Those Nutty Professors

9 November 2006 at 8:50 am Peter G. Klein Leave a comment

| Peter Klein |

Anthony Grafton reviews William Clark’s Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (University of Chicago Press, 2006) for The New Yorker. Clark focuses on Weber’s notion of charismatic authority and argues that the critical element in the development of the professorial role was not the lecture, but the “disputation,” or debate, a form of which survives today as the oral thesis defense. Peter Abelard was apparently a master of the disputation. Writes Grafton:

His triumphs in these “combats” made him, arguably, the first glamorous Parisian intellectual. A female disciple, Héloïse, wrote to him, “Every wife, every young girl desired you in absence and was on fire in your presence.” Their story has become a legend because of what followed: Héloïse, unwed, had a child by Abelard, her kin castrated him in revenge, and they both lived out their lives, for the most part, in cloisters. But even after Abelard’s writings were condemned and burned, pupils came from across Europe hoping to study with him. He had the enduring magnetism of the hotshot who can outargue anyone in the room.

I don’t wish Abelard’s fate, but it would be nice to have that kind of enduring magnetism. Anyway, the book sounds like a good read. (HT: Jackson Library Blog)