The University: A Great Adventure of the Spirit

Abstract

It is a tradition to read a speech on the occasion of the opening of the academic year. He needs the spirit to open a space to hope. The indeterminacy of history allows the human being to exercise his freedom, try to take over the present and build the future.

Because some students wanted to learn and some teachers wanted to teach, it was that colleges were born. They fought for freedom to accomplish that task. That task changed the face of the world. To achieve the atmosphere of independence they needed, teachers and disciples often moved and being poor often made it easier for them to leave; as the Greek sage could say: omnia mea mecum porto.

There is the classic Ortega y Gasset page that refers to those first steps of universities:

"This is that from the twelfth century it is heard without interruption, native to the breasts of Europe, a son that looks nothing like anything, but that if it resembled something would be a like a board of solicitous and restless bees, wandering and stabbing. It's the rumor that universities make, a rumor that, like the explosion engine of our time, was a new noise in the world. And in those centuries, whatever the trivio or crossroads where you place yourself, you will see four stumbles of disparate men collide: a troop of soldiers who mobilize public power, a troop of merchants pushing interest, a troop of pilgrims going to Compostela or the Holy Land and a troop of those who were then called schoolchildren and today we call students.