Abstract: Education and the spirit of the time are closely related to each other,and university is the rational conscience of the time.Unlike the optimism two centuries ago,most thinkers,including Heidegger,used to define the essence of the spirit of the times with "darkness" and "nihilism".Foucault,on the other hand,believed that there was no need to exaggerate the particularity of the present era.These pessimistic or objective reflections actually show that the great spiritual crisis in the West is ready for a new era.The root of the spiritual crisis of the time lies in the fact that the concept of "democracy" in the modern sense has been solidified into an ideology.Democracy itself is the mechanism of social politics,not the idea of education and the spirit of the times.Its demand for unprincipled equality ignores individual differences and replaces quality with quantity,thus erasing the nobility of the spirit of the time.This "majority principle" can only lead to the technology￣oriented value neutrality.Modern education that ignores quality becomes an assembly line of processing plant,and technology instead of virtue becomes a new belief,which eventually leads to "no thinking" and even the death' of education,history and philosophy.The criticism of today's educational idea is not intended to "discredit" the era,nor is it to show off the cheap sadness,but to face the reality.Only in this way can we find an appropriate way out and let new possibilities begin to emerge.After all,we are facing fundamental changes on an unprecedented worldwide scale.

Key words: education, spirit of the time, nihilism, democracy, technicalization