2006 Winter Semester âAcademics and Humansâ Today universities are facing the third great revolutionary phase after the World War â
¡. The first revolutionary phase was soon after World War II, when universities under the old education system shifted to the new education system. The second revolutionary phase was in 1968 and 1969, when throughout the world student power confronted universities. At each phase, the structure of universities and academic disciplines themselves were keenly scrutinized. The third phase is no exception. To scrutinize academic disciplines is to scrutinize the people concerned with academic disciplines in the first place. Next, one must question the relationship between academic disciplines and humans. This is because academic disciplines are always considered as an activity of humans. Academic disciplines concerning human beings, culture, society and history are, at the same time, destined to scrutinize their activities themselves. They question how sciences studying humans are possible, the meanings to consider the subject which confronts reason, and they ask again what is the âobjectivityâ and âhistoryâ of truth itself.ãThis lecture, (as in the lecture series âGlobal Focus on Knowledgeâ presented by the University of Tokyo) takes a global viewpoint in fields of humanity, sociology and psychology, especially in philosophy, religion and science of knowledge. Students are expected to touch upon the activities to question the meanings of academic disciplines, and think how human sciences should be.