The manuscripts and the lecture notes

The complete absence of textbooks on the teaching of philosophy at the new University of Christiania, which was established in 1811, was due not only to the passive continuation of a practice that had been dominant in Copenhagen but also to the fact that the production of textbooks in Norway at this time was virtually non-existent. There were also political reasons for this. In a pamphlet aimed at proving the harmfulness of the importation of foreign goods, written by the industrialist Hovel Helset (1779–1865), it was admittedly stated that ‘books are the guidance of literature, and as such free’,5 H. Helset, Den lille Tarif. Et Forsøg paa at bevise Skadeligheden ved Indførselen af atskillige fremmede Varer i Norge (Christiania, 1820), p. 10. but during a debate about the higher education system in parliament in 1818 one of the participants warned against initiating a domestic production of textbooks, and among the arguments he put forward was that it would be almost impossible to profit from such a project, even if one succeeded in finding a Norwegian author.

The teaching of philosophy included four sub-disciplines: logic, metaphysics, psychology and ethics. What the students were offered under these headings was, in terms of content, an anonymous body of knowledge – anonymous in the sense that it could not be traced back to a particular philosopher or philosophical school. It consisted rather of what one might call the common ground of philosophy. This body of knowledge was in itself an expression of the aforementioned opinion that the truth was already known and that the university’s task was to convey this to the students. That the teaching material was not linked to a specific philosophical position and, consequently, not to the person lecturing on it meant that in practice the lecturers could also borrow manuscripts from each other, and this was done on several occasions. When F. P. J. Dahl (1788–1864) arrived in Christiania in 1815 to take over as philosophy teacher after Treschow’s resignation, Treschow put several of his lecture manuscripts at his successor’s disposal; and when Poul Martin Møller (1794–1838) in 1828 joined as professor of philosophy in Christiania, Treschow made him the same offer. But Møller, who had already got a taste for German idealism, soon realised that he could not use these manuscripts and instead wrote to his mentor in Copenhagen, Professor Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785–1872), to get a copy of his manuscript on metaphysics. What Møller received from Sibbern was, however, far too strongly influenced by his mentor’s own philosophical position, and as a result Møller had to write his own manuscript, based on what his predecessors had presented to their students. The result was a manuscript that any lecturer could have prepared and then used.7 This manuscript, which is dated February 1828, can be found at the Royal Library in Copenhagen (The manuscript collection, Collin 377 4to).

Two of the booklets with lecture notes found in the manuscript collection at the National Library of Norway are particularly interesting because they illustrate parts of what has been referred to above as a system of circulation. This system includes the knowledge transfer which took place during the actual lecture, where the oral words were taken down, but an equally important part of it was the circulation of notes that obviously took place subsequently. The precondition for such circulation was, of course, that the content of the lectures was almost identical from year to year – and that the notes could thus be sold to, or copied by, new students. The fact that NBO Ms. forelesn. [lecture] 398 is a copy of an original note is clear from the first page of the booklet, where it is written: ‘Lectures on moral philosophy by councillor Treschow held at the Norwegian University in its first semester. Copied in the summer of 1816 by Niels Schydtz’.

That the copy is reliable is beyond doubt, since much of its content is almost literally the same as one will find in the textbook on moral philosophy that Treschow would later publish.8 N. Treschow, Den philosophiske Sædelæres første Grunde (Christiania, 1824). Furthermore, it is worth noting that the copy has retained the wide margins, which were often used to note down some of the more comprehensive parts of the lecture where the professor quickly elaborated on his points or provided additional explanatory information.The copy also contains many of the standard abbreviations that the students made use of in order to be able to keep up with the dictation.

On closer inspection, however, there are signs to suggest that the copy is not only based on one, but two earlier sets of student notes. For example, there is a discrepancy in the number of paragraphs as well as an attempt to establish a concordance by giving some paragraphs two numbers. What this second text might be is highly uncertain. It could of course be a manu­script from one of the lectures Treschow had given during his time in Copenhagen, but it may just as well be additions that the student himself had made with the help of a somewhat shadowy figure in the academic world at the time, namely the manuductor. Unlike a modern seminar assistant, the manuductor (litr: ‘one who leads by the hand’) was not appointed by, or paid by, the university. He was an older student who had found a way to make money, namely by teaching and rehearsing the current subject matter for new students. This meant that he himself had to be in possession of a complete set of lecture notes written down during lectures given by the same professor whom the new students later would meet at the exam table. When this system – in which student notes were copied, bought and sold, and in which the manuductor played an important role – did not pose the same threat to the lecture as the textbook, it was simply because the system itself was informal and in practice required personal contacts and acquaintances.

Before considering the second of the two booklets, it would be appropriate to take a quick look at the figure who during the debate mentioned above had been regarded as the one who made the lecture into something more than the textbook, i.e. the professor who by his mere presence attracted the attention of the audience. Few professors at the University of Christiania during the 1820s and 1830s embodied the lecturer in the same way as Professor Georg Sverdrup (1770–1850), and the attraction he exercised on his audience has been well documented. In his memoirs one of his former students emphasises ‘Sverdrup’s impressive personality (he resembled Goethe), his deep and sonorous voice and the nimbus that still stood about him from his significant participation in my fatherland’s new political life also helped to elevate the impression his lectures exerted on me as on all his other listeners’; another former student recalls ‘the excellent lectures I heard from this so highly gifted man with the manly, impressive exterior and the powerful, deep voice’,9 A. Munch, Barndoms- og Ungdoms-Minder (Christiania, 1874), p. 194, and S. B. Bugge: ‘Autobiografiske Optegnelser’, Skilling-Magazin (Copenhagen, 1881), p. 85. while a third gives the following description of Sverdrup’s entrance into the lecture hall:

These lectures took place Monday to Saturday between 1 and 2 pm throughout the semester, and the number of listeners was just over 100. Originally, Sverdrup was also supposed to lecture on moral philosophy this semester, but according to the report which he himself submitted to the faculty, he had realised that he had to ‘proceed so slowly that his audience, who come from the schools to the university without prior knowledge in any philosophical discipline, could still be able to understand some of what he said’.11 Departements-Tidende (1833), no. 47. A quick glance at this student note clearly reveals that it is not made on site. Although it still contains the standard abbreviations that characterise most dictated notes, it is a 150 pages long clean copy, meticulously calligraphed and bound in hard cover. The amount of work that is put into it also suggests that it was not meant for sale. In short, it is a manuscript turned into a book that is meant to remain in the owner’s possession, and it even includes something that one will not normally find even in printed textbooks at the time: a register of items.

As such, it clearly testifies to what some students were willing to do with the notes they had once had dictated in the auditorium. Unlike Professor Sverdrup himself, who had all his own manuscripts burned after his death, it is obvious that a number of students wanted to keep and preserve their lecture notes, and these are thus available for posterity as an invaluable source material and, not least, as monuments to a dying form of teaching.

In the 1840s the dictation of lectures began to approach its end. As early as 1836 William Sverdrup (1809–72), the son of Professor Sverdrup, published a textbook on logic with the intention of documenting his qualifications with a view to a future position at the university, and his father also used this as a basis for his lectures with the result that the scope of the student notes decreased significantly. He simply assumed that the students themselves were in possession of the printed textbook and that in many cases he could therefore simply refer to it. Soon, critical voices outside the university also began to appear. In the spring of 1841 readers of Christiania’s largest newspaper found in print a comprehensive critique of the university as a whole which also addressed the way in which the institution had hitherto carried out its task of transferring knowledge. Here it was stated, among other things, that whereas a school teacher could be compared to the merchant who resold the raw materials he had imported in unchanged form, a university teacher ideally resembled a merchant who processed his goods before putting them up for sale.

Several of the university’s younger teachers were far from unreceptive to this critique. When Marcus Jacob Monrad (1816–97) in 1849 published his philosophical propaedeutic – the first textbook to be used on a large scale at the university – his explicit purpose was ‘to give my contribution to the restriction of dictation at the University’.13 M. J. Monrad, Philosophisk Propædeutik. Grundrids til Brug ved Forelæsninger (Christiania, 1849), ‘Foreword’. He could further assure the students that his colleague would also make use of this textbook in order to promote a unity in the elementary teaching of philosophy. Although the introduction of textbooks made both the dictation and the process of circulation described above superfluous, it did not mean the end of the lecture’s significant role in university teaching. On the contrary: now that all students had equal access to an authorised text that contained everything they needed for their forthcoming exam, they also had the opportunity to prepare themselves for the lectures which from now on, ideally speaking, would focus on the freer oral explanation of the content of the course.

Whereas it would be beyond the scope of this chapter to trace the occasionally tense relationship between the spoken and the written word in university teaching up until the present day, suffice it to say that this tension has still not been brought to rest. The students’ introduction to an academic literary citizenship takes place, now as before, through the spoken words of the lecture and with the help of the textbook, although the circulatory process described above does not have the same significance as during the heyday of dictation – and it is highly uncertain to what extent today’s students preserve their notes for posterity. Regarding the relationship between the oral, the note-taking and the printed book, a new component has undoubtedly been added in recent times, namely the pre-recorded lecture. A book-historical analysis of today’s lecture will therefore have to take into account the fact that the tension does now not only lie between the spoken and the written word but also between the living voice in the lecture hall and the impersonal voice of the recording.