POSTLIBERAL UNIVERSITY AS A POLITICO-THEOLOGICAL PROJECT: CONCEPTUAL PREMISES OF ITS FORMATION IN THE USA, GREAT BRITAIN AND RUSSIA

Abstract

The article analyzes the conceptual premises for the formation of the postliberal university model in the works of American, British and Russian theorists. The introduction defines the basic principles of the postliberal approach to higher education: the critique of methodological individualism, a wider interpretation of rationality, the rejection of the radical separation of theory and practice, as well as criticism of globalism in favor of religious, national, and local forms of identity. It is argued that in the United States, postliberalism was formed as a result of an attempt by a group of theologians to abandon the emphasis on epistemological problems in favor of the priority of the ontology of religious phenomena. It is stated that the political theology of American postliberalism criticizes of the fragmentation of political space. American postliberals oppose the interpretation of religion as the main cause of political conflicts and its confinement to the private sphere by the nation state. The reform of one of the key institutions, the university, is based on reinterpreting knowledge as a mutual gift and on development of the idea of public service through practices, borrowed from the life of monasteries. The main difference of the British approach is the emphasis on the impossibility of implementing the project of the postliberal university without abandoning the understanding of politics as conflict in favor of the concept of the common good. This explains the desire of British theorists to view intellectual elites not as participants in the struggle for power, but as bearers of traditional authority. In Russia, postliberalism is considered to be mostly a negative phenomenon. Despite superficial similarities with foreign analogues, Russian postliberal approach to higher education does not reject the interpretation of politics as conflict, but insists on its more consistent implementation.

Keywords:

University, postliberalism, political theology, education, secularization