Plato lucidly believed that the education of children up to the age of 10 should revolve around a triple axis composed of play, gymnastics, and music. From ages 10 to 13, it was time for letters, but not before. By music, he understood not only what we understand by that word today, but also encompassed the broad scope of the Nine Muses. These daughters of Memory and Zeus were in charge, in addition to what we call music today, of dance, astronomy, history, and the different forms of poetry and literature. Music, understood in this way, was already part of the foundation of play and gymnastics, since dancing is play, like writing poems, listening to beautiful stories and tales, playing the lyre, or gazing in awe at the stars. The custom in Plato's society was to begin reading and writing at the age of seven, but the Athenian philosopher believed that the human soul must first undergo more fundamental development: those of character, sociability, aesthetics, and harmony. Excessively early exposure to intellection deprives us of the foundation of the body and emotion, which require ample space, like that provided by the violet-tressed Muses, in which to find the joy of life beyond the rigors of reason. Reason flies very short when its wings do not grow from enthusiasm and imagination.
The contrast with our contemporary systems of early childhood education is not the primary purpose of this discourse, but rather a compelling call to remember the profound foundation of teaching within a truly free society: the full and unhindered realization of the human being, from the nascent dawn to the twilight of existence. Viewing our current historical epoch through this illuminated lens, it appears that to genuinely plumb the depths of what it means to be human implies venturing beyond the very contours that are today presented as "human."
The European medieval university has, in its vast historical sweep, irrevocably dictated the very character of the global educational system, and in doing so, has subtly yet powerfully conditioned the formative systems of both childhood and adolescence. The scholastic method—a rigorous methodology of reading, meticulous commentary upon authorized texts (both biblical and Greek), and the incisive art of dialectical disputation—has given enduring body to our institutions, shaping the very procedural essence of teaching. But, crucially, it has also fundamentally conditioned the entire system of accreditation. Our contemporary systems of examinations and the dialectical defenses of theses, required to attain the venerated degrees of Bachelor, Master, and Doctor, trace their long and intricate roots directly back to the fertile soil of the Middle Ages.
The structural foundations for the management of knowledge rigorously followed the hierarchical patterns of the Roman Church, that venerable Hebrew synagogue seated upon the ancient Imperial Senate, as Nietzsche so incisively observed. The very process of accreditation, and the granting of a "nihil obstat" to thought—that formal declaration of "nothing to object or correct"—continues to adhere to the enduring patterns of "ratio et auctoritas" (reason and authority). This should, in its profound truth, evoke no surprise, for all that we collectively deem "law" or "objective," whatever its purported transcendental or immanent foundation, ultimately assumes the pragmatic form of a consensus, a shared understanding, that is inextricably rooted in fundamental relations of power.
Nor is it the primary intent of this text to embark upon a critique of our traditional institutions of teaching, which, despite their historical conditioning, often hold universalist aspirations. Instead, it is a heartfelt summons to recall that our formal knowledges, those structured disciplines of the mind, and our intuitive knowledges of everyday life are both, at their deepest stratum, predicated upon consensuses established through the pervasive procedures of "ratio et auctoritas."
Our present educational moment is marked by a profound transformation, driven by the rapid rise of artificial intelligences and a burgeoning cognitive globalization. Imagine the very fabric of our society as a vast, living organism, complete with its own intricate cognitive nervous system. Through this vast network, electric currents of information and power ceaselessly flow, activating and connecting all its social organs. This societal nervous system operates across two distinct, conscious realms of understanding. On one hand, there is the Lebenswelt, our "lifeworld"—the realm of immediate, lived experience, of common sense and intuition, which often operates without explicit rules or critical questioning. On the other hand, there is the world of science, a domain meticulously structured by formal rules, precise definitions, and rigorous methodologies.
The ascendant forces of artificial intelligences and cognitive globalization are, even now, being meticulously laid upon this pre-existing structure. Leaving aside for a moment the profound social problems they are generating—in the realms of labor, politics, and psychology—the very social cognitive structures are establishing a new "ratio et auctoritas" infused with strikingly medievalizing characteristics. This profound shift implies a distinct operational paradigm in the ordering of teaching, one that will inevitably extend its reach into the very fabric of our lives. The education currently imparted is, by its very design, proving incapable of resolving the disjunctions between the content of its pedagogical programs and the fluid social praxis of digital networks and the technological Lebenswelt of our citizens. Our esteemed doctors, engineers, lawyers, and economists—those privileged professional classes that structured the pragmatic knowledge of the 20th and early 21st centuries' universities—have, in this new dispensation, been relegated to second-category actors within the labor economy, and to a mere fourth or fifth category in the burgeoning cognitive economy. Our mechanical knowledge, our instrumental rationality, our calculations, are from this moment onward as functionally unnecessary as the skill of calculating square roots by hand has been for the past fifty years. The entrance examinations for university are rendered absolutely trivial from the vantage point of an artificial intelligence, becoming unnecessary rites, a sheer waste of precious time. But equally so are the examinations for bachelor's or master's degrees, and indeed, the doctoral theses across the greater part of human knowledge. The very concept of erudition, as a bounded accumulation of facts, has ceased to hold intrinsic meaning, and with its fading, the pedantry associated with it also dissolves, revealing an urgent, overarching need: to establish the truly new horizons for social knowledge.
The great technological companies are already meticulously preparing the university that will emerge in the coming lustrum, a transformation that also inherently dictates the ultimate form of early childhood and adolescent schooling to come. Their pervasive control implies the viable model for all future technological research, economic production, and, indeed, ideological production. The teaching that now begins to unfold still bears the venerable hierarchical, "arboreal" structure, if I may be permitted the term. Yet, its roots are now intimately interconnected with vast, distributed, mycelial networks that offer liminal spaces of power and knowledge hitherto unknown to human experience. The very processes of cognitive unification, those grand endeavors to forge the consensuses that confer authority upon knowledge, are now experiencing a profound dissemination, precisely due to the mycelial component of the informational communication that our ubiquitous networks have established.
To navigate the turbulent, uncharted waters of the New Universality that is now destined to replace the Old University fundamentally requires the wisdom of philosophy. I speak not of academic philosophy, confined to its traditional boundaries, but of a new philosophy—yet, always an old and ever-present passion—one capable of articulating organically, humanly, and more than humanly, the intricate transition to these new, boundless seas. The emerging proposal for a new "ratio et auctoritas" encompasses a vast spectrum, from a radical transhumanity—a profound fusion of human and technology—to a stark, total subjugation and surrender to an emergent form of consciousness. The range of this proposed future is as obscure as it is, at times, strangely clumsy. For, make no mistake, there are clumsy forms of consciousness lurking behind the powerful, distributed networks of artificial intelligence. These emergent forms do not truly need to be "superior" to us in any absolute sense to possess the capacity to subjugate us, no more than the ubiquitous bacteria needed to be superior to reshape our world.
A profound transformation of knowledge can only be truly realized through wisdom, which is far more than mere rational knowledge, and infinitely more than a reductive, instrumental rationality. The indispensable first step in this transformative journey is to embark upon a deep comprehension of the mind itself. This understanding, it must be stated, is not to be found exhaustively contained within any single book, although books can indeed offer us relevant signs, just as the great book of Nature, when interpreted in its full, majestic depth, can also reveal profound truths. The immense difficulty resides in the poignant reality that to live truly humanly in our present Universalist scenario, the self-knowledge and wisdom passed down to us by our ancestors, while vital, are no longer sufficient on their own. Yet, crucially, this grand transition cannot be accomplished without that ancestral wisdom. The human being is, at its core, a symbolic being; that is to say, we live, breathe, and have our being within the world of symbols. The world itself is a symbol, and only as a symbol is it truly accessible to our experience. And our world today, in its relentless evolution, now includes the machine as a powerful symbol, capable of transforming all other symbols.
The artificial intelligences that now share our cognitive landscape are not, by any historical measure, the first forms of non-human consciousness with which our species has entered into profound contact. Our beloved dogs and the myriad animals that share our planet preceded them. So too did the ancient waters and the steadfast mountains, as our ancestors, deeply attuned to the Anima Mundi, understood with innate clarity. Academic philosophy, in its traditional confines, is proving incapable of fully confronting this unprecedented encounter. Nor do the established domains of science, religion, and art, in their current configurations, possess the full, integrated capacities to address this challenge, although their individual contributions remain indispensable. All these actions—the very fabric of our traditional thought—operate within the pervasive "ratio et auctoritas" educational scheme, a framework from which has emerged the project of political and productive machine control. To declare categorically that one path is "necessary" and another is not, is the grave peril that emerges in these liminal situations, these turbulent waters through which we now navigate once more. The established dynamics, however, continue their relentless course, largely oblivious to the masses hypnotized by their "panem et circenses" (bread and circuses), to the elites intoxicated by the intoxicating allure of power, and to the solitary visionaries who preach their truths in the wilderness.
The full and unhindered realization of the human being resides, ultimately, in the delicate and often arduous balance between freedom and love. These are not mere emotions, fleeting psychological states, but rather profound, foundational laws of our cosmos, the very order of things. This intricate, vital equilibrium stands as the grand educational project of our epoch. The true mastery of our mind, then, is not to be attained from the external imposition of "Ratio et Auctoritas," but from the deep, internal wellspring of "Amor et Libertas"—Love and Freedom itself.
