The beautiful risk of education

and reason was turned back on itself only to demonstrate that rationality leads nowhere (p. 118). Citizens, trapped or not in the iron cage of bureaucracy, lost the sense of meaning in their lives: culture as participation had been replaced by knowledge as construction. This diagnosis of the triumph of modern technocracy is quite perceptive, but one major actor is missing: capitalism. It is tangentially introduced later under the guise of ‘commercial society’ (p. 120); one misses, however, the correlation between technocracy and capitalism that has been discussed by authors such as Russell, Mumford, Ellul and Gorz. From their perspective, technique has not lost its telos: a capitalistic telos has been substituted for the humanistic telos. Is education a matter of instruction in citizenship or in individualism? This anthology constitutes an excellent introduction to the current state of university education and to most historical facets of its crisis. Converging themes include the correlation between, on the one hand, liberal arts, Humboldtian university, culture, progressive civilization and robust democracy and, on the other, skill training, corporate university, nihilism, consumerism and friendly fascism. Unfortunately, no contributor produces a sharp judgement on the nature of technique (or on its technoscientific heir) and on its link with capitalism, a double conundrum that is at the core of the debated issue.