by Peter Kahl, 2025-09-03; v2: 2025-09-04
A multimodal odyssey in seven movements — from the dependency of the student, through the theatre of the university and the seal of accreditation, to the crack of doubt, the act of self-emancipation, and finally the manifesto that opens onto a city of free thinkers. Each stage is rendered through poetry, essay, and image, treated as coequal epistemic registers: the poem enacts, the prose situates, the image exposes. This form is not ornamental but methodological. To resist epistemic domestication, philosophy must refuse monomodality.
The work diagnoses universities and allied institutions as theatres of epistemic clientelism, where recognition is exchanged for conformity and accreditation substitutes for truth. It shows how practices of accreditation and peer review often operate as systemic gatekeeping mechanisms that produce epistemic injustice by design. Drawing on Foucault and Bourdieu, it situates these dynamics as theatres of visibility and silence, where authority is aestheticised and dissent suppressed.
Against this order, the work advances the case for fiduciary openness: epistemic authorities must be bound by duties of care, loyalty, and accountability to truth itself. It envisions epistemocracy, a form of governance in which plurality is structurally safeguarded and institutions act not as sovereign gatekeepers but as stewards of the commons.
The cycle culminates in a manifesto of unfettered thought, proposing a reimagined motto for knowledge: Epistemic Liberty, Equality of Voices, Fraternity of Free Thinkers. It calls for a city where silence is fertile rather than imposed, libraries are gardens rather than prisons of paper, and knowledge circulates not as property but as fiduciary trust. The invitation is collective: to breathe together in the open space created when certainty falls and doubt begins.
epistemic clientelism, epistemic freedom, fiduciary openness, epistemocracy, epistemic injustice, fiduciary duties, epistemic plurality, epistemic agency, multimodal philosophy, democratic epistemology, institutional critique, higher education, silence, accreditation, emancipation, manifesto
This is a provisional draft circulated for discussion; readers are welcome to cite it, noting that revisions may follow in later versions.
Kahl, P. (2025). Toward a city of free thinkers: From the precipice of knowledge to the horizons of emancipation (v2). Lex et Ratio Ltd. GitHub: https://github.com/Peter-Kahl/Toward-a-City-of-Free-Thinkers DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17301139
First published in London by Lex et Ratio Ltd, 2025-09-03.
v2 published in London by Lex et Ratio Ltd, 2025-09-04.
© 2025 Lex et Ratio Ltd. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0.
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