On truth-seeking

Miroslav Volf fleshes out what he thinks universities are for.

close

Summary

Miroslav Volf fleshes out what he thinks universities are for.

Transcript

I think modern universities are to be construed as being, in their various disciplines and sub-disciplines, engaged in kind of [a] truth-seeking enterprise, with variety of methodologies all the way from hard sciences to humanities. And we need to foster conversations not just about what constitutes an explanation or how do we design appropriate technologies to achieve certain ends, but also the conversation about what the proper norms are, what the proper goals of human existence are. And I think that especially in today’s environment, we need to retrieve the emphasis on humanities and on the grand conversation across centuries about [the] nature of human life, [the] nature of human good, and engage in these conversations with the intention of taking the claims from these various traditions seriously – that they make claims to truth, and therefore in the critical conversation about [the] nature of reality and the way our lives are to be lived in the light of the reality, to foster conversation about the good life.