The University Without Condition 3
Derrida’s Insights for Today’s World
Here is the third reading post on L’université sans condition (2001), translated into English in 2002 as The University Without Condition.
The previous ones have been gathered with my other Substack writings on Derrida, which you can find here: Derrida.
Derrida begins with a strange phrase: “as if [comme si] the end of work were at the origin of the world.” He does not affirm it as a truth, but presents it as a suspended thought — a “subordinate clause” (proposition subordonnée) left floating without a main proposition.
His goal is to make us reflect on the expression ‘as if’. What do we mean when we say something happens ‘as if’? What kind of thought or gesture is that?
This reflection leads to the topic of virtuality. The university today is shaped more and more by digital technology, remote work, and online communication. He writes:
One of the mutations affecting the place and nature of university work today, as we are well aware, is a certain virtualization and delocalization of the space for communication, discussion, publication, and archiving. (Derrida, 2001, p. 25)
Derrida points out that while the idea of virtuality is not new — since every trace or sign already involves some degree of virtuality — the speed, scale, and power of today’s virtual structures are unprecedented, even though he said this in 2001.
The result is a transformation in the way university work is done, discussed, and even imagined. Spaces of teaching, learning, publishing, and debate are no longer tied to a physical campus. The university’s community, its boundaries, and its disciplines are all being reshaped.
At the heart of this transformation, Derrida brings us back to the words ‘as if’. He draws on Kant’s use of this idea, especially in the Critique of Judgment. Kant argued that we often need to think and act ‘as if’ things had meaning or purpose, even if we cannot prove they do. For example, we may see the natural world ‘as if’ it were designed for our understanding, or we may judge beauty ‘as if’ it had an objective standard.
These judgments are not illusions, but ways of organizing experience when certainty is not possible (p. 28). Derrida sees this ‘as if’ not just as a logical tool, but as something that questions the usual oppositions between nature and freedom, between what is real and what is imagined.
This recurring reference to Kant is particularly noticeable in the United States where, for historical reasons that need to be analyzed, the term Humanities has had a unique history and, at the end of the century, remains problematic, with a semantic energy, presence, and conflictual resonance that it has probably never had or has lost in Europe — and undoubtedly everywhere else in the world where American culture does not yet prevail. There are certainly intertwined factors at play here, in particular the effects of ongoing globalization, which always passes in a more unavoidable and visible way through the United States, with its political, techno-economic, and technoscientific power. (Derrida, 2001, p. 30)
He then turns to the Humanities — fields like literature, philosophy, art, and law — and asks whether they too are grounded in this ‘as if’ structure. He is careful not to reduce these disciplines to mere fiction, but he notes that their objects — works of art, cultural texts, symbolic forms — are not simply present or real in the way that physical objects are. They require interpretation, imagination, and commitment. The ‘as if’ is part of how we approach them. He asks:
But following common sense, can we not say that the modality of ‘as if’ seems appropriate to what we call works, particularly works of art, fine arts […], but also, to varying degrees and according to complex stratifications, to all discursive idealities, to all symbolic or cultural productions that define, in the general field of the university, the disciplines known as the humanities — and even the legal disciplines and the production of laws, and even a certain structure of scientific objects in general? (Derrida, 2001, p. 31)
After reiterating his call for a university without conditions, a key idea emerged: to profess is not just to teach or know something. The word comes from the Latin profiteri, meaning to declare openly, to make a vow.
Derrida emphasizes the performative nature of this gesture. To profess is to say: I commit myself to this path, and I ask others to believe me. This act is close to fiction, because it involves trust, promise, and belief — but it is also serious, because it binds the speaker to a public commitment. He writes:
A declaration from someone professing something is a kind of performative statement. It commits the person making the declaration through an act of sworn faith, an oath, a testimony, a manifestation, an attestation, or a promise. (Derrida, 2001, p. 35)
To profess philosophy, for example, is not just to know it, but to promise to live it, to speak for it, to take responsibility for it. He states:
Philosophiam profiteri means to profess philosophy: not simply to be a philosopher, to practice or teach philosophy in a relevant way, but to commit oneself, through a public promise, to devote oneself publicly to philosophy, to bear witness to it, and even to fight for it. (Derrida, 2001, pp. 35–36)
In the end, Derrida suggests that the university should be a space where thought remains free — free not in the sense of detached from reality, but free in the sense of being responsible, engaged, and open to the future. It is the Humanities, more than any other field, that are called to carry this responsibility — not because they are better or more important, but because their work has always involved a certain ‘as if’: the space where imagination, commitment, and reflection meet.
Next time, we will start reading the second chapter of the text together. Your sponsorship means everything. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber. You will get access to all my paywalled articles and support my Substack.