Critical Evaluation of the Concept of Commercialization in the Existing Humanities

In "Knowledge Management", four outputs for the existing humanities are listed: 1. Enhancing knowledge; 2. To function; 3. Application; 4. Commercialization. The late concept of commercialization, with its fundamental problem of "material and commodity view of knowledge" and the direct influence of "neoliberalism", "theory of knowledge economics" and "concept of knowledge industry", has caused deep earthquakes in world knowledge. In the logic of commercialization, knowledge and the university serving free economic markets and commercial companies are described in such a way that the center of gravity of the two is often referred to as "material gain" rather than "understanding" and "truth". The present research has been done with a qualitative approach and with a "descriptive-analytical method" and the authors have used two research strategies "summary of documents" and "end to beginning thinking" to achieve the research results. This study has evaluated the epistemological foundations and non-epistemological factors of commercialization of humanities according to the "principle of prioritizing the understanding of theory over its study" and using the "fundamental methodology of the development of scientific theories". Explaining the benefits and pests of commercialization of humanities is another goal of this research. In the six epistemological foundations of the commercialization of the humanities, the traces of the fundamental problem of commercialization, namely the materialist view of knowledge, can be seen. Therefore, "application of humanities" and related concepts cannot be reduced to "commercialization of humanities". Also, among the non-epistemological and contextual factors of commercialization of humanities, three areas of "knowledge", "university" and "education and research" that are seriously in the commercialization radius were selected and examined. In these areas, too, a commodity, object, and tool view of knowledge can be seen.