PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF COMPLIANCE CULTURE IN THE MODERN UNIVERSITY: ETHICS, FREEDOM, AND INSTITUTIONAL TRUST

This article offers a philosophical interpretation of compliance culture within the modern university as a form of ethical and normative organization of academic life. Compliance is understood not merely as a mechanism of legal and regulatory conformity, but as a proactive system of values and norms aimed at fostering a responsible and just educational environment. Drawing on classical philosophical traditions, compliance culture is conceptualized as the “moral architecture” of the university – a normative framework that ensures a balance between rule-based governance, academic freedom, and mutual trust. The university, in this perspective, is not only a site of knowledge transmission (episteme), but also a moral space where collective norms of justice, responsibility, and autonomy are shaped. Through the lens of the ethics of responsibility, the phenomenology of trust, and critiques of institutional reason, the article explores how compliance culture contributes to the moral legitimacy of the academic community. The authors argue that fostering such a culture requires a careful balance between normative structures and the existential freedom of academic actors. In the context of digitalization and increasing regulatory pressures, compliance is emerging as an essential element of the philosophy of education and a new form of institutionalized humanism. Keywords: compliance culture, trust, responsibility, ethics, freedom.