that culture should
not be only for the elites because it was an instrument of individual and collective emancipation. Due to its
polemic project the University was compulsively closed in 1943.
10
Henrique Vilhena (1909), A Expressão da Cólera na Literatura, Lisboa: Typ. A. de Mendonça.
11
We can see his calm and trusting face in the portrait painted by Helena de Bourbon e Meneses, who was
one of his students of Artistic Anatomy. The painting (n/d) is nowadays at the Instituto de Anatomia of the
Faculdade de Medicina of the University of Lisbon.
12
His fans and disciples were not only medical students but also from the Law and Art School, where Vilhena
also taught. Among these, he selected Carlos Bonvalot (1893-1934) to make the anatomical drawings he
used for his classes, just as we do nowadays with our Power Point presentations.
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Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
other profe ssors 13, he tr ansfo rmed the way medicine was then ta ught at the
University of Lisbon , creating resea rch in stitutes that in ter conne cte d the tuiti on
with the clinical praxis, th us f ollowing the famous Humb oldian model of the
University of Berlin.
We can , the refore , say tha t, in 19 11 , Vilhen a, initiate d a new s tyle in the
tuiti on of Anatomy whe n, he opened the do ors of the School of Medicine to the
studen ts of Fine Arts thus giving them the o pportunity to have practical classes
of the dissecte d human body th at they did not have at their College.
Consequently the undergra duates w ent to the Institute of Ana tomy where they
used as models the ana tomical pieces p rep ared by the Assistan t Profess ors of
the S ch ool o f Me dicine 14.
Hence Henrique Vilhena , with his decisio n of joining d octors a nd ar tists
together in order to stu dy the human b ody from differen t perspe ctives - and in
this way getting to know it be tter - reviv ified the classical tr adition in the
anatomical study in which art and science were united 15 and there was a
conne ctio n be tween the pr odu cers o f images and the resear chers of the human
body 16. He was thus going against the tw entieth ce ntury pa radigm of the
separation o f art and s cience 17, which - since the Enlightenment - were organized
13
Among them, the most well-known are Victor Fontes and Manuel Barbosa Sueiro.
It is worth mentioning that today this interdisciplinary connection between the College of Fine Arts of the
University of Lisbon is still active but the current link is with the Department of Anatomy of the New
University as this is the only medical school in Portugal where human cadaveric dissection is still performed.
I thank Professor M. Alexandre Pires, who is the Chefe de Trabalhos Práticos of the Dept. of Anatomy of the
Faculdade de Ciências Médicas of the New University of Lisbon, for this information.
15
When can consider Leonardo's Vitruvian man (1487), which is the icon of the Portuguese Catholic
University, as an image that represents this connection between art and science.
16
The link between knowledge and practice via anatomical representations has recently been the topic of an
excellent exhibition entitled "Gabinete de Anatomia-Arpad, Vieira e os Desenhos Anatómicos do Museu de
Medicina" (2011), which was organized by Manuel Valente Alves at the Arpad Szenes - Vieira da Silva
Museum in Lisbon.
17
G. K. Chesterton, with his usual wit, concerning this separation, noted that: "The virtues have gone mad
because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for
truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity... is often
untruthful".
14
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Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
as auton omous fields of knowledge and requ ired that the re would be no emotion
in the ana tom ical re presen tatio ns.
We can therefore say that Henrique Vilhe na has all the chara cteris tics of a
supersta r profes sor who cause d a radical ch ange at the University an d, being a
celebrity, ha d lots of f ans some of them superstar s themselves as the famo us
painter Helena Vieira da Silva, who was one of his stu dents of Artis tic Ana tomy.
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Fans and Celebrities at
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Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
Lion el Trilling
"This is the grea t vice of academicism, tha t i t is
con cerned with ideas r ather than with thinki ng."
Lionel Trilling
Lionel Trilling (19 05 - 197 5), who was a star professor and celebrity in the
20 t h cen tury , remains today o ne of the mo st influential , admired - a nd a t the
same time most co ntr oversial - and per plexing American intellectual. In his time,
he had one of the great repu tation s in the academic world and he himself
confesses in his Journal : "I hear on all sid es of the exten t of my re puta tion which s ome even call 'f ame'".
In 1932 , he became a Professor a t Columbia University 18, where he had
been an under gra dua te in 192 5 ( thus beginn ing a life -long asso ciation with th at
university) and , although he de clared he did no t consider himself a sch olar, in
194 8, he was promo ted to Full Professo r in the English Depa rtmen t 19. Columbia
was then - as it is today - a preeminent ce nter f or edu ca tional innova tion a nd
scholarly a chievement. D uring Trilling’s year s there , there were plenty of genial
and well -known pu blic intellectuals among the fa culty , such as Joh n Dewey,
18
Columbia University in the city of New York was founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter of King
George II of England. It is the oldest institution of higher learning in the State of New York and the fifth
oldest in the United States.
19
He was the first tenured Jewish professor in the English department of Columbia University.
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Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
Mark Van D oren , who was Trilling’s tea cher, a nd Jacq ues Barz un, Meyer
Schapir o, Richard Hof stad ter , and Daniel B ell, to name ju st a few of the great
minds of the Mo rningside campus.
Trilling published his d octoral disser ta tion, on Ma tthew Arnold , in 19 39 ,
and it was reviewed with approval by famous criti cs like Edmund Wilson and
Robert Penn Warren and admired by John De wey. In 1943, Time devote d a seven page arti cle to his stu dy of E. M. F orste r en titled E. M. Forster: A S tudy . He also
published a number of shor t s tories and his ambition wa s to be a grea t n o velist
in spite of the fact that his first novel , entitl ed The Middle of the Journey , which
appeared in 1 947 , had a ba d re cep tion a nd disap pointing sales, but it was
nevertheless widely n otice d 20. Besides teaching, he wro te essays and reviews,
and was a regular con tributor to the Times and The New Yorker, being however
prominently ass ocia ted with the Partisan Re view, which , being a member of the
New York intellectuals 21, he had joined since 1 937 .
He was great tea cher , au tho r an d literar y critic and even tho ugh he
cultivated a circums pect distan ce from a ny group with which he might be
identified, su ch as profes sors , public intell ectuals , liberals or Jews, when his
brilliant collection of essays enti t led Th e Liberal Imagination: Essays on
Literature and Society came out in 1950, it was a phenomenon , and, a t the age
of fo rty-f our , he had already acq uired a mystique amo ng scholarly intellectuals.
The main topic of The Liberal Imagination is that literatu re teaches tha t life can
be complica ted an d th at u nfairness , sno bbe ry, resen tment, prej udice , neur osis,
and tragedy are literature ’s specifi c subject matter and only the right eco nomic
system, the right political reforms , the right undergradua te cur riculum , a nd the
right psych otherapy will do away with th os e problems. He was a humanis t who
believed that works o f literature can speak to us across time. This first b ook ,
which was a critique o f pos t -war political and social atti tudes , played a decisive
20
It is worth mentioning that it was republished in 1975, the year Trilling died, and that it proceeded to sell
fifty thousand copies in six months.
21
V. Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires, "Os Intelectuais de Nova Iorque" in Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires/Vítor
Oliveira (Eds.), Nova Iorque - De Topos a Utopos, Lisboa: Universidade Católica Editora, 2009.
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Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
role in drawing international attentio n to h is intellectual gifts and marked him
as, a s some cri tics said, as "a rising sta r." 22
As he ta ught in his classes for more than thirty years , in Trilling’s view,
human be ttermen t is possible and the re is a s traight ro ad t o health and
happiness. Conseque ntly, in his often quo te d essay "On the Tea ching of M odern
Literature" ( 196 1), whi ch is the first essay in his volume entitled Beyond Culture:
Essays on Literature and Learning (196 5) , h e complained abo ut the eagerness of
his students "to engage in the process that we might call the socialization of the
anti -so cial, o r the a ccultura tion of the a nti - cultural , o r the legitimization of the
subversive". His fans and studen ts includ ed famous writers and critics , like
Norman Podhore tz , Jack Keroua c, Allen Ginsberg, John Hollander , and Louis
Menand. It is remarkable that he prod uce d so many ou tsta nding books w hile
teaching wave af ter wave of grateful under graduates. I t is irref uta ble th at his
influence bo th in the a cademic w orld and in jou rnalism, was ex tremely
importan t an d that his solemn voice was heard whe n he claimed tha t: "This
intense conviction of the exis ten ce of the s elf apart from cul ture is , as cul ture
well knows, its n oblest and mos t genero us a chievement" and de fended th e ideal
of the wise man who becomes self -sufficien t thro ugh virtue, atten tion to du ty,
and the putting aside of the angers and passi ons tha t govern o thers.
Lionel Trilling, who ha ted being regarde d as a paragon , has taugh t us that
at the university certain qualities like in tellectual climate, commitment to
studen ts and corp orate per sonality always matter and tha t the more common
danger in academic life is lassitude and sel f -congra tula ting mediocrity. And we
know tha t nowadays these char acterize so me superst ar pro fessors who a ct as
lofty aristo cra ts and "sultans of the a ca demy" thus e nco uraging a selfish
atmosphere tha t injures their less famous, b ut more committed , colleagues who
actu ally advise studen ts a nd oversee disser tation research.
We can , therefore , con clude that we need to hear his word s even more
now than in his own time, because pu blic discourse is riddled with the simple 22
V. John Rodden (Ed.), Lionel Trilling & the Critics: Opposing Selves, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
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Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
mindedness that he spe nt his life opp osing. We should also remember w hat he
said in "The Un certain Fu ture of the Human istic Edu cational Ideal ," the lecture
delivered in the year before his dea th , in which he argues that: "This desire to
fashion, to sh ape, a self and a life has all bu t gone from a con temporary cul ture
whose empha sis, parad oxically eno ugh, is so much on self."
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Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
Bernard Stiegler
"Today, we need to under sta nd the pr ocess o f techni cal evol uti on
gi ven that we ar e exper i enci ng the deep opaci ty of contem por ar y
tec hni c s; we do no t i m m edi atel y under stand what i s bei ng pl ayed ou t
i n tec hni c s, nor what i s bei ng pr ofoundl y tr ans for m ed ther ei n, even
though we unc easi ngl y have to m ake d e ci si o ns r egar di ng techni c s,
the c onsequenc es of whi ch ar e fel t to e scape us m or e and m or e. And
i n day -to-day techni cal r eali ty, we cannot spontaneousl y di sti ngui sh
the l ong -ter m pr ocesses of tr ansfor m ati on f r om spectacul ar but
fl eeti ng tec hni c al i nnovati ons. "
Ber nar d Sti egl er 23
Bernard S tiegler ( 1952 --) is a well known French philosop her who
obtained his PhD a t the École des Hautes Étu des en Sciences So ciales in 199 2. He
is a Professor at the Université de Te chnolo gie in Compiègne and a Professorial
Fellow at the Cen tre for Cultural Studies at the University of Lon don (G oldsmiths
College), since 2009. He is also the director of the Institu t de Recher che et
d'Innova tion of the Centre de Ge orges Pomp idou in Paris - which was created at
his initiative in April 2006 - an d of the Collège International de Philos ophie. He
has held the posi tions of Director Gene ral at the Institut National de l'
Audiovisuel
and
at
the
Institut
de
Recher che
et
Coor dina tion
Acoustiq ue/Musique.
23
Stiegler, Bernard (1998), Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, p. 21.
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Universidade Católica,
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In 2005 , he foun ded the p olitical and cultural group, "Ars Indu strialis"
that de bates the problem of individuation i n consumer capitalism, and the new
possibility of an economy of con tribu tion. In 201 0, he star ted his own
philosophy s cho ol 24, Ecole de Philosop hie d' Epineil -le-Fleuriel, where there a re
courses opene d to high s cho ol and grad ua te studen ts and to everyone in the
region. In those courses - whi ch are filmed and tran smitted in o pen access in the
site of "Ars In dustrialis" - Stiegler tea ches Plato's philosophy using the
methodology of S ocra tic dialogues. There is also a d octoral p rogram condu cted
by videoco nferen ce fo r twelve grad uate stu dents of u niversities from different
con tinents wh o can parti cipate in the course via Internet, and a s ummer
academy, w hich is cons titu ted by an inte nsive seminar tha t lasts f or six weeks.
The school engages in resea rch , critique a nd analysis and is to tally organized
according
to
S tiegler's
ideas ,
which
he
designates
as
"pharma c ological
approa ch ". 25 The topi cs studied a t the school lie in Stiegler's argument that we
are entering a period of post - consumeris m and post -globalization. The main
objective of the sch ool of Epineil is to study philosophy as a way of living and to
search i ts links to the making of citizens hip thu s initiating yo ung ci tizens wh o
will be more lucid and usef ul to their ho meland, prom oting an in trinsically
interdisciplinary research and linking the academic world to the everyday world
and n ot only to the e conomi c universe.
Bernard
S tiegler
has
published
numero us
books
an d
articles
on
philosophy , technology , digitization , capi ta lism and consumer cul ture. Among
his writings, the most widely no ticed are La technique et le te mps , De la misère
symbolique, Mécréance et Discrédit an d Co nstituer l'Europe in which he writes
about the relatio n be tween technology a nd philosophy , n ot only in a theore tical
sense, but also situa ting them in indus try a n d so ciety a s pr actices.
24
The designation "school" is used by Siegler according to its original meaning, which was a place of skholè,
a skholeion, that is, a place of exercise of a way of thinking which emerged for the first time in old Greece.
25
V. Bernard Siegler, (2010) Ce qui fait que la vie vaut la peine d'être vécue: De la pharmacologie and (2011)
"The Pharmacology of the Spirit," in Jane Elliott & Derek Attridge (eds.), Theory After 'Theory' (New York:
Routledge).
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Maria Laura Bettencourt Pires
Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
In this essay I am specially interes ted in B ernard S tiegler's most re cent
analyses of educa tion, "telecr acy", demo cracy and indus try but the central
theme of te chni cs an d transf ormatio n u nde rlies all of his tho ught and writing,
since Technics and Time 1 (1994/1 998 ) till today. Accor ding to Stiegler, what is
being "profou ndly transf ormed" is the na tu re of the human itself and technics
and
te chn ology
are
temp orally
prior
to
"the
huma n".
Base d
on
the
anthr opological and s ociological ideas of André Leroi -Gou rhan 26 and Gilbert
Simondon 27, he claims that the huma n i s the pro duct, no t the "cause " of
tech nical evolution , an evolution whose gro unding con cept is "te chni cs". In this
sense, "the technical", "te chniques ", and "technology " are all manifest as pects
and mode s o f o peratio n of tech nics.
"The human " is a result, a subset, of te chnics and humans are, as Stiegler
advoca tes in Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus , animals "withou t
qualities." For him the critical dilemma of o ur time is the gr owing gap between
long-circui t
matura tion
and
s hor t -cir cui ted
attentio n
which
defines
a
transf ormed relations hip between technics /techn ology and its " pro duct" , the
human. Stiegler, con trary to Des car tes or H eidegger, denies tha t the com puting
machine is a danger o r th reat to the huma n beings - as so may though t in the
195 0’s - since , a ccording to him, the human i s and has always bee n "machinic".
In his mos t re cently -p ublished w orks 28 on democr acy and edu cation ,
Stiegler proceeds to analyze the "battle for intelligence" that, th ough it has
always been a part of the human/ tech nics interface , has now be come more
26
André Leroi-Gourhan (1911-1986) was a French archaeologist and anthropologist who was interested in
technology and aesthetics and wrote L'Homme et la matière (Paris: Albin Michel, 1943) and Milieu et
techniques (Paris: Albin Michel, 1945). Besides Stiegler, his ideas have also influenced Jacques Derrida and
his formulation of the neologism, diffèrance and Deleuze and Guattari in their Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
27
Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) was a French philosopher whose theory of individuation inspired both
Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler. He wrote, among other works, Du mode d’existence des objets
techniques. Paris: Aubier, 1989 and L'individuation psychique et collective (Paris, Aubier, [11989] 2007) which
has a preface by Bernard Stiegler.
28
See Stiegler, Bernard (1998), Technics and Time 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press; Technics and Time 2: Disorientation, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008 and
with Jacques Derrida Echographies of Television, Cambridge, Polity, 2002.
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Universidade Católica,
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centr al tha n ever an d is dire ctly conne cted to his e duca tional me thod ology and
to his interr ogation s of the cu rrent s ta te o f culture and of e ducation. Working
with his group Ars Industrialis, in Paris, h e scru tinizes the most fund amental
questions addresse d by con temporary cul tural change in a wide variety of
disciplines in order to help us understa n d the crisis we are facing at the
beginning of the 21 s t cen tury.
Another fundamen tal theme he fo cuses on in Technics and Time 2:
Disorientation is a very specific sense of di sorienta tion, and , since fo r him, as
above-mentione d, "the huma n" is itself "te chnics ", the discovery of this
apparen tly
co unter -intuitive
-
and
undou btedly
coun ter -h umanist
-
interpretation o f the human le ads to a "dis enchan tment", tha t, in Te chnics and
Time 3 , The Time of Cinema and the Problem of Malaise , he designates as
malaise, but which has mu ch wider implications. For him, existen ce witho ut
participa tion , as opposed to "ex -siste nce " through par ticipa tio n and critique , is
the very defini tion of
malaise tha t is the res ult o f disorien tatio n and
disenchan tment.
In the Technics and Time series and in other recent works , su ch as Taking
Care: of Youth and the Generations 29, he d eals with global te chn ological and
political co nditions tha t need immediate a ttention. S tiegler's originality is due
to the fa ct th at he is practi cally the only scholar who juxta poses these two
perspectives in orde r to sh ow how "the dise nchan tment/ re enchantmen t dia d" is
at work in both pop ular and academic cultur e 30 for he acts both at the university
and in political spheres 31. Consequen tly, one of his leitmo tifs is the pos sibility of
"tra ns-forma tion ": the f orming and re - formi ng of cons ciousness w hich is imbued
in a new kind of ontology tha t is a trans formation o f the phen omenological
29
Taking Care: of Youth and the Generations. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009 (English translation
of Prendre soin. De la jeunesse et des générations. Paris: Flammarion, 2008.
30
Stiegler, Bernard (2006). Réenchanter le monde: La valeur esprit contre le populisme industriel. Paris:
Flammarion. Stiegler asserts that, when schools teach blind obedience and passive acceptance of orders
rather than critical thinking, they transform themselves from programming institutions into programming
industries.
31
See Bernard Stiegler (2006), La Télécratie contre la démocratie: Lettre ouverte aux représentants
politiques. Paris: Flammarion.
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Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
tradition from Des car tes to Derrida. He thinks there must be "a to tal
transf ormation " a nd tha t it is human cogni tion that must be re -co nceived a s a
function of technics. W e ca n theref ore co nclude tha t S tiegler’s con cep tion of
tech nics redefines the relationship be tween mind and world and, sin ce technics
pervades the very na ture of the human , we can use it to re -en chan t the world 32.
As such , all of the ins trumen ts which no t o nly shape bu t crea te the mind
are pharmaka 33 and are b oth poiso n an d rem edy for i ts grow th an d efficacy. He
also speaks of k nowledge -acq uisition an d of the repr odu cibility and pro ducibility
of knowledge 34, co ncluding tha t the strategy of the "programming industries "
(television,
interne t,
p od casts
-
to
the
emergent
and
not -yet-emergent
tech nologies of contr ol) is to "shor t -cir cuit" the learning pro cess in favor of the
development and nu rtur ance o f automa tic responses to stimuli at the level of
drives. Contrarily, the design of "progra mming institutions" ( cultural relics ,
family histories and artifacts, the educa tio n and training systems) - which are
interested in capturing atte ntion (i.e. con sciousness) a nd manipulating it fo r
marketing purp oses - as o pposed to pr ogra mming industries, whi ch deliver an
awareness and immersion in long circuits of cultural memory (and rely on their
development),
thus
con necting
and
cr o ss -fertilizing
the
generatio ns
and
produ cing stru ctured knowledge that is si multaneously "ra di cally open." And
Stiegler claims, that "the tr ansmission of k nowledge is its tra nsforma tion " for
only tra nsmissible knowledge ca n con tribute to the crea tion and perpe tuati on o f
both individual an d collective "h umanity".
32
Réenchanter le monde, p. 6.
Stiegler is referring here to the role of the pharmakon in Derrida’s "Plato’s Pharmacy".
34
Technics and Time 2: Disorientation, p. 136.
33
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Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
Final Cons id eration s
As final considerations o n the topic of this essay we can recall that it is
high quality edu ca tion tha t makes the s tu dents distinctive and renow ned a nd
that only suitable and prof ound learning en riches an d en ables them to a chieve
succes s in any future pr ofession. And, this is one of the reaso ns why high -quality
professor s are so necess ary at the u niversity Stiegler is referring here to the
role of the pharmakon in Derrida’s "Plato ’s Pharmacy" for only th ose capa ble of
imparting first-ra te knowledge ab out their s ubjects ca n tr ansform their s tuden ts
into f utu re citizens who will turn the world i nto a better pla ce.
These famous profe ssors may be well known for their knowledge and
research as well as for their pr ominent pu blication s but only tho se wh o put their
teaching above every other a cademic a ctivity will be remembered by their
pupils. The three aca demics that I have selected ca n be co nsidered celebrities a t
the university a nd although very diffe rent, w e can say tha t each one of them has
left a mark of innova tion and progress in his spe cific field, respectively
medicine, litera ture and cultural theo ry, an d have thus con tribute d to alter and
ameliorate the a cademic life in Por tugal, the United Sta tes a nd Fran ce a t the
20 t h and the 21 s t ce ntu ri es.
They deserve to be mentione d and co nsider ed as models in our times of
crisis and disencha ntmen t when t he biggest rewards in the universities are
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Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
reserved for resear ch ra ther th an tea ching, not least be cause resea rch is easier
to evaluate a nd because co rpor ate sp ons ors are attaching strings to their
donatio ns in orde r to prevent compe titors from free -riding on their resear ch,
such as f orcing scien tists to delay publica tio n or even blank ou t cr ucial passages
from pu blished pa pers.
We also know that our 21 s t- century te chn ology and the publishing trends
are altering the roles of the pr ofessor s and that the re is a shif t o f power at the
academia, when two or th ree pr ofessors wa nt to be p aid like a s por t's supers tar
or a TV celebrity forgetting th at their main objective should be to form and
inform their s tuden ts.
On the o ther hand , it is obvious tha t ch anges in the way learning is
delivered are going to ha ppen mu ch soon er tha n expe cted. Regar ding the se
changes , we have only to realize tha t, nowadays an e -u niversity like, for
instance , Cardea n University, o r any oth er virtual university , ca n draw i ts
teaching talen ts for its online course s from universities including the best i n the
world, like the L ondo n S cho ol of Econo mics, S tanf ord University , and the
University of Chicago, th us having an all -star team of s upers tars as profe ssors. If
this new type of edu cation al institutio n - where intellectual reputation can serve
as a coarse alterna tive for high sta ndards - prevails and is successful, i t will
certainly contradict John Hen ry Newman who wrote tha t: " Education in i ts
fullest sense will never issue from the most stre nuo us effor ts of a set of
teacher s with n o mu tual sympa thies a n d no intercommunion." 35
Then again, it may also seem to prove ho w right Christopher Las ch was
when, in his wo rk enti tled The Culture of Narcissism (1979) , he de fined our
culture of diminishing expecta tions as a nar cissistic cul ture where every activity
and relations hip is defined by the hedonis tic need to acquire the symb ols of
wealth, this becoming the o nly expression of rigid, ye t covert, so cial hierarchies.
35
John Henry Cardinal Newman (1907), The Idea of a University, London: Longmans, Green, And Co.
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Universidade Católica,
Sociedade Científica
Bibliographical Refer ences
 Al ves, Manuel Val ente ( 2011) , G a b i n ete d e An a to mi a -Arp ad , Vi ei ra e o s
Desen h o s An a tó mi co s do Mu seu d e Medi ci n a ", L i sboa: Fundação Vi ei r a da
Si l va/Ar pad Sz enes.
 Hedges, Chr i s ( 2010) , E mp i re o f I ll u si on : Th e E nd o f L i tera cy a n d th e Tri u mph o f
Sp ecta cl e , New Yor k: Nati on Books.
 L asc h, Chr i stopher ( 1979) , Th e Cu l tu re o f Na rci ssi sm, New Yor k: W. W. Nor ton.
 L er oi -G our han, Andr é ( 1943) , L 'Ho mme et la mati ère , P ar i s: Al bi n Mi chel.
 ------------ ( 1945) , Mi l i eu et tech n i qu es , P ar i s: Albi n Mi chel .
 Newm an, John Henr y Car di nal ( 1907) , Th e I d ea o f a Un i v ersi ty, L ondon:
L ongm ans, G r een, And Co.
 P ayne, Tom ( 2009) , Th e Fa me Mo n ster: Fro m th e Bro n z e Ag e to Bri tn ey , L ondon:
Vi ntage.
 ---------- ( 2010) , Fa me: Wh a t Th e Cl a ssi cs Tel l Us a b o u t Ou r Cul t o f Cel eb ri ty ,
L ondon: P i c ador .
Resumo
Nos nossos dias, ta nto o númer o de profe ssores que são celebridades na
universidade e como o dos seus fãs tem au mentado em todo o mu ndo. Tal
pode estar relacio nado com a recen te prol iferação dos media que dão aos
professore s superstars uma fama imediata e efémera que fascina o s seus
estudan tes devido ao fa cto de o culto da ce lebridade ser mais acen tuad o na
juventude. Po rém, a o olharmos para trás , vemos que recordamos mais os
professore s que nos tra nsmitiam excelente s co nhecimentos. Cons ciente de
que, na n ossa ép oca de crise, necessi tamos de mo delos, seleccio nei um
professor por tuguês, um america no e um fr ancês , que, n os séculos XX e XXI,
nas áreas de Medicina , Litera tura e Filosofi a, mudaram e revolucionar am a
universidade
te ndo ,
p or
iss o,
fãs
e
d iscípulos
e
mere cend o
serem
considera dos celebridades na universidade.
Key-words : celebrity; university ; Vilhena ; Tri lling; Stiegler
Palavras- chave: celebrida de; universidad e; Vilhena; Trilling; Stiegler
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De Ch irico, La Serenità del Saggio
36
36
The Serenity of the Scholar (1914) is a painting in oil and charcoal on canvas by Giorgio de Chirico (18881978) now displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. De Chirico, who was a writer, theatre
designer, sculptor, printmaker and pre-Surrealist and Surrealist Italian painter, has been considered the
inventor of a revolutionary approach to painting. His "enigma" paintings formed the nucleus of the art
movement Scuola Metafisica that he founded. He studied the German philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and
Arthur Schopenhauer, whose texts, according to him, coalesced into visions the artist could "see with his
spirit" and put on canvas thus becoming known for his metaphysical and dreamlike images. His paintings are
characterized by a visionary, poetic use of imagery, in which themes such as nostalgia, enigma and myth are
explored. He was an important source of inspiration for artists throughout Europe in the inter-war years and
again for a new generation of painters in the 1980s.
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