This may have to do with his own position as a humanities scholar, with his description of Humboldt's vision as our historical antecedent, or with fact that issues of culture have dominated the debate. Regardless, he does address the allure of reason, but with more ambivalence and less commentary. This move reflects his broader aim to hold open the question of value, and to hold open questions in general, in a corporate university where value is less a philosophical problem than an accounting problem. For Readings, the problem with the university of reason and the university of culture is that they point to external justifications, community totalities that the university rests on and reproduces. In focusing on dissensus, Readings invokes Derrida's and Lyotard's challenges to ideal speech situations and presumptions of communicative transparency.
Readings strongly resists any Idealist recourse to continuity.
When it comes to the specific material conditions of researchers and teachers, Readings has less to say. These challenges aim to trace limitations in Readings' argument, but at the same time to remind us that many of the questions that he poses are the crucial ones in the effort to inhabit the corporate university.