University and tradition: notes on the referential context of university rationality

This paper presents a central thesis: that humanistic language is the idiomatic context in which the Western cultural universe or world has existence, and, by extension, where the academic world has existence and sense. In this frame, the authors analyze two main topics: a) the way in which meaning units, that name the referent University, articulate and organize humanistic contents that adjust along to the academic world which men have been postulating throughout history; and b) the evidence of inherited vocabulary of Western thought in the traditional discourse of the National Autonomous University of Mexico.