The Death of the Soul

Critical Essays on the University

Thomas Martin’s collection of essays, both satirical and pointed, are gathered from his dissident campus newsletter The Examined Life, founded with the purpose of critiquing the life of the secular university at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. The Medieval foundations of the university much preceded today’s universities which, by becoming secular, have cut off their roots. Although created as one body which recognizes and accepts man’s natural rights aimed at the common good, it has become a multi-bodied, ever progressive, forward-looking creation, bound to the beat of the ideology that there is no enemy other than the man who is not open to everything. It is important to remember that word “university” houses an idea that comes from the Latin universum, which in turn grew from the neuter of universus, the base from which the word “universe” evolved, meaning the whole body of things and phenomena observed or postulated. A university, therefore, allows for the democracy of the dead rather than merely the oligarchy of the living who just happen to be walking around. When our intellectual ancestors are given an equal voice in the formation of the minds of students, those students have the potential to be moved by principles, be virtuous and maybe, even be wise.