quadrivium was composed of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and musical theory. With occasional variation, these seven disciplinae liberales or artes liberales ...
TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ......................................................... ...........................................ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................. iii PART ONE: THE MODERN UNIVERSITY I.
INTRODUCTION: THE MODERN AND THE POSTMODERN ........................................................................... 1
II.
FOUR MODERN VISIONS OF THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE: .......................................................................... 28 Hutchins: The Great Conversation about Truth ...................28 Whitehead: The Transformation of Human Experience and Civilization by the Progress of Speculative Ideas ............40 Giamatti: The Common Language of Citizenship .................53 Pelikan: "Knowledge its Own End" Preserved and Reformed ............................................................................60
PART TWO: FIVE POSTMODERN CRITIQUES OF KNOWLEDGE III.
LYOTARD, RORTY, AND SCHRAG ...................................... 77 Lyotard: The Postmodern Legitimation of Knowledge and Reformation of the Well-Educated Person .......................77 Rorty: Postmodern Conversation as Pragmatic Edification ..........................................................................93 Schrag: Reason Between Modernism and Postmodernism .108
IV.
FOUCAULT AND DERRIDA ................................................ 129 Foucault: The Human Subject as a Strategy of PowerKnowledge ........................................................................129 The Relationship Between Pursuit of Knowledge and Pursuit of Power ...................................................129 The Human Subject and the Human Sciences..........137 The Question of the Postmodern Educated Self .......143 Derrida: The Problem and Promise of Differance ...............147 Speech, Writing, and the Problematic of Absolute Knowledge .............................................................148 Differance, Deconstruction, and General Writing ....157 Implications of Differance, Deconstruction, and "General Writing" for the Ideas of Knowledge for "its own sake" and Well-Educated Person ...........165
PART THREE: THE POSTMODERN UNIVERSITY A POSTMODERN CRITIQUE OF THE DISCIPLINES.............. 184 The Absolute Foundation of Modern Higher Education: Pursuit of Knowledge of Reality as it is Already Conceived to Be................................................................184 The “Absolutism” of the Disciplines and Disciplinary Fragmentation .................................................................195 Reformation of the Disciplines .............................................201 A Postmodern Idea of Theoretical Practice..........................206 VI.
POSTMODERN THEORETICAL PRACTICE: THE PURSUIT OF INTELLECTUALLY COMPELLING IDEAS ........................................................... 211 Postmodern Reality: A State of Indeterminacy ..................212 The Postmodern's Threefold Relationship with Reality......217 The Experience of Intellectually Compelling Ideas .............220 The Postmodern Alteration of Reality .................................224 Compelling Ideas and the Alteration of Reality ..................227 The Public Expression of Compelling Ideas.........................232
VII.
POSTMODERN HIGHER EDUCATION: THEORETICAL PRACTICE OUTSIDE AND INSIDE THE DISCIPLINES ................................................. 238 The Disciplines and Knowledge of Reality as Local Contexts.................................................................................239 The Pursuit of Intellectually Compelling Ideas...................241 Postmodern Higher Education, Interdisciplinarity, and the Comparative Study of Social Transformations ..............247 Conclusion: The Postmodern Meaning of Knowledge for its Own Sake and of what it means to be Well-Educated ...254
VIII. EPILOGUE: THE LIBERAL INTELLECTUAL SPIRIT OF A POSTMODERN UNIVERSITY ......................................... 270 The Meaning of the Blurring of Research and Teaching ....271 Intellectual Activity in the New American University: Postmodern Research Programs .....................................276 The Blurring of the Mind-Body Distinction and its Pragmatic Implications for a Postmodern University .....................282 Intellectual Community, Administration, and the Elevation of Teaching and Students in a Postmodern University .285
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................... 291
PART ONE: THE MODERN UNIVERSITY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: THE MODERN AND THE POSTMODERN
the wise man, even when by himself, can contemplate truth, and the better the wiser he is . . . And this activity alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while from practical activities we gain more or less apart from the action . . . the activity of intellect, which is contemplative, seems both to be superior in worth and to aim at no end beyond itself . . . (1) "All men by nature desire to know": these familiar opening words of Aristotle's Metaphysics . . . continue to state the underlying rationale of university education (2). What, then, is the postmodern? . . . It is undoubtedly a part of the modern . . . A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant . . . The postmodern would be that which, in the modern, puts forward the unpresentable in presentation itself. . . that which searches for new presentations, not in order to enjoy them but in order to impart a stronger sense of the unpresentable (3). We all still need an education in thinking, and first of all, before that, knowledge of what being educated and uneducated in thinking means. In this respect Aristotle gives us a hint in Book IV of his Metaphysics (1006a ff.): "For it is uneducated not to have an eye for when it is necessary to look for a proof and when this is not necessary." This sentence demands careful reflection. For it is not yet decided in what way that which needs no proof in order to become accessible to thinking is to be experienced (4). My aim in this dissertation is to explore the implications of five postmodern philosophical positions for the theory and practice of higher
2 education. The focal themes of this philosophical inquiry are what the idea of the pursuit of knowledge is, what it means to be a well-educated person, and the organization of the pursuit of knowledge in higher education. The philosophers whose work I explore for this purpose are Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and Calvin Schrag. Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge is regarded as the most illuminating exposition of postmodern philosophy. Foucault and Derrida are the most influential French postmodern philosophers, and French thought is the most widely influential source of postmodern themes. Rorty is a philosopher of the Anglo-American analytic tradition, who developed a postmodern position on knowledge that signaled his break from that tradition and that established him as the leading American postmodern philosopher. In contrast, Schrag is an American philosopher who adopts major French postmodern positions and attempts to reconcile them with aspects of modern Continental European philosophy. . The developing idea of postmodernism, or the diverse array of intellectual movements called "postmodern," is still in its infancy. Accordingly, the significance and meaning of postmodernism is the subject of considerable contemporary debate. It is generally agreed, however, that in the last three decades fundamental challenges to "modern" forms of thought have emerged in many realms of thought and activity. Sometimes more fullblown challenges of this sort are depicted as "postmodern." More specifically, among the thinkers primarily to be considered here, postmodernism can be understood in large part as a rejection of what philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who is decidedly not postmodern, calls "the project of modernity" and identifies with the French Enlightenment:
3 The project of modernity formulated in the 18th century by the philosophers of the Enlightenment consisted in their efforts to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic. At the same time, this project intended to release the cognitive potentials of each of their domains from their esoteric forms. The Enlightenment philosophers wanted to utilize this accumulation of specialized culture for the enrichment of everyday life--that is to say, for the rational organization of everyday social life (5). These postmodernists claim that this project, which originally challenged the social order, and which heavily informs education at all levels in most parts of the world today, has succeeded in becoming dominant as a cultural form yet falls far short of realizing its humane aims (6). While many contemporary modernists, such as Habermas, agree with this assessment, these postmodernists differ from them in attempting to move intellectual discourse and expression out of the modern, while Habermas and company seek to reform the modern project in some way. These challenges reject belief in the modern idea that intellect can direct human civilization toward a progressive realization of ideal forms of human existence and understanding that are universal, knowable, and achievable through discoveries and applications in such areas as science, civil governance, and aesthetic expression. While, to be sure, not all strands of distinctly modern thought wholly correspond to this widespread belief and the so-called "project of modernity" is but one version of that belief, it is one that these highly visible and influential postmodernists share in rejecting in every detail. Moreover, it must be admitted that even among some strands of modern thought an explicit critique and opposition directed to some of these details is to be found, quite prominently in some cases. In this respect aspects of "modern" thought, present almost from the beginning, are identical with aspects of thought among these "postmoderns." Partly for this reason, a feature of
4 postmodernism that I particularly emphasize and seek to develop in this study lies in an assertion drawn chiefly from Lyotard that in part postmodernism identifies with aspects of modernism in its nascent state (7). Today postmodern influence is evident in the sciences, the visual and performing arts, literature, politics, philosophy, religious studies, and cultural studies generally. Since the critiques embedded in postmodern thought radically challenge the status quo in these fields and in education generally, and since the university can be understood as the place where such forms of knowledge and expression are now preeminently distinguished and legitimized, it is important to examine the potential significance of postmodern views for higher education. However, very little work has been published on this subject (8). This study seeks to begin to fill that void by posing questions and expressing positions that provide a direction for scholarly inquiry and debate. There is also a dearth of contemporary literature devoted specifically to the philosophical bases of higher education (9). If the study of higher education has not established itself within the university, as some within the field claim, then one of the things it needs to provide is philosophical inquiry that is relevant to contemporary concerns (10). By focusing on one major strand of postmodern thought, which is arguably the most readily identifiable and prominent to date, I aim to address this need with a study that analyzes an intellectual current that is now a subject of intense discussion in many domains within universities and colleges. To accomplish these aims, I will elaborate what I believe is most distinctive about postmodern thought as it pertains to the philosophical question of human knowledge. A position is often identified as postmodern because it asserts that knowledge is determined, or at least substantially
5 conditioned, by the social rules that govern discourse and by a general emphasis on the centrality of culture and social relations. While these themes are common among many postmodern thinkers, as well as others such as the advocates of "critical theory," they are not particularly illuminating because they do not get at the core of postmodern thought. They represent some possible consequences of postmodern thought rather than its focal meaning. Postmodern philosophy in particular expresses a distinctive epistemological position, one that cannot, however, be simply reduced to one idea such as the idea that "everything is social" or even that "everything is cultural." This position, moreover, is not limited to the discipline of philosophy or to any other discipline. In fact, as I will show, it challenges the very idea of the disciplines, at least as they are generally construed. I interpret postmodern thought as reflecting a fundamental concern for expanding the possibilities and purposes of theoretical practice. In particular, it is concerned with opening up room for intellect to pursue important ideas outside the notion that reality is composed of things to know. Specifically, postmodern thought seeks room for the pursuit of ideas of what reality can be conceived to be for their own sake, where "for their own sake" is broadly construed to mean "for the sake of how to live." Since a fundamental concern of higher education is the pursuit of knowledge, and since postmodern philosophers take positions on knowledge that are intended to have broad implications for intellectual and social life generally, an analysis of these positions in the context of higher education provides a means of eliciting the potential significance of postmodern thought in a way that goes well beyond an exploration of its presence within the confines of a particular discipline. Therefore, in this study the confluence of postmodern thought and higher education has a potential significance that
6 goes far beyond the field of higher education studies, to issues that concern scholars in many areas of inquiry. Since this study will include an examination of the thought of five philosophers who take postmodern positions on the question of knowledge, it is important to provide a basic definition of what I mean by postmodern philosophy. I define postmodern philosophy as a speculative exploration of the consequences of the rejection of the idea that inquiry can yield a permanent, objective, self-justifying foundation to guide human thought and action. However, contrary to some interpretations, this does not mean that postmodern philosophers reject the idea of foundations; it means that they reject the idea of absolute foundations. Undoubtedly, many intellectuals in the modern era, in addition to the sophists of ancient Greece, have rejected the idea of an absolute, selfjustifying foundation. For this reason, postmodern challenges are not isolated concerns but arise out of modern critique, especially modern social critique. One way to distinguish postmodern philosophy is that it criticizes modern social critique on the basis that the latter attempts to ground itself on theory that purports to explain social phenomena in absolute terms or in terms that are tantamount to being absolute. For example, forms of postmodern thought termed "poststructural" originate as critiques of one prominent form of "absolute" social explanation, the structuralist social theory identified with the thought of Claude Levi-Strauss. This distinction helps to explain the largely misunderstood postmodern rejection of modern progress. Postmodernists do not reject the idea that social conditions can be vastly improved, or the idea that intellectuals can and should play a very important role in "making life better for everybody," as Rorty would say. Foucault is a good example of a postmodern philosopher
7 who rejected modern social critique and who was very active in organized social and political protests in the 1960s and 1970s. More than anything else, postmodern critique is fueled by the desire for social change that overcomes oppressive conditions. Thus, it is particularly meaningful for intellectuals with a social conscience. What postmodern philosophers reject is the idea that desirable social change is conceptualized and pursued as social progress in the modern sense. "Modern progress" is the idea that forms of human knowledge, social organization, and creative expression are progressively improved over time, either gradually or through successive waves of intellectual revolutions. Postmodernists reject this idea, claiming that its proponents mistakenly seek to justify intellectual revolutions, either explicitly or implicitly, on the basis that they are closer to being absolute explanations of aspects of physical and social reality than what has prevailed. Although scientists often disavow the idea that scientific inquiry will ever attain absolute knowledge, this disavowal does not mean that science is not subject to this idea of progress. Better explanations are explanations that explain more of reality; this means that the ultimate guiding aim is to explain all of reality absolutely, even if that aim cannot be realized. The point is that even though many scientists may disavow absolutes, they retain belief in the idea that their particular endeavors are part of a larger, inexorable story called modern progress. Lyotard, for example, argues that a better description of what really guides scientific inquiry is what he calls "performativity." (11) He claims that scientists whose research produces knowledge most efficiently in cost/benefit terms are most likely to obtain the material resources that are necessary to engage in the pursuit of knowledge.
8 For postmodern philosophers, then, the idea of making life better, and the idea that intellectual inquiry is a means toward doing so, are important aims. However, they claim that modern proposals for making life better unwisely attempt to justify themselves on the basis that they capture ways of thinking and living that are, or come close to, the absolute nature of things, including human nature. For example, neo-Marxist social critique that attempts to ground itself on absolute foundations is self-defeating because it cannot possibly justify such foundations, and this shortcoming adversely affects the credibility of the critique. Further, such critique does not adequately account for the diversity, paradoxes, and spontaneity of human experience. Therefore, it is prone to reproducing the kinds of oppressive relationships that it aims to overcome, or to creating new ones. Postmodern philosophers, along with some modern philosophers, allege that the pursuit of absolute foundations remains a basic aim of modern philosophical work. Rorty, for example, asserts that "analytic philosophy is still committed to the construction of a permanent, neutral framework for inquiry, and thus for all of culture." (12) Richard Bernstein uses the term "objectivism" to signify "the basic conviction that there is or must be some permanent, ahistorical matrix or framework to which we can ultimately appeal in determining the nature of rationality, knowledge, truth, reality, goodness, or rightness." (13) Hilary Putnam, in distinguishing his own position from Bernard Williams's view that contemporary physics provides "at least a sketch of an "absolute conception of the world," states that "many analytic philosophers today subscribe to such a view, and for a philosopher who subscribes to it the task of philosophy becomes largely one of commenting on and speculating about the progress of science, especially as it bears or seems to bear on the various traditional problems of philosophy."
9 (14) Thus, if these assertions by three eminent American philosophers who reject absolute foundations are accurate, the pursuit of an absolute foundation is still a central theme in modern philosophy. The idea of an absolute foundation has no precise, standard meaning that is beyond dispute. I will define belief in this idea simply as belief that there are general explanations for at least some aspects of reality whose accuracy is permanent, that these explanations can be known, and that they provide a firm ground upon which further knowledge of reality can be justified. A general explanation explains how particular aspects of reality are structured, change, or behave. An explanation is general if, and only if, its explanation of a particular aspect of reality applies universally for particulars of that kind under like conditions. A general explanation may be "absolute," that is, even though it must be qualified on the hypothesis that there are limitations on the capacity of the human intellect to know reality. Postmodern exploration of the possibilities for intellectual purpose can be understood as taking the rejection of belief in absolute foundations for attaining knowledge as a primary point of departure. For the most part, postmodern philosophers, especially those who have been schooled in a Continental European tradition, assume that an absolute foundation cannot be achieved and work from this assumption, rather than make analytic arguments that demonstrate why this idea is inherently problematic (Rorty's book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is a significant exception). I define a postmodern philosophical position on the subject of absolute foundations in a broadly inclusive and in a more specific sense. In a broad sense, a postmodern position holds that the idea of absolute foundations for attaining knowledge is inherently problematic, rather than a problem to solve or a problem that can be satisfactorily dealt with theoretically and
10 methodologically (for example, by using statistical techniques of approximation and probability). In a specific sense, a postmodern position actively seeks to draw out the intellectual consequences of this problematic idea and views it as an opportunity to change how reality is thought about in ways that can be defended as reasonably desirable. Each of the five philosophers whose thought I examine in Part Two qualify as postmodern in this specific sense. The distinction between philosophers who qualify as postmodern in the specific sense and others who reject the idea of an absolute is that the former view this rejection as an opportunity to expand the meaning of intellectual purpose in ways that go well beyond the idea that intellectual purpose is fundamentally that of pursuing knowledge of reality. The former focus their speculative efforts on exploring possibilities that this opportunity provides, while the latter seek simply to revise the idea "knowledge of reality" in some way. There is a more illuminating way of distinguishing the specific postmodern position on absolute foundations for attaining knowledge, and I will use it as the point of departure for this inquiry. Postmodernists generally understand the problematic nature of this idea in a way distinctly different from those engaged in what Habermas calls "the project of modernity." For postmodern philosophers, this idea is associated with what I will call an authentic intellectual experience. This is the idea that intellect can come to know reality through an experience that is "pure," or is "whole," or forms a "unity," such that the experience reveals reality "as it really is," qualified by the cognitive and sensory limitations of knowers. This idea is most explicit in Derrida's critique of what he calls "the metaphysics of presence," but it is my position that this form of critique tends to underlie
11 postmodern philosophy in general. Thus, to understand postmodern philosophy and postmodern thought generally, one must understand that the problematic nature of the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge is rooted in the problematic nature of claims to have an authentic intellectual experience, an experience that yields knowledge of reality. The position that knowledge is an intellectual experience of reality is fundamental to the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge does not originate with postmodern philosophers. In recent times it emerges within existential phenomenology, specifically with Martin Heidegger's claim that ancient Greek philosophers thought of what he terms absolute truth as something that is rooted in concrete existence rather than as something that transcends it (15). Although he has many detractors, the great significance of Heidegger's influence over many realms of intellectual thought in the twentieth century is indisputable. This influence has been especially strong in Continental structuralist and hermeneutic schools of textual interpretation, which are a prime target of critique for Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard (16). It is no accident that Heidegger is a key figure in Derrida's critique of opposed notions of knowledge and truth, and that Derrida's first two books are critiques of Edmund Husserl's thought (17). Husserl, a founder of modern phenomenology, was Heidegger's mentor. Heidegger also figures prominently in the critiques of Rorty and Schrag (18). Other philosophers that critiqued the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge or truth and who are prominent influences on postmodern philosophers are Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Nietzsche is particularly influential for Foucault, and Wittgenstein is especially important for Lyotard and Rorty. In addition, Rorty especially emphasizes the work of the pragmatist John Dewey.
12 Now, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein reject the idea of any absolute, whereas Heidegger transforms it into the idea of Being, the key concept of his entire philosophy. For this reason, one might think that it would be more accurate to think of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein as precursors to postmodernism. However, my position is that Heidegger is the key figure, for two reasons. First, unlike the others, Heidegger confronted the idea of "absolute truth" by substituting for it something in the nature of an authentic intellectual experience, or what he calls "aletheia," the experience of letting beings reveal themselves as they are to themselves (19). Second, and most significantly, Heidegger refused to resolve the idea of Being. Although he claimed to be trying to determine the Being of or beyond beings, Heidegger actually kept the idea problematic so that he could continue to explore it. Unlike Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, he did not let go of an underlying, or overarching and original logos but treated it as a perpetual problem. Heidegger wanted to keep his dialogue going, because in his mind the answer to the question of Being is itself contained in the activity of thinking about Being. What makes Heidegger the key precursor to postmodernism is (1) his critique of reality as comprised of things to know and (2) the course that his thinking about Being takes, rather than what he concludes. For postmodernists, the idea of Being, conceived as the idea of an authentic intellectual experience that reveals reality as it is, really is problematic. One postmodern expression of this sense of what is problematic that I deem to be particularly important is Lyotard's assertion that postmodernism is modernism in its nascent state (20). In pursuing the meaning of postmodernism, Lyotard focuses especially, though not exclusively, on distinguishing postmodern from modern aesthetics, but his idea of nascence
13 is intended to apply to postmodern thought in general. However, he does not develop an extended meaning for this idea that is particularly illuminating. Nascence generally refers to something's being born or coming into being, thus to its initial state. In chemistry, nascence designates the state of an element immediately after it has been released from a compound and having unusual chemical activity because atoms of the element have not yet combined to form molecules. I interpret Lyotard's notion of nascence, along with his statement that the postmodern is that which in the modern is "unpresentable," as meaning that postmodern rationality is concerned with intellectual activity before it determines that there are objects that can be known as things that are objectively real and that are essentially or ultimately known by reference to an absolute foundation. The significance of this notion in the context of higher education is that it provides a direction for an idea of postmodern higher education. If the problematic idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge is approached as one option for referring to an authentic intellectual experience of reality, then Lyotard's position suggests that a postmodern response to this problematic idea would develop a notion of intellectual experience that is not grounded on the pursuit of knowledge of an objective reality. Rather, such an experience would be based on an idea of intellectual engagement with reality that is before, or outside, the idea that intellectual engagement with reality fundamentally means the pursuit of knowledge of an objective reality. It would suggest, then, that a postmodern university is a place that is focused on expanding the idea of theoretical practice in some way, by emphasizing an idea of intellectual experience that goes beyond, or may even abjure the idea of pursuing knowledge of reality. If, as it is claimed, postmodern thought is concerned with an alternative
14 intellectual experience, and if the postmodern critique of the modern is accomplished by pursuing interpretations of Lyotard's notion that the postmodern tendency is nascent in modern thought, then it must be possible to find such an expanded idea of theoretical practice to be nascent in the idea of the modern university. The questions then become: how the modern university in theory and in practice falls short of realizing this nascent idea, how a postmodern notion of theoretical practice can be seen to be nascent in modern notions, and how a university that would strongly embody this notion, a postmodern university, would look. In order to answer these questions, one must first examine the idea of the modern university, at least as it is currently regarded. If the postmodern university can be seen to be nascent in the modern university, and if the postmodern rejection of the modern is a rejection of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge, then one must determine how this idea is treated in the context of the modern university. What, then, are the modern foundations of higher education, and in what ways do they function as absolutes? I answer this question in chapter II by examining the ideas of four established thinkers and institutional leaders who present currently typical visions of the intrinsic worth of higher learning. They are Robert Maynard Hutchins, Alfred North Whitehead, A. Bartlett Giamatti, and Jaroslav Pelikan. It is perhaps no accident that among these men only Whitehead is a philosopher, and even then more typical than influential in this regard. No twentieth century philosopher appears to have had any marked influence on the articulation or enactment of these visions apart from compliance to them. I show how each of these thinkers grounds the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake on the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge and show how the nature of this foundation for each
15 vision is different. I also show how their notions of what it means to be welleducated emerge from the belief in an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge. I suggest how these four visions fall short if these varied beliefs are rendered inherently problematic. In Part Two, I analyze how the postmodern rejection of the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge is articulated by Lyotard, Rorty, Schrag, Foucault, and Derrida. In each case, I draw out its implications for the practice of higher education, focusing in particular on the pursuit of knowledge and what it means to be a well-educated person. I show how their rejection of an absolute foundation suggests a notion of theoretical practice that goes beyond the pursuit of knowledge of reality as it is already conceived to be. (I will postpone an explanation of what I mean by the phrase "knowledge of reality as it is already conceived to be" until Part Three, when I develop an expanded idea of theoretical practice.) The claim of nascence as defined above suggests that a postmodern idea of higher education would have to respond to, and, in some cases at least, have to affirm basic modern intellectual values. I show how certain intellectual values that are expressed in the four visions of the modern idea of the university in chapter II are retained by the postmodernists despite their rejection of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge. Thus, I show how postmodern critique is rooted in modern concerns. My analysis of each philosopher concludes with a question framed in terms of these concerns that an adequate postmodern notion of higher education must give some well-formed response. In Part Three, based on the implications of this analysis and on the claim that the postmodern university is nascent in the modern pursuit of knowledge, I develop a critique of the modern university and develop a
16 postmodern idea of higher education. In chapter V, I explore the implications of the idea that an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge is problematic with respect to the philosophy and practice of higher education. If one assumes that the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge is problematic, the modern visions of higher education that I examined in chapter II do not in themselves justify the pursuit of knowledge of reality for its own sake, since they ground that pursuit on an assumption of that problematic idea. Most importantly, I claim that, even if one decides that modern visions of the university do not actually reflect the way that the pursuit of knowledge is actually organized, an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge is fundamentally implicated in the pursuit. The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is itself, in effect, the absolute foundation of the modern university. I argue that this foundation itself depends upon the idea that the primary relationship between human intellect and reality characterizes intellect as primarily a thing that seeks to know reality and reality as primarily things to know as they already are. Based on this characterization, knowing reality theoretically is rendered the foundation for practical activity. I argue that this foundation unduly limits the capacity of intellectuals to make better worlds. Rather, it is the basis upon which the intellectual community in part unknowingly constricts itself. In particular, I claim that the disciplines have the effect of presupposing the idea of an absolute foundation concerning what counts as legitimate intellectual activity, for several reasons. First, the disciplines are generally regarded as comprising the foundations of the university in practice. Second, the disciplines, as currently practiced, are primarily concerned with theoretical knowledge of reality. Third, in large part, since
17 theory is expressed in disciplinary terms, the disciplines are the prescribed structure for theoretical practice. For these reasons, the disciplines, as the theoretical and practical basis for the pursuit of knowledge, are, in practical effect, generally regarded as if they were absolute. I argue that postmodern philosophy implies an idea of higher education that would open up the relationship between knower and reality, and, therefore, liberate the idea of an intellectual community and the idea of legitimate theoretical practice from the constraint of this absolute. Since postmodern philosophy rejects absolute foundations, a postmodern conception of higher education would reject the absoluteness of the disciplines. Consistent with Rorty's ideas of the purpose of post-analytic philosophy, a postmodern philosophy of higher education would seek to be "therapeutic," in the sense that it would provide a rationale for theoretical practice that would not be constrained by the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge of reality as it is already conceived to be. Yet this conception must retain a substitute for, or revision of, the idea of absolute in some limited form, because if it did not the view that an absolute foundation is problematic would itself have, in practical effect, the status of an absolute claim. Therefore, the question is how to justify the idea of the pursuit of knowledge in a way that reflects that the idea of an absolute foundation is problematic, without making this problematic an absolute claim. I argue that a postmodern conception of higher education would be a conception that both reforms the idea of the disciplines and that goes beyond them. The problem that chapter V leaves for development, then, is that an idea of a postmodern university must be based on a philosophical framework that provides a conception of intellectual experience that goes beyond the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge, yet is capable of sustaining the latter in a
18 form that does not have the practical effect of being absolute. It must be a notion of theoretical practice that, as a foundation, is flexible in Derrida's sense of differance: it must reflect both some elements within the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge and some elements within the rejection of this idea, without resolving them in a supposedly permanent hierarchy. It must provide a basis for opening up the intellectual community without negating the heritage that postmodern philosophy emerges from and that provides values that postmodern philosophers deem important. I argue that this is an idea of theoretical practice that moves intellect outside the modern relationship between knower and reality. In chapter VI, I develop a philosophical framework based on this idea. To do so, I articulate a postmodern philosophical vocabulary that revises some basic philosophical terminology based on a clear awareness of the problematic of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge. The key term is a postmodern notion regarding intellectual experience, which I call the experience of intellectually compelling ideas. I show how this notion is nascent in the modern pursuit of knowledge of reality. What is nascent is the idea that an intellectual experience has a foundation other than some presupposed objective and apprehendable reality. This foundation is located in the process of intellectual activity at a point before intellect has decided that its object is knowledge of reality as it is already conceived to be. This point is what I call the experience of intellectually compelling ideas. In chapter VII, I apply this conception of intellectual experience and its supporting philosophical framework to the organization of higher education, in order to show what a postmodern university would look like. I situate disciplinary pursuits of knowledge as variations of a particular way of expressing intellectually compelling ideas of reality. Thus, the idea of
19 knowing reality remains, but it no longer bears the nature or effect of an absolute foundation. Released from the constraint of an absolute foundation, the disciplines are reformed as dynamic, unstable groupings of similar local variations. These groupings are not determined "top down" but are determined by similarities in the character of local variations as they are manifested at a given point in time. Most importantly, the conception of intellectually compelling ideas justifies the creation of an intellectual space outside the disciplines that makes possible theoretical practice that is not limited by the pursuit of knowledge of reality as this is generally but differentially presupposed within them. Intellectual experiences outside the disciplines are "outside" those intellectual experiences that are structured by what reality is already conceived to be. Outside the disciplines, the structure of intellectual experience is created in the course of the experience. It produces forms of knowledge that are outside mere representation. Here one does not doubt received frameworks in order to prove them true, to make them more nearly true, or to come up with a better framework to explain reality as it is already conceived to be. Rather, one views theoretical frameworks as "tools," to borrow from Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Rorty. They are tools to be used to generate intellectually compelling ideas of what reality can be conceived to be. This idea of an intellectual space outside the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge of reality is the space that postmodern philosophy seeks. To further develop this postmodern idea of the university, I explore implications of the postmodern university for the idea of interdisciplinarity and apply these implications to a particular interdisciplinary dialogue at the University of Michigan. Interdisciplinarity is the most commonly discussed and implemented approach to addressing perceived shortcomings of the
20 disciplines. The arguments that advocates of interdisciplinarity make to support their claim that the disciplines are not entirely adequate as providing foundations for the pursuit of knowledge can be summarized as follows (21). In the modern university, the disciplines are discrete realms of knowledge. Reality, knowledge of reality, and contemporary socio-cultural ideas and problems are not naturally divided. Therefore, in actually dividing them the disciplinary matrix itself often hinders the pursuit, transmission, and useful application of knowledge. Further, the emphasis on focusing research and education in a particular discipline produces narrow specialists whose ability to advance and apply knowledge is unduly restricted, and it produces citizens who lack an understanding of what it means to be a responsible member of an increasingly diverse, complex community. For these reasons, assert interdisciplinarians, the current foundation of higher education is fragmented and needs to be repaired. Repairing this foundation means filling in the cracks between the disciplines, in order to connect and unify them. I argue that a shortcoming of the usual interdisciplinary argument lies in the modern assumption that both reality and knowledge of reality are unified. Behind this concern is the widespread modern belief that both reality and knowledge of reality are, or are supposed to be regarded as, coherent, comprehensive wholes. This concern to affirm unity and wholeness is also presupposed in recent critiques of the university among both conservative and liberal thinkers, including the four modern visions that I described in chapter II (22). Although interdisciplinary proposals are often accompanied by virulent criticism of the disciplines, I argue that, as it is usually conceived, interdisciplinarity is an extension of the disciplines, as the name "interdisciplinarity" implies. Since it emerges out of, and in terms of,
21 the disciplines, interdisciplinarity does not provide a distinct alternative to the disciplinary foundation. In fact, interdisciplinarity in the usual sense seeks to secure that foundation in ongoing new presentations. In filling in the distance between the disciplines it brings them together and secures their hold on thought. In contrast to the usual conception of interdisciplinarity and the position of many thinkers about universities, a postmodern response would assert that fragmentation in the pursuit and transmission of knowledge is not a problem to be repaired by unifying the disciplines or making them interconnect. Rather, the problem is that fragmentation has not been understood and made useful, because the problematic nature of absolute foundations, notably in this respect, has not been made explicit in a philosophy of higher education. I argue that fragmentation is an indication of how the postmodern is nascent in the modern university. It indicates that intellect desires to engage reality in ways that are not structured by ideas of how reality is already conceived to be, including how the modern university is already conceived. A postmodern idea of the university that removes the disciplines from their absolute status, retains the idea of some kind of absolute within local contexts, and creates a space for theoretical practice outside the disciplines, is a positive acknowledgment of this desire. In a postmodern university, interdisciplinarity would not be determined by an absolute foundation of disciplines. Instead, "disciplines" would themselves be combined, extinguished, and created by ever-changing constellations of compelling particular inquiries informed by compelling ideas of what reality can be conceived to be. I then use this postmodern philosophical framework to answer the questions that emerged in my analyses of Lyotard, Rorty, Schrag, Foucault, and Derrida to present postmodern notions of "knowledge
22 as its own end" and "a well-educated person." In the Epilogue, I will describe what a postmodern university and intellectual community based on this inquiry would be like for those who would work and learn there.
23
Notes to Chapter I 1.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D. Ross, rev. J. Barnes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), X.7 1177a-1177b20.
2.
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Idea of the University: A Reexamination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 32.
3.
Jean-Francois Lyotard, "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?," in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 79, 81.
4.
Martin Heidegger, "The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,"
in
Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 392. 5.
Jurgen Habermas, "Modernity--An Incomplete Project," in The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Port Townsend, Wash.: Bay Press, 1983), 9.
6.
As Terrence N. Tice points out (personal communication) largely non-philosophical forms of rhetoric derived from classical and medieval thought have dominated modern conceptions of education. They presuppose, as the eighteenth-century French encyclopedists did, a grammar that builds from letters to phrases and sentences to larger forms of descriptive, explanatory and persuasive discourse, and that gets translated into conceptions of a rationally and/or empirically apprehended universe. For some initial indications of a marked contrast between historical developments in philosophy and those in rhetoric see Tice's Research Guide to Philosophy (Chicago: American Library Association, 1983), passim.
7.
Lyotard, "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?" See note 3.
8.
When postmodernism does appear, it is not treated in depth. For example, William Tierney's book, Building Communities of Difference: Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century (Westport: Bergin and Garvey, 1993), following critical
24 educational theorist Henry Giroux, superficially appropriates some postmodern themes for the purpose of advancing a similar critique of higher education. Tierney does not investigate the philosophical meaning of French postmodernism. Thus, the implications of postmodernism in its own terms for higher education are not considered. Postmodernism is usually referred to in a specific context, especially on articles that deal with the teaching of literature and communication; it also appears in feminist critique and cultural studies. Cf. John Stewart, "A Postmodern Look at Traditional Communication Postulates," Western Journal of SpeechCommunication 55, no. 4 (Fall 91): 354-79; Stanley Aronowitz, "Disciplines or Punish: Cultural Studies and the Transformation of Legitimate Knowledge," The Journal of Urban and Cultural Studies 1, no. 1 (1990): 39-54; Carol Nicholson, "Postmodernism, Feminism, and Education: The Need for Solidarity," Educational Theory 39, no. 3 (Summer 89): 197-205; "Techno-Science, Rationality, and the University: Lyotard on the Postmodern Condition," by Michael Peters, basically describes Postmodern Condition. Educational
Theory 39, no. 2 (Spring 1989): 93-105. See also J.M. Fritzman,
"Lyotard's Paralogy and Rorty's Pluralism: Their Differences and Pedagogical Implications," Educational Theory 40, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 371-80. Postmodern discourse also emerges in work on the education of science teachers and on science curriculum in primary and secondary schools. Cf. Cathleen C. Loving, "The Scientific Theory Profile: A Philosophy of Science Model for Science Teachers," Journal of Research in Science Teaching 28, no. 9 (Nov. 1991): 823-38; William E. Doll, A PostModern Perspective on Curriculum (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993); and William E. Doll, "Foundations for a Postmodern Curriculum," Journal of Curriculum Studies 21, no. 3 (May/June 1989): 243-53. Doll does not consider postmodern philosophy at all; its analysis is primarily focused on the implications of open systems theory and related considerations for science curriculum planning theory in schools. The focus here on systemic
change is inconsistent with postmodern philosophy
25 and postmodernism in general. In "Cultural Reconstruction in the Postmodern World," Journal of Curriculum Studies 21, no. 3 (May/June 1989): 255-70, Richard Slaughter summarizes four hierarchical social theory frameworks with the aim of overcoming rather than addressing postmodernism. 9.
John S. Brubacher's On the Philosophy of Higher Education (San Francisco: JosseyBass, 1977), is arguably the only significant contemporary work on the philosophical foundations of modern higher education. Its philosophy is an explanation of various basic aspects of the modern university as Brubacher sees them. In keeping with its conservative modern approach to higher education, the book's perspective is based on and bounded by what the institution of the university already is rather than what the idea of the university can be.
10.
The position that the study of higher education has not established itself is a theme in Administration as a Profession. ed. Jonathan D. Fife and Lester F. Goodchild, New directions for higher education, no. 76 (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1991).
11.
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 41-53.
12.
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 8.
13.
Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 8.
14.
Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 2.
15.
Cf. "On the Essence of Truth" and "Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics," in Basic Writings, 117-41, 247-82.
16.
Cf. George Steiner, Martin Heidegger (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), chap. 1.
17.
Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973);
26 Edmund Husserl's "Origin of
Geometry": An Introduction, trans. John P. Leavey
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1978). 18.
Cf. Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature; Essays on
Heidegger and
Others: Philosophical Papers Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Calvin O. Schrag, The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1992). 19.
Cf. "Being and Time: Introduction," in Basic Writings, 79-82.
20.
"Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?", 79.
21.
Cf. Julie Thompson Klein, Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1990); Mary E. Clark and Sandra A. Wawrytko, eds., Rethinking the Curriculum: Toward an Integrated, Interdisciplinary College Education (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1990); Joseph Kockelmans, ed., Interdisciplinarity and Higher Education (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1979). See also the recent reports on the state of undergraduate education and the liberal arts curriculum, including William J. Bennett, To Reclaim a Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education (Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Humanities, 1984); Lynne V. Cheney, 50 Hours: A Core Curriculum for College Students (Washington, D.C.: National Endowment for the Humanities, 1989); Integrity in the College Curriculum: A Report to the Academic Community: The Findings and Recommendations of the Project on Redefining the Meaning and Purpose of Baccalaureate Degrees (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges, 1985); Ernest L. Boyer, College: the Undergraduate Experience in America (New York, Harper and Row, for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1987); To Secure the Blessings of
Liberty: Report of the
National Commission on the Role and Future of State Colleges and Universities (Washington, D.C.: American Association of State Colleges and Universities, 1986); Involvement in Learning: Realizing the Potential of American Higher Education,
27 Final Report of the Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in American Higher Education (Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Education, 1984). 22.
Cf. Francis Oakley, Community of Learning: the American College and the Liberal Arts Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Bruce Wilshire, The Moral Collapse of the University: Professionalism, Purity, and Alienation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987); David Bromwich, Politics by Other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); David Bromwich, "The Cost of Professionalism in the Humanities," Learned Societies and the Evolution of the Disciplines, American Council of Learned Societies, Occasional Paper, no. 5 (April 14, 1988): 9-16; Gerald Graff, Beyond the Culture Wars: How Teaching the Conflicts Can Revitalize American Education (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992); Paul Lauter, Canons and Contexts (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). See also the recent reports on the state of undergraduate education and the liberal arts curriculum cited in Note 21.
28
CHAPTER II FOUR MODERN VISIONS OF THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE: HUTCHINS, WHITEHEAD, GIAMATTI, AND PELIKAN
Hutchins: The Great Conversation about Truth and its Community of Knowers We in universities are concerned with free minds. How can we get them? We must remember that it is not freedom from something that we are seeking. We want minds that are free because they understand the order of goods and can achieve them in their order. The proper task of education is the production of such minds (1). There can be little argument about the proposition that the task of the future is the creation of a community. Community seems to depend on communication . . . The effectiveness of modern methods of communication depends on whether there is something intelligible and human to communicate. This, in turn, depends on a common language, a common stock of ideas, and common human standards. These the Great Conversation affords (2). For Robert Maynard Hutchins, influential educator, lawyer, and president and chancellor of the University of Chicago from 1929 to 1950, the foundation of the university is the pursuit of absolute truth. The premise of this foundation is that absolute truth exists, is knowable, and extends to all aspects of reality and human experience, including how humans ought to live: Now truth is of two kinds, theoretical and practical. Theoretical truth tells us what is the case: practical truth tells us what should be done. The test of theoretical truth is conformity to
29 reality. A statement about man, for example, is true if it describes man as he actually is. The test for practical truth is the goodness of the end in view (3). Hutchins did not seriously question the necessity of truth. To understand why, one must understand his characterization of human nature and the critical role of education in its realization. For Hutchins, human nature is universal. All humans are rational, moral, and spiritual beings. The aim of every human being is to realize its potential along these dimensions. Education is concerned primarily with the intellectual dimension (4). Consistent with his teleological, unified description of human nature, Hutchins believed that the ultimate aim of human intellect is absolute truth in all realms of thought: We cannot talk about the intellectual powers of men . . . unless our philosophy in general tells us that there is knowledge and that there is a difference between true and false. We must believe, too, that there are other means of obtaining knowledge than scientific experimentation. If knowledge can be sought only in the laboratory, many fields will offer us nothing but opinion and superstition, and we will be forced to conclude that we cannot know anything about the most important aspects of man and society (5). In Hutchins's view, absolute truth exists because it is simply unthinkable that human beings, who are by nature rational and civilized, can realize their inherent potential individually and collectively without it. Presumably, if pressed to provide proof that absolute truth is attainable, he would rely on the philosophy of Aristotle, since it is the primary influence on Hutchins's basic ideas. Now for Hutchins, since the foundation of the university is the pursuit of absolute truth, the inherent structure of absolute truth is the basis for the proper organization of its pursuit in the university. The university can
30 realize its potential as a true community of educated people only if it is organized according to the objective nature of reality. Since, according to Hutchins, knowledge of reality is an interconnected whole, the organization of subject matter in the university should be unified. In this way, the individualistic pursuit of knowledge is rendered communal. If, and only if, the university is organized in this manner, will the true meaning of a "welleducated person" be realized. The well-educated person is a part of a cohesive community of knowers devoted to the pursuit of absolute truth. In his key work, The Higher Learning in America (1936), Hutchins describes two essential, complementary means of forming and maintaining this unified community (6). Their object is the production of a liberally educated person. First, a general liberal arts curriculum that emphasizes the study of "Great Books," produces a liberally educated person in a basic sense. Hutchins advocates the creation of a general curriculum for all students for the first two years of study. Its purpose is draw out "the elements of our common human nature." (7) These elements are "intellectual virtues," or "good intellectual habits," which Hutchins specifies according to Aquinas's formulation, itself derived from Aristotle (8). There are three speculative virtues, including the habit of induction, scientific knowledge or the habit of demonstration, and philosophical wisdom, which is "scientific knowledge, combined with intuitive reason, of things highest by nature, first principles and first causes." (9) There are two practical virtues: art, which is the capacity to make according to reason, and prudence, or right reason as the basis for action (10). The subject matter of Hutchins's general curriculum is drawn from "those books which have through the centuries attained the dimensions of classics," because "they are the best books we know," "it is impossible to understand any subject or to comprehend the contemporary
31 world without them." They "cover every department of knowledge." (11) Hutchins believed that this curriculum is crucial not only because it provides students with "a common stock of fundamental ideas"; he also emphasized the significance of a general curriculum for unifying scholars engaged in the pursuit of knowledge (12). Given this base, Hutchins then focuses on the second means of producing a liberally educated person. This person is one who is able to engage in "independent intellectual work." Such activity, left to pursue its own particular ends, results in "complete and thoroughgoing disorder." (13) Since reality is a coherent whole, knowledge of reality is knowledge that is organic and interconnected. Independent intellectual research is a proper form by which to pursue knowledge, but it must be unified by the institutional organization of knowledge. While the pursuit of knowledge per se is, in a general sense, the "unifying principle" of the university, it requires a certain organization if it is to create a true community of scholars (14). The proper organization of the pursuit of knowledge is based on a hierarchy of truths according to their degree of primacy (15). The basis for a unified university community is the absolute foundation for all knowledge. This absolute foundation is metaphysics, or the study of first principles as Aristotle conceived it. Since "the aim of higher education is wisdom," and since wisdom is "knowledge of principles and causes," then metaphysics is "the highest wisdom." (16) Thus, the second, and most fundamental, basis for producing the educated person is, the organization of the pursuit of knowledge according to a hierarchy of truths grounded on first principles. Upon this ground of absolute truth, the rest of knowledge is organized, and the university is realized as a true community of educated people. The community of well-educated people in this "higher" sense is made possible
32 only through their unification in accord with the ordered hierarchy of their common object. This organization also provides the structure for the third and fourth year of undergraduate study. This study is comprised of the fundamental problems of metaphysics (first principles, natural philosophy, philosophy of man), the social sciences (practical principles of ethics, politics, and economics), and the natural sciences (17). Only in this manner can one become a well-educated person in the higher sense, because a true education requires an understanding of the whole of knowledge and its hierarchy of truths, and this understanding is made possible only by participation in a unified, properly ordered community of knowers. For a true education to be possible, the departmental system, "which has done so much to obstruct the advancement of knowledge, will vanish." (18) Further, "professional schools . . . would disappear as such" because "preparation of men and women for their life work" fundamentally conflicts with the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and infects the entire university with "vocationalism." (19) "Education of the professions would be conducted in the three faculties of metaphysics, social science, and natural science." (20) Thus, in the structures of general education and an institutional organization of the pursuit of knowledge according to a hierarchy of truths, Hutchins elaborates his prescription for "making our universities true communities and communities of true scholars." (21) Hutchins believed that the adoption of these two structures is most likely to produce a well-educated person. Such a person is, first, one who has a cultivated intellect, which is comprised of good intellectual habits based on the ancient formulation of intellectual virtues. Second, a well-educated person in the highest sense is
33 one who engages in the pursuit of knowledge with a deep understanding of the fundamental truths and fundamental problems of "the nature of the world and the nature of man." (22). Such a person is the true scholar and teacher, one who engages in the common pursuit of knowledge as a part of a community in which all members share and value this understanding. Such a person, and such a community, are wise. In subsequent works, Hutchins attempted to demonstrate that his classical understanding of knowledge and the educated person is relevant to contemporary concerns. In so doing, he further articulates and extends what it means to be well-educated. In Education for Freedom (1943), a series of lectures given during the Second World War, Hutchins applies the notion of fundamental problems to contemporary issues (23). Amid fascism and the horrors of mass warfare, the conscientious intellectual is confronted with real-life questions about how human beings really can and should live together. In Freedom, Hutchins acknowledges that higher learning must address basic political and social questions of the present. The university must be a community that thinks together in order to address such questions. For Hutchins, these real-life problems are not unique to the twentieth century. Instead, they are particular manifestations of classical problems that are inherent to human existence and they should be approached that way. Moreover, the war between democracy and fascism should remind the intellectual of the importance of the true meaning of democracy and freedom, and the significance of absolute truth if these ideas are to have meaning: Let us inquire into what is needed if we are to understand clearly and feel deeply the principles on which democracy rests. What is the basis of these principles of law, equality, and justice? In the first place, in order to believe in these principles at all we must believe that there is such a thing as truth and that in these matters we can discover it . . . (24)
34 In order to believe in democracy, then, we must believe that there is a difference between truth and falsity, good and bad, right and wrong, and that truth, goodness, and right are objective standards even though they cannot be experimentally verified . . . We must believe that man can discover truth, goodness, and right by the exercise of his reason, and that he may do so even as to those problems which, in the nature of the case, science can never solve (25). If democracy is the best form of government, then democrats simply must believe in absolute truth. Democracy is the means to the common good, and the common good is achievable only in a community that shares a belief in absolute truth and its attainment. Otherwise, there can be no community and no common good. Absolute truth is necessary, according to Hutchins, for there to be democracy. moreover, people who pursue absolute truth are democrats. However, democracy is not possible unless freedom is understood as a means to the common good, rather than an end in itself. Freedom is only the means to achieving moral, intellectual, and spiritual powers. The problem is that in universities, "We have been concerned with the transitory and superficial instead of the enduring and basic problems of life and of society." (26) The centrifugal forces released through the dissolution of ultimate beliefs have split the universities into a thousand fragments. When men begin to doubt whether there is such a thing as truth or whether it can ever be discovered, the search for truth must lose that precision which it had in the minds of those who founded the American universities . . . free inquiry ceases to be that infallible guide to terrestrial salvation . . . The universities, instead of leading us through the chaos of the modern world, mirror its confusion (27). If the unification of minds as a community of well-educated people in pursuit of knowledge for the common good is absent, inquiry is not truly free. Nor are such persons true democrats. Since they are not a community of scholars united for the sake of wisdom, they cannot lead American society toward the
35 realization of true democracy. They do not approach contemporary problems properly because they are not united on a foundation of absolute truths, and those truths are the only basis by which real-life problems can by properly addressed. The individualistic pursuit of knowledge, which is distinct from the independent pursuit of wisdom, is chaotic and confused. Absent a true community of well-educated people in the higher sense of scholars united in the search for fundamental truths, free inquiry becomes its own end, rather than the means for the sake of true knowledge. In this form, the university is not a community of free minds. Instead, it is enslaved in free inquiry for its own sake. In The Conflict of Education, lectures delivered in 1953, Hutchins renews his classical critique of contemporary higher learning and elaborates further the meaning of the notion of community of scholars: The task of intellectual leadership now is to bring about a genuine communion of minds. But this is still the age of discovery. It is therefore, still the age of the individual thinker, the specialist . . . If there is to be a new cultural epoch and not simply a further cultural collapse, the distinguishing feature of the new epoch must be this: it must combine discovery and discussion. The object must be, while retaining and encouraging the drive toward discovery, to restore the conditions of conversation (28). However, there is chaos in the speculative realm, since "ideas are unclear, unrelated, and uncomprehended," the practical realm is silent "on matters of life and death," and the two realms are sharply divided. Thus, there is no true communion of minds (29). In order for scholars to become a community, they must converse. The conditions for scholarly discourse must be provided by the academic policy and organization of the university. Otherwise, they will not occur. The solution is "a common training, a common appreciation of the different kinds of knowledge and of the different methods and techniques
36 appropriate to each, and a common, continuous discussion on the Socratic model of those ideas . . . And the problem is to do this through the university as a whole." (30) Communion through conversation: Hutchins now explicitly acknowledges differences and debate. However, the basis for reform remains the organic whole of knowledge, and therefore, the university as a community of well-educated people. If the university is to function according to its nature as epitomized by the Greek academy and by the medieval university, its leadership must foster communion throughout the whole. To achieve this community, it must provide a common background of learning and encourage the pursuit of knowledge and debate on "the crucial problems of contemporary civilization." (31) This common background of learning, a true liberal education, affords the well-educated person access to "the Great Conversation," or the Western heritage of great ideas (32). In Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954), Hutchins describes Western society as "the Civilization of the Dialogue . . . Nothing is to remain undiscussed. Everybody is to speak his mind. No proposition is to be left unexamined. The exchange of ideas is held to be the path to the realization of the potentialities of the race." (33) The liberally educated person is one who has experienced the Great Books and can participate in this Conversation. This person is one who seeks to clarify the basic problems and to understand the way in which one problem bears upon another . . . for example, the relation between the immortality of the soul and the problem of the best form of government . . . The liberally educated man understands, by understanding the distinctions and interrelations of the basic fields of subject matter, the differences and connections between poetry and history, science and philosophy, theoretical and practical science . . . He knows what is meant by soul, state, God, beauty . . . The liberally
37 educated man has a mind that can operate well in all fields . . . (34). While "great works of science are a part of the Conversation," Hutchins states in renewing his criticism of empirical science and positivism, begun in Higher Learning, because empiricism and positivism do not establish the parameters of truth (35). Hutchins points out that David Hume, a forerunner of this position, was himself a "voice in the Great Conversation." (36) Thus, "The Great Conversation . . . contains both sides of the issue that in modern times is thought to have a most critical bearing on the significance of the Great Conversation itself." (37) The question of absolute truth is inherent in the Conversation; it represents one point of view within it. A position on this question is a position within the Conversation, not in spite of it. "Only an unashamed dogmatist," can leave this Conversation and its community (38). In The University of Utopia (1953), Hutchins describes further the nature of this Conversation and what it means for the idea of a community of educated people (39). While "education is a conversation aimed at truth," the aim of the University is to work toward a definition of real points of agreement and disagreement . . . not in the hope of obtaining unanimity, but in the of obtaining clarity. The object is not agreement but communication . . . The University . . . aims to bring together men of different attitudes, backgrounds, interests, temperaments, and philosophies for the purpose of promoting mutual comprehension. The University . . . is an understood diversity (40). Even as he reaffirms the existence of truth, Hutchins expresses here an emphasis on diversity of views and mutual comprehension rather than absolute agreement regarding the truth. The maintenance of the Conversation is crucial, rather than coming to answers that would narrow it or even bring it to an end. Practically, educated people depend on
38 maintenance of the Conversation, not on final determination of truth itself. Moreover, such a community, if realized, would have success "dealing with the kind of practical issues that seem beyond resolution in the West today . . . The object of the University of Utopia is not to mirror the chaos of the world, but to straighten it out." (41) The Great Conversation is a practical conversation. In The Learning Society (1968), a late work, Hutchins continues to emphasize the virtues of "a liberal education for all." (42) Its purpose is not simply to transmit a common inheritance of excellence; today, its purpose is to change the world: A world community learning to be civilized, learning to be human, is at last a possibility . . . Whether it does or not depends on the transformation of values . . . A society in which everybody has a liberal education . . . is one in which values may be transformed . . . Man makes himself . . . He makes his institutions . . . His educational institutions have been designed largely to perpetuate existing values. Ultimate recognition of the facts of life may force the reconsideration of those values and the redirection of education toward new ones (43). Whereas Hutchins in a 1947 speech could say that the right education "is the kind which . . . helps the citizen to work out for himself a set of principles by which he may live," the emphasis in 1968 is different (44). Amid the diversity of fundamental challenges to received values in the latter era, Hutchins does not describe a true education as one that inures to the individual educated as a part of an absolute order. Instead, a true education is the basis for directly transforming the values of mass society and creating a world community. A well-educated person can think and contribute toward fundamental social change.
39 Although Hutchins does not deny absolute truth, the emphasis of his conversation seems to have changed from the pursuit of absolute truth to a critical questioning of contemporary social values. Yet, the issues of the Great Society do not really change the nature of the Conversation itself. The Great Conversation is capable of absorbing new issues. The educated person is still part of a communal inquiry of fundamental ideas, engaged in through conversation as well as by independent thought. The authority of the past is still the guide for the thoughtful resolution of current problems, because, in essence, current problems are not novel but represent classical questions meant to lead to absolute truth. They cannot be otherwise, according to Hutchins. The basic questions, principal modes of reasoned inquiry, and solutions concerning the human condition are universal in character. Transformation for Hutchins really means setting things right by serious study of the deliberations of great thinkers on these questions. The accumulated wisdom of the Conversation establishes the terms and conditions of inquiry and debate. However, a tension emerges when Hutchins's classical position attempts to subsume the critical reflexivity of contemporary debate. Since "no proposition is to be left unexamined," the nature of the Conversation must itself be open to question. Postmodern participants will claim that the Conversation is itself not about the detached pursuit of universal knowledge but about the systematic domination of culture-specific beliefs. In effect, the Great Conversation is an absolute foundation, and this foundation is unjustified. Further, they will argue that Hutchins's division between theoretical knowledge, as that which conforms to reality, and practical knowledge, as that which tells humans what should be done, is not warranted. With a questioning of such classical distinctions, the very nature
40 and purpose of the pursuit of knowledge "for its own sake" and the meaning of "well-educated person" will themselves be drawn into question. Whitehead: The Transformation of Human Experience and Civilization by the Progress of Speculative Ideas In The Function of Reason (1929), British philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead expresses a contrast between two notions of the concept of reason that corresponds to Hutchins's distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge. However, Whitehead's analysis of reason leads him to a different understanding of the pursuit of knowledge "for its own sake" and of what it means to be "well-educated," also to a different conception of having an "absolute" foundation for that pursuit. For Whitehead, a person who truly seeks to know in a "higher" sense is one who assumes that the whole of reality is objective, systematically ordered, and in theory, capable of being accurately accounted for in an integrated, comprehensive ontological system. In Process and Reality (1929), Whitehead claims that "the reasons for things are always to be found in the composite nature of definite actual entities . . . which are real, individual, and particular." (1) In Adventures of Ideas (1933), he asserts that "the foundation of metaphysics should be sought in the understanding of the subject-object structure of experience, and in the respective roles of the physical and mental functionings." (2) In Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929), he states that there are "right ways and wrong ways, and definite truths to be known." (3) In Process and Reality, Whitehead elaborates a comprehensive cosmology that reflects his affinity for the weight that Hutchins places on metaphysics as the ground of knowledge. Yet Whitehead's metaphysics is not
41 Aristotle's metaphysics. Whitehead is a post-Hegelian, a modern creator of an original system, one that is informed by relativity theory and evolution theory. His system is dynamic and historical. For example, the "actual entities" in Whitehead's "philosophy of organism" are constituted as process, are complex and interdependent, and endure for only an instant of becoming (4). Unlike Hutchins, for Whitehead the free pursuit of knowledge is not constrained within a classical metaphysical framework. The most literal evidence of Whitehead's modern approach to the organized pursuit of knowledge is to be found in his essays on education. In The Aims of Education and Other Essays, Whitehead's articulation of the meaning of knowledge and the well-educated person differs substantially from Hutchins's position. For example, in Aims Whitehead introduces an explicit requirement that important knowledge must be useful. Further, wisdom does not simply consist in knowing absolute truth but is an ability to use knowledge to add value to experience (5). While Whitehead, like Hutchins, associates the free mind with disciplined thinking in the pursuit of knowledge, for Whitehead freedom of thought is not essentially an acknowledgment and understanding of absolute truth grounded on general principles. Instead, it is the ability to apply general principles to particular experience in order to transform immediate experience and thereby to add value to life (6). Nevertheless, there are definite similarities between Hutchins's and Whitehead's philosophical foundations. Before examining Whitehead's thoughts on education, I will focus in some detail on his articulation of reason in The Function of Reason. My analysis of Reason will show that Whitehead's modern bifurcation of reason, and the status that he gives "speculative Reason" within that bifurcation, is consistent with Hutchins's
42 classical idea of speculatively known absolute truth, even though it also gives "practical Reason" an important role in the confirmation of truth. The value of this analysis lies in its helping to elucidate the precise nature of Whitehead's philosophy of education in Aims. A substantive understanding of Aims will reveal that while Whitehead is informed by ideas of the ancient past, he is focused on transforming present experience with an eye toward the future. Whitehead's educated moderne refers to the past in that metaphysics organizes one's comprehension of reality, even though this comprehension does not reproduce the categories and content of classical knowledge. Reality is historical and subject to change. However, it remains orderly, objective, absolute, and theoretically accessible. The modern lives in the present, for "The present contains all that there is. It is holy ground"; but only because the present "is the past, and . . . the future." (7) In Reason, Whitehead delineates "two aspects of the function of Reason," which he calls speculative Reason and practical Reason (8). Whitehead claims that these two aspects of Reason are fundamental manifestations of reality over the course of natural and human history (9). Concerning the function of Reason in the human mind, speculative reason, "the Reason of Plato," seeks "a complete understanding" of reality, whereas practical reason, "the Reason of Ulysses," seeks "an immediate method of action." (10) Both aspects of Reason figure in the pursuit of objective knowledge. Like Hutchins, Whitehead apprehends a purposeful universe. The primary function of human Reason in both aspects is teleological: "This function is to constitute, emphasize, and criticize the final causes and strength of aims directed towards them . . ." (11). Speculative Reason seeks knowledge for its own sake. It
43 is enthroned above the practical tasks of the world. It is not concerned with keeping alive. It seeks with disinterested curiosity an understanding of the world . . . It is driven forward by the ultimate faith that all particular fact is understandable as illustrating the general principles of its own nature and of its status among other particular facts . . . Its sole satisfaction is that experience has been understood . . . Also so long as understanding is incomplete, it remains to that extent unsatisfied. It thus constitutes the urge from the good life to the better life . . . In this function Reason serves only itself. It is its own dominant interest . . . (12) There exists a strong moral intuition that speculative understanding for its own sake is one of the ultimate elements in the good life. The passionate claim for freedom of thought is based upon it (13). Practical Reason is subordinate to speculative Reason, but it too is necessary for the improvement of life over time: the short-range function of Reason, characteristic of Ulysses, is Reason criticizing and emphasizing the subordinate purposes in nature which are the agents of final causation. This is Reason as a pragmatic agent. In this function Reason is the practical embodiment of the urge to transform mere existence into the good existence, and to transform the good existence into the better existence (14). Whitehead claims that in metaphysical perspective the practical aspect of Reason is purposeful because it is the efficient means by which purpose is manifested in the world. However, considered alone, it provides no purpose (15). Now "Science has been developed under the impulse of the speculative Reason, the desire for explanatory knowledge." (16) Yet Whitehead, like Hutchins, gives empirical method a decidedly subordinate place in the pursuit of knowledge. For Whitehead, science is an instance of the practical aspect of Reason. Alone, it gives the knower no guidance on decisions pertaining to the determination of proper ends, and it can be destructive: "Some of the major disasters of mankind have been produced by the
44 narrowness of men with a good methodology." (17) Metaphysically, scientific method, being an instance of practical Reason, is heir to primitive forms of life. Method is the means of survival (18). In contrast, speculative Reason is uniquely human (19). However, it too has a decadent quality. Absent method, it can be "anarchic," because alone it is "the flight after the unattainable." (20) It is quite apparent that for Whitehead, both aspects of Reason are crucial for the well-educated person. Speculative Reason contains within itself the method of methods, "the logic of discovery," discovered by the Greeks (21). The logic of discovery is the notion of "a set of criteria by which the content of a belief should be subjected." The ancient Greeks discovered "that the speculative Reason was itself subject to orderly method. They robbed it of its anarchic character without destroying its function of reaching beyond set bounds . . . " (22) However, for Whitehead the modern, more is needed. The main difficulty with speculative Reason is "its confrontation with experience." (23) "The whole forms a system, but when we set out to describe the system direct intuition plays us false. Our conscious awareness is fluctuating, flitting, and not under control. It lacks penetration . . . besides this . . . moments differ among themselves . . . Our variety of phases is infinite." (24) "Abstract speculation . . . requires discipline." (25) Thus, "the basis of all authority is the supremacy of fact over thought . . . thought irrelevant to the wide world of experience is unproductive . . ." (26) Thus the supreme verification of the speculative flight is that it issues in the establishment of a practical technique for wellattested ends . . . In this way there is the progress from thought to practice, and regress from practice to the same thought. This interplay of thought and practice is the supreme authority. It is the test by which the charlatanism of speculation is restrained . . . (27)
45 The object of this discipline is not stability but progress . . . there is no true stability. What looks like stability is a relatively slow progress of atrophied decay. The stable universe is slipping away from under us. Our aim is upwards (28). For Whitehead, human civilization improves itself over time because it has to, and practical Reason, which renders knowledge effective, is metaphysically essential in that improvement. The educated person embodies the advancement of civilization by the capacity to utilize an interplay of both aspects of Reason as a unity in process. A key element of progress is technological advance. It is made possible because "speculative and practical Reason have at last made contact . . . We should be on the threshold of an advance in all the values of human life." (29) However, according to Whitehead, human history has been plagued by "Obscurantism . . . the inertial resistance of practical Reason . . . with its fixed methods . . . the refusal to speculate freely . . . the negation of . . . such speculation." (30) In modernity, the obscurantists are scientists (31). The modern problem is not, then, a lack of restraint on unfettered technological advance. Rather, it is scientific dogmatism that restrains an "understanding of the proper functions of speculative thought" in the progress of civilization. There is a "natural human tendency to turn a successful methodology into a dogmatic creed . . ." (32) For Whitehead, then, the well-educated person apprehends ideas by speculative Reason; but speculation that is productive is verified as such by practical Reason, because practical Reason confirms thought that is capable of being fact. Modern metaphysics saves humanity from the excesses of either aspect of Reason in a resolution of each by the presence of the other without synthesizing them. Speculative reason reflects higher learning and respects the need for practical method to prove that it is productive. Yet
46 nowhere in Reason is there an account of justified knowledge. In the essay, "The Aims of Education," Whitehead explains: In scientific training, the first thing to do with an idea is to prove it. But allow me for one moment to extend the meaning of "prove"; I mean--to prove its worth. Now an idea is not worth much unless the propositions in which it is embodied are true. Accordingly an essential part of the proof of an idea is the proof, either by experiment or by logic, of the truth of its propositions. But . . . In our first contact with a set of propositions, we commence by appreciating their importance . . . We do not attempt, in the strict sense, to prove or to disprove anything unless its importance makes it worthy of that honour. These two processes of proof, in the narrow sense, and of appreciation . . . can be proceeded with nearly concurrently. But in so far as either process must have the priority, it should be that of appreciation by use (33). Practical Reason, that is, scientific method, is an agency of purpose rather than an end in itself. In a teleological world, ends count more than means: the pursuit of knowledge is guided by human decision, based on a determination of important ends. Proving that an idea is objective fact by using scientific method or logic to prove the truth of its propositions is not, in itself, important because method is not an end in itself. The importance of an idea is determined according to its use. "My point is that what is proved should be utilised, and that what is utilised should--so far as is practicable-be proved." (34) Presumably, for Whitehead proof is important for the reason that it provides its utilization with reliability. False propositions are not likely to be useful. What does Whitehead mean by "use"? "By utilising an idea, I mean relating it to that stream, compounded of sense perceptions, feelings, hopes, desires, and of mental activities adjusting thought to thought, which forms our life." (35) By "use," then, Whitehead means that ideas are to be related to experience, where "experience" is broadly construed to include all mental
47 activity. Use can include, but does not demand, the application of knowledge toward the accomplishment of some material end. The essence of utilization is intellectual. However, theoretical practice does not mean idle contemplation for its own sake, and ends worth pursuing are not merely abstract ideas. In Reason, Whitehead says that speculative reason is important only if it is productive: "thought irrelevant to the wide world of experience, is unproductive . . ." (36) Also, "Abstract speculation . . . has to be kept in some relation to the general facts of this epoch." (37) Education should develop the speculative intellect, but its subject matter are ideas that are relevant now, in that they are related to currently productive ideas. Facts emerge as such because the ideas that lend rise to them are deemed important, and ideas are important and thus worthy of being tested as fact because they are relevant to the progress of civilization. The pursuit of knowledge is created by the activity of intellect consonant with ends deemed important to the development of human culture. "Thus the supreme verification of the speculative flight is that it issues in the establishment of a practical technique for well-attested ends . . ." (38) The advancement of civilization, then, is a function of the advancement of intellect. What are ends proper to the advancement of civilization, and thus, proper to higher education? In Reason, he gives a clue: The fact that . . . higher and higher types (of organisms) have evolved (is) not in the least explained by any doctrine of adaptation to the environment, or of struggle . . . Animals have progressively undertaken the task of adapting the environment to themselves . . . In the case of mankind this active attack on the environment is the most prominent fact in his existence . . . the explanation of this active attack on the environment is a three-fold urge: (i) to live, (ii) to live well, (iii) to live better. In fact the art of life is first to be alive, secondly to be alive in a satisfactory way, and thirdly to acquire an increase in
48 satisfaction . . . The primary function of Reason is the direction of the attack on the environment (39). If seems that the well-educated person thinks in order to "live better," or to increase satisfaction, which is an urge that Whitehead claims is a basic fact of existence. The well-educated person uses its intellect speculatively to increase its satisfaction. This process is essentially intellectual, but its "supreme verification" is its utility in altering the environment materially to advance civilization. The advancement of civilization means, in some collective measure, an increase in satisfaction. Collective satisfaction is accomplished by the application of knowledge to alter the environment, or "a practical technique for well-attested ends . . ." (40). What is satisfying is contingent on the state of thought and civilization in the present, and it is subject to change as civilization advances over human history. What does it mean, "to live better"? In Reason, Whitehead says that "The function of Reason is to promote the art of life." (41) What is the "art of life"? What does education have to do with these notions? He tells us in the essay, "The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline": Education is the guidance of the individual towards a comprehension of the art of life; and by the art of life I mean the most complete achievement of varied activity expressing the potentialities of that living creature in the face of its actual environment . . . Science, art, religion, morality, take their rise from this sense of values within the structure of being. Each individual embodies an adventure of existence. The art of life is the guidance of this adventure (42). Education is a key to a "better life," because it is the guide towards a comprehension of "the art of life." The well-educated person leads a better life because this person understands and values its potential to achieve "varied activity" and is capable of expressing its potential "in the face of its actual environment." (43) The simple accumulation of facts is itself not artful
49 and is therefore not educative. Education must cultivate the foresight and ability to actively use ideas to create oneself in the world. Wisdom is the selection and use of knowledge to "add value to our immediate experience." It is "the most intimate freedom obtainable." (44) Speculative reason is the origin of the well-educated person's creative intellectual freedom. Practical reason tests and implements its ideas. Well-educated people use ideas creatively, to initiate their own theoretical practice relative to their immediate environment. Theoretical practice is the basis for deliberate action that transforms one's environment. The pursuit of knowledge "for its own sake" is, therefore, an ongoing expression and realization of one's intellectual potential. "We have to remember that the valuable intellectual development is self-development . . ." (45) The "principle of progress is from within . . ." (46) "Mastery of knowledge" is not simply knowing: educated people are wise because they use knowledge to "add value to bare experience." (47) Wisdom requires a free and disciplined mind (48). A free mind is able to use knowledge to transform the environment and in so doing to realize value in concrete experience. A disciplined mind does not speculate at random but does so with purpose. It seeks to realize possibilities that enlarge the satisfaction of one's life. Free and disciplined minds are created by a properly ordered education. Such an education reflects the fact that the human being, through its intellect, is necessarily in a state of constant movement: "the problem of keeping knowledge alive, of preventing it from becoming inert, is the central problem of all education . . . The reason is that we are dealing with living minds, not dead matter." (49) To accomplish these aims, the curriculum must be connected. "The solution which I am urging, is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects
50 which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum. There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations . . . this single unity . . . (50) "The life of man is founded on Technology, Science, Art and Religion. All four are inter-connected and issue from his total mentality." (51) Connections across subject matter are connections between ideas, and ideas must be activated by the intellect. Ideas must be presented to engage the mind in an adventure to discover new possibilities of thinking and living by apprehending new relationships of ideas. Connections are not simply to appreciate but to appreciate through creative use. The university must exemplify this speculative spirit "by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning. The university imparts information, but it imparts it imaginatively . . . A university which fails in this respect has no reason for existence." (52) Imagination . . . is a way of illuminating the facts . . . by eliciting the general principles which apply to the facts, as they exist, and then by an intellectual survey of alternative possibilities . . . consistent with those principles . . . to construct an intellectual vision of a new world (53). The spirit of generalisation should dominate a University . . . concrete fact should be studied as illustrating the scope of general ideas . . . how to apply principles to immediate circumstances . . . The function of a University is to shed details in favor of principles . . . A principle . . . is rather a mental habit than a formal statement . . . the way the mind reacts to the appropriate stimulus in the form of illustrative circumstances (54). The true university is a place, then, that exists to transform received ideas by speculative Reason in immediate, communal, and individual intellectual experience for the purpose of advancing civilization. The interplay between concrete, particular facts and general principles, between practical and speculative Reason, is the raw material by which well-educated
51 people create alternative possibilities for understanding and practically organizing human experience, possibilities that transcend the given to make a "better life." A key "is the provision of a faculty whose learning is lighted up with imagination. This is the problem of problems in university education; and unless we are careful the recent vast extension of universities in number of students and in variety of activities--of which we are justly proud--will fail . . . by the mishandling of this problem." (55) Further, since "a university is imaginative or it is nothing," research and teaching must go together (56). Contra Hutchins, study of the classics is not the basis of imaginative thought. The popularity of the classics in medieval universities is not explained by attributing to these texts the quality of intrinsic greatness. Rather, "there was a large demand for classical scholars for the mere purposes of tuition; there was a classical tone in all learned walks of life, so that aptitude for classics was a synonym for ability . . . All this is gone, and gone for ever . . . There are now other disciplines each involving topics of widespread interest, with complex relationships, and exhibiting in their development the noblest feats of genius in its stretch of imagination and its philosophic intuition" (57) For Whitehead, the classics are not the measure of virtue. They do not teach moderns how to live. Instead, they have historical value. They are important because "there is no substitute for first-hand knowledge. In so far as Greece and Rome are the founders of European civilisation, a knowledge of history means above all things a knowledge of the thoughts of Greeks and Romans." (58) Historical knowledge is valuable if it is useful. "The vision of Rome is the vision of the unity of civilisation." (59) Thus, according to Whitehead, the example of the ancients must be qualified. Contemplation for its own sake "carries with it the decadence of
52 civilization." (60) The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, properly construed, is not removed from action (61). Finally, specialization is essential for one to be truly educated in a higher sense, for "mankind is naturally specialist," and "specialism" produces "the most austere of mental qualities . . . style" which is both "an aesthetic sense," and "the power of attainment" of desired ends (62). For Whitehead, the speculative, "practical" intellect and the progress of civilization are inextricably linked. The well-educated person does not finally "attain" knowledge but constantly works with it to make a world from which new truths emerge. Truth is real, but its importance does not lie in its objectivity apart from mind. Truth must matter to be worth knowing, and it matters if and only if it can be intelligently used. The ultimate motive power, alike in science, in morality, and in religion, is the sense of value, the sense of importance. It takes the various forms of wonder, of curiosity, of reverence, or worship, of tumultuous desire for merging personality in something beyond itself. This sense of value imposes on life incredible labours, and apart from it life sinks back into the passivity of its lower types." (63) Despite their aversions to metaphysics, Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke, and the New World, rather than Plato, Aristotle, and ancient origins, are the ground of Whitehead's modern well-educated person. However, it is the speculative spirit of the ancient Greeks, rendered practical by the methods of modern science and the values of modern culture, that is the means to the object of civilization: making the "lived" conditions of human experience better by the transformative, productive activity of free and disciplined intellect. Whitehead's faith, that modernity means the liberal progress of ideas, relies on an absolute foundation. This absolute foundation is the idea that science and its methods elicit facts, and facts are better known and can
53 thus be better used over time. Although Whitehead rejects the position that science alone shows well-educated people how to live, scientific method, or practical Reason, is the basis for distinguishing between idle and productive speculative Reason, since scientific verification confirms ideas that are fact, and productive ideas can only be utilized for desired ends if they are based on fact. Scientific method is, then, the ground for speculative reasons that serve to change the world. However, if scientific method is not self-justifying, then science cannot be an absolute ground for free, well-educated minds. The modern university, which, as an embodiment of the Western notion of progress, derives its justification at least in substantial part from the authority of modern scientific inquiry, is then vulnerable to claims that it represents a constellation of beliefs that in some ways retards, as well as fosters, the power of educated people to make a world that really is better. Giamatti: The Common Language of Citizenship I believe all of us are what we say we are--that as individuals and as a people we define through language what we have, and what we will be . . . through those individual acts of negotiation between ourselves and our language. Without a respect for its awesome power we can never find out who we are, and thus never . . . become citizens (1). I use the word civility often. The word is important to my view of the University as a place . . . where the larger goal of intellectual training is a civic one--the making not only of future scholars but of good citizens. Civility has to do . . . with a free and ordered common life--or civilization (2). For the late A. Bartlett Giamatti, Renaissance scholar and president of Yale University from 1978 to 1986, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake has a higher purpose, and that purpose is the creation of a good citizen. In collections of his essays published as The University and the Public Interest
54 (1981) and A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University (1988), he argues that if one pursues knowledge properly, then one learns how to be a good citizen, because the principles of the pursuit of knowledge are also the basis for good citizenship. These principles are freedom and order in their proper relation, and they are principles of democracy: At the heart of . . . a liberal education--lives the conviction, derived from the Greeks, that freedom of thought is the necessary precondition to political freedom . . . Such an education does not magically confer freedom of mind and spirit. Rather, by the pursuit of learning for its own sake, by the pursuit of truth wherever it may lie, by the pursuit of those limits that must be learned in order to be surpassed . . . the mind and spirit are toughened and made capacious in the habits and conditions of freedom . . . an order for freedom's sake (3). The university's values are encapsulated in "the capacity of individuals to associate in a spirit of free inquiry," and these values are "free, rational and humane investigation and behavior." (4) Political freedom, according to Giamatti, is freedom of "belief, speech and choice." (5) By coming to know the meaning and values of free inquiry, a person comes to know the meaning and value of political freedom. A well-educated person knows and lives by the values of free inquiry in association with others. If one is committed to these values, one knows what it means to live as a part of a democratic political community and how to be a good citizen. Giamatti seems to presume that simply by knowing the meaning of "good citizen", the well-educated person will be a good citizen. Although Giamatti asserts that both the university and the "larger society" have significantly to do with freedom and democracy, he also states that there is an important difference between them. The difference is that the formal power structure of the university is a hierarchy, rather than a balance of powers. Giamatti claims, however, that this hierarchy is not
55 authoritarian because it acts democratically in advancing its essential purpose. Executive leadership is collaborative for the purpose of promoting "the educational process, in which the individual, often alone, often with others, seeks constantly to clarify limits in order to surpass them, constantly seeks to order the mind so as to set it free. That seeking is the University's essence." (6) Hutchins had claimed that the intrinsic aim of the pursuit of knowledge "for its own sake" is to discover and live according to the truth. In this way, one realizes freedom. Yet, according to Hutchins, truth, not freedom, is the real object of inquiry. In contrast, for Giamatti, the pursuit of knowledge has intrinsic value primarily because intellectual imagination is the essence of humanity and that, in turn, is freely expressed in the pursuit of knowledge. Through intellectual imagination, the well-educated person comes to know. Truth is not itself the reason for knowing: the University nourishes at its core the humanizing and spacious acts of the individual imagination . . . Those designs made by the imagination are the signs of our ability to shape instinct and flux, to find or reveal patterns in the seemingly unplanned. The University is the guardian of the imagination that both defines and asserts our humanity . . . the foe of the merely random, insistent on order while urging freedom, convinced that the human mind, out of nature, can fashion shapes and patterns nature never bore . . . (7). Human imagination is not an act of make-believe. It is the means of finding and making the truth, since the truth is essentially human. Truth is not essentially a problem of philosophical justification, or of determining the "true" relationship between subject and object, or a problem of understanding the linguistic representation of reality. For Giamatti, a Renaissance scholar, truth is interpretive, and interpretation is multiple and whole. "My logocentricity is part of an old, relatively unphilosophical, fundamentally
56 philological tradition. It sees language as the bearer of tradition, believes words give first principles and last things . . . texts and the varieties of interpretation are vital concerns to that individual or institution or people." (8) The human imagination both makes and finds the truth. A knowledge of scientific principles of inquiry is an integral element of the liberally educated person, not because it produces scientific knowledge but because these principles are "various languages that science speaks" and are imaginative in character (9). There is a "unity of knowledge--no separation between science and the arts," and that unity is grounded on the fact of "the reality of language." (10) Expressive of multiple perspectives, language also connects those perspectives and connects human beings with each other. Most importantly, language has this connective function only if humans come to understand language through a liberal education. Language must be respected as the means of intellectual imagination and the possibility of democracy. For Giamatti, then, language is both the foundation of a liberal education and the chief means for attaining civility. If the humanities, whose central concern is language, are properly conceived, they do not place the individual at the center of the universe. The essence of language is realized in an educated civil community. For Giamatti, the exemplary model is the Renaissance and classical origins of the studia humanitatis (11). To be educated according to the Western tradition of the humanities frees the mind to create meaning. Order and continuity of thought are insured by a common, disciplined approach to thinking (12). Further, solo contemplation is not a proper use of language unless its end is "the larger or common good, the freedom that the individual mind wishes for itself, it seeks for others." (13) Humanism . . . celebrated active engagement
57 with the world, not contemplative repose. The purpose of study was to improve the political life of the community." (14) What makes the connection of multiple perspectives and civilized communication among citizens possible is a humanities education as it was originally meant. A humanities education embodies a respect for the original meanings of words and their history (15). To understand language, to know how to be a free citizen, one must understand language historically, according to a tradition, because "language is the bearer of tradition . . . words give first principles and last things." (16) This tradition is "our common Western heritage," and a liberal education, properly construed, "is one of the central means whereby that heritage is made continuous and available to the
future." (17) The "absolute" foundation of a well-educated,
civil community is the language of this common heritage, understood historically. Although interpretation is often multiple and dynamic, multiple meanings are connected because they are grounded in a unified, common language, the language of the Western tradition. The core of this language is the studia humanitatis. If the humanist perspective sees how things secular and sacred are connected among themselves, it sees that connection through the ligatures of language. And it is the tradition of seeing from various vantage points, the principle of perspective and hence of multiple perspectives, that the humanities want to keep alive and well (18). Time is a unity: "whatever moment is newest is also oldest, for today is older than all the yesterdays; whatever moment is oldest is youngest." (19) The well-educated person knows how to find objective meaning in the past in order to create a coherent future. This person reconstitutes the apparent flux of experience in accord with the language of the West to make history (20). Although "a liberal education is not defined by the content or by the subject
58 matter of a course of study," and should "foster a . . . tolerance for other beliefs and peoples," the need for connections rooted in the Western tradition justifies a common core curriculum (21). there is no specialization in a democracy unless there is first a broad, deep base of shared assumptions and perceptions, growing out of a carefully wrought curriculum, about where we have come from and what that pluralism of values and backgrounds and peoples had as a purpose, and how important is the unity in and through that diversity. While it may feel as if we are reinventing the wheel at a time when everyone wants to go by Concorde, it is precisely now that the values, and value, of a liberal education must be asserted again, a liberal education whose intellectual core is a required curriculum and whose purpose is the development of students who can make rational, humane, informed choices, and citizens (22). Those connections need not be logical; they need to be true to the tradition. They can even be paradoxical: "The paradox into which one gradually grows, through education and throughout one's life, is that independence is achieved through consenting to interdependence." (23) I am concerned throughout with connections, between principles and practicalities, schools and governments, students and teachers, language and power, restraint and release . . . There is, therefore, a good deal of dealing in paradox . . . The reader who does not share my sense of the need for certain contradictory connections . . . will find not ambiguity but confusion here . . . the educational process, like the country it animates, is an act of the will, fusing access and structure, democratic values and hierarchical modes of governance, convictions about excellence and about equity, into a single, variegated, generous ideal (24). The curriculum should "follow the mind, not restrain it." (25) Therefore, the connections in the humanities are not defined by academic departments. Departments should function as "forces in a field rather than feudal baronies," and should reflect "the mutual dependence and reliance of the various parts," including the fine and performing arts (26). Above all, the
59 humanities "share common interpretive modes and angles of vision," "connections," "common values, about humane order, a decent rationality, a spacious and civilizing flexibility," and "a tradition that is a spirit as well as a collection of texts and ways of seeing." (27) Freely inquiring minds should "seek to see the truth from as many vantage points as humankind can summon," and should have a "healthy disregard of boundaries--where they only impede the pursuit of learning." (28) According to Giamatti, this fluidity of knowledge is insulated from causing fragmentation of thought and belief within and across minds by comprehension of the connection between order and freedom, "that essential, grand connection." The order necessary to keep that freedom from collapsing into merely competitive appetites or colliding gusts of anarchy is, first, in this country, a respect for law and the processes of law. But it is more than an order external; it is the internalized order that grows with self-government, self-civilizing (29). For Giamatti, free inquiry in the university, and freedom of speech and belief in the polis, insure democracy, the political order of true citizens. The substance of good citizenship is knowledge of the common language of the Western cultural and intellectual tradition. Knowledge of that language is the guide for how to be a good citizen who contributes to the common good. However, these are procedural, not substantive, freedoms. They do not, in themselves, necessarily produce a person who can "reach into yourself so as to reach beyond yourself--out to others, in order to make a country, and the lives of your fellow citizens, better." (30) For Hutchins and Whitehead, the object of the pursuit of knowledge is external reality, and it is known philosophically and scientifically. For Giamatti, the object of knowledge is Western culture, and it is known
60 through the study of its languages. When the foundation of the pursuit and transmission of knowledge moves to culture and language, its status can be more easily challenged on the basis that cultural distinctions are not objective. Giamatti claims that cultural diversity is subject to underlying connections, some paradoxical, including the "grand connection" between freedom and order. Belief in these connections holds Giamatti's vision of a well-educated person together. The multiplicity of interpretations is possible only on the basis of a common language, the dominant Western heritage. Giamatti simply rejects the idea that paradoxes are problems and that they belie his claim that the Western heritage is unified. He categorizes paradoxes in that heritage as objective limits that humans cannot explain and must respect. However, postmodern philosophers and many others take a very different view. Paradox is interpreted to indicate that cultures and languages can be incommensurable. From this perspective, the absolute foundation for Giamatti's vision of knowledge "for its own sake," a "wordcentered" humanities education that emphasizes the dominant Western tradition, falls apart. Pelikan: "Knowledge its Own End" Preserved and Reformed A "great idea," Newman observed . . . changes in order to remain the same (1). "Knowledge its own end," then, is a first principle for the university that must not only be reaffirmed but must be applied more thoroughly than ever (2). Historian Jaroslav Pelikan's The Idea of the University: A Reexamination (1992), an analysis and critique of John Henry Newman's classic statement of the aims of higher education, The Idea of a University (1852), is also an attempt to accommodate the varying notions of knowledge
61 "for its own sake" and the "well-educated person" that I have described in the work of Hutchins, Whitehead, and Giamatti (3). Despite their differences, each of these three thinkers seeks to defend a conventional notion of "knowledge for its own sake," and Newman's 1852 lectures are the classic modern-era formulation of that idea. Pelikan's analysis of Newman is also a summation of the thought of the others that both preserves and extends their ideas. Like Newman and the others, "knowledge its own end" is for Pelikan the "first principle" of the university, but for Pelikan the meaning of this idea must be broadened if it is to avoid being problematical (4). Like Hutchins, for Pelikan "first principles" ground the pursuit of any inquiry. They "are always present whether they be recognized or not." (5) However, whereas Hutchins believes that knowing the "hierarchy of truths" in their proper order is the basis of wisdom and virtue, for Pelikan intellectual knowledge is not the equivalent of either wisdom or virtue (6). In the context of the university, Pelikan associates "wisdom" with those "scholars of great learning" whose reflections on fundamental questions go well beyond their formal fields, citing Whitehead, among others (7). Like Hutchins, Pelikan emphasizes the idea of "intellectual virtues." Unlike Hutchins, Pelikan does not equate them with well-developed "intellectual habits" in the pursuit of knowledge. Rather, intellectual virtues are ethical values that govern the pursuit of knowledge (8). They include, among others, "trust in rationality and its processes." (9) Such trust, according to Pelikan, must be predicated on the development, within the university, of "a deepening appreciation for other ways of knowing and thinking, which cannot be accommodated easily to the criteria of Enlightenment rationalism." (10) Quoting Whitehead, another intellectual
62 virtue of note that Pelikan recites is "the instinctive faith that there is an Order of Nature which can be traced in every detailed occurrence." (11) Along with these virtues, there is a moral obligation to communicate the results of research to others (12). Like Whitehead and Giamatti, Pelikan asserts that while one's "creative solitude" must be respected and provided for, the well-educated person does not merely contemplate for itself; there must be communication with others (13). Like Hutchins, for Pelikan the professionally educated person must also have a liberal education (14). Unlike Hutchins, for Pelikan professional schools are integral to the pursuit of knowledge. To exclude them "is a foreshortening of perspective," and "ultimately an impoverishment of the faculty of the arts and sciences." (15) Like Whitehead, practical Reason for Pelikan has a key role relative to speculative Reason. Again quoting Whitehead favorably, Pelikan states that the justification of the university "necessarily implies the movement of questions and ideas in both directions." (16) Further, like Whitehead, Pelikan argues that "knowledge its own end" implies that teaching and scholarship go hand-in-hand (17). Yet whereas Whitehead emphasizes scientific advancement in the progressive transformation of civilization, a point of emphasis for Pelikan is the pursuit of knowledge for revolutionary social change, both in research and in the curriculum, with the proviso that "critical understanding, not adherence or discipleship, whether uncritical or critical, is the criterion" in the evaluation of peers and students (18). Pelikan's thinking on this subject incorporates the thinking of Hutchins, Whitehead, and Giamatti, while going beyond them. He argues that a "scientific formation of mind" is a central force for social change (19). "Critical intelligence," he adds, is "the most valuable of all natural resources," and of all "national products." (20)
63 the university's responsibility in relation to the spread and philosophical nurture for the moral outrage and social idealism of its students, by exposing them to a wide range of serious reflection about the nature of the good life and the good society and by aiding them to develop rational methods of analysis for relating such reflection to social and political reality; but at the same time to provide them with the instrumentalities by which reason can continue to stand guard through moderating the visions and expectations of unthinking revolutionaries . . . (21) Like Giamatti, Pelikan takes issue with those who argue "that a consensus about what seem almost unavoidably to be called values is beyond our grasp." (22) Also like Giamatti, Pelikan emphasizes the need to rediscover an "authentic humanism" grounded in a disciplined imagination. Like Giamatti and Hutchins, he justifies the importance of a liberal education in the "formation of mind" based on intellectual traditions (23). However, whereas Giamatti's conception of the pursuit of knowledge ends in the production of individual citizens, Pelikan broadens the concept of citizenship. There is a distinct "moral contract" between the university, as a center of well-educated people who discover and transmit knowledge, and local, national, and international communities, especially the Third World (24). This duty is based on the fact that the university is the principal community where "higher rationality" examines all communities (25). This duty also extends to the need for the university to expand the possibility of becoming a well-educated person to adults previously neglected by the educational system (26). Nor does Pelikan contextualize the notion of a curriculum for citizenship on the Western tradition, as Giamatti does. There is an "urgency to review the international context of the university curriculum . . . with a view to identifying the university's duties" to all three levels of community (27).
64 This issue has repeatedly stood out from all the others, as the one without which, in a real sense, the other issues of the business of the university cannot be addressed, nor its duties to society properly identified (28). Moreover, Pelikan argues that the integrity of the university as a community that pursues knowledge "lies to a considerable extent in the development of mechanisms" for collaborative research that goes beyond not only disciplinary and campus boundaries but also "across national boundaries and across continents." (29) Thus, while quoting Giamatti favorably regarding the need to affirm both freedom and order, Pelikan argues that "the community of scholars that is the university will need to affirm old ways of being both free and responsible, and to learn new ways of doing so," in order to preserve "the grand connection" amid the increasingly politicized academic climate (30). A related consideration regarding the curriculum that is of particular concern to Pelikan is the need for the pursuit of knowledge to be connected with practical, real-world problems (31). Like Hutchins, Pelikan sees unification as an institutional, not merely an individual, problem. He suggests the possibility of cross-disciplinary integration, including the integration of arts and sciences areas with professional schools that share common subject matter, based on the need to apply "critical philosophical reflection" to practice (32). If the university understands the crisis in which it is living and if the university is the key to educational reform throughout the various societies in which it exists all over the world, the reexamination of the relation between its professional mission and its research and teaching in the faculty of arts and sciences may well be its most fundamental assignment . . . inherent to my argument, is the prediction that . . . such a recognition will lead to the conviction that this framework calls for a fundamental reorganization . . . of the whole university (33).
65 A recurring theme in Reexamination is the idea that in the pursuit and transmission of knowledge the well-educated person forges intellectual connections with others. In a sense, Pelikan's work itself embodies this theme. In the process of updating Newman's vision, it brings the visions of Hutchins, Whitehead, and Giamatti together. While each of these thinkers thinks that the "free" pursuit of knowledge is an activity that is engaged in by the individual, each also emphasizes that the meaning of this activity is dependent on the idea that the individual pursues knowledge as a part of some larger social context: Hutchins's community, Whitehead's civilization, Giamatti's polis. Pelikan's very broad vision of the university produces a multi-dimensional idea of a "well-educated person" that embraces all three of these contexts. Yet there is something ambiguous and unsatisfactory about Pelikan's synthesis of these three visions. The effort to show that Newman's basic "idea of a university" is an "educationally justifiable" foundation, both for those who accept Newman's metaphysical assumptions and for those who do not, seems to go too smoothly, given Pelikan's acknowledgment that the "university is in crisis." (34) Pelikan's effort does not appear to confront squarely the degree of confusion and conflict over the basic meaning of the pursuit and transmission of "knowledge its own end" that currently exists in higher education. Nor does he explicitly come to terms with his own call for "a fundamental reorganization . . . of the whole university." (35) While some of the ideas that he advances to accommodate contemporary concerns are thoughtful, in general they seem to be predicated on the assumption that the university can meet challenges and overcome conflicts by simply absorbing new realms of thought. That approach is often criticized as part of the problem. In trying to be everything for everyone, the university has ceased to
66 embody a distinctive sense of knowledge "for its own sake" and of what it means to be an "well-educated person." If the ideas of having foundations of knowledge "for its own sake" and of producing the "well-educated person" advanced by Hutchins, Whitehead, and Giamatti represent approaches that are reflected, at least in part, in the actual practice of higher education, then the ad hoc manner in which Pelikan attempts to reconcile them is perhaps symptomatic of the current state of higher education. It is possible that the much discussed incoherence of both the pursuit and the transmission of knowledge in higher education is partly a consequence of the insufficiency of these visions and others even for manifesting the actual "state" of knowledge. Perhaps the confusion is at least partly due to the idea that the "absolute" foundations that these visions are based on do not adequately speak to the contemporary pursuit of knowledge. If that is the case, then simply reforming or revising these visions, as Pelikan attempts to do, is not adequate. The fact that Pelikan does not address postmodern critiques of knowledge in Reexamination is perhaps symptomatic of a larger oversight in the theory and practice of higher education and in the multitude of contemporary critiques of higher education. An inquiry into these critiques may provide some insight into the nature of the confusion and conflict in higher education. It may also provide some useful guidance for restructuring the pursuit and transmission of knowledge in higher education. In Part Two, I will analyze postmodern critiques of knowledge by five postmodern philosophers: Jean-Francois Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Calvin Schrag, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida. To the extent that they do not address higher education, I will infer the meaning of "well-educated person" that each philosopher's critique suggests. I will also infer some of the
67 consequences that their respective positions have for the organization of the pursuit and transmission of knowledge in higher education, before pursuing these consequences in depth in Part Three.
68
Notes to Chapter II
Hutchins: The Great Conversation about Truth and its Community of Knowers 1.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, Education for Freedom (New York: Grove, 1963, first published 1943), 89.
2.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, Great Books, the Foundation of a Liberal Education (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 62-3.
3.
Education for Freedom, 85.
4.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Conflict in Education in a Democratic Society (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1972, first published 1953), 68, 70.
5.
ibid, 71.
6.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Higher Learning in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936).
7.
ibid, 73.
8.
ibid, 63.
9.
ibid.
10.
ibid.
11.
ibid, 63, 78, 79, 81, 85.
12.
ibid, 59.
13.
ibid, 92.
14.
ibid, 57.
15.
ibid, 95.
16.
ibid, 97-8.
17.
ibid, 106-8.
18.
ibid, 111.
69 19.
ibid, 111, 33, chap. 3.
20.
ibid, 111-2.
21.
ibid, 57.
22.
ibid, 108.
23.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, Education for Freedom (New York: Grove, 1963, first published 1943).
24.
ibid, 85.
25.
ibid, 86.
26.
ibid, 92.
27
ibid, 100.
28.
The Conflict in Education in a Democratic Society, 102-3.
29.
ibid, 103.
30.
ibid, 104-5.
31.
ibid, 106.
32.
Great Books, the Foundation of a Liberal Education, 4.
33.
ibid, 26-7.
34.
ibid, 29-30.
35.
ibid, 9.
36.
ibid, 68.
37.
ibid, 69.
38.
ibid.
39.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, The University of Utopia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964, first published 1953).
40.
ibid, 56, 67-8.
41.
ibid, 70.
42.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Learning Society (New York: Praeger, 1968), chap. 7.
70 43.
ibid, 135-6.
44.
Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Education We Need (Chicago: Regnery, 1947), 13.
Whitehead: The Transformation of Human Experience and Civilization by the Progress of Speculative Ideas 1.
Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 28-9.
2.
Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1967, first published 1933), 209.
3.
Alfred North Whitehead, "The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline," in The Aims of Education and Other Essays (New York: Macmillan, 1967, first published, 1929), 34.
4.
Donald Sherburne, ed., A Key to Whitehead's Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1966), 6-8.
5.
"The Aims of Education" and "The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline," in The Aims of Education and Other Essays, 3, 32.
6.
ibid, 32.
7.
ibid, 3.
8.
Alfred North Whitehead, The Function of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1929), 11.
9.
ibid, 9-10.
10.
ibid, 11.
11.
ibid, 25-6.
12.
ibid, 37-8.
13.
ibid, 38.
14.
ibid, 28-9.
71 15.
ibid, 37.
16.
ibid, 48.
17.
ibid, 11-12.
18.
ibid, 17-19, 40.
19.
ibid, 40-1.
20.
ibid, 65.
21.
ibid, 66-7.
22.
ibid.
23.
ibid, 78.
24.
ibid, 79.
25.
ibid, 76.
26.
ibid, 80.
27.
ibid, 80-1.
28.
ibid, 82.
29.
ibid, 42-3.
30.
ibid, 43.
31.
ibid, 43-4.
32.
ibid, 49, 50.
33.
"The Aims of Education," in The Aims of Education and Other Essays, 3.
34.
ibid, 4.
35.
ibid.
36.
The Function of Reason, 80.
37.
ibid, 76.
38.
ibid, 80.
39.
ibid, 7-8.
40.
ibid, 80.
41.
ibid, 4.
72 42.
"The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline," in The Aims of Education and Other Essays, 39.
43.
ibid,
44.
ibid, 30.
45.
"The Aims of Education," 1.
46.
"The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline," 39.
47.
ibid, 32.
48.
ibid, 30, 32.
49.
"The Aims of Education," 5.
50.
ibid, 6-7.
51.
"The Place of Classics in Education," in The Aims of Education and Other Essays, 72.
52.
"Universities and their Function," 93.
53.
ibid.
54.
"The Rhythm of Education," in The Aims of Education and Other Essays, 256.
55.
"Universities and their Function," 97.
56.
ibid, 96.
57.
"The Place of Classics in Education," in The Aims of Education and Other Essays, 61.
58.
ibid, 74.
59.
ibid, 75.
60.
"Technical Education and its Relation to Science and Literature," in The Aims of Education and Other Essays, 47.
61.
ibid, 48.
62.
"The Aims of Education," 10-13.
63.
"The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline," 40.
73 Giamatti: The Common Language of Citizenship 1.
A. Bartlett Giamatti, "Sentimentality," in The University and the Public Interest (New York: Atheneum, 1981), 47-8.
2.
A. Bartlett Giamatti, A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), 12.
3.
"On Congregations, their Pleasures and Perils," in A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University, 92.
4.
"The Nature and Purpose of the University," in The University and the Public Interest, 17.
5.
ibid.
6.
ibid, 18.
7.
ibid, 18-19.
8.
"On Behalf of the Humanities," in The University and the Public Interest, 49-50.
9.
"Nature Justly Viewed," in The University and the Public Interest, 60-1.
10.
ibid, 68, "Sentimentality," 47.
11.
"A City of Green Thoughts," in A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University, 135-6.
12.
ibid.
13.
"The Earthly Use of a Liberal Education," in A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University, 123.
14.
"A City of Green Thoughts," 132.
15.
ibid, 132-3.
16.
"On Behalf of the Humanities," 49-50.
17.
"A City of Green Thoughts," 130.
18.
"On Behalf of the Humanities, 50.
74 19.
"The Apocalyptic Style," in The University and the Public Interest, 32.
20.
"Give Time to Time," in A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University, 301-2.
21.
"The Earthly Use of a Liberal Education," 120, "The Apocalyptic Style," 38.
22.
"The Private University and the Public Interest," in A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University, 216.
23.
"A Family of Freedoms and Responsibilities," in A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University, 82-3.
24.
The University and the Public Interest, viii-ix.
25.
"On Behalf of the Humanities," 58.
26.
ibid, 56, 54.
27.
ibid, 59.
28.
"Nature Justly Viewed," 75, 74.
29.
"A Liberal Education and the New Coercion," in A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University, 110.
30.
"The Apocalyptic Style," 38.
31.
"A Liberal Education and the New Coercion," 113.
32.
"Coda: the Codification of Us All," in The University and the Public Interest, 181.
33.
"Ruminations on University Presidency," in A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University, 29-30. "The Academic Mission," ibid, 38, 44.
34.
"On Behalf of the Humanities," in The University and the Public Interest, 49.
35.
"The Earthly Use of a Liberal Education," in A Free and Ordered Space: The Real World of the University, 124, 125.
75 Pelikan: "Knowledge its Own End" Preserved and Reformed 1.
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Idea of the University: A Reexamination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 79.
2.
ibid, 87.
3.
John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (New York: The America Press, 1941, first published 1852).
4.
The Idea of the University: A Reexamination, 32, 16-17, 76, 117.
5.
ibid, 30.
6.
ibid, 21, 37.
7.
ibid, 37.
8.
ibid, 48.
9.
ibid, 50.
10.
ibid.
11.
ibid, 50-1.
12.
ibid, 51.
13.
ibid, 64, 122-3.
14.
ibid, 101.
15.
ibid, 99.
16.
ibid, 195-7, 103.
17.
ibid, 82.
18.
ibid, 153, 159-167,161.
19.
ibid, 152-3.
20.
ibid, 153.
21.
ibid, 163.
22.
ibid, 48.
23.
ibid, 18, 150.
24.
ibid, chap. 13, 139, 144-5.
76 25.
ibid, 67.
26.
ibid, 182.
27.
ibid, 145.
28.
ibid.
29.
ibid, 64.
30.
ibid, 65.
31.
ibid, 105.
32.
ibid, 108-9.
33.
ibid, 108.
34.
ibid, 9-10, chap. 2.
35.
ibid, 108.
77
PART TWO: FIVE POSTMODERN CRITIQUES OF KNOWLEDGE CHAPTER III LYOTARD, RORTY, AND SCHRAG
Lyotard: The Postmodern Legitimation of Knowledge and Reformation of the Well-Educated Person Postmodern science--by concerning itself with such things as undecidables, the limits of precise control, conflicts characterized by incomplete information, "fracta," catastrophes, and pragmatic paradoxes--is theorizing its own evolution as discontinuous, catastrophic, nonrectifiable, and paradoxical. It is changing the meaning of the word knowledge, while expressing how such a change can take place. It is producing not the known, but the unknown (1). While the "postmodern" critique of knowledge is not comprised of a single theoretical position, the work of French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard is critically regarded as a major voice in this contemporary critique. The emphasis Lyotard gives to the dynamics of human interaction, conceived in terms of a multiplicity of "language games," for the social "legitimation" of ideas about reality and values, and the importance that he places on paradox, contingency, and limitation as inherent conditions in the structure of knowledge and belief, embody themes that are typical of postmodern critique. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1984), is considered to be a classic expression of these themes. An understanding of Lyotard's position on knowledge and the educated person requires that one understand what Lyotard means by "language games," "legitimation," and
78 "metanarrative" as he develops these concepts in Condition. It also requires that one understand his critique of technology and society. For Lyotard, what is important to understand about all forms of knowledge is that they embody forms of linguistic expression between people: to know is to discourse. We communicate with each other about knowledge. For example, we use language to assert and describe what is true, and we use language to describe processes of scientific verification. When we make truth assertions and try to verify them, if we are using language correctly, we follow linguistic rules specific to truth assertions. The communicative activity that humans engage in when an idea is being asserted as true is distinguished from other forms of assertion in that it involves the use of denotative utterances: the utterance places (and exposes) the sender in the position of "knower" . . . the addressee is put in the position of having to give or refuse his assent, and the referent itself is handled in a way unique to denotatives, as something that demands to be correctly identified and expressed by the statement that refers to it (2). Following Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose late work is the basis for this approach to understanding language as being, in effect, the ground of knowledge, Lyotard refers to this social interaction as a kind of "language game." All human interaction can be understood as embodying different kinds of language games. Lyotard claims that while language games are not the exclusive basis for understanding social relations, "language games are the minimum relation required for society to exist." (3) Every assertion and response, that is, every utterance, involved in the interaction of a language game constitutes a "move." The rules of the language game that concerns truth, as in all language games, "are the object of a contract, explicit or not, among players." (4) The process of scientific proof is thus a matter of one's
79 playing the science game and "winning," that is, having one's truth assertion verified as in fact true according to the rules. Lyotard defines "learning" as "the set of statements which, to the exclusion of other statements, denote or describe objects and can be declared true or false." (5) Scientific knowledge is that subset of "learning" that requires that a true statement be experimentally verifiable according to the language of experts in a given scientific field (6). Knowledge has another meaning for Lyotard, a practical or pragmatic meaning that he believes is far more significant. Knowledge in the "pragmatic" sense is competency in playing language games, and this competency applies to not only the scientific language game, but many others: It also includes notions of "know-how," "knowing how to live," "how to listen," etc. Knowledge, then, is a question of competence that goes beyond the simple determination and application of the criterion of truth, extending to the determination and application of criteria of efficiency (technical qualification), of justice and/or happiness (ethical wisdom), of the beauty of a sound or color (auditory and visual sensibility), etc. . . . knowledge is what makes someone capable of forming "good" denotative utterances, but also "good" prescriptive and "good" evaluative utterances . . . it makes "good" performances in relation to a variety of objects of discourse possible . . . it coincides with an extensive array of competence-building measures." (7) Simply put, the well-educated person is one who is skilled at playing a variety of language games. To develop this idea further, however, I must first show in some detail how the game of science is "legitimized" as authoritative in matters of truth. Although different kinds of language games are incommensurable with each other, Lyotard believes that how the game of science is legitimized has particular significance for understanding what it means to be a good player in general.
80 It is conventional that the designation of a truth proposition as "knowledge" requires that the idea be confirmed as such by being submitted to some form of verification as agreed upon by experts. Now, for Lyotard the problem that arises is not simply how to justify the rules as constituting good grounds for verification. The very fact that the rules of the game called science have to be justified means that there is a larger problem: how to justify scientific method as the basis of truth per se. When Lyotard uses the word "legitimation" he means to emphasize that the authority of science itself, as the basis of true knowledge, is a problem of what I will call social authorization. Lyotard equates the social authorization of science to the social authorization of civil legislation: both are forms of legitimation. Take any civil law as an example: it states that a given category of citizens must perform a specific kind of action. Legitimation is the process by which a legislator is authorized to promulgate such a law as a norm. Now take the example of a scientific statement: it is subject to the rule that statement must fulfill a given set of conditions in order to be accepted as scientific. In this case, legitimation is the process by which a "legislator" dealing with scientific discourse is authorized to prescribe the stated conditions . . . determining whether a statement is to be included in that discourse for consideration by the scientific community (8). The language game of scientific knowledge requires a rationale on which it can be legitimized, and thus accepted by society, as an authoritative basis of understanding reality, just as ideas of justice require a rationale for society's acceptance. Lyotard claims that in both cases resort is made to "narrative," or a fictional story of some kind, as the basis of legitimation (9). Narratives "determine criteria of competence and/or illustrate how they are to be applied. They thus define what has the right to be done and said in the culture in question . . . by the simple fact that they do what they do." (10) For example, Lyotard claims that Plato's Allegory of the Cave in The
81 Republic serves the function of legitimizing dialectical inquiry as the classical truth game, by telling a story about the virtue of knowledge (11). Now, in the modern period science has been legitimized in the West by two stories, which Lyotard calls "metanarratives." In the "political" version, epitomized by the French Third Republic, science is legitimized as the means of emancipating the people from political domination (12). In this story, scientific knowledge tells the universal metasubject, "the people," who are supposedly self-governing, what is possible, and thus "allows morality to become reality." (13) Science serves a wholly practical function, supplying information for the practical ends of the collectivity. This version, although still active in public discourse, became delegitimized, according to Lyotard, when it was realized that science can only play its own game: since science cannot play the game of prescriptive statements, it cannot be grounded in a metanarrative about the just State (14). The second alternative, which Lyotard calls "philosophical," originated in the founding of the University of Berlin early in the nineteenth century, and came to be most prominently expressed in German
idealism (15). In this mostly Hegelian version, as
Lyotard depicts it, science is itself the metasubject, in the form of the becoming of universal Spirit. It legitimizes itself through the historical unfolding of speculative reason, or knowledge of the Spirit (16). In the course of this story, the people and the State are indirectly legitimized, as embodiments of Spirit. According to Lyotard, the German version collapsed because its metaphysical foundation was revealed to be "unscientific." (17) The "postmodern" condition of science is a consequence of the attempt by science, in the wake of the decline of metanarrative, to legitimize itself on the basis of the authority of the rules of scientific verification themselves. During the rise of logical positivism, philosophers of science sought to
82 legitimize science by perfecting a metalanguage, formal logic. Yet eventually it was realized that, for any formal system to account for all phenomena and remain consistent, it must be grounded on assumptions that cannot themselves be demonstrated. Thus, no formal language can be universal and remain consistent. As a result of this recognition, the nature of the legitimation of scientific knowledge was drastically altered to account for the paradoxes that emerge due to the internal limitations of formal systems (18). According to Lyotard, the drastic change entailed rejection of the notion that the legitimation of scientific knowledge occurs in terms of a metalanguage. This notion was replaced by the principle of a plurality of inconsistent languages, and thus a plurality of incommensurable "truths." For Lyotard, this realization means that the referent of empirical science, "nature," is essentially unpredictable and unstable: all that can be calculated is the probability that the scientist's utterance will say one thing rather than another (19). The object of the game of postmodern science is then to identify what paralogical game nature is playing in a given instance, rather than to identify what nature really is, as a complete, consistent whole: all we can know, that is, all that can be said to exist, are "islands of determinism." (20) For Lyotard, the legitimation of postmodern science suggests that the nature of the social bond can only be comprised of "little narratives," language games whose rules and play are "locally determined." (21) In stark contrast to this legitimation by "paralogy," there is another way in which science has been legitimized in postmodernity, which Lyotard calls "performativity," or the principle of optimizing performance by technological innovation (22). This form of legitimation arises in the following manner. Given the limitations of the human senses, and the increasing complexity of empirical demonstration and proof, the principle of replication becomes
83 dependent on sophisticated and expensive technology. The rules of technological application in capitalist society, argues Lyotard, enforce a game of efficiency: the production of scientific proof costs money, with the result that, scientists who can maximize output (proof) while minimizing input expended in the process of proof (energy, and thus cost) get funded (although Lyotard acknowledges that there are exceptions). The pursuit of scientific knowledge, according to this quasi-Marxist explanation, becomes a force not for its own end but for maximizing wealth, and thereby feeding the desire for socioeconomic power, in which optimal performance, not paralogy, becomes the basis of legitimation (23). Lyotard claims that this game has demoralized research scientists and has forced the university into a subordinate, functional role in the social system: the loss of metanarrative as basis of the legitimation of science is a "crisis of the university institution that in the past relied on it." (24) The principle of optimal performance affects not only the pursuit of knowledge but the nature of its transmission as well. "The moment knowledge ceases to be an end in itself--the realization of the Idea or the emancipation of men--its transmission is no longer the exclusive responsibility of scholars and students." (25) "The speculative hierarchy of learning gives way to an immanent and, as it were, flat network of areas of inquiry, the respective frontiers of which are in constant flux . . . and the universities lose their function of speculative legitimation." (26) Thus, according to Lyotard, higher education has become increasingly defined by its capacity to create and produce skills indispensable to competition in world markets and the efficient maintenance of internal social cohesion, whereas according to the modern metanarratives, the education of elites was for the purpose of creating leaders for the emancipation or
84 realization of society (27). The goal of learning becomes problem-solving in the "here-and-now" and skill at organizing data "into an efficient strategy." (28) For Lyotard, this situation entails the demise "of the Professor," because "a professor is no more competent than memory bank networks in transmitting established knowledge, no more competent than interdisciplinary teams in imagining new moves or new games." (29) Now Lyotard thinks that the decline of metanarrative is a good thing, because he believes that these epics of progress have turned out to be frauds: they have resulted in totalitarianism and mass exploitation. Further, he sees some positive aspects to performativity as legitimation, but claims that ultimately its results are dehumanizing, because performativity follows a systems theory logic: whatever course of action increases the overall efficiency of the social system is legitimated, without decisive regard for its effects on human beings (30). Moreover, Lyotard claims that such systems theory does not work, because it is predicated on the notion that a system can be stabilized and can yield perfect information, and is thus subject to prediction and control, which is contradicted by the rules of the postmodern game of science, summarized above, that there is only local determinism (31). For Lyotard, the social good resides in the recognition that human society, like nature, is composed of "heteromorphous" language games rather than being a whole (32). Any attempt toward achieving consensus by a new "grand metanarrative" to rescue "humanity" from the "system" is out of the question, because such a project would invariably result in another oppressive system (33). The end is paralogy, not consensus, an open society that allows for a multiplicity of divergent games and encourages the ongoing imaginative creation of new ones, but only as "little narratives," that is, as
85 temporary contracts among small numbers of players that are finite in duration (34). Given Lyotard's explanation of postmodern knowledge as I have just described it, the idea of a postmodern "educated person" can be inferred. The educated person of postmodernity conceives knowledge not as a body of thought but as competencies in language games. Knowledge is not something one accumulates but is something one uses to create new ideas. The educated person understands, and tolerates, the essential disunity and instability of the content of knowledge, which is in a constant state of flux. Contra Hutchins, the goal of higher education is not realization of the whole, which is a remnant of antiquated modern thought and destroys human beings: "The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have paid enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one . . ." (35) Postmodern science departs from both Hutchins and Whitehead, because it drops the notion of first principles: knowledge is not "whole." (36) While Whitehead's notion of education as the imaginative transformation of the present has some affinity with Lyotard's ideas, Whitehead focuses on the individual transformation of experience, and for Lyotard, the autonomous individual is a fiction: "each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before . . . one is always located at a post where various kinds of messages pass." (37) For Whitehead, speculation is an individual act of original thought, verified as fact by experiment and used to innovate for the progress of society. For Lyotard, one's speculative utterance is the experimental, imaginative revision of received narratives, a new move in a language game in which one is always an addressee before one
86 is a sender (38). The postmodern educative act is then participatory, not didactic. For Lyotard, to make moves is "to set the imagination to work," but the work of imagination is not, as it is for Whitehead, to further the progress of
ideas (39). From Lyotard's perspective, Whitehead's notion that speculative
Reason legitimizes itself to practical Reason and thereby contributes to a historical "progress of ideas" that advances civilization, embodies, like Hutchins's whole of knowledge, German "philosophical" metanarrative: both are instances of a bad story. Lyotard would accuse Whitehead of being engaged in the modern fantasy that reality can be seized by knowledge (40). Knowledge, for Lyotard, does not accumulate; to think it does is to forget time by calling it history (41). The belief that knowledge accumulates also implies that nature is stable or evolves in time, instead of it exhibiting what is, for Lyotard, an essentially inexplicable multiplicity of logic-defying, simultaneous, incommensurable "games." Lyotard would identify Whitehead's holism, and his notion that the essence of Reason is function, with his depiction of systems theory, and he would thus criticize Whitehead for subordinating knowledge to an efficiently insidious purpose: the maximal performance of an abstract subject called "society." For Lyotard, Reason as a function of system reflects an outmoded modern dichotomy between functional reason and critical reason, a dichotomy that, like "progress," Lyotard associates with the defunct metanarrative-based legitimation of knowledge (42). Postmodern reason is defined by "the principle of a plurality" of scientific languages (43). Similarly, the notions of knowledge and the educated person that Giamatti and Pelikan express would be, for Lyotard, straight out of the French (and American) "political metanarrative." Giamatti's vision is that
87 one learns how to be a free citizen, capable of contributing to the realization of democracy, by learning the meaning of free inquiry as it is expressed in the languages of the liberal arts. From Lyotard's perspective, this vision subscribes to the "political" metanarrative that mythologizes knowledge as an "emancipation" of "the people," a story which, Lyotard claims, has turned out to be a sham of the bourgeoisie. Giamatti's "paradox" of freedom and order stands in sharp contrast to Lyotard's notion of freedom and obligation in language games, which he articulates in the extensive interview, Just Gaming (1984) (44). Lyotard describes the freedom of the addressee to make a new move in the game of justice as the freedom to revise prescriptive statements that one receives from the sender. Lyotard emphasizes that this freedom is subject to the obligation to listen to the sender first; otherwise, there is no game (45). Lyotard would accuse Giamatti's paradox of placing the addressee in servitude to the sender's message, because Giamatti simply imposes the story of Renaissance humanism on learners, thereby constraining their creation of new "little narratives." As in Hutchins's vision, Giamatti's "classicism" embodies preestablished criteria and a definite subject, in contrast to postmodern views (46). Pelikan, too, by attempting to accommodate the notion of "knowledge its own end" to progressive social change while retaining modern ideas of the nature of knowledge and the modern research university, also subscribes to the outdated "political metanarrative." Lyotard rejects the notion of a "universal subject" because it assumes that one could step outside of language games and think at a metalinguistic level, thereby attaining an "exclusive and exhaustive" point of view, which is not possible (47). This idea of ontology is thus untenable (48).
88 Moreover, in the myth of the authentic, whole human being that is implied in their works, all of the modern thinkers make the mistake of conflating language games. While there is a "strict interlinkage between the kind of language called science and the kind called ethics and politics," the linkage is social, not linguistic (49). Since these games are comprised of different kinds of statements, denotative and prescriptive respectively, their rules are different: justice cannot be derived from the scientific, nor can the scientific be derived from the just (50). Justice cannot be resolved in terms of theoretical models: current practice establishes context, and the question of justice can only be addressed on a case-by-case basis (51). As is the case with scientific knowledge, then, ethical knowledge is local knowledge. Since games are of "striking disparity," it is not surprising to find that Lyotard rejects the interdisciplinary organization of knowledge, because it implies "common measures." (52) "The idea of an interdisciplinary approach is specific to the age of delegitimation and its hurried empiricism. The relation to knowledge is . . . articulated . . . in terms of the users of a complex conceptual and material machinery and those who benefit from its performance capabilities . . . The emphasis placed on teamwork is related to the performativity criterion . . ." (53) Since different kinds of language games are not translatable, interdisciplinary knowledge can only be legitimated by performativity, which for Lyotard is the bane of higher learning. In contrast, the idea of paralogical language games "refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our capacity to tolerate the incommensurable." (54) Since for Lyotard the limits imposed by institutions on language games are never permanent, it seems that Lyotard would also reject the modern notion that knowledge expands within otherwise stable disciplines (55).
89 Lyotard does not describe the postmodern organization of higher learning, but one can draw some inferences in that respect. The structure of knowledge would be based on distinguishing language games. Taking their cue from postmodern science, different language games would constitute unstable "islands of determination" rather than disciplines (56). The notion that there is established knowledge and the notion that established knowledge carries the authority of truth would both vanish from higher education. Instead, formalized rules would insure that the kinds of statements proper to each kind of game would be observed, and it would encourage "working at the limits of what the rules permit, in order to invent new moves, perhaps new rules and therefore new games." (57) If games became impure due to their intermingling, there is the possibility of one kind of game prevailing over the other games, which leads to the domination of some groups of people by others. Only if no language game prevails "can we say that the society is just." (58) Therefore, assuming that it is desirable for higher education to be just, the philosophy of the curriculum and of the pursuit of knowledge would be to "maximize the multiplicity of small narratives." (59) Further, Lyotard's definition of culture would seem applicable to the postmodern organization of higher learning. Culture is local consensus regarding the criteria that constitute a good utterance (60). His observation that in traditional narrative, the present act of communication is central, would also be an important consideration (61). The immediate transmission of a little narrative about some subject of knowledge is something to use to tell a new story rather than a fact to absorb. Further, the traditional narrative, as something to be shared that forms the social bond, would seem to be important as a basis of community in the university (62). Lyotard notes
90 that in contrast to traditional narrative, where the social bond is directly woven in the act of communication, scientific knowledge indirectly contributes to the social bond by lending rise to institutions and professional classes (63). This claim suggests that the loss of community in the university is partly explained by the fact that, amid the plethora of knowledge claims, the "disciplinary matrix" cannot directly influence the formation of a university community. The accumulation and expansion of knowledge perhaps defies the idea of community; in any case, Lyotard would likely reject the idea of a single university community that the educated person is a part of, because it would retard the maximization of language games. Indeed, Lyotard claims that the fiction of the progress of the universal subject by the accumulation of knowledge is in conflict with traditional narratives of "minorities" and thus seeks to exclude those stories (64). Minorities are for Lyotard "not social ensembles; they are territories of language. Each one of us belongs to several minorities . . ." (65) In the organization of higher learning, Lyotard would also distinguish between the natural and human sciences on the basis that in the former "nature" is the "indifferent, not deceptive" referent: mute, but as predictable as a die thrown a great number of times-- about which scientists exchange denotative utterances constituting moves they play against one another. In the human sciences . . . the referent (man) is a participant in the game, one that speaks and develops a strategy . . . here, the kind of chance with which the scientist is confronted is not object based or indifferent, but behavioral or strategic--in other words, agonistic (66). However, Lyotard also says that "The question of the legitimacy of science has been indissociably linked to that of the legitimation of the legislator since the time of Plato . . . the right to decide what is true is not independent of the
91 right to decide what is just." (67) Further, between the descriptive and the prescriptive "there is always some talking to be done." (68) Presumably, Lyotard would then acknowledge, and make possible, movements between these two basic kinds of games within the context of a given discussion. Since postmodern science shows that the end is paralogy, not consensus, the pursuit of knowledge would mean the creation of new ideas, that is, new moves and games, based on "a desire for the unknown" rather than for the known (69). The educated person tolerates the incommensurability of games: this person doesn't seek "truth" but rather seeks to come "to grips with the new effects produced by the new situation of a joint discussion." (70). Educated people are experimental rather than innovative; the latter is "but a way of repeating, without great difference, something that already has been done and that has worked." (71) The welleducated person participates in dialogue with the understanding that the obligation to listen precedes the freedom to experiment (72). Further, such a person does not seek to "master" language games because language cannot be mastered: "its very plurality makes it impossible for anyone to establish her- or himself in a field and proceed to produce its laws in a sort of universal language . . ." (73) Perhaps most importantly, since the educated person is essentially focused on departing from, rather than building upon, "received" ideas and theories, Lyotard's ideal is much more that of a critical questioner and debater than it is the ideal envisioned by Hutchins, Giamatti, Pelikan, and even Whitehead. Yet, although the present discussion indicates the great differences between Lyotard and these thinkers, I think that they also have a strong affinity, a real connection. Lyotard's critique of technology and the negative influence that it has on basic experimental research is a theme that is often
92 associated with traditional conceptions of "knowledge for its own end." Hutchins, of course, takes a strong position on this issue. Whitehead does also, in his critique of practical Reason absent speculative Reason, albeit without denouncing technological advance. Further, in taking the developments of "postmodern" science as the cue for understanding the nature of social relations and the basis for a just society, Lyotard is very modern. Moreover, his critique of "metanarrative" is the critique of an intellectual insider, one who subscribed to the idea of liberation only to find it illusory (Lyotard was active at one time in French Marxist circles). Most importantly, I believe that Lyotard is seeking to save the status of the individual, which is a modern notion, from being determined by the rationalization of modern technocracy, and this concern is not new. What is relatively new with his postmodernist position is the notion that the individual is not "self-determined" but what I will call self-initiating, in a limited sense. The postmodern individual is not the modern ideal, which is original, authentic, and autonomous. Rather, the educated person is a "practical," linguistic entity that, as a subject of unpredictable, incommensurable, impermanent social webs comprised of disparate local connections, is itself in a state of flux. Yet what especially connects Lyotard to those previous thinkers is a concern that the intellectual be free to inquire. Unlike the others, Lyotard's critique claims, and elaborates an argument to show why, the educated person, especially the scholar, is being over-determined by the socioeconomic system. Also, unlike those others, Lyotard advances a "solution" that does not wax "nostalgic" for metaphysical, i.e. "metanarrative" foundations which, he claims, cannot realize the free mind but can only encumber it. In keeping language games "local" and forever subject to change, and closure, by some
93 act of any immediate participant, he seeks to reconstitute the realm of intellectual creativity so that the intellectual can freely make its world, rather than limit itself by the illusory idea of making the world. The idea of a single, unified community of free thinkers, and the idea of a unified community of free citizens, so important to the visions of "knowledge its own end" and of the "educated person" for those previous thinkers, are, for Lyotard, modern fictions that can only result in the oppression of individuals. Postmodern connections can only be freely made by individual knowers on a local basis. This notion is very difficult for most educated persons to accept; I will address it further, along with related considerations, in Part Three. Rorty: Postmodern Conversation as Pragmatic Edification by Abnormal Discourse The attempt to edify . . . may consist in the hermeneutic activity of making connections between our culture and some exotic culture or historical period, or between our own discipline and another discipline which seems to pursue incommensurable aims in an incommensurable vocabulary. But it may instead consist in the "poetic" activity of thinking up such new aims, new words, or new disciplines, followed by . . . the inverse of hermeneutics: the attempt to reinterpret our familiar surroundings in the unfamiliar terms of our new inventions (1). While American philosopher Richard Rorty agrees with Lyotard's assertion that a new metanarrative is not what the West needs, he makes a sharp distinction between the kind of "educated person" he believes it needs and the kind that he thinks Lyotard represents (2). According to Rorty, Lyotard has "a special, idiosyncratic need . . . for the ineffable . . . a need to go beyond limits, a need to use words which are not part of anybody's language game," while Rorty claims to reject metanarratives for the down-to-earth
94 reason that they are "an unhelpful distraction from what Dewey calls 'the meaning of the daily detail'." (3). Lyotard understands and critiques the idea of knowledge as a social phenomenon; Rorty understands and critiques the idea of knowledge as a phenomenon of academic philosophy. To understand Rorty's position on knowledge and what it means for higher learning, one must understand the basis for his break from the "analytic" philosophical tradition and his "postmodern" interpretation of Deweyan pragmatism. That break was established with Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). In that book, Rorty claims that Western philosophy, especially Anglo-American philosophy, has pursued a mistaken notion of truth, the idea that truth refers to something objective and eternal. For Rorty, truth is better thought of as a name or label for the subject of agreement among any group of humans concerning beliefs, values, and action. Rorty locates the origin of the allegedly mistaken view with the Platonic distinction between Forms, embodying permanent, unchanging, universal Ideas and accessible only by the intellect, and the transient flux of particular things experienced by the senses (4). Rorty argues that this distinction began as an arbitrary story by Plato about general truths that are intelligible by the "divine" intellect based on a visual metaphor of the human eye; then, Aristotle developed this story in more detail by describing a process through which this "Eye of the Mind" internalized such forms in harmony with the Reason of Nature (5). Descartes substantially revised this narrative by saying that the intellect represents the world, so that the "clear and distinct" reason of the immaterial human mind, not the Reason of Nature, became the "foundation" of truth (6). Then Locke developed the Cartesian story further, by emphasizing and elaborating sense representations as primary "ideas," and Kant revised the story again,
95 by moving the ground of knowledge from "outer" objects to "inner," transcendent structures of the mind (7). Like many philosophers since Kant, Rorty claims to expose flaws in the arguments that each philosopher makes. Whereas most philosophers would, by virtue of these flaws, locate problems to solve, or ideas to replace with a superior conception of knowledge as a relation between human knower and object, Rorty claims that these flaws merely indicate that the arguments are essentially manners of speaking, employing different vocabularies (8). He takes particular aim at the modern notion that "to know is to represent accurately," and he disputes representationalist problems, from which has emerged epistemology, the very "core" of contemporary analytic philosophy and the "foundation" of the sciences (9). Rorty argues that the problems of justification arising from the story of knowledge as representation have not been overcome by subsequent anti-Cartesian philosophers. Philosophers are "still committed to the construction of a permanent, neutral framework for inquiry, and thus for all of culture," that "can be isolated prior to the conclusion of inquiry." (10). They will not, in Rorty's opinion, be able to isolate "certain sorts of representations . . . expressions . . . processes" as "basic," "except on the basis of a prior knowledge within which these elements occur." (11) Thus, he asserts that it is time for philosophers to abandon this "misguided" epistemological project. Instead, asserts Rorty, they should follow the lead of Dewey and the later Wittgenstein and release their creative intellects from the self-imposed limitations caused by the "optional" notion that knowledge needs "foundations," or a "theory." (12) Philosophical thought should be "edifying" rather than systematic: from an "educational point of view . . . the ways things are said is more important than the possession of truths." (13)
96 Rational certainty is most usefully understood as "a matter of victory in argument," "rather than a matter of interaction with nonhuman reality." (14) For Rorty, knowing a proposition is true is not identified with being caused to do something by an object; rather, truth assertions can be justified only by "social context." (15) Quoting philosopher Donald Davidson, Rorty argues that the meaning of words does not transcend "their systematic effect on the meanings of sentences in which they occur." (16) Thus, philosophers should see "conversation as the ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood." (17) The kind of conversation Rorty desires is not one that assumes, as epistemology does, that "to be rational, to be fully human, to do what we ought, we need to be able to find agreement with other human beings," and that "there is a permanent neutral framework" whether that be objective, subjective, or linguistic, that can provide this "common ground" so that "all contributions to a given topic are commensurable." (18) Instead, the conversation is "hermeneutic," which, for Rorty, means that "relations between various discourses (are) strands in a possible conversation . . . which presupposes no disciplinary matrix which unites the speakers, but where hope of agreement is never lost so long as the conversation lasts." (19) In Rorty's kind of conversation, "Our choice of elements will be dictated by an understanding of practice, rather than the practice's being legitimated by a rational reconstruction out of the elements." (20) For Rorty, then, culture is a "conversation rather than a structure erected on foundations." (21) Borrowing from Thomas Kuhn's account of scientific revolutions, Rorty asserts that his "pragmatic approach to knowledge" construes the difference between discourses that are commensurable and those that are not as a contrast between "normal" and "abnormal" discourse:
97 normal discourse is that which is conducted within an agreedupon set of conventions about what counts as a relevant contribution, what counts as answering a question, what counts as having a good argument for that answer or a good criticism of it. Abnormal discourse is what happens when someone joins in the discourse who is ignorant of these conventions or who sets them aside . . . The product of abnormal discourse can be anything from nonsense to intellectual revolution, and there is no discipline which describes it, any more than there is a discipline devoted to the unpredictable, or of "creativity." (22) While hermeneutics is not, for Rorty, a discipline, he thinks of it as "the study of an abnormal discourse from the point of view of some normal discourse--the attempt to make some sense of what is going on at a stage where we are still too unsure about it to describe it . . . " (23) In contrast, "epistemology," in Rorty's pragmatic approach to knowledge, means that "we understand perfectly well what is happening but want to codify it in order to extend, or strengthen, or teach, or ground it . . . where we already have agreed-upon practices of inquiry (or, more generally, of discourse) . . ." (24) The distinction between epistemology and hermeneutics is then "purely one of familiarity." (25) Moreover, the distinction between normal and abnormal discourse "does not coincide with any distinction of subject matter . . .
method . . .
faculty . . . Anything can be discoursed about abnormally." (26) For Rorty, incommensurability means irreducibility, not incompatibility (27). From this perspective, Rorty dissolves the distinctions between fact and value, making and finding, objective and subjective, Natur- and Geisteswissenschaft, and, perhaps most controversial, the distinction between science and non-science as well (28). Further, the distinction between the values of science and the values of other realms of thought is not based on the idea that science uses uniquely objective and rational standards, nor on the basis
98 of its subject matter; rather, its value distinctions are a result of cultural considerations, "a function of educational and institutional patterns." (29) Rorty asserts that hermeneutics, as he has defined it, is not another way of knowing, but "another way of coping." (30) To elaborate this idea, Rorty borrows the theme of Bildung, which he translates as "self-formation," from Hans-Georg Gadamer, whom he interprets to mean that education, properly conceived, is about "remaking" oneself rather than about "getting the facts right." (31) Education as "edification" is hermeneutic: one seeks to use ideas, via reading, talking, and writing, to create abnormal discourse in order to "remake" oneself (32). The educated person, then, copes with living by using its intellect to keep the conversation going, by changing the conversation. "The events which make us able to say new and interesting things about ourselves are, in this nonmetaphysical sense, more essential to us (at least to us relatively leisured intellectuals, inhabiting a stable and prosperous part of the world) than the events which change our shapes or our standards of living (remaking us in less spiritual ways)." (33) "For edifying discourse is supposed to be abnormal, to take us out of our old selves by the power of strangeness, to aid us in becoming new beings." (34) Rorty interprets Gadamer's notion of education having "no goals outside itself" as requiring "a sense of the relativity of descriptive vocabularies to periods, traditions, and historical accidents. This is what the humanist tradition in education does, and what training in the results of science cannot do." (35) Edification does not mean finding normal discourses to make oneself (36). Thus, for Rorty "knowledge its own end" does not mean, as it does for Giamatti, learning the various discourses of the humanities tradition for their own sake; rather, one would learn them as the raw material for remaking oneself via the creation of new (abnormal) discourses
99 (37). Wisdom for Rorty is practical, in the sense that the wise person is able to participate in conversation, and edification, the creation and of abnormal discourse and its introduction into participatory conversation, seeks "to prevent the conversation from generating into inquiry, into a research program." (38) Contra Hutchins, then, for Rorty a "Great Conversation" is not normal discourse; instead, it is the activity of participating in what might be called a postmodern dialectic, in which abnormal discourse is created and heard from the ("hermeneutic") point of view of normal discourse, with the goal of the abnormal becoming normal (recall that for Rorty, merely extending normal discourse is not hermeneutic but is only "epistemic," not edification but only "the end of conversation"). Like Whitehead, Rorty claims that it is creative intellect, Whitehead's speculative Reason, that is the stuff of civilization. Unlike Whitehead, however, Rorty does not posit something like "practical Reason" and "fact" to make speculative thought useful. Moreover, he would entirely reject Whitehead's metaphysical presuppositions and inquiry. Instead, "free and leisured conversation generates abnormal discourse as the sparks fly upward." (39) Yet Rorty claims to be pragmatic, not wistful. He asserts that the point of edification, at least as it pertains to philosophers, is "to perform the social function which Dewey called breaking the crust of convention, preventing man from deluding himself with the notion that he knows himself, or anything else, except under optional descriptions." (40) Rorty does not say how his educated person, who seeks to remake itself by pursuing abnormal discourse rather than absolute knowledge, is also a philosophical pragmatist. The notion that "edifying philosophers want to keep space open for the sense of wonder which poets can sometimes cause," does not translate
100 easily into the idea that anyone who is edified by abnormal discourse is pragmatic, especially in the sense of being a social progressive (41). Inferences can be made, on this question of the relationship between Rorty's notion of edification and his pragmatism, from his collection of essays, Essays on Heidegger and Others (1982) (42). There he defines "intellectual progress" as "an increasing ability to shape the tools needed to help the species survive, multiply, and transform itself." (43) For Rorty's educated person, language is "a set of tools rather than a set of representations--tools which . . . change their users and the products of their use." (44) This approach is present when the educated person "begins to take the relativity of thinghood to choice of description for granted, and so starts asking how to be useful rather than how to be right." (45) Rorty seems to think that as soon as the thinker drops truth-asrepresentation this person will then seek to make its intellect practical to humanity. This conclusion is not at all apparent. If "meaning is endlessly alterable through the recontextualization of signs," this does not mean that the meaning of words in abnormal discourse will gravitate toward practice and utility, unless the free thinker, or the community of free thinkers, limits the possibility of abnormal discourse to ideas that have practical import; which alters the practical significance of academic freedom profoundly. Rorty's desire to defer abnormal discourse to its practical effects is further evidenced by the "pragmatic" use of language: The pragmatist . . . thinks of the thinker as serving the community, and of his thinking as futile unless it is followed up by a reweaving of the community's web of belief. That reweaving will assimilate, by gradually literalizing, the new metaphors which the thinker has provided (46).
101 The well-educated person is one who uses metaphors to change the languages that society speaks, thus enabling it to remake itself in some progressive manner. "Literalizing" metaphors means having them adopted as useful tools for social progress. In other words, it means normalizing abnormal discourse. For Rorty, social progress means making "things easier for everybody." (47) Rorty values Dewey as a social philosopher because he "turns away from the theoretical scientists to the engineers and the social workers--the people who are trying to make people more comfortable and secure, and to use science and philosophy as tools for that purpose." (48) So it seems that what separates abnormal discourse as "intellectual revolution" from abnormal discourse as "nonsense" is the former's utility in helping society to overcome linguistic "patterns of habitual use," or modes of thinking, speaking, and acting that make life more wearisome and dull, and to replace them with patterns that allow people to "remake" themselves. In this sense, the well-educated person would be a postmodernized Deweyan social engineer, a useful poet: the educated person uses language creatively, as the intellectual "tool" to help democracy remake itself, thereby effecting practical social change. It is not apparent, however, that "remaking" necessarily makes "things easier for everybody." (47) Rorty values Dewey as a social philosopher because he "turns away from the theoretical scientists to the engineers and the social workers--the people who are trying to make people more comfortable and secure, and to use science and philosophy as tools for that purpose." (48) So it seems that what separates abnormal discourse as "intellectual revolution" from abnormal discourse as "nonsense" is the former's utility in helping society overcome linguistic "patterns of habitual use," or "modes of
102 thinking, speaking, and acting that make life more wearisome and dull, and to replace them with patterns that allow people to "remake" themselves. In this sense, the well-educated person would be a postmodernized Deweyan social engineer, a useful poet: the educated person uses language creatively, as the intellectual "tool" to help democracy remake itself, thereby effecting practical social change. It is not apparent, however that "remaking" necessarily makes "things easier" or "more comfortable and secure." Many educated people would claim the opposite. If one tries to reconcile Rorty's ideas, it seems that "remaking" expresses a creative power to overcome personal and social stagnation, the capacity to exert control over given circumstances, the ability to give shape to one's environment and meaning to one's life. If so, then Rorty's "practical wisdom" has much in common with Dewey's progressive educational philosophy, such as the notion that the only valuable educative experience is one that consists of and in growth and the recognition that individual growth cannot be removed from its social context (49). When Rorty shares his ideas about what higher education should look like, he sounds remarkably unprogressive. In a 1989 speech to the Association of American Colleges, published as "Education, Socialization, and Individuation," Rorty asserted that the point of nonvocational higher education is to help students realize that they can reshape themselves--that they can rework the self-image foisted on them by their past, the self-image that makes them competent citizens--into a new selfimage, one which they themselves have helped to create (50). Identifying his educational philosophy with "the traditional function of the reformist liberal left," as opposed to "the revolutionary radical left," Rorty emphasizes the importance of college teachers "who make vivid and concrete the failure of the country of which we remain loyal citizens to live up to its
103 own ideals." (51) He goes on to say that "higher education in America is in basically good condition." (52) If anything needs to be done to improve higher learning, Rorty asserts that fragmentation of the curriculum is not a problem. Contra Hutchins, Rorty argues that education "must be left up to individual college teachers to do or not to do as they think fit, as their sense of responsibility to their students and their society inspires them." (53) The problem of "the integrity of the curriculum" and "the challenge of connecting learning" are problems for high schools, not for universities (54). By the time they reach college, students "should have finished absorbing the best that has been thought and said and should have started becoming suspicious of it." Contra Hutchins and Giamatti, "Great Books and contemporary civilization curricula" are, at the college level, "remedial work." (55) Rorty asserts that "growth is indeed the only end which democratic higher education can serve, and . . . the direction of growth is unpredictable . . . That is why we Deweyans think that the question, "What should they learn in college?" had better go unasked . . ." (56) The student learns to remake itself by the example of "real live professors . . . setting their own agendas--putting their individual, lovingly prepared specialties on display in the curricular cafeteria, without regard to any larger end . . . (that) is what nonvocational higher education is all about." (57) Therefore, the connection that higher learning should foster is between teacher and student, and that connection is the idea of "self-creation," so that students "will realize what democratic institutions are good for: making possible the invention of new forms of human freedom, taking liberties never before taken." (58) What is needed to make this happen, are "teachers who are not exclusively concerned with preparing people to be graduate students in their own specialties, and ensuring that these teachers get a chance to offer
104 whatever courses they feel like offering." (59) Rorty does not mean that teaching, or the curriculum, should be "student-centered": "the authors, texts and disciplines being discussed take precedence over both the teacher and the student." (60) "At some point, students have to be allowed to get confused or unconfused on their own." (61) Contra Giamatti, "college students badly need to find themselves in a place where people are not ordered to a purpose, where loose cannons are free to roll about." (62) Rorty extends Hutchins and Giamatti by taking the idea that the Western intellectual tradition is literally dynamic. He recognizes, as they do not, that much of what is assumed "normal" to the Western heritage of ideas was initially "abnormal" to, and resisted by, that tradition. Unlike Hutchins and Giamatti, then, Rorty recognizes that if the "Great Conversation," and the multiplicity of languages in the liberal arts, are democratic and free, then they are critical of what is given in that tradition, rather than merely serving to reproduce it by extension. For Rorty, if there is no abnormal discourse, there is no conversation; "knowledge its own end" does not mean adherence to received knowledge and values. Rather, the educated person must learn to create new ideas, that is, new languages or ways of thinking, about human experience; one must learn to be "parasitic" upon the given (63). Unlike Hutchins, Giamatti, and "the political right," for Rorty the free mind is not predicated on the notion that freedom follows from truth; nor does truth follow from freedom, as it does for Whitehead, Pelikan, and "the political left." (64) According to Rorty, there is no true nature or true human nature for the free mind to aim for (65). The free mind is a mind that creates and uses ideas to remake oneself, rather than one that seeks to find and know truth.
105 It is difficult to believe, with Rorty, that the present arrangement, or lack thereof, in higher education, facilitates the development of such a mind. Rather, it is arguable that the fragmented elective system that Rorty defends does just what he does not want it to do. Faced with an incoherent flux of courses and lacking a means of giving it coherence, most students probably do not learn to know the difference between normal and abnormal discourse, or to use their intellects to remake themselves and "cope" with the practice of living. Instead, they try to cope with the flux of higher learning by doing what they already know how to do: namely, do whatever is required to succeed (and survive) scholastically. Not having made a connection between themselves and the subject matter, upon graduation they have not come to know their intellectual capacities to remake themselves, and they fall back on pre-determined social categories, thus reproducing, not changing, society. They do not become educated persons in Rorty's sense: they are not "edified." I believe that Rorty's notions of hermeneutics, edification, and abnormal discourse have much to offer for postmodern ideas of the "educated person," knowledge its own end, and higher learning. Unfortunately, Rorty himself seems to exhibit a tendency not to take his own ideas very seriously, and that is disappointing. For example, it is difficult to imagine that "remaking oneself" can occur through "sparks leaping back and forth between teacher and student," without being "centered," in some significant way, on the participants, rather than simply on authors and texts. Further, though Rorty denies it, the structure of higher learning would seem to have to change drastically under his ideas. For one thing, it would be organized on the basis of distinguishing normal and abnormal discourses, rather than being based on disciplines and/or interdisciplinary work. Under Rorty, the only reason to connect ideas, or subject matter, would be to keep the
106 conversation going by creating abnormal discourses, rather than to unify learning. The problem with Rorty is that when he directs the spirit of his antiessentialist critique of academic philosophy outside that realm and applies it to higher education (and to the political system), he opts to defend the status quo. Although his critique of analytic philosophy is undoubtedly edifying for some, he appears to get the intellectual equivalent of "cold feet" at the prospect of doing the very thing that he says philosophers should do, namely, creating abnormal discourse. Yet he criticizes those Continental theorists who do that very thing, such as Lyotard, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, on the basis that they are advancing "essentialist" ideas (66). Rorty, following Jurgen Habermas, claims that their ideas are "neoconservative" because they do not suggest a direction for society, thereby obliterating the "dynamic of liberal social thought," and surrender the liberal's "untheoretical sense of social solidarity." (67) Further, he argues that they manifest the "hopeless" attempt to make the needs of the avant-garde intellectual and the larger community coincide (68). This claim is misplaced: "avant-garde" is a modern category. More importantly, Rorty's "therapeutic" philosophy itself stops far short of providing anything explicitly "progressive" for higher education and for society. Moreover, it is quite possible that asking the educated person to deprive "knowledge its own end" of "foundations," however unfounded the notion of foundations may be, would have a "chilling effect" on the production of abnormal discourse. It seems that the creation of such discourse is, at least in part, fueled by the desire to make truth assertions. If a "postmodern" philosophy of higher education departs from the notion that knowledge has objective foundations, then what is the object of desire that motivates
107 intellectual vision? Further, what is it that serves as the basis for intellectual community, and as the basis of that community's relation to the larger society? While it may be nice to think that intellectuals can be domesticated by focusing their thought on the "meaning of the daily detail," this idea is not the stuff that stimulates the kind of intellectual creativity that Rorty admires enough to critique, such as that of Lyotard, Foucault, and Habermas. Further, in identifying the professions of engineer and social worker as role models for philosophers, Rorty seems to suggest that philosophers should be focusing their creative thought on the practical needs of society, but it seems that there are already many sorts of people doing that kind of work, such as public policy analysts, policymakers, and reform advocates. Surely philosophy can provide some role modeling of its own. Rorty claims that the motor for his kind of thinker is the "desire for communication, harmony, interchange, conversation, social solidarity, and the merely beautiful." (69) In contrast to Lyotard's "sublime" paralogy, he offers "the American sublime," "Dewey's exaltation of democracy for its own sake and of growth for its own sake." (70) Rorty seems to think that "being raised on narratives of heroic struggles for the expansion of democratic freedoms," which he advocates for high school "cultural literacy," is not a metanarrative, as if Deweyan democracy comes naturally (even though, for Rorty, there's no thing as human nature). (71) Contra Rorty, it is arguable that in the West the "a de-theoreticized sense of community" that Rorty advances already predominates, at least in the United States, and many educated people would argue that something more intellectual, more relevant, and, in some sense, more foundational, than the American story is needed in higher education and in the larger society (72).
108 Schrag: Reason Between Modernism and Postmodernism The bidding farewell to reason; the disparagement of the logos; the jettisoning of the drive for unification; and the celebration of difference, plurality, and multiplicity--all these conspire to challenge us to respond anew to the question, "How does it stand with rationality as we attempt to make our way about in a postmodern world?" (1) In The Resources of Rationality (1992), American philosopher Calvin Schrag, borrowing ideas from many contemporary thinkers of the "Continental" persuasion, attempts to respond to "the postmodern challenge" by articulating a "refigured" idea of reason that responds to its primary claims (2). His accommodation to postmodernism is basically composed of Rorty's argument against the modern epistemological framework, that is, rejection of the assumption that knowledge production needs ahistorical foundations and a subject-centered notion of truth (3). Like Rorty and some of the French postmodernists, Schrag claims that knowledge emerges and changes within an unstable multiplicity of social practices. Like Lyotard, upon whom he especially relies for his understanding of postmodernism, he rejects the legitimacy of "metanarrative" as the basis for the social authorization of knowledge (4) Like Rorty, and unlike some French postmodernists, Schrag stops short of concluding that the postmodern condition leaves the knower mired in an indeterminacy of reference and meaning, in paralogy instead of understanding, in a state that defies any coherent sense of what it means to be a rational creature. Given that knowledge arises in social experience, to "rescue" the resources of reason from other postmodernists Schrag asserts "that rationality is transversal to the multiplicity of our discursive and nondiscursive practices." (5) By "transversal" Schrag means that reason can be
109 understood as "lying across varying forms of discourse, modes of thought, and institutional practices." (6) Reason is thus "diagonal" to "the various forms of our personal and social forms of life." (7) The metaphor of the diagonal is used by Schrag in contrast to the classical and modernist notion that reason comes to know truth by appealing to a "vertical" hierarchy that locates the source of true knowledge "above" the flux of experience. The diagonal or transversal notion of reason is also meant to distinguish Schrag's characterization of reason from the postmodern depiction of reason as "horizontal," or lacking the capacity to make certain truth determinations in the absence of absolute, ahistorical criteria (8). Schrag states that transversal rationality "lies between" modernity and postmodernity and between universalism and particularism (9). The concept shifts the locus of knowledge from Cartesian and Kantian consciousness to "the assemblages and patterns of discourse and action." (10) Thus, the "vertical" approach is itself revealed as "a contingent strategy." (11) The subject and consciousness emerge from "the transverse mass of our social practices" rather than originating outside them: "Subjectivity and reason alike arise from a complex networking of contingencies in communicationoriented existence." (12). However, Schrag does not privilege the horizontal either. Although he credits postmodernism for recognizing the "horizontal discontinuities in the flux of our changing and heterogeneous forms of discourse and social practices", to leave the knower at an "impasse" of "anarchic multiplicity" that "has neither goal nor purpose" is not necessary (13). To counter paralogy, indeterminacy, and irrationality, Schrag utilizes what he calls "communicative praxis." This concept was developed in a previous work, Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity (1986) (14). There it is
110 described as "the holistic space in which our ongoing thought and action, language and speech, interplay"; it is the ever-changing ground from which Schrag claims philosophy and knowledge actually originate (15). Within this social space, the subject is "de-centered" or displaced from its modernist isolation as epistemology's foundation and is resituated intersubjectively as speaker, author, and actor (16). (This notion of the de-centered self does not originate with Schrag, but is a common claim among the French postmodernists.) In his 1992 work Schrag thus asserts that social practices are not explained by theory from above but are "performances of meaning"; theory is "contextualized concept formation" and is embedded within, rather than coming from outside, discourse and action (17). Transversal reason, operating within the social "space" communicative praxis, forms knowledge by discernment, articulation, and disclosure. By these three so-called "moments" of reasoning, transversal rationality "manages" multiplicity without a transcendent foundation (18). In brief, through these three moments of reasoning the knower "scans the terrain of our lifeworld involvements," thinking and acting as follows (19). By discernment or "praxial critique" Schrag means that the knower, as a willing participant in a community, aligns its understanding with communal "pre-judgments," or operative assumptions of the community, but dissents from those assumptions that result in a "tyranny of custom" (20). Criteria emerge from the "play of perspectives and practices" and provide the basis for discernment, not certainty (21). By articulation, Schrag simply means that meaning emerges via a "radical hermeneutic" of social interpretation and is "textualized." That is, interpretation occurs in the form of speaking and writing, and it is "narrated", i.e., directed to listeners and readers who respond and revise what is communicated (22). Thus,
111 interpretation is "decentralized, redistributed, and resituated within a network of interdependencies." (23) Finally, by disclosure Schrag means that the knower's interpretation is a consequence of its referring, or responding, to "that which is other" as it is revealed in everyday experience (24). For Schrag, the task of postmodern rationality, then, is to "discern and articulate how our discursive and non-discursive practices hang together , however loosely, within the texture of everyday life." (25) Thus, unity and integration of thought and of action are not inevitably lost in, but emerge from, the ever-changing flux of particularity and diversity in social experience. However, unity and integration are always contextual (26). Nor does transversal reason ever achieve a coincidence with any social practice (27). It "lies between" modernity and postmodernity in that it "effects a passage between the orthodoxy of sedimented belief-systems and institutional forms" and "normatized rules and procedures," on the one hand, and the "heterodoxy of changing beliefs and practices" and "revolutionary thought and action," on the other (28). "Local meanings" occur against a "background" of discourses and actions that impact upon, but do not determine, their configuration (29). Thus, there is "convergence without coincidence." (30) Thus, for Schrag, like Rorty, coming to know is not "getting it right." Rather, it is "a process of delimiting the authority of any particular interpretation and discerning the possibilities for the creation of new standpoints through dissent and a revision of perspectives." (31) Since "reason is "situated within the exigencies of historical and communal existence," all knowledge occurs within "the context of community." (32) This position means that, contra modernity, knowledge is not separate from its communication (33). Rhetoric is refigured by Schrag as being rational, in
112 that the "event" of knowledge is the rhetorical act of giving "good reasons" to persuade through critique, articulation, and disclosure (34). Schrag states that the "decisive feature" and "directive" of transversal "logos" is the intrusion and acknowledgment of difference, "of that which is other." (35) He claims that by his scheme of transversal rationality: The integrity of otherness--other forms of thought and other social practices--is maintained, accomplishing at once a better understanding of that which is one's own and a recognition of the need to make accommodations and adjustments in the response to the presence of that which is other. Within such a scheme of things, the dynamics of transversal rationality falls out as a convergence without coincidence, an interplay without synthesis, an appropriation without totalization, and a unification that allows for difference. Such is the transversal dynamics that motivates rationality as a concernful struggle within communicative praxis (36). For Schrag, then, the well-educated person is open to others by virtue of and within "communicative praxis." Educated people seek to know by interpreting particular social practices against pervasive background assumptions of the community. Knowledge is never "outside" the community; it emerges through the knower's interactive participation in a community of knowers and in the larger community. Knowing is an act of communication, in which the knower is "de-centered" within communal dialogue. To know is to understand the other's social experience, even though "we never achieve an untrammeled, perfect, or ideal manner of speaking or mode of communication." (37) As a communicative knower, the educated person does not seek to accumulate knowledge but seeks to hear, consider, revise, and respond to critique, articulation, and disclosure in the present. Knowledge does not evolve in a linear fashion, but one becomes better informed by broadening one's social experience and by refining one's abilities to comprehend the
113 specifics of divergent particulars: "Every context-dependency is situated within a wider context-interdependency." (38) As for Lyotard and Rorty, for Schrag the educated person is skilled at using language to converse as a speaker and writer, listener and reader. Rather than being an authority in a specialized discipline or sub-discipline, this person is adept at learning across disciplines. Although he does not develop a scheme that would apply transversal reason to higher education in Resources, Schrag claims that transversal reason is operative across disciplines, genres of discourse, and culture spheres (39). He does claim that transversality has, as "a grammatical figure and concept," "achieved a rather wide currency among the various disciplinary matrices that make up the academy of the arts and sciences." (40) He specifically identifies the diagonal metaphor in mathematics, physiology, anatomy, physics, philosophy, psychiatry, and literary studies (41). Apart from developing the concept philosophically, Schrag refrains from searching for a paradigm that would equate the concept across disciplines, stating that the particularities of its meaning in different disciplines "should not be glossed." (42) However, in a way similar to that of Rorty, he does claim that, from the standpoint of "radical hermeneutics," there is no striking distinction between the physical and social sciences, since the practices of both emerge from the context of a community of investigators (43). Further, Lyotard's notion of narrative knowledge extends across culture spheres: scientists, moralists, and artists are all storytellers as well as interpreters (44). In an article published in 1988, four years before Resources, Schrag, following Lyotard and Rorty, argues against the legitimacy of a "grand
114 narrative" or the need for a "foundationalist concept of rationality" to ground knowledge and justify the university (45). As in Resources, Schrag there attempts to "rescue" reason from postmodernism while affirming some of postmodernism's basic claims. Assuming that rationality is plural across realms of thought, he advances two notions of reason to guide the university: "as a catalyst for critique and as a performance of evaluation." (46) The former he describes as critical analysis of "different modes of discourse and different forms of life." (47) The latter he describes as making value judgments based on concrete, particular situations rather than at "an abstract metalevel of inquiry." (48) Schrag identifies both of these notions with inherent goals of liberal learning, namely, the development of a critical mind and the development of ethical judgment (49). This accommodation of postmodernism within the tradition of liberal learning reflects a basic problem that pervades Resources. Schrag's attempt to make postmodernism palatable to modernists and liberal learning is commendable and useful. A pervasive problem in Schrag's attempt is that it tends to be simply a restatement of postmodernism in positive terms rather than a project that revises, and thereby makes, postmodernist claims positive. His notion that transversal reason moves "in the space between" modernism and postmodernism is symptomatic of this problem. Schrag is merely assuming that there is such a space, metaphorical or otherwise: without providing this intuitive notion with theoretical substance, it lingers as at best an aesthetically appealing image rather than what it tentatively purports to be, a reconciliation of sorts between modernity and postmodernity. Throughout Resources, Schrag seems to be enamored with the postmodern notion of "play" that is left by the alleged undecidable opposition
115 between pairs of philosophical concepts. In essence, what he seems to be doing with the modernism/postmodernism dichotomy, albeit implicitly, is something like the following. Jacques Derrida claims that any philosophical idea, such as that signified by the word "presence," that is advanced as a description of an autonomous metaphysical origin or foundation, is actually not originary but derives meaning only in opposition to an idea that is signified by another word (e.g., "absence"), the meaning of which is in turn dependent on its distinction from the signifier "presence." (50) Thus, according to Derrida, the search for metaphysical origins is forever deferred by the irresolvable "play" of opposing signifiers within language. What Schrag seems to be doing in Resources, at least in its effect, though he does not say so, is to take this notion of "play" and use it as the basis for a resolution, or perhaps better, a mediation, between modernism and postmodernism in the context of ongoing social practice. If that is the case, he simply does not advance sufficient arguments or principles, however imaginative, to justify such a move. Postmodern "undecidability" as it is meant by Derrida, Foucault, and others, is not, in itself, the basis for the useful mediation of anything. Schrag uses the concept as just that, without giving any clear, or good, reasons for doing so. As was noted above, even if postmodern knowledge has no need for a foundation, by Schrag's own admission, transversal reason needs "good reasons"; but he does not advance any. In dropping the representationalist "picture" of knowledge, he "plays" rather loosely with Heideggerian and other phenomenological language so as to present a rather vague, slippery "texture" of convergence without coincidence" that is simply too easy: it glosses over, and thus unjustifiably pacifies, the sharp philosophical contrasts that exist between modernism and the French postmodernists.
116 For example, the notion of "transversal reason" does not deal directly with power and conflict as they are implicated in the activity of coming to know. While Schrag acknowledges the presence of these themes (which are so basic) in the postmodernist critique of Lyotard, Foucault, and others, and while he recognizes that power is at play in the legitimation of knowledge in the university, his notion of transversal reason never really confronts it (51). Schrag only briefly notes that the achievement of "shared understanding and solidarity" across forms of life is a "hard struggle" and that "the conventions of our thought and action are tested and contested and become subject to assessment and evaluation." (52) At another point, he states that recognition of the fact that both theory and practice are context-dependent provides "a sheet anchor against any privileging of beliefs over actions, and vice versa"; in other place, he simply notes that "dissensus figures in every occasion of consensus." (53) It seems that amid the flux of conflicting social practices and beliefs, "the community," whether one means scholars or the general public, just "happens." That is precisely the theoretical shortcoming: it is as if by his merely stating that there is dissent about what to believe and how to act, for him conflict and power are not thought really to present a challenge to the concept of community, whereas in the work of Lyotard and others, power and conflict render the idea of community problematic. Even if knowledge is contextual, there needs to be some explanation, and justification, of what holds the community together besides its "interplay" with background norms. In the context of higher education, these issues really come down to the meaning of "well-educated person" and "knowledge its own end." If the knower's pursuit of knowledge is predicated on the desire for knowledge in itself, then a postmodern conception of the knower has to account for the
117 changed status of its object. If the object of knowledge is socially-based knowledge of "the other," rather than classicism's Nature or modernity's object-in-itself, then good reasons need to be advanced in support of this idea. It is not at all self-evident that educated persons desire to know "the other." In fact, much of the conflict in the contemporary university seems to reflect the situation that both those in power and those others aspiring to power do not want to know each other, and seem to advance ideas of knowledge and human society that are mutually adverse. In Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity, Schrag's work prior to Resources, which I cited above in describing his notion of the "decentered subject," Schrag describes what he calls a "new humanism." (54) It is based on the idea that "moral action, as it arises out of the dialectic of conflict and consensus within the space of ethos, exhibits an operating intentionality of moral insight and self-understanding that antedates the construction both of value properties and of a monadic ethical subject that entertains them." (55) Within this space of ethos (in Heidegger's sense of a dwelling-place), Schrag states that the ethical question is "a question about the fitting response of the decentered subject in its encounter with the discourse and practices of the other against a backdrop of the delivered tradition." (56). Somewhat complementary to Lyotard's requirement that the participant in prescriptive language games has an obligation to listen before responding, Schrag states that the "proximity of the ethos of our communicative praxis," which the decentered subject shares with the other, "directs us to the requirement of responsiveness." (57) For Schrag, then, given the absence of absolute truth, the ground of discourse and action is ethical, and thereby, "the other" is rendered the object of knowledge.
118 This claim, although perhaps compelling, does not show why knowledge of the other is desirable. Since absolute truth, in various forms, has been an object of the knower's desire at least since Socrates, I think that, absent absolute truth, the question of a fitting object of desire needs to be addressed. Schrag, then, leaves a question that complements the one that emerged from my analysis of Rorty, which is the basic question about locating the object that would constitute the object of knowledge, the object of intellectual vision, in the absence of absolute truth. If that object is to be "the other," what principles, or "good reasons," can provide the intellectual depth, as well as breadth, sufficient to persuade the well-educated person that "the other" is a desirable object to know in itself?
119
Notes to Chapter III
Lyotard: The Postmodern Legitimation of Knowledge and Reformation of the Well-Educated Person 1.
Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 60. Other work of Lyotard's where one can find less developed aspects of the theme of this book include The Postmodern Explained: Correspondence 1982-1985, ed. Julian Pefanis and Morgan Thomas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); and The Lyotard Reader, ed. Andrew Benjamin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989).
2.
ibid, 9.
3.
ibid, 15.
4.
ibid, 10.
5.
ibid, 18.
6.
ibid.
7.
ibid, 18-19.
8.
ibid, 8.
9.
ibid, 28.
10.
ibid, 23.
11.
ibid, 28-9.
12.
ibid, 31-2.
13.
ibid, 36.
14.
ibid, 40.
120 15.
ibid, 32-3.
16.
ibid, 34-5.
17.
ibid, 38-9.
18.
ibid, 41-3.
19.
ibid, 57.
20.
ibid, 59.
21.
ibid, 61.
22.
ibid, 44-5.
23.
ibid, 46.
24.
ibid, xxiv, 8.
25.
ibid, 50.
26.
ibid, 38.
27.
ibid, 48.
28.
ibid, 51.
29.
ibid, 53.
30.
ibid, 62-3.
31.
ibid, 61.
32.
ibid, 65.
33.
ibid, 66.
34.
ibid.
35.
ibid, Appendix, "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?", 81.
36.
ibid, 29.
37.
ibid, 15.
38.
Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean-Loup Thebaud, Just Gaming, trans. Wlad Godzich (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985), 31-3.
39.
ibid, 61.
40.
"Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?", 81-2.
121 41.
Just Gaming, 34.
42.
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 13-15.
43.
ibid, 43.
44.
Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean-Loup Thebaud, Just Gaming (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).
45.
ibid, 35-7.
46.
ibid, 9, 14-15.
47.
ibid, 43, 48.
48.
ibid, 58.
49.
ibid, 8.
50.
Just Gaming, 25.
51.
ibid, 28-9.
52.
ibid, 50-3; The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 52-3.
53.
ibid, 53.
54.
ibid, xxv.
55.
ibid, 17.
56.
ibid, 59.
57.
Just Gaming, 100.
58.
ibid, 95.
59.
ibid, 59.
60.
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 19.
61.
ibid, 22.
62.
ibid, 25.
63.
ibid.
64.
ibid, 30.
65.
Just Gaming, 95.
66.
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 57.
122 67.
ibid, 8.
68.
Just Gaming, 17.
69.
The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 67.
70.
Just Gaming, 60, 6.
71.
ibid, 14, 61.
72.
ibid, 66.
73.
ibid, 98.
Rorty: Postmodern Conversation as Pragmatic Edification by Abnormal Discourse 1.
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 360. Initial development of the theme of this book can be found in Rorty's Consequences of Pragmatism (Essays: 1972-1980) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). See also the collection of essays in Rorty's Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, v. 1 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Rorty explores his ideas in analysis of works of literature in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). For a collection of essays by analytic philosophers that critique Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, see Alan Malachowski, ed., Reading Rorty: Critical Responses to Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (and Beyond) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990). A recent book that treats Rorty in depth is David L. Hall's Richard Rorty: Prophet and Poet of the New Pragmatism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). A good summation of Rorty's pragmatism is Konstantin Kolenda's Rorty's Humanistic Pragmatism: Philosophy Democratized (Tampa: University of South Florida Press, 1990).
123 2.
Richard Rorty, "Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity," in Habermas and Modernity, ed. Richard Bernstein (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), 173.
3.
ibid, 174-5.
4.
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 31, 149.
5.
ibid, 40-1, 51-2.
6.
ibid, 45, 51-2, 62.
7.
ibid, 48-50, 140-55.
8.
ibid, 48.
9.
ibid, 3, 6, 132, 136, 152.
10.
ibid, chap 5, 6, pp. 7, 8, 9.
11.
ibid, 318-19.
12.
ibid, 159.
13.
ibid, 358-9.
14.
ibid, 159, 156, 157.
15.
ibid, 159, 210.
16.
ibid, 303.
17.
ibid, 389.
18.
ibid, 315-7.
19.
ibid, 318.
20.
ibid, 319.
21.
ibid.
22.
ibid, 320.
23.
ibid, 320-1.
24.
ibid.
25.
ibid.
26.
ibid, 387.
27.
ibid, 388.
124 28.
ibid, 321-2, 363-5, 328-33, 335-9, 344.
29.
ibid, 331.
30.
ibid, 356.
31.
ibid, 359.
32.
ibid, 357-365, 359.
33,
ibid, 359.
34.
ibid, 360.
35.
ibid, 362.
36.
ibid, 361.
37.
ibid, 365-6.
38.
ibid, 372.
39.
ibid, 389.
40.
ibid, 379.
41.
ibid, 370.
42.
Richard Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers Volume 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
43.
ibid, 3.
44.
ibid.
45.
ibid, 5.
46.
ibid, 17.
47.
ibid.
48.
ibid, 9.
49.
Cf. John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Collier-Macmillan, 1963, first published 1938).
50.
Richard Rorty, "Education, Socialization, and Individuation," Liberal Education 75, no.4 (September/October 1989): 5. Also in Dissent as "Education Without Dogma," (Spring 1989).
125 51.
ibid, 8.
52.
ibid, "Richard Rorty Replies," 30.
53.
ibid, 8.
54.
ibid.
55.
ibid.
56.
ibid, 9.
57.
ibid.
58.
ibid.
59.
ibid, 7.
60.
ibid, 31.
61.
ibid.
62.
ibid, 9.
63.
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 366.
64.
"Education, Socialization, and Individuation," 2-3.
65.
ibid.
66.
Essays on Heidegger and Others: Philosophical Papers Volume 2.
67.
"Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity," in Habermas and Modernity, 171.
68.
ibid, 174-5.
69.
ibid, 175.
70.
ibid, "Education, Socialization, and Individuation," 9.
71.
ibid, 30, 2.
72.
"Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity," in Habermas and Modernity, 173.
126 Schrag: Reason Between Modernism and Postmodernism 1.
Calvin O. Schrag, The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1992), 8. Other work of Schrag's that leads up to this book includes an essay, "Rationality Between Modernity and Postmodernity," in Stephen K. White, ed., Lifeworld and Politics: Between Modernity and Postmodernity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), and two books, Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986); and Radical Reflection and the Origin of the Human Sciences (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1980).
2.
ibid, ix.
3.
ibid, 24, 161, 164.
4.
ibid, 97-100.
5.
ibid, 9.
6.
ibid, 151-2.
7.
ibid, 158.
8.
ibid, 164.
9.
ibid, 7, 9.
10.
ibid, 151.
11.
ibid, 166.
12.
ibid, 152, 164.
13.
ibid, 165, 152, 163, 168.
14.
Calvin O. Schrag, Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986).
15.
ibid, 6.
16.
ibid, chap. 6, chap. 7.
127 17.
The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge, 58.
18.
ibid, 74-5.
19.
ibid, 171-2.
20.
ibid, 61-5.
21.
ibid, 60.
22.
ibid, 72, 88, 90-1.
23.
ibid, 93.
24.
ibid, 110-11.
25.
ibid, 94.
26.
ibid, 154.
27.
ibid, 158.
28.
ibid, 174.
29.
ibid, 166.
30.
ibid, 76.
31.
ibid.
32.
ibid, 136.
33.
ibid.
34.
ibid, 137-42.
35.
ibid, 170.
36.
ibid, 158-9.
37.
ibid, 134.
38.
ibid, 173.
39.
ibid, 154, 147.
40.
ibid, 148.
41.
ibid, 148, 152-4.
42.
ibid, 148, 156.
43.
ibid, 101-2.
128 44.
ibid, 102.
45.
Calvin O. Schrag, "Liberal Learning in the Postmodern World," in The Key Reporter 54, no. 1 (Autumn 1988): 3.
46.
ibid.
47.
ibid.
48.
ibid, 4.
49.
ibid.
50.
Cf. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 89-110; Hilary Lawson, Reflexivity: The Post-modern Predicament (London: Hutchinson, 1985), chap. 4; Eve Tavor Bannet, Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent: Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), chap. 4.
51.
The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge, 3542, 126-7; "Liberal Learning in the Postmodern World,"
52.
3.
The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge, 169, 176.
53.
ibid, 58, 134.
54.
Communicative Praxis and the Space of Subjectivity, chap. 10.
55.
ibid, 202.
56.
ibid, 200-02.
57.
ibid, 204.
129
CHAPTER IV FOUCAULT AND DERRIDA
Foucault: the Human Subject as a Strategy of Power-Knowledge truth or being does not lie at the root of what we know and what we are, but the exteriority of accidents (1). we should abandon a whole tradition that allows us to imagine that knowledge exists only where the power relations are suspended and that knowledge can only develop outside its injunctions, its demands and its interests . . . We should admit rather that power produces knowledge (and not simply by encouraging it because it serves power or by applying it because it is useful); that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any kind of knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations . . . In short, it is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that produces a corpus of knowledge, useful or resistant to power, but power-knowledge . . . that determines the forms and possible domains of knowledge (2). The Relationship Between Pursuit of Knowledge and Pursuit of Power Like Lyotard and Rorty, the late French philosopher Michel Foucault rejects the idea that true knowledge is belief that conforms to objective reality. Instead, for Foucault knowledge is discourse created by humans in the effort to attain power: by truth I do not mean the ensemble of truths which are to be discovered and accepted, but rather the ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and
130 specific effects of power attached to the true, it being understood also that it's not a matter of a battle "on behalf" of the truth, but of a battle about the status of truth and the economic and political role it plays (3). As with Lyotard's critique, an understanding of the implications of Foucault's critique of knowledge for the pursuit of knowledge requires an explanation of Foucault's claims about knowledge as a social phenomenon. I will first discuss his notion of power and its relationship to knowledge. This analysis will lead to a discussion of the notion of the human subject in his critique of knowledge. I will then describe the social role of the human sciences, which is the particular focus of Foucault's critique, and the theoretical problems that he alleges to exist in the very idea of the human sciences. Finally, I will analyze the implications of his critique of knowledge for the postmodern pursuit of knowledge and the meaning of "educated person." However, a large portion of that analysis will be postponed until after I have analyzed the work of Jacques Derrida, for reasons that will become apparent. When Foucault uses the term "power," he does not mean ethnic, social, or religious domination, or economic exploitation (4). While he acknowledges that these forms of group-affiliated domination and exploitation have been prevalent in different historical periods, Foucault claims that the most significant manifestation of power in Western society since the late eighteenth century "applies itself to immediate everyday life which categorizes the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth on him which he must recognize and which others have to recognize in him. It is a form of power which makes individuals subjects." (5)
131 This form of power is not simply tantamount to the effects of state or rational-bureaucratic hegemony. The power relations he has in mind are not structural in this sense but are "rooted deep in the social nexus." (6) This power, moreover, is not solely a function of institutions; while institutions represent one important manifestation of power, they are not "the fundamental point of anchorage" of power relationships. Rather, power emerges basically "from the starting points of local conditions and particular needs." (7) Nor is power understood as a dichotomous relationship "between those who exclusively possess and retain it, and those who do not have it and submit to it." (8) Further, there is not "something called Power . . . which is assumed to exist universally in a concentrated or diffused form . . . Power exists only when it is put into action . . ." (9) For Foucault, power is basically "a productive network which runs through the whole social body," understood in terms of concrete practices: "power in its external visage, at the point where it is in direct and immediate relationship with that which we can provisionally call its object, its target, its field of application . . . where it installs itself and produces its real effects." (10) Individuals are the vehicles and one of the prime effects of power (11). The chief instrumentality and product of modern power, then, is the individual subject: the individual is not a pre-given entity which is seized on by the exercise of power. The individual, with his identity and characteristics, is the product of a relation of power exercised over bodies, multiplicities, movements, desires, forces (12). The individual is not created by the exercise of power upon an inert human being (13). Instead, power is "an action upon an action, on existing actions or on those which may arise in the present or the future . . . In itself the exercise of power is not violence; nor is it a consent . . . it is . . . always a way of acting
132 upon an acting subject or acting subjects by virtue of their acting or being capable of action." (14) Moreover, "power is exercised only over free subjects . . . individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse comportments may be realized." (15) Knowledge and power imply each other, though they are not identical: "We are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth. This is the case in every society, but I believe that in ours . . . we are forced to produce the truth of power that our society demands, of which it has need, in order to function: we must speak the truth; we are constrained or condemned to confess or to discover the truth." (16) One of Foucault's most controversial claims is that since their inception the discourses of the human sciences have been instrumental in the production of subjects through the exercise of power. He argues that the rise of the scientific study of the human being in modernity is associated with the appearance of what Foucault calls "disciplinary technologies," or "procedures which allowed the effects of power to circulate in a manner at once continuous, uninterrupted, adapted and individualised throughout the entire social body." (17) Foucault claims that disciplinary technologies emerged, beginning in the seventeenth century but not becoming prominent until the nineteenth, as organized means for the purpose of making human beings productive, cooperative participants in society: individuals whose behavior "consolidated the system and contributed to its overall
functioning." (18)
Disciplinary technologies are practical (not essentially ideological or institutional) "techniques and procedures" that act as "mechanisms of power" because they are"economically advantageous and politically useful." (19)
133 Disciplines proceed by directing various techniques upon the object of the human body; in this process, human subjects are invested with individuality. These techniques involve four basic dimensions, which Foucault details in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1979) (20). They are: the efficient distribution and circulation of individuals in "cells, places, and ranks" according to the precise analysis of space; the control of activities; the organization of time in profitable durations; and the creation of productive forces "superior to the sum of elementary forces that composed it." (21) The creation and production of knowledge is a key element in the operation of disciplines: It is the production of effective instruments for the formation and accumulation of knowledge--methods of observation, techniques of registration, procedures for investigation and research, apparatuses of control. All this means that power, when it is exercised through these subtle mechanisms, cannot but evolve, organise and put into circulation a knowledge, or rather apparatuses of knowledge, which are not ideological constructs (22). And this investigation enables us to rediscover one of the conditions of the emergence of the human sciences: the great nineteenth-century effort in discipline and normalisation (23). In his use of the word "disciplines," then, Foucault does not mean the human sciences themselves; he means disciplinary technologies, or practical mechanisms for establishing norms that produce and control the modern individual subject, which, "in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became general formulas of domination." (24) In reality, the disciplines have their own discourse. They engender . . . apparatuses of knowledge (savoir) and a multiplicity of new domains of understanding . . . Disciplines are the bearers of . . . discourse that speaks of a rule, but this is not the juridical rule deriving from sovereignty, but a natural rule, a norm. The code they come to define is not that of law but that of normalisation. Their reference is to a theoretical horizon which
134 of necessity has nothing in common with the edifice of right. It is human science which constitutes their domain, and clinical knowledge their jurisprudence. . . . it is not through some advancement in the rationality of the exact sciences that the human sciences are gradually constituted . . . the process which has really rendered the discourse of the human sciences possible is the juxtaposition, the encounter between two lines of approach, two mechanisms, two absolutely heterogeneous types of discourse: on the one hand there is the re-organisation of right that invests sovereignty, and on the other, the mechanics of the coercive forces whose exercise takes a disciplinary form (25). According to Foucault, then, the pursuit of knowledge, especially knowledge of the human being, rather than being an intellectual counter to power, has in modern history played a significant role in the complex utilization of power. Now I believe that the problem does not consist in drawing the line between that in a discourse which falls under the category of scientificity or truth, and that which comes under some other category, but in seeing historically how effects of truth are produced within discourses which in themselves are neither true nor false (26). This position does not mean that Foucault categorically rejects the notion of scientifically demonstrable truth. Like Lyotard, for Foucault a "foundational" understanding of knowledge is an understanding of the social "origin" and construction of knowledge. For Foucault, an understanding of the social construction of knowledge in the human sciences is concerned with knowledge as an instrument of social power in the rise of organized, rationalbureaucratic European society. There is nothing scientistic in this (that is, a dogmatic belief in the value of scientific knowledge), but neither is it a skeptical or relativistic refusal of all verified truth. What is questioned is the way in which knowledge circulates and functions, its relations to power. In short, the regime du savoir (27).
135 Foucault is not claiming that the sole purpose of the production of knowledge in the human sciences has been or is to create productive individual subjects. Similarly, he is not arguing that the human sciences are simply, or necessarily, an extension of disciplinary technologies (28). He is, however, arguing that the human sciences are historically situated within a profoundly altered foundation of knowledge (what the early Foucault calls an episteme, and later, a dispositef) that emerged in response to the strategic need for a discourse to ground the organization of modern society as a collective of disciplined, productive individual "subjects." (29) In Discipline and Punish, the first book in which Foucault articulates his notion of power, Foucault makes this point in reference to one of the alleged "armatures" of power and knowledge that he identifies in his work, in this case the establishment of correctional prisons in the nineteenth century: I am not saying that the human sciences emerged from the prison. But, if they have been able to be formed and to produce so many profound changes in the episteme, it is because they have been conveyed by a specific and new modality of power: a certain policy of the body, a certain way of rendering the group of men docile and useful. This policy required the involvement of definite relations of knowledge in relations of power; it called for a technique of overlapping subjection and objectification; it brought with it new procedures of individualization. The carceral network constituted one of the armatures of this powerknowledge that has made the human sciences historically possible. Knowable man (soul, individuality, consciousness, conduct, whatever it is called) is the object-effect of this analytical investment, of this domination-observation (30). The reference to the human body in this passage reflects that the human body, as the ultimate "local" site on which power is concentrated, is a prominent element in Foucault's notion of disciplinary technologies and his critique of the human subject. I will take up this topic shortly. First, there is
136 more to explain regarding the crucial role of the human sciences in the spread of disciplinary technologies, as this passage indicates. While the example of prisons is his most extensive illustration of "sites" where disciplinary technologies and the "power-knowledge" of the human sciences are focused, in Discipline and Punish Foucault details a number of other examples, including factories, schools, hospitals, and the military. In his earlier work, before he explicitly developed his concept of power, Foucault approached the study of human beings as the strategy by which the human subject is constituted by "dividing practices." For example, he claims that the description of people as mentally ill or physically ill and their "internment" in asylums or hospitals are means by which the modern human subject seeks to cleanse itself of "the other" within itself (31). In subsequent work, he examines the emergence of discourse regarding sexuality and the self in the constitution and control of human subjects (32). In all of these cases, the role of knowledge in the human sciences is identified as a key element in the proliferation of disciplinary technologies in the nineteenth century. A prominent example is the formation and growth of psychology: It was the emergence . . . of a new type of the supervision--both knowledge and power--over individuals who resisted disciplinary normalization . . . the supervision of normality was firmly encased in a medicine or a psychiatry that provided it with a sort of "scientificity" . . . marked a new era (33). Foucault is claiming that historically, the human sciences are linked to "modes of objectification which transform human beings into subjects." (34). There are two meanings of the word subject: subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to (35).
137 The Human Subject and the Human Sciences In Discipline and Punish, Foucault claims that the human sciences have been, and are, beholden to the modern phenomenon of disciplinary technologies. In a previous work, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1970), Foucault identifies, by historical (or more accurately, what he calls "archaeological") analysis, alleged theoretical shortcomings of the human sciences that, he claims, are fatal to the idea that they are justified as autonomous realms of scientific knowledge (36). Like Lyotard, Foucault subordinates epistemological argument to a historical analysis that is predicated on the social contingency of the scientific pursuit of knowledge; in this case, it is the creation of the human sciences as "discourse that takes as its object man as an empirical entity." (37) By "human science" Foucault means, at least roughly, what American intellectuals refer to as the social sciences and the humanities, and what German intellectuals mean by Geisteswissenschaften. Among the realms of knowledge that he regards as human sciences, Foucault explicitly includes psychology, sociology, the study of literature, cultural anthropology and ethnology, psychiatry, and, to some degree, history (38). The epistemological field traversed by the human sciences was not laid down in advance: no philosophy, no political or moral option, no empirical science of any kind, no observation of the human body, no analysis of sensation, imagination, or the passions, had ever encountered, in the seventeenth or the eighteenth century, anything like man: for man did not exist (any more than life, or language, or labour) and the human sciences . . . their intrinsic possibility, the simple fact that man . . . for the first time since human beings have lived together in societies, should have become the object of science . . . it is an event in the order of knowledge (39).
138 Foucault argues that when the human being became an object of modern study in the nineteenth century, it could not be simply cast as an external object like other entities because it was both subject and object (40). it was the appearance of that empirico-transcendental being, of that being whose thought is constantly interwoven with the unthought, of that being always cut off from an origin which is promised to him in the immediacy of the return-- it was this appearance that gave the human sciences their particular form . . . In fact, the human sciences are addressed to man in so far as he lives, speaks, and produces . . . The site of the sciences of man may therefore be fixed in the vicinity . . . of those sciences that deal with life, labour, and language (41). Foucault is not asserting that human biology, economics, and philology are themselves human sciences. He is asserting that they constitute, as sciences of life, labor, and language, the bases upon which "man first detached himself historically as a form of possible knowledge." (42) The human sciences are distinguished on the basis that their object of study is the human being as a being that represents from within its own finitude: man for the human sciences . . . is that living being who, from within the life to which he entirely belongs . . . constitutes representations by means of which he lives . . . Similarly . . . it is that being who, from within the forms of production by which his whole existence is governed, forms the representations of those needs, so that upon that basis he can finally provide himself with a representation of economics itself . . .The same is true of language . . . The object of the human sciences is not language . . . it is that being which, from the interior of the language by which he is surrounded, represents to himself . . . (43). Thus, for Foucault, "The human sciences are . . . an analysis that extends from what man is in his positivity (living, speaking, labouring being) to what enables this same being to know (or seek to know) . . ." (44) Foucault claims that while the human sciences are not mere extensions of biology,
139 economics, and philology, they borrow conceptual categories for classifying objects from these three empirical sciences . From biology, they borrow the concepts function and norm; from economics, they borrow conflict and rule; from philology, they borrow signification and system (45). These categories "link together the empirical positivities of life, labour, and language (on the basis of which man first detached himself historically as a form of possible knowledge) and the forms of finitude that characterize man's mode of being (as he constituted himself when representation ceased to define the general space of knowledge)." (46) Foucault claims that the epistemological problem of the human sciences is that "representation is not simply an object for the human sciences; it is . . . the very field upon which the human sciences occur." (47) Thus, the human sciences find themselves treating as their object what is in fact their condition of possibility. They are always animated, therefore, by a sort of transcendental mobility. They never cease to exercise a critical examination of themselves. They proceed from that which is given to representation to that which renders representation possible, but which is still representation (48). The problem is that unlike other objects of knowledge, since the human being is, for the human sciences, both subject and object, knower and known, it cannot be objectively represented like other entities, yet historically the human sciences "have been unable to find a way around the primacy of representation." (49) In essence, Foucault is claiming that the human sciences lack an objective philosophical foundation and therefore cannot be justified as scientific knowledge. They are stuck in representation, yet representation as a form of knowledge is insufficient to know the human knower: "Western culture has constituted, under the name of man, a being who, by one and the same interplay of reasons, must be a positive domain of
140 knowledge and cannot be an object of science." (50) Given this lack of an objective foundation, Foucault claims that an explanation for the emergence of the human sciences in the nineteenth century is at least partly explained by historical analysis of their role in the exercise of power. He then develops this theme in subsequent works, including Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality (1978-1985). Although Foucault does not develop a similar critique of the natural sciences, in Discipline and Punish he does claim that the initial emergence of the empirical sciences at the end of the Middle Ages was also implicated in power, in this case the economic and political conquest of the natural world on the model of the Inquisition: "the sciences of nature were born, to some extent . . . from the practices of investigation. The great empirical knowledge . . . had its operating model no doubt in the Inquisition . . . this politico-juridical, administrative and criminal, religious and lay, investigation . . ." (51) Further, by focusing on the human sciences, Foucault does not mean to suggest that the natural sciences are not implicated in power: if, concerning a science like theoretical physics or organic chemistry, one poses the problem of its relations with the political and economic structures of society, isn't one posing an excessively complicated question? Doesn't this set the threshold of possible explanations impossibly high? But on the other hand, if one takes a form of knowledge (savoir) like psychiatry, won't the question be much easier to resolve, since the epistemological profile of psychiatry is a low one and psychiatric practice is linked with a whole range of institutions, economic requirements and political issues of social regulation? (52) Thus, one reason for Foucault's focus on the human sciences, rather than on the natural sciences, is strategic. For Foucault, then, what is important for the educated person to know about an idea, regardless of its
141 classification as "scientific" or otherwise, is not whether or not an idea is objectively "true," but the significance of that idea as a social product in the articulation of power. Foucault argues that the implications of this understanding for the role of the educated person are essentially political: '"Truth" is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it . . . The essential political problem for the intellectual is not to criticise the ideological contents supposedly linked to science, or to ensure that his own scientific practice is accompanied by a correct ideology, but that of ascertaining the possibility of constituting a new politics of truth. The problem is not changing people's consciousnesses-- or what's in their heads--but the political, economic, institutional regime of the production of truth . . . The political question, to sum up, is not error, illusion, alienated consciousness or ideology; it is truth itself . . . (53) It seems plausible to me to make fictions work within the truth, to introduce truth-effects within a fictional discourse, and in some way to make discourse arouse, "fabricate," something which does not yet exist, thus to fiction something. One "fictions" history starting from a political reality that renders it true, one "fictions" a politics that does not yet exist starting from a historical truth (54). The emphasis Foucault places on power in his historical analysis of the creation of the modern human subject has led many commentators to believe that power is his primary concern. Foucault himself asserts that his primary object of study is the historical phenomenon of the human subject: the goal of my work during the past twenty years. It has not been to analyze the phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such an analysis. My objective, instead, has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects . . . modes of objectification which transform human beings into subjects (55). Foucault is interested in understanding how, and for what ends, the idea of the human subject has been formed and put into practice by the social
142 production of knowledge in modernity. His social critique of knowledge epitomizes the postmodern: Foucault even makes the distinctly a-modern claim that notions like freedom and liberation are complicit in, rather than responses to, totalization (56). This theoretical approach to the idea of knowledge reflects that Foucault is profoundly concerned with the "totalizing" effects of modern society on human beings; like Lyotard, he is especially concerned about the participation of the intellectual in this totalization. Although the definition and production of knowledge are implicated in the movement of power, the problem that Foucault raises for the postmodern pursuit of knowledge is not a problem of how to extricate the pursuit of knowledge from the articulation of power. According to Foucault, what is important for the educated person to understand is that historically, the modern era means that knowledge and power are necessarily linked. To think that they are opposed is part of the ruse by which intellectuals are manipulated into perpetuating totalization. Thus, for Foucault, theory is unavoidably political: there exists a system of power which blocks, prohibits, and invalidates this discourse and this knowledge, a power not only found in the manifest authority of censorship, but one that profoundly and subtly penetrates an entire societal network. Intellectuals are themselves agents of this system of power--the idea of their responsibility for "consciousness" and discourse forms part of the system. The intellectual's role is no longer to place himself "somewhat ahead and to the side" in order to express the stifled truth of the collectivity; rather, it is to struggle against the forms of power that transform him into its object and instrument in the sphere of "knowledge," "truth," "consciousness," and "discourse." In this sense theory does not express, translate, or serve to apply practice: it is practice. But it is local and regional . . .
143 and not totalizing. This is a struggle against power, a struggle aimed at revealing and undermining power . . . to take power . . . A "theory" is the regional system of this struggle (57). The Question of the Postmodern Educated Self An important problem that Foucault raises for the idea of the postmodern pursuit of knowledge is the following. Foucault claims that power-knowledge, which is essentially social in nature, is an inevitable outcome of intellectual practice. He further claims that the means by which power-knowledge totalizes human beings is the perpetuation of the idea of individual subjects. Assuming his position, is there a desirable postmodern alternative to the idea of the modern individual subject? Framed in terms of the present inquiry, if the educated person that produces, and is produced by, the pursuit of knowledge is properly not a modern individual subject, then what should this person be? This question turns the thought of the intellectual reflexively back upon itself, not as a subject who contemplates its own consciousness but as a social actor who acknowledges that its thought and action is intellectual-political. It is a question that seeks a meaning for "educated person" that confronts, rather than evades, the political nature of knowledge. In the closing sentences of The Order of Things, Foucault suggests that the postmodern educated person would be beyond modern recognition: man is neither the oldest nor the most constant problem that has been posed for human knowledge . . . man is a recent invention . . . In fact, among all the mutations that have affected the knowledge of things and their order . . . only one, that which began a century and a half ago and is now perhaps drawing to a close, has made it possible for the figure of man to appear . . . it was the effect of a change in the fundamental arrangement of knowledge . . . If those arrangements were to disappear . . . then one can
144 wager that man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea (58). Foucault seems to overlook the idea that even if the human subject is erased, there still remains a face, even if "face" is socially acknowledged and constructed. There is still an entity, whether it is named or not, and it is an individual entity, even if its socially constructed nature is variegated, transient, paradoxical, and contextually bounded. There is, in other words, something called a human body. Foucault himself has emphasized the significance of the human body as the target of disciplinary technology, the object by which the human being is manipulated into acknowledging itself as a "docile, productive subject": The historical moment of the disciplines was the moment when an art of the human body was born, which was directed not only at the growth of its skills, nor at the intensification of its subjection, but at the formation of a relation that in the mechanism itself makes it more obedient as it becomes more useful, and conversely. What was then being formed was a policy of coercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, its behaviour. The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it, a "political anatomy," which was also a "mechanics of power," was being born; it defined how one may have a hold over others' bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and practised bodies, "docile" bodies (59). Further, in the essay, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" (1971), which initiated his theoretical move to the socio-historical (more accurately, what is for him the particularized "genealogical") analysis of power, Foucault, quoting Nietzsche, expressly links the pursuit of knowledge with bodily concerns: Why did man invent the contemplative life? Why give a supreme value to this form of existence? Why maintain the
145 absolute truth of those fictions which sustain it? "During barbarous ages . . . if the strength of an individual declined, if he felt himself tired or sick, melancholy or satiated and, as a consequence, without desire or appetite for a short time, he became relatively a better man, that is, less dangerous. His pessimistic ideas only take form as words or reflections. In this frame of mind, he either became a thinker and prophet or used his imagination to feed his superstitions." . . . The body manifests the stigmata of past experience and also gives rise to desires, failings, and errors . . . Genealogy . . . is thus situated within the articulation of the body and history. Its task is to expose a body totally imprinted by history and the process of history's destruction of the body (60). The body is not simply known: it is acted upon. The presence of the body means that the human being, including the intellectual who pursues knowledge, is capable of being adversely affected by practice. If it did not have this capacity, this vulnerability, the human body would not be the strategic object by which human beings have been, according to Foucault, coerced into becoming "free" subjects. In claiming to identify these operations without going beyond them, Foucault himself remains modern. Indeed, in his concern for the individual human being against "system," Foucault, like Lyotard, reveals himself to have profoundly modern. Foucault is concerned about what happens to individual bodies, as a consequence of what happens to intellectual thought by disciplinary technology. He is concerned with the totalization of individual human beings by the manipulation, and complicity, of intellectuals in the production of knowledge for the sake of the social system. Finally, all these present struggles revolve around the question: Who are we? They are a refusal of these abstractions, of economic and ideological state violence which ignore who we are individually, and also a refusal of a scientific or administrative inquisition which determines who one is (61).
146 Thus, it is not the idea of the individual per se but the historical subjection of the individual to a coercive notion of individuality that Foucault seeks to overturn. For the postmodern educated person, there still remains an individual face, an individual body, an individual human being. The problem for the postmodern educated person is the social determination of this individual qua individual. It is a problem that Foucault does not extricate himself from, for the very reason that he limits the nature of knowledge to its social construction. For Foucault, the problem of the individual human being, as a problem of the capacity of the human body to be adversely affected, is essentially understood as a social problem. The importance of prisons and other institutional manifestations of disciplinary technology seems to be grounded in terms of the old modern notion of social liberation, even though he claims that the idea of liberation is a part of the problem. In thinking in terms of social confinement, Foucault remains stuck in the language that he seeks to overcome. If the educated person in pursuit of knowledge is to go beyond the modern, perhaps the educated person has to find a way partly "out of" the language of the social, even if knowledge is inherently a social construction. That is, even if the idea of the body is a social construct, the idea of the body can be pursued "outside" the frame of reference that is social. The more basic question that Foucault raises, however, in light of his critique of the modern individual subject, is the meaning of the postmodern educated person as an intellectual self. Since the modern educated person has been identified with the idea of an autonomous, free, self-determining individual, at least since the Enlightenment, then assuming his rejection of this idea as an illusion gives new meaning to the question of what it means to be a postmodern "educated person." If one takes away the modern idea of the
147 intellectual, what is left for the intellectual to be, as a distinctive individual? If self-determination in the modern sense is a sham, is there a postmodern idea of intellectual self-determination that marks an individual as educated? Further, a postmodern answer to this question that assumes Foucault's critique of the modern intellectual as an instrument of power and of "disciplinary technologies" has squarely to come to terms with the sociopolitical implications of the intellectual is acting qua intellectual. In particular, since the Enlightenment idea of the individual remains a prevalent myth that operates to coerce individuals into being "productive subjects" of the system, as Foucault claims, then an adequate postmodern notion of the intellectual self has to consider this person especially as a marginalized "other," whether that marginalization occurs within the academy, relative to society in general, or, as was the case for Foucault himself, in both respects. What makes this problem particularly vexing is that, following Foucault, this marginalization is the purpose and effect of the very idea that has distinguished the modern intellectual self, namely its pursuit of knowledge. That is, the normalization of theoretical practice as the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake," as a purpose and effect of disciplinary technologies, means that intellectuals who cease to engage in that pursuit are marginalized. What, then, is a postmodern notion of "educated person" that rejects this modern, normalized intellectual self, yet also rejects marginalization and the social and political compromise, even capitulation, that marginalization entails? Derrida: the Problem and Promise of Differance the history of (the only) metaphysics, which has, in spite of all differences, not only from Plato to Hegel (even including
148 Leibniz) but also, beyond these apparent limits, from the preSocratics to Heidegger, always assigned the origin of truth in general to the logos: the history of truth, the truth of truth, has always been . . . the debasement of writing, and its repression outside "full" speech (1). The "rationality"--but perhaps that word should be abandoned . . . which governs a writing thus enlarged and radicalized, no longer issues from a logos. Further, it inaugurates the destruction, not the demolition but the desedimentation, the de-construction, of all the significations that have their source in that of the logos. Particularly the signification of truth (2). Speech, Writing, and the Problematic of Absolute Knowledge The primary object of Jacques Derrida's analysis is the very idea of knowledge, especially knowledge as the fundamental subject of Western philosophy. For Derrida, any philosophical text that attempts to describe, explain, and defend a theory of absolute truth or absolute knowledge unjustifiably assumes what he calls a "metaphysics of presence." Derrida claims that the idea of "absolute" cannot be justified because it is necessarily subject to a fundamental problematic relation. He reveals this alleged problematic in "deconstructive" readings of important philosophical texts. Derrida asserts that a specific problematic relation emerges regardless of whether the foundation of knowledge that is implicitly assumed, or explicitly advanced, in a given text is objective reality, an autonomous or transcendental subject, natural or human history, or empirical or logicaldeductive science. Derrida's target is the idea of knowledge of reality as objective or subjective "presence" in the texts that he examines, which include major works of foundational figures in ancient and modern philosophy. While the English translations of Derrida's work have used the words "presence" and
149 "self-presence," a more illuminating expression of what Derrida means is "that which absolutely is," or absolute "is," especially in the sense of an absolute as it is presently accessible to human reason. In Heideggerian terms, for example, this notion would be the "Being of beings." (3) Derrida claims that this idea of absolute presence is always implicated whenever the idea of knowledge as something pure or whole, something unblemished by uncertainty, is relied upon in a text. He argues that this idea, which is commonly believed, at least tacitly, by many educated people, is necessarily without rational justification. At one level, Derrida is alleging that the notion of knowledge as ultimately knowledge of something absolute or universal is a cultural construct rather than an accurate description of the nature of things. For Derrida, knowledge is not simply one cultural construct among others; he attempts to demonstrate that the idea of absolute presence inherently contains a necessary problematic that effectively renders the idea an illusion. Derrida believes that the implications of his critique are very broad: by virtue of his critique of absolute presence, he is purporting to render problematic what he believes to be the intellectual fabric of Western civilization. Although he uses the term "metaphysics of presence" to describe the basic target of his "critique," Derrida's work cannot be simply confined to a "Continental" approach. Like Rorty, Derrida believes that the human's basic dependence on language to signify and communicate meaning in thought and experience carries with it insurmountable problems for those humans who pursue certain knowledge of "reality." Whereas Rorty uses the terms epistemology and ontology to critique the Anglo-American analytic tradition, Derrida, being of a different philosophical tradition, writes of metaphysics. While he writes from "within" the so-called Continental tradition, Derrida,
150 like Rorty, intends his critique to have significance beyond his philosophical tradition. Unlike Rorty, however, Derrida is not aiming essentially at the academic tradition of philosophy. Although philosophy is his primary means, he assumes that philosophical ideas are ideas that, while originating as intellectual concerns in the thought of ancient Greek philosophers, permeate Western thought in general. It is these ideas, rather than philosophy per se, that Derrida is most concerned with. Moreover, Derrida asserts that "everyday language is not innocent or neutral. It is the language of Western metaphysics . . ." (4) Thus, he means to make a much broader statement than does Rorty. Derrida's early works articulate his basic argument; his later works are attempts to apply his argument by deconstruction of various foundational texts. This argument is found in its most extensive and detailed exposition in Of Grammatology (1976) (5). Even a summation of this complicated, and rather elliptical, argument requires some carefully chosen detail. After analyzing the key elements of Derrida's position, I will delve into the implications of his position for the meaning of "educated person" and the idea of "knowledge its own end." Derrida claims that philosophers of what he calls the Western "epoch," from the time of ancient Greece across modernity, have been concerned with the status of speech and writing relative to the idea of absolute: Even when the thing, the "referent," is not immediately related to the logos of a creator God where it began by being the spoken/thought sense, the signified has at any rate an immediate relationship with the logos in general (finite or infinite), and a mediated one with the signifier, that is to say with the exteriority of writing. When it seems to go otherwise, it is because a metaphoric mediation has insinuated itself into the relation and simulated immediacy: the writing of truth in the
151 soul, opposed by Phaedrus to bad writing (writing in the "literal" (propre) and ordinary sense, "sensible" writing, "in space"), the book of Nature and God's writing, especially in the Middle Ages; all that functions as metaphor in these discourses confirms the privilege of the logos and founds the "literal" meaning then given to writing: a sign signifying a signifier itself signifying an eternal verity, eternally thought and spoken in the proximity of a present logos (6). One of Derrida's basic claims is that across Western intellectual history speech has been accorded a superior status to writing on the basis that speech is a natural medium (7). Derrida claims that the conventional idea of signification, and thus knowledge of reality, has always been predicated on the idea of absolute as presence (as "is" or as "that which is") that is revealed by pure speech. Writing, in contrast, has been relegated to an inferior role, as "a sign signifying a signifier itself signifying . . . an eternal verity, eternally thought and spoken in the proximity of a present logos." (8) Human speech is thought to be "natural," he claims, because it is the product of the "authentic" human voice. Since the vocal chords are a part of the human being, and since the human voice (including one's "inner voice") expresses a human thought at virtually the same moment that the human forms the thought, speech has typically held a special status as a signifier of knowledge in the minds of philosophers and writers. Speech is a signifier that is directly connected with, or present to, human thought. As such, speech is the natural means by which intellectual experience of reality is manifested; speech is so close to that actual experience that it is "discrepant by the time of a breath from the order of the signifier." (9) Thus, speech has a natural bond to thought that apprehends reality: it affords the human the capacity to pronounce, within itself and to others, the realization of knowledge nearly coincident with the moment of its realization in the mind. To be a knower is to speak the truth.
In contrast, graphic writing is twice
152 removed from human cognition: it is a signifier and it is "exterior" to, and wholly separate from, the mind. That which is written is an artifact outside thought, whereas speech is naturally bonded to thought. Writing is tainted by its deviation from human intellect. Being a signifier on the page instead of "interior" to the knower, writing is liable to depart from knowledge of reality (10). Derrida is struck by the lengths that many philosophers go to make a sharp distinction between writing and speech. He places particular importance in their alleged general tendency to assign writing a grossly inferior place relative to speech as a signifier of knowledge of reality, to the point that writing is sometimes characterized as evil and impure. In his readings of Plato, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, and many others, Derrida claims to reveal their attempts to insulate, and thus purify, speech as the "natural" signifier that is intimate with reality. Most importantly, Derrida's intricate analysis of their texts purports to demonstrate that, far from succeeding in "drawing" this distinction, these thinkers are unable to avoid using metaphors derived from writing in order to have human speech manifest knowledge of reality. For Derrida, the implications of this alleged problematic are profound. The apparently inescapable infiltration of the idea of writing into the idea of speech (and vice versa) is not a large scale linguistic or logical error that can be cleaned up by analytic reason. Rather, it is a paradox of signification that renders the idea of knowledge, where "knowledge" is the signification of that which is essentially present to a properly attuned mind, illusory. This logocentrism, this epoch of the full speech, has always placed in parenthesis, suspended, and suppressed for essential reasons, all free reflection on the origin and status of writing, all science of writing which was not technology and the history of a
153 technique, itself leaning upon a mythology and a metaphor of natural writing (11). Derrida argues that the unjustified superiority of speech over writing reached a new zenith with the advent of modern philosophy. This occurred when knowledge became articulated as "self-presence," that is, as presence that is revealed to an attentive and clear-minded knower or subject. "In the history of this treatment, the most decisive separation appears at the moment when, at the same time as the science of nature, the determination of absolute presence is constituted as self-presence, as subjectivity . . ." (12) To understand the basis for Derrida's claim that this relation is inherently problematic, one must understand the implications that he derives from some principles of structural linguistics, especially the theoretical work of Ferdinand de Saussure. Derrida claims that the distinction that Saussure and others make between signified (the medieval signatum), and signifier (signans), as complementary elements of a unified sign, is simply a recent reiteration of the philosophical prioritization of speech over writing: The signatum always referred, as to its referent, to a res, to an entity created or at any rate first thought and spoken, thinkable and speakable, in the eternal present of the divine logos and specifically in its breath. If it came to relate to the speech of a finite being . . . through the intermediary of a signans, the signatum had an immediate relationship with the divine logos which thought it within presence . . . And for modern linguistics . . . the signifier is a meaning thinkable in principle within the full presence of an intuitive consciousness (13). Of similar importance for Derrida is Saussure's assertion that the meaning of any sign is essentially a function of how it differs from other signs. For Saussure, this claim means that for any sign, the association of a particular signifier and a particular signified is arbitrary, purely a matter of convention.
154 The elements of signification function not by virtue of the compact force of their cores but by the network of oppositions that distinguish them and relate them to one another. "Arbitrary and differential" says Saussure, "are two correlative qualities." As the condition for signification, this principle of difference affects the whole sign, that is, both the signified and the signifying aspects . . . The first consequence to be drawn from this is that the signified concept is never present in itself, in an adequate presence that would refer only to itself. Every concept is necessarily and essentially inscribed in a chain or a system, within which it refers to another and to other concepts, by the systematic play of differences . . . . . . it is clear that the differences have been produced, they are the effects produced, but effects that do not have as their cause a subject or substance, a thing in general, or a being that is somewhere present and itself escapes the play of difference (14). For Saussure, then, meaning for a given sign emerges as the differentiation of that sign from other signs. In other words, a sign has no intrinsic, autonomous meaning, and a signifier is not a transparent revelation of an essential signified (15). Now, Derrida claims that within this scheme Saussure nevertheless privileged human speech as a form of signifier on the basis that speech, as the form of signifier produced by the human voice, has a "natural bond" with logos. In contrast, the form of signifier that is writing has "the exteriority that one attributes to utensils." (16) Most importantly, Derrida claims that Saussure is simply reiterating, in terms of modern structural linguistics, a basic tenet of the Western educated person: "my quarry is not primarily Ferdinand de Saussure's intention or motivation, but rather the entire uncritical tradition which he inherits." (17) The tradition is uncritical because it does not question the basis for its belief that writing is "a deviation from nature." (18) Saussure takes up the traditional definition of writing which, already in Plato and Aristotle, was restricted to the model of
155 phonetic script and the language of words. Let us recall the Aristotelian definition: "Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words." Saussure: "Language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first." . . . This representative determination . . . does not betray a psychological or metaphysical presupposition peculiar to Saussure; it describes or rather reflects the structure of a certain type of writing: phonetic writing, which we use and within whose element the episteme in general (science and philosophy), and linguistics in particular, could be founded . . . (19) Now the apex of Derrida's argument is the following. The position that assigns writing the subordinate role of graphic substitution for speech, yet claims that signs are essentially arbitrary and take on meaning by their differences, reveals something important about writing in the very attempt to minimize it. The idea signified by the word "writing" implies a human activity that is considerably broader than being simply a graphic substitution for speech: The thesis of the arbitrariness of the sign . . . must forbid a radical distinction between the linguistic and the graphic sign . . . Now from the moment that one considers the totality of determined signs, spoken and a fortiori written, as unmotivated institutions, one must exclude any relationship of natural subordination, any natural hierarchy among signifiers or orders of signifiers. If "writing" signifies inscription and especially the durable institution of a sign (and that is the only irreducible kernel of the concept of writing), writing in general covers the entire field of linguistic signs. In that field a certain sort of instituted signifiers may then appear, "graphic" in the narrow and derivative sense of the word, ordered by a certain relationship with other instituted--hence "written," even if they are "phonic"-signifiers. The very idea of institution--hence of the arbitrariness of the sign--is unthinkable before the possibility of writing and outside of its horizon . . . ... The thesis of the arbitrariness of the sign thus indirectly but irrevocably contests Saussure's declared proposition when he chases writing to the outer darkness of language . . . (20)
156 Derrida is claiming here that the Saussurian notion of the arbitrariness of signs is derived from the notion, which Derrida alleges goes back at least to Socrates, that writing in its most basic sense is "inscription . . . especially the durable institution of a sign." Therefore, argues Derrida, the traditional, narrow idea of writing, of writing as the graphic inscription of phonos at a second remove from logos, is only one case of a broader notion of writing, "writing in general," or inscription, that encompasses phonos: "speech . . . is already in itself a writing." (21) Since the essential arbitrariness of signs implies that the act of signification is a human invention, rather than an act of natural necessity, then, in a sense, human thought, language, and expression is inscription "before" it is anything else, whether the event under consideration is a speech act or some other act. Thus, goes his argument, the Western predilection that he calls "phonocentrism," and the accompanying degradation of writing to mere mimetic stand-in for speech, are unjustified. In the key essay "Differance" (1968) Derrida makes this argument directly against the position that writing is purely graphe or "phonetic writing": There is no purely and strictly phonetic writing. What is called phonetic writing can only function--in principle and de jure, and not due to some factual and technical inadequacy--by incorporating nonphonetic "signs" (punctuation, spacing, etc.); but when we examine their structure and necessity, we will quickly see that they are ill described by the concept of signs. Saussure had only to remind us that the play of difference was the functional condition, the condition of possibility, for every sign; and it is itself silent. The difference between two phonemes, which enables them to exist and to operate, is inaudible. The inaudible opens the two present phonemes to hearing, as they present themselves. If, then, there is no purely phonetic writing, it is because there is no purely phonetic phone.
157 The difference that brings out phonemes and lets them be heard and understood (entendre) itself remains inaudible (22). The idea that writing is purely an exterior mark for speech is contradicted by the fact that graphic writing requires elements, such as spacing and punctuation marks, that are not phonetic. Just as these elements serve to indicate differences between words in written text, yet convey no meaning in themselves, the difference in sound between spoken words gives spoken words meaning but conveys no meaning in itself. Most importantly, this condition, that difference in both cases is requisite for meaning but is in itself absent, or outside meaning in itself, indicates that the idea of pure presence is a fiction. Difference is both necessary for there to be meaning and a necessary condition that belies ultimate meaning. It will perhaps be objected that, for the same reasons, the graphic difference itself sinks into darkness . . . That is no doubt true . . . this happily suggests that we must here let ourselves be referred to an order that no longer refers to sensibility. But we are not referred to intelligibility either . . . We must be referred to an order, then, that resists philosophy's founding opposition between the sensible and the intelligible. The order that resists this opposition, that resists it because it sustains it, is designated in a movement of differance (with an a) . . . This differance . . . takes place . . . between speech and writing . . . (23) Derrida creates the word "differance" to signify this necessary condition that he claims exists, conceptually and practically, between speech and writing such that their relative priority, on the basis that one purely signifies truth, is "undecidable." In French, the "correct" spelling of the word "difference" is like the English, with an e. Derrida deliberately spells the word with the letter a to make a rhetorical point: in French, differance is pronounced the same as difference, yet they are not identical. The distinction is "purely graphic: it is written or read, but it is not heard." (24) Thus,
158 Derrida designates "differance" to signify his position that speech and writing mutually imply each other without resolution: they imply a "sameness which is not identical." (25) Differance, Deconstruction, and General Writing Derrida asserts that "Differance is neither a word nor a concept" in any conventional sense (26). Further, "differance is not, does not exist, and it is not any sort of being-present . . . it has neither existence nor essence. It belongs to no category of being, present or absent. " (27) Derrida is careful not to make truth claims about differance: differance is itself subject to deconstruction, it is never pure: "Differance produces what it forbids, makes possible the very thing that it makes impossible." (28) Differance is then the same, but not identical with, other Derridian deconstructive terms like trace, supplement, and gramme. Rather than being about knowledge of reality, differance signifies what I have called a "condition" that Derrida claims necessarily occurs in the effort to make philosophical distinctions that purport to be absolute. More specifically, by "differance," Derrida signifies two conditions that emerge in any effort to make absolute determinations (29). I will refer to the speech/writing opposition to explain and illustrate these alleged conditions. The first condition that differance signifies is simply Saussure's claim that a sign takes on meaning by virtue of its difference from other signs: speech has meaning in terms of its difference from writing, and vice versa. The second condition is what Derrida calls "deferral." Since speech is constituted with reference to writing, speech as a full, "pure," or autonomous idea is necessarily deferred (and vice versa): there is no pure sign. The alleged necessity of these two conditions is what Derrida means by the statement
159 that differance signifies a "sameness that is not identical." (30). "In the one case "to differ" signifies nonidentity; in the other case it signifies the order of the same." (31) Speech and writing are not entirely distinct, nor are they identical. Further, these conditions reflect there being no sharp distinction between signifier and signified. The idea of pure speech is the idea of a fully transparent, or "pure," signifier, a signifier that can simply reveal reality as it absolutely is, or what Derrida calls the "transcendental signified." (32) Since writing infiltrates speech, and vice versa, there is no form of signifier that simply mirrors something that is absolutely not itself a signifier. Thus, the unit of signification, the sign, which depends on the sharp distinction between its elements, the signifier and the signified, is disorganized. With it, the foundation of signification, the idea that there is something that is not a sign, namely, an absolute foundation, is rendered problematic. Most importantly, Derrida asserts that the condition of differance cannot be resolved: there is no Hegelian synthesis, but rather an endless "play" of opposing terms. Having "found" the basic condition of differance in the opposition speech/writing, Derrida, in a kind of inversion of the Cartesian generalization of clear and distinct ideas from cogito ergo sum, claims that this condition exists in many other philosophical "hierarchies" that purport to make absolute distinctions, such as good/evil, intelligible/sensible, mind/body, reason/passion, and nature/culture. The operation Derrida calls "deconstruction" is a "strategy" by which Derrida claims to reveal this condition as a consequence of the logic of a given philosophical or literary text (33). Deconstruction reveals differance by a so-called "double gesture." Derrida inverts the hierarchy that is claimed in a given text, by showing how
160 the allegedly superior (in the sense of desirable, or good, or true) term presupposes, in some sense, the inferior term. What seems inferior is, in that sense, actually superior according to the logic (or illogic) of the text. He then displaces or disrupts the entire opposition on the basis that what was claimed to be purely inferior is, by the very logic of the text, partially superior (34). In other words, displacement is the destruction of what had been alleged or implied to be a stable hierarchy. The effect is to disorganize the hierarchy of the opposition without destroying it. Derrida is not arguing that what was thought to be essentially or naturally superior is in fact essentially or naturally inferior. Rather, he is asserting that a pure distinction, such that either term is wholly "above" the other term of an opposition, cannot be justified in a literal reading of a given text. Thus, he is not asserting that, for example, writing is wholly superior to speech as a form of signification. In a sense, "writing in general," or "institution," is indeed superior to speech, for reasons that I have already described. Yet this superiority is incomplete: speech is partially "prior" to writing within the context of Saussure's reasoning. (35) What is intolerable and fascinating is indeed the intimacy intertwining image and thing, graph, i.e., and phone, to the point where by a mirroring, inverting, and perverting effect, speech seems in its turn the speculum of writing, which "manages to usurp the main role." Representation mingles with what it represents, to the point where one speaks as one writes, one thinks as if the represented were nothing more than the shadow or reflection of the representer . . . In this play of representation, the point of origin becomes ungraspable (36). Thus, "writing in general," like differance, is supposedly not another absolute foundation. Yet writing in general is very important to Derrida's approach to analyzing texts; sometimes he even calls it arche-writing, though he is quick to disclaim that this designation means that it is true (37).
161 "Arche" signifies that general writing is the writing of differance: it indicates that for Derrida knowledge of the pervasiveness of writing in general is not an absolute, because it too is subject to differance. What, then, is "writing in general," or what I have just called "the writing of differance," beyond "inscription and especially the durable institution of a sign"? (38) Early in Grammatology, Derrida asserts that the word "writing" in the general sense is a de facto contemporary phenomenon, readily apparent in a wide variety of cultural realms of expression and action: we tend to say "writing" . . . to designate not only the physical gestures of literal pictographic or ideographic inscription, but also the totality of what makes that possible; and also, beyond the signifying face, the signified face itself. And thus we say "writing" for all that gives rise to an inscription in general, whether it is literal or not and even if what it distributes in space is alien to the order of the voice: cinematography, choreography, of course, but also pictorial musical, sculptural "writing." One might also speak of athletic writing, and . . . military or political writing . . . All this to describe not only the system of notation secondarily connected with these activities but the essence and the content of these activities themselves . . . the contemporary biologist speaks of writing and pro-gram in relation to the most elementary processes of information within the living cell . . . the entire field covered by the cybernetic program will be the field of writing . . . Even before being determined as human . . . or nonhuman, the gramme--or the grapheme--would thus name the element (39). Later, he asserts that the idea of general writing revealed by deconstruction of the philosophical speech/writing opposition is not writing as philosophers and scientists would conceive it: the alleged derivativeness of writing, however real and massive, was possible only on one condition: that the "original," "natural," etc. language had never existed, never been intact and untouched by writing, that it had itself always been a writing. An arche-writing which . . . I continue to call writing only because it essentially conveys the vulgar concept of writing . . . . . . This arche-writing, although its concept is invoked by
162 the themes of "the arbitrariness of the sign" and of difference, cannot and can never be recognized as the object of a science. It is that very thing which cannot let itself be reduced to the form of presence (40). In the interview "Implications" (1967) Derrida states that "the play of differance . . . prevents any word, any concept, any major enunciation from coming to summarize and to govern from the theological presence of a center the movement and textual spacing of differences." (41) In "Differance" he claims that "there is no name for this . . . not even the name "differance," which is not a name, which is not a pure nominal unity, and continually breaks up in a chain of different substitutions . . . What is unnamable here is not some ineffable being . . . What is unnamable is the play . . . What we do know . . . is that there never has been and never will be a unique word, a master name (42). In the essay, "Freud and the Scene of Writing" (1966) Derrida asserts: "The 'subject' of writing does not exist if we mean by that some sovereign solitude of the author. The subject of writing is a system of relations between strata: the Mystic Pad, the psyche, society, the world." (43) In the interview "Positions" (1971) Derrida explains further: On the one hand, the signifier is a positive lever: thus I define writing as the impossibility of a chain arresting itself on a signified that would not relaunch this signified, in that the signified is already in the position of the signifying substitution. In this phase of overturning, one opposes, insistently, the pole of the signifier to the dominant authority of the signified. But this necessary overturning is also insufficient . . . the word "signifier" leads us back to or retains us in a logocentric circle (44). He also states that "writing" and "text" are not reducible either to the sensible or visible presence of the graphic or the "literal." (45) In the interview "Semiology and Grammatology" (1968) Derrida explicitly identifies the "new concept of writing" with
163 gram or differance. The play of differences supposes, in effect, syntheses and referrals which forbid at any moment, or in any sense, that a simple element be present in and of itself, referring only to itself. Whether in the order of spoken or written discourse, no element can function as a sign without referring to another element which itself is not simply present . . . This interweaving, this textile, is the text produced only in the transformation of another text. Nothing . . . is anywhere ever simply present or absent. There are only, everywhere, differences and traces of traces . . . semiology . . . thus becomes grammatology . . . The gram as differance, then, is a structure and a movement no longer conceivable on the basis of the opposition presence/absence (46). General writing is then "the "generative movement in the play of differences. The latter are neither fallen from the sky nor inscribed once and for all in a closed system . . . Differences are the effects of transformations . . . (47) In a 1968 interview, he states: As for the question of differance as "source of everything," you also wonder what it is. First of all, differance is not a source, it is not an origin . . . To ask about differance a question of origin or a question of essence, to ask oneself "What is it?" is to return abruptly to the closure which I am attempting, with difficulty, laboriously and obliquely, to "leave." Moreover, "leave" is here a metaphor which does not satisfy me. It is less a question of jumping with both feet out of a circle than of scribing, of describing the elliptical deformation by which perhaps a circle may repeat itself while referring to itself (48). General writing is then the engagement of differance: to engage in writing is to elicit and produce the "play" of differance across and between culturally given dichotomies, pillars of Western culture that, claims Derrida, do not insulate the true from the false but implicate each in the other, thereby implicating intellectual and cultural foundations. The well-educated person, according to Derrida, would follow his general project: to think through the ontological difference . . . to prepare ourselves for venturing beyond our own logos . . . is neither to
164 give up this passage through the truth of Being, nor is it in any way to "criticize," "contest," or fail to recognize the incessant necessity for it. On the contrary, we must stay within the difficulty of this passage; we must repeat this passage in a rigorous reading of metaphysics . . . and not only in the texts of "the history of philosophy." Here we must allow. . . a trace of something that can never present itself . . . (49) It is not, therefore, a matter of inverting the literal meaning and the figurative meaning but of determining the "literal" meaning of writing as metaphoricity itself (50). However, if the educated person expresses meaning as metaphoricity, what is the meaning of intellectual life? In the absence of belief in the progress toward absolute knowledge, what does it mean "to know"? Is differance a pursuit? Wherein lies its intrinsic worth, if any, of differance as a subject/object of thought? If "The end of linear writing is indeed the end of the book," what is the value of Derridian intellectual practice? (51) It seems that the opposition between critical and creative intellect, between reason and style, and the hierarchy within higher learning that sharply distinguishes these signs, and marginalizes the latter terms, would be deconstructed. Along with this deconstruction goes the object that, to whatever degree it may be largely ignored, qualified, or "unknown" in actual scholarly practice, seems to remain a basis of definition: the idea of knowledge of reality. The scholar as subject would likewise appear to go: But can we not conceive of a presence and self-presence of the subject before speech or its signs, a subject's self-presence in a silent and intuitive consciousness? Such a question therefore presupposes that prior to signs and outside them . . . something such as consciousness is possible . . . What then is consciousness? What does consciousness mean? Most often. . . consciousness in all its modifications is conceivable only as self-presence, a selfperception of presence. And what holds for consciousness also holds for what is called subjective existence in general. Just as the category of subject is not and never has been conceivable
165 without reference to presence as hypokeimenon or ousia, etc., so the subject as consciousness has never been able to be evinced otherwise than as self-presence (52). Implications of Differance, Deconstruction, and "General Writing" for the Ideas of Knowledge for "its own sake" and Well-Educated Person Among the postmodern thinkers that I have analyzed in this inquiry, Derrida poses the most difficult challenge to the idea of objective knowledge. Differance, "neither a foundations, nor a ground, nor an origin," is a condition that is activated whenever discourse points toward "the transcendental signified." (53) Derrida claims that Western intellectual traditions typically point in that direction. If one takes Derrida on his own terms (which his critics often resolutely and, I think, rather uncritically, refuse to do), then it would seem that the knower is stuck between undecidable theoretical oppositions (54). These oppositions have functioned as the foundational constructs upon which the modern idea of knowledge is predicated. For Derrida, the language of knowledge of reality is circular: every signified is a signifier, and vice versa. Rather than finding freedom in the pursuit of knowledge, the seeker of knowledge, the human being that speaks for logos, is stuck in the "circle of logocentrism." If that is all that Derrida gives the well-educated person, then perhaps a charge of nihilism would be justified. Yet Derrida is not spending his professional life simply negating Western theoretical foundations. He is carefully attempting to work toward a postmodern idea of thought and discourse: "I do not believe, that someday it will be possible simply to escape metaphysics . . . " (55) Certainly a new conceptualization is to be produced, but it must take into account the fact that conceptualization itself . . . can reintroduce what one wants to "criticize." This is why this word
166 cannot be purely "theoretical" or "conceptual" or "discursive," I mean cannot be the work of a discourse entirely regulated by essence, meaning, truth, consciousness, ideality, etc. What I call text is also that which "practically" inscribes and overflows the limits of such a discourse (56). It is an idea of thought and discourse that is not thought and discourse as they are construed by modern thinkers: "if there is thought--and there is . . . then whatever will continue to be called thought, and which, for example, will designate the deconstruction of logocentrism, means nothing, for in the last analysis it no longer derives from meaning." (57) In his later work, Derrida is attempting to tease out the implications of his thesis, by engaging classical and modern texts in deconstructive strategies with his notion of general writing (58). In so doing, he is challenging just about everything foundational in Western thought and discourse, and not only in the sense of an object of thought independent of particular social foundations. He is aiming at the philosophical ideas that permeate Western intellectual foundations, including the social. Coincident with this deconstruction, he is carefully attempting to move language out of the idea of true and false, to another way of thought and discourse, without assuming that the way through knowledge of reality is simply realized. The logocentric circle cannot be evaded: it must be worked through. Derrida works within the "metaphysics of presence" to deconstruct it, rather than imagining a leap around or "outside" it. He recognizes and respects the depth and rigor of the intellectual foundations that he is trying move beyond. The very fact that he focuses his critique on those figures that are widely regarded as foundational to Western thought reflects that he is a part of that tradition: the texts that he deconstructs are valued by him because he knows that the ideas they express are important.
167 However, differance is not a substitute for the object. It is a condition that necessarily confronts the knower as soon as the knower seeks to know. It is not simply a question of the object as being absent, because for Derrida there is no simple absence. The idea of knowledge is stuck between presence and absence. Similarly, Derrida is not saying that knowledge is simply cultural. The cultural is the inferior term of a hierarchical opposition with the natural (59). The same is the case with the historical. Although knowledge of reality as presence is an idea that Derrida associates with the Western "epoch," it is not an objective manifestation of an inexorable, general "movement" of history. Nor is it a contingent product of a particular historical moment (60). The problem that Derrida leaves for others, then, is how to address the idea of a foundation for higher education if "absolute" is problematic. Differance suggests that if absolute is a concept that educated people are implicitly tied to in the form of general theory, then absolute is also prominent in modern intellectual practice, since theory is produced by intellectual practice. This means that a postmodern notion of higher education requires, first, a speculative determination of how the idea of absolute is prominent in practice within the modern university. Second, the prominence of this idea must be displaced without eradicating the idea entirely, since differance means that the idea of a foundation cannot be simply erased. Thus, the postmodern university would have some kind of foundation. However, it would be flexible in a way that an absolute foundation is not. In the effort to work "through" the idea of absolute, one seeks to extend the idea of intellectual purpose beyond the determination of knowledge of reality.
168 This extension of intellectual purpose would be akin to Derrida's notion of "general writing" or "institution." Just as Derrida attempts to displace what he claims is the dominance of speech, and knowledge of reality as presence enunciated over the idea of writing, by arguing the that speech can be construed as an instance of a generalized notion of writing, a postmodern notion of intellectual purpose informed by differance would displace the dominance of the pursuit of knowledge of reality by construing it as a particular instance of a generalized notion of intellectual purpose. The aim is to expand the idea of the well-educated person beyond limiting its intellectual purpose to the pursuit of knowledge of reality. That does not mean that the pursuit of knowledge is simply rejected. To entirely reject the idea of knowledge would be inconsistent with differance, since it would imply an absolute claim of absence. One would then be making an absolute truth-claim. "We know what always have been the practical (particularly political) effects of immediately jumping beyond oppositions, and of protests in the simple form of neither this nor that." (61) Rather then being stuck in these extremes, a postmodern notion of higher education informed by the notion of differance would think of the pursuit of knowledge of reality as only one element of a more generalized notion of intellectual purpose. Derrida asserts that any determination occurs only within differance: "undecidability is always a determinate oscillation between possibilities (for example, of meaning, but also of facts). These possibilities are themselves . . . pragmatically determined." (62) For the Derridian, one does not think for knowledge of reality and thereby live truthfully; rather, in living this way, one perpetuates distinctions that may harm as well as preserve and advance "civilization."
169 This night begins to lighten a little at the moment when linearity--which is not loss or absence but the repression of pluri-dimensional symbolic thought--relaxes its oppression because it begins to sterilize the technical and scientific economy that it has long favored (63). "The end of the book" is not the end of intellectual thought. Differance notwithstanding, Derrida promises that the "deconstruction of logocentrism" will be accomplished through thought, even though postmodern thought as such will not have meaning in itself (64) The question that Derrida leaves for others, then, is what this generalized notion of intellectual purpose for its own sake would be, how the idea of a foundation would be retained with it, and what this means for the organization of the pursuit of knowledge in higher education. I will pursue these questions in Part Three. In chapter V, I will locate a way in which the notion of absolute is predominant in modern intellectual practice and develop an idea that displaces this predominance without removing the idea of a foundation. I will argue that this displacement requires a generalized notion of intellectual purpose that creates a space for theoretical practice outside the disciplines. In chapter VI, I will construct a postmodern philosophical framework, consistent with the themes that I have culled from my analyses of the postmodern philosophers in Part Two, that can sustain this space while retaining the disciplines in an altered form. The manner of this construction is the development of a vocabulary based on a postmodern interpretation of important terms that modern trends tend to associate with the idea of having knowledge of reality. In chapter VII, I will then apply this philosophical framework to describe what higher education would look like and develop it further in the context of interdisciplinarity. Further, I will use this postmodern philosophical framework and its application to answer the questions that emerged in my analyses of Lyotard,
170 Rorty, Schrag, Foucault, and Derrida. These answers will culminate in a consideration of postmodern notions of "knowledge its own end" and "welleducated person." The Epilogue will describe what a postmodern university and intellectual community based on this inquiry would be like for those who would work and learn there.
171
Notes to Chapter IV
Foucault: the Human Subject as a Strategy of Power-Knowledge 1.
Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 81. Also in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977). There is a large number of books on Foucault's philosophy. The best is still Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition, 1983). Others of note include Gary Gutting, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Todd May, Between Genealogy and Epistemology: Psychology, Politics, and Knowledge in the Thought of Michel Foucault (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993); Martin Kusch, Foucault's Strata and Fields: An Investigation into Archaeological and Genealogical Science Studies (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1991); James W. Bernauer, Michel Foucault's Force of Flight: Toward an Ethics for Thought (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International, 1990); Gary Gutting, Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Gilles Deleuze, Foucault (London: Athlone, 1988); Jonathan Arac, ed., After Foucault: Humanistic Knowledge, Postmodern Challenges (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988); James Bernauer and David Rasmussen, eds., The Final Foucault (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988); Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain, Michel Foucault (London: Macmillan,
172 1984). There are two collections of essays that begin to think about some implications of Foucault's idea of power for education. Several essays implicate power in analytic philosophy, the transmission of knowledge, and the natural sciences: Chuck Dyke, "Extralogical Excavation: Philosophy in the Age of Shovelry," Mary Schmelzer, "Panopticism and Postmodern Pedagogy," and Joseph Rouse, "Foucault and the Natural Sciences," in John Caputo and Mark Yount, eds., Foucault and the Critique of Institutions (University Park, Pa: Pennsylvania University Press, 1993), 101-162. A collection of essays by British educators uses power as a starting point for critiques of the allegedly oppressive nature of British public schools. Stephen J. Ball, ed., Foucault and Education: Disciplines and Knowledge (London: Routledge, 1990). 2.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1979), 27-8.
3.
Michel Foucault, "Truth and Power" in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Random House, 1980), 132.
4.
Michel Foucault, "The Subject and Power," afterword in Hubert L. Dreyfus, and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition, 1983), 212.
5.
ibid.
6.
ibid, 222.
7.
Michel Foucault, "The Eye of Power," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 159.
8.
Michel Foucault, "Two Lectures," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 98.
9.
"The Subject and Power", 219.
173 10.
"Truth and Power", 119, and "Two Lectures," 97.
11.
ibid, 98.
12.
Michel Foucault, "Questions on Geography," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 73-4.
13.
"Two Lectures," 98.
14.
"The Subject and Power", 220.
15.
ibid, 221.
16.
"Two Lectures," 93.
17.
"Truth and Power," 119.
18.
"Two Lectures," 101-2.
19.
"Two Lectures," 101.
20.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1979).
21.
ibid, 141-69.
22.
"Two Lectures," 102.
23.
"Body/Power," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 61.
24.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 137.
25.
"Two Lectures," 106-7.
26.
"Truth and Power," 118.
27.
"The Subject and Power," 212.
28.
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 194.
29.
Foucault defines episteme as "the total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences, and possibly formalized systems . . . The episteme is not a form of knowledge or type of rationality . . .it is the totality ofrelations that can be discovered, for a given period, between the sciences when one analyzes them
174 at the level of discursive regularities." The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 191. Dispositef (translated as "apparatus"), which supplanted episteme in Foucault's later work, includes non-discursive as well as discursive practices. Foucault describes dispositef as "firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions--in short, the said as much as the unsaid . . . The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements. Secondly, what I am trying to identify in this apparatus is precisely the nature of the connection that can exist between these heterogeneous elements . . . Thirdly, I understand by the term "apparatus" a . . . formation which has as its major function at a given historical moment that of responding to an urgent need. The apparatus thus has a dominant strategic function." "The Confession of the Flesh," in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 194-5. 30.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 305.
31.
Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. R. Howard (New York: Random House, 1965). The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Random House, 1975).
32.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Random House, 1978); Volume 2: The Use of Pleasure, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Random House, 1985); Volume 3: The Care of the Self, trans. R. Hurley (New York: Random House, 1986).
33.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 296.
34.
"The Subject and Power," 208.
175 35.
ibid, 212.
36.
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, trans. A. Sheridan (London: Tavistock, 1970).
37.
ibid, 344.
38.
ibid, chapter 10.
39.
ibid, 344-5.
40.
ibid, 345-6.
41.
ibid, 350, 351.
42.
ibid, 362.
43.
ibid, 352-3.
44.
ibid, 353.
45.
ibid, 356-7.
46.
ibid, 362.
47.
ibid, 363.
48.
ibid, 364.
49.
ibid, 363.
50.
ibid, 366-7.
51.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, 226.
52.
"Truth and Power," 109.
53.
ibid, 133.
54.
Michel Foucault, "Interview w/Lucette Finas," in Michel Foucault: Power, Truth, Strategy, ed. M. Morris and P. Patton (Sydney: Feral, 1979), 75.
55.
"The Subject and Power," 208.
56.
"Two Lectures," 95-8, 103-4; Michel Foucault, "Revolutionary Action: Until Now," in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, 221-2.
176 57.
Michel Foucault, "Intellectuals and Power," in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, 207-8. See also "Truth and Power," 126-33.
58.
The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences, 386-7.
59.
Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, 137-8.
60.
Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 82-3.
61.
"The Subject and Power," 212.
Derrida: the Promise and Problem of Differance 1.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 3. Chakravorty Spivak's introduction is a widely regarded introduction to Derrida's thought. It provides illuminating comparisons and contrasts between Derrida and Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, and others. Other standard introductions that do the same are Christopher Norris, Derrida (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987) and Hilary Lawson, Reflexivity: The Post-Modern Predicament (London: Hutchinson, 1985). Substantive philosophical critiques of Derrida are John Sallis, ed., Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Rodolphe Gasche, The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986); David Wood and Robert Bernasconi, eds., Derrida and Differance (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988); and J. Claude Evans, Strategies of Deconstruction: Derrida and the Myth of the Voice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). The limited but growing attention paid to Derrida by philosophers is generally due to the "analytic" and "Continental" philosophical divide (See note 53 below). There
177 are many other books on Derrida that approach him from a variety of perspectives; most often, he is analyzed by English and American scholars in terms of his implications for the study and critique of literature. One noteworthy example is Jonathan Culler's critically regarded On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), a particularly detailed exposition of Derrida's deconstructive strategies. Another is Eve Tavor Bannet's Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent: Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989). Tavor Bannet examines Derrida and some other notable French poststructuralists with particular attention for understanding them in terms of their distinctly French intellectual and socio-cultural contexts. Her exposition suffers, however, from its attempt to import alienation, a modern notion, in order to illuminate poststructuralist thought. The idea of alienation presumes the possibility of individual autonomy, which, as I have made clear in my analysis of Foucault, is rejected by poststructuralists. Foucault, for example, would describe the concept of alienation, whether of the Marxist or existentialist variety, as a modern myth that perpetuates, rather than names, totalization. 2.
Of Grammatology, 10.
3.
Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).
4.
Jacques Derrida, "Semiology and Grammatology," in Positions, trans. Alan Bass, (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1981), 19.
5.
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976).
6.
ibid, 14-15.
7.
ibid, 10-18.
178 8.
ibid, 15.
9.
ibid, 18.
10.
ibid, 29-41.
11.
ibid, 43.
12.
ibid, 16-17.
13.
ibid, 73.
14.
Jacques Derrida, "Differance," in Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 139-41. Another translation of this essay can be found in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 1-27.
15.
ibid, 133, 139-140.
16.
Of Grammatology, 34.
17.
ibid, 45-6.
18.
ibid, 38, 30-41; "Semiology and Grammatology," 21-5.
19.
ibid, 30.
20.
ibid, 44-5.
21.
ibid, 46.
22.
"Differance," 133.
23.
ibid, 133-4.
24,
ibid, 132.
25.
ibid, 129.
26.
ibid, 130.
27.
ibid, 134.
28.
Of Grammatology, 143.
29.
"Differance," 136-52.
30.
ibid, 129.
179 31.
ibid.
32.
Cf. "Semiology and Grammatology," 19.
33.
"Differance," 135.
34.
Cf. Derrida's essay "Positions," in Positions, 42-3.
35.
Of Grammatology, 38-9.
36.
ibid, 36.
37.
Cf. Of Grammatology, 56-7, 61-2.
38.
"Semiology and Grammatology," 44-5.
39.
Of Grammatology, 9.
40.
ibid, 56-7.
41.
Jacques Derrida, "Implications," in Positions, 14.
42.
"Differance," 159.
43.
Jacques Derrida, "Freud and the Scene of Writing," in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 226-7.
44.
"Positions," 82; Of Grammatology, part I, chapter 1; 324, note 9.
45.
ibid, 66.
46.
"Semiology and Grammatology," 26-7.
47.
ibid, 27.
48.
Jacques Derrida, "The Original Discussion of Differance (1968)," in David Wood and Robert Bernasconi eds., Derrida and Differance (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 84-5.
49.
"Differance," 154.
50.
Of Grammatology, 15.
51.
ibid, 86.
52.
"Differance," 146-7.
53.
"Positions," 52.
180 54.
Searle attacks Derrida and those who have been influenced by deconstruction on the basis of "the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscuratism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial." John Searle, "Reply to Louis H. Mackay," New York Review of Books 31, no. 1 (1984):48. Searle thus continues a tradition among some Anglo-American philosophers to simply refuse to consider Continental philosophers on their own terms, perhaps inaugurated by Rudolf Carnap's ridicule of Heidegger (cited in Arthur Danto, Connections to the World (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 60-2. See also Searle's "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida," Glyph 1 (1977):198-208; "The World Turned Upside Down," New York Review of Books, 30, no. 16 (1983):74-79; and Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Jonathan Culler calls Searle's position on Derrida an "egregious misunderstanding" in his book On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 112. For Derrida's reply to Searle, see Jacques Derrida, Limited, Inc. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1988). For similar criticism of Derrida, see J. Claude Evans, Strategies of Deconstruction: Derrida and the Myth of the Voice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991); Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 126-33; John Passmore, Recent Philosophers (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1990), 27-33.
55.
"Semiology and Grammatology," 17. See also Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," in Writing and Difference, 280; Jacques Derrida, "The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy before Linguistics," in Margins of Philosophy, 177; and note 59 below.
181 56.
"Positions," 59.
57.
ibid, 49.
58.
Two collections of essays in which Derrida deconstructs important philosophical and literary texts are Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), and Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). These essays are diverse deconstructive exercises based on the ideas that Derrida developed in Of Grammatology and in the aforementioned Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs. Extended deconstruction of philosophical texts is exhibited in Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles, trans. Barbara Harlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Dissemination, trans. Barbara Harlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Glas,trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986); The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); The Archeology of the Frivolous: Reading Condillac, trans. John P. Leavey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987); The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); and Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989). Most of these works use deconstructive strategies that emphasize a variety of unconventional literary nuances to deconstruct philosophical oppositions. Of course, Derrida rejects a stable distinction between philosophy and literature. Every act of general writing that Derrida engages in reflects, among other things, his incessant deconstruction of that distinction: the philosopher and the writer are the same, but not identical. It is common for Derrida to juxtapose philosophical and literary texts with his "own" in order to
182 deconstruct this very distinction; the most explicit example of this strategy is Glas. Derrida has written two rather unilluminating essays on higher education that have been translated into English. "The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of its Pupils," Diacritics (Fall, 1983): 3-20, discusses the social responsibility of universities. "Mochlos; or, The Conflict of the Faculties," in Richard Rand, ed., Logomachia: The Conflict of the Faculties (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1992), 3-34, explores this theme further, by analyzing the thought of Kant on the idea of a university. In "Canons and Metonymies: An Interview with Jacques Derrida," he discusses this topic and others further. Ibid, 195-218. 58.
Cf. "Nature, Culture, Writing" in Of Grammatology, Part II;
"Structure,
Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," in Writing and Difference, 278-93. 59.
While Derrida, like Lyotard, rejects the idea that history manifests objective truth, Derrida also states that the "necessity" of the Western discourse that he calls the metaphysics of presence "is irreducible; it is not a historical contingency." "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," 282. By "necessity," Derrida does not mean historical necessity. Rather, he means that any attempt to breach the intellectual foundations of the Western epoch must use the discourse of the metaphysics of presence because it pervades, and grounds, every Western intellectual endeavor. The postmodern intellectual is immersed in this discourse: it is the discourse that the well-educated person has been educated in, and it underlies the university and Western culture in general. It is a necessity, then, for the Derridian to work through the metaphysics of presence, if the educated person is to overcome those intellectual foundations. To borrow a phrase from Derrida, an alternative discourse does not simply "fall from the sky."
183 60.
"Positions," 41.
61.
"Afterword: Toward and Ethic of Discussion," in Limited, Inc., 148.
62.
Of Grammatology, 86.
63.
"Positions," 49.
184
PART THREE: THE POSTMODERN UNIVERSITY CHAPTER V A POSTMODERN CRITIQUE OF THE DISCIPLINES
The Absolute Foundation of Modern Higher Education: Pursuit of Knowledge of Reality as it is Already Conceived to Be In this chapter I will begin to explore implications of the idea that an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge is problematic with respect to the philosophy and practice of higher education. If the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge is problematic, the modern visions of higher education that I examined in chapter II do not in themselves justify pursuit of knowledge of reality for its own sake, since these visions ground that pursuit on an assumption of this idea. Now, one might argue that normally the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge simply does not refer to the actual practice of higher education. On this basis the postmodern position regarding absolute foundations would not bear any significant implications for that practice. In contrast, I hold that, even if one decides that the modern visions of the university already examined here do not reflect how the pursuit of knowledge is actually organized, the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge is, in effect, fundamentally implicated in the dominant modern practice of higher education. The first part of this chapter explores the meaning of such an "absolute" foundation for the dominant practice of higher education and
185 shows how it is dependent on epistemological assumptions that are currently the subject of widespread dispute. I argue that the disciplines are the core manifestation of this absolute foundation. I will then attempt to set forth a solid basis for a postmodern account of the pursuit of knowledge that would nonetheless not, in effect, be an absolute foundation. The absolute foundation underlying modern higher education is, in effect, the idea that the self-justifying cornerstone of legitimate intellectual activity in the university is pursuit of knowledge of reality as that knowledge is already conceived to be. This idea is often represented in the claim that pursuit of knowledge is "for its own sake”--that is, that it is intrinsically valuable and does not require any further extrinsic or instrumental aim. In addition, this foundation is, in its overall effect, the absolute foundation of the modern university as a whole. This absoluteness attributed to pursuit of knowledge of reality as it is already conceived to be is generally taken to be self-evident; furthermore, it is generally regarded to underlie all the other, secondary purposes of higher education. Many would argue that still other basic purposes are equally or more important, such as the reordering, critical examination and transmission of knowledge, the education of enlightened citizens, the application of knowledge to practical problems, and the training of professionals. However, it is generally held or implied that fulfillment of these other purposes is dependent on there being “sound” knowledge to transmit and apply. For this reason, the pursuit of knowledge is, in practice, considered to be foundational in its function. This is why research universities are regarded as being of the highest stature. Institutions of higher learning where research is not emphasized nevertheless seek teachers who have been educated in research universities, who have engaged in scholarly research, and who have doctoral
186 degrees reflecting knowledge of research methods and research skills. The pursuit and production of knowledge is the fundamental meaning of higher education in actual practice. The pursuit of knowledge, then, could still be considered a foundation for purely or primarily instrumental reasons relative to the other purposes that I have mentioned. In that case, the pursuit of knowledge would not provide an "absolute" foundation, because it would be determined by and defined only or chiefly in terms of instrumental ends. The position that the value of higher education is primarily instrumental has a long tradition, especially as a common belief held among many people outside the university. This position is reflected, for example, in the emergence of comprehensive universities over the last one hundred years, in the widespread attitude in society that a college education, including the liberal arts, is necessary preparation for a professional career, and in the intense competition for public and corporate funds devoted to applied research. Each of these factors, along with numerous others, suggest that many people consider the university to be a place for ends that are not strictly determined by the pursuit of knowledge and hold that the extent that higher education satisfies these ends determines the value of that pursuit. However, most within the modern university do not think of their work as primarily instrumental in nature. They at least tacitly believe that the foundation provided by the pursuit of knowledge is an absolute foundation, that is, it is self-justifying and thus independent of instrumental purposes. Embedded in this often tacit belief is an assumption concerning the idea of knowledge. This assumption is that the fundamental idea of knowledge involves a certain characterization of a relationship between intellect and
187 reality. Intellect is a thing that seeks to know reality as reality is already conceived to be. In this characterization another assumption is embedded, namely, that reality has meaning before, or independent of, the knower. By "reality as it is already conceived to be" I mean that the modern idea of the pursuit of knowledge is confined to the study of, and attempts to understand, what is already there, where "already there" includes (1) things that are real without human involvement, (2) things and ideas that are real or ideal entirely through human action and thought, and (3) things that are real with some human involvement. For the sake of convenience, for the phrase "knowledge of reality as it is already conceived to be" I will use "knowledge of reality," or, for reasons that will soon be apparent, "disciplinary knowledge of reality." Within this concept, scientific study of things that are real independent of human involvement, namely the natural and physical sciences and mathematics, are often accorded preeminence in the university relative to the social sciences and the humanities, on the basis that the former produces objective, "real" knowledge, or far more nearly so. Indeed, some scholars believe that the value of the social sciences and even the humanities is a function of the extent that scholars in these fields are able to construct and utilize methods that are modeled on those of the natural and physical sciences and mathematics so as to produce objective, "real" knowledge. Based on this characterization of intellect and reality, the dominant modern practice of higher education stresses the role of theory. Theory is considered to be the bridge between intellect and reality. For this reason, theoretical knowledge of reality is itself the most fundamental knowledge. Since theory is about some aspect of reality that is essentially autonomous, in that it has come before theory, a good theory is, among other things, not
188 essentially a human creation. Instead, it is a human re-creation of reality in the form of an explanation of the way something is independent of the knower. A good theory is transparent; it "mirrors" reality; in doing so, it signifies in words that the theorist comprehends the kinds of things that the theory explains. In the modern university the status of theory gives it a quality that approaches the autonomy of its object. Similarly, the practice of pursuing theoretical knowledge of reality is given a special status relative to other practices. Theoretical knowledge is the foundation for practical knowledge, and theoretical activity is the foundation of practical activity. Typically, these distinctions are sharply drawn within modern research and comprehensive universities. Professional, applied, and artistic activities are usually considered separate from those of schools and departments that pursue "basic research." While the first kind of activities may be very strong in particular schools, the second kind are generally regarded to be the core of a university and therefore the most significant barometer of its overall strength and reputation. Further, the strongest professional, applied and art schools are usually considered to be those where the value of theory for practice is stressed. Other intellectual and practical activities are deemed intellectually inferior to the pursuit of theoretical knowledge, because they are tarnished by the lack of autonomous objects. They must borrow knowledge from, or gain knowledge from applying, the results obtained in the pursuit of theoretical knowledge. Most importantly, these other intellectual and practical activities must themselves borrow the idea of theory from basic science and gain theoretical knowledge of practice. Even theoretical knowledge of practice is considered to be inferior to theoretical knowledge of autonomous reality because it is at a second remove from the essence of theory, namely, theory that explains
189 aspects of autonomous reality. Therefore, the pursuit of theoretical knowledge of reality is considered a special case of practice. It is the practice of gaining access, however partial and imperfect, to things that are independent of the knower and thus independent of the practice that accesses it. It is a participation with things that reveals them, even though this participation and revelation may be limited in various respects. However, the cognitive, sensory, and physical limitations of theoretical knowledge are mediated by the idea that particular understandings gained in the pursuit of theoretical knowledge are contributions toward a comprehensive, increasingly accurate understanding of reality. Also, the limitations of theory are mediated by a collective ideal, which is manifested in a conception of the university as, or as growing into being, a coherent, unified whole. Theories are the basis of this ideal conception, which considers theories collectively to comprise an integrated, comprehensive hierarchy or order of explanations of reality that are to form a coherent whole. Theoretical knowledge is seen to accumulate progressively, serving the aim either of "filling in," and/or of gradually reconstructing more effectively a complete or whole picture called reality. In this way, a particular theory takes on meaning that extends beyond the meaning that it has as one theory alone. Knowledge of reality as it is already conceived to be comes to mean an integrated collection of particular theoretical representations of particular aspects of a single, unified reality. Knowledge of the whole is a collective endeavor of educated people over time, who, as individual participants of an intellectual community, seek to contribute toward the incremental accumulation of particular theories that are to make up knowledge of this whole. This overall conception is variously expressed by each of the modern thinkers that I examined in chapter II.
190 Although many intellectuals today deny the claim that there really is a whole picture that is absolutely knowable, it is still common to think that theoretical knowledge progresses toward at least an approximation of such an ideal, and the idea of a progression here suggests a linear movement toward something that is stable and independent of that movement, something that is the telos of the movement. Even if belief in "complete" or "perfect" knowledge of reality is explicitly rejected, this idea of a progression of theoretical knowledge is, as an underlying aim, implicit in the claim that explanations of reality are improved upon or are succeeded by better explanations. Moreover, denial of the notion that the collective pursuit of "complete knowledge" is what unifies the modern university, even if that notion is not actually believed or even considered by a great many among its faculties, without offering well-formed proposals for an alternative conception, only shows that philosophically the modern idea of higher education as a communal endeavor remains tacitly dependent on it. If, or to the extent that, this idea is no longer believed, the question arises as to how any particular pursuit of theoretical knowledge can be thought to refer to anything besides itself. Clearly, few modern scholars would find this description of their work desirable. Most scholars today would say that their inquiries seek to discover, improve, and enlarge knowledge within their particular disciplines. In effect, the disciplines are the manifestation of the absoluteness of the pursuit of knowledge, and for several reasons. First, the disciplines are generally regarded as comprising the foundations of the university in practice. Second, the disciplines, as currently practiced, are primarily concerned with theoretical knowledge of reality. Third, in large part, since theory is expressed in disciplinary terms, the disciplines are the prescribed structure
191 for intellectual activity. For these reasons, the disciplines, as the theoretical and practical basis for the pursuit of knowledge, are, in effect, generally regarded as if they were absolute. They are thought to constitute the absolute foundation for what counts as legitimate intellectual activity in the modern university. Thus, "reality as it is already conceived to be" is, in practice, a reality that is composed of disciplines. The special status of the theoretical pursuit of knowledge of objective reality, as of the idea that intellect seeks to know reality as it is already conceived to be, and of the idea that particular pursuits are contributions to a comprehensive knowledge of reality, whether these pursuits are disciplinebound or not, are all dependent on a number of epistemological assumptions that have been the subject of intense philosophical debate, particularly since David Hume's critique of objective knowledge of reality in the eighteenth century. Beginning with Immanuel Kant toward the end of that century, philosophers have attempted to overcome or at least, to qualify Hume’s critique by advancing theories of knowledge that, if they do not accord it strict objectivity, refer to objective knowledge in the extended sense indicated in the accounts of it given in Rorty’s and Bernstein’s critiques, namely, the idea of a permanent, ahistorical framework that can be relied on as an absolute foundation for knowledge (1). More recently, and increasingly over the past thirty years, important philosophical challenges to this effort have emerged through significant critiques within the philosophy of science, notably represented by Paul Feyerabend, Mary Hesse, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos, and Karl Popper, and by analytic epistemologists and metaphysicians, notably represented by Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Nelson Goodman, Jack Meiland, Hilary Putnam, and W.V.O. Quine (2). A sociology of scientific inquiry influenced by the work of Kuhn and others has also
192 emerged, notably at the hands of Michael Mulkay and the British school of sociology of science (3). In addition, some of the pictures of reality that have emerged from scientific inquiry itself over the past one hundred years and more suggest that reality is much less objective and unified than the "project of modernity" has tended to assume. The claim that aspects of reality that were once thought to be largely knowable as stable entities are now widely taken to be only partially knowable and unstable (in process, subject to chance, not ascertainable except as artifacts of probability findings, inescapably affected by instruments, requiring interpretation, explained differentially by competing theories, etc.) does not entail a denial that some aspects of reality, at least, are objective and knowable as such. Nor do sociological explanations of how scientists work and think mean in themselves that reality is not objective and knowable as such. Further, philosophical explanations of how theories are formed that challenge sheer objectivism have so far not greatly changed how that theoretical knowledge tends to be pursued. However, these intellectual currents, which can reasonably be termed postmodern in the sense that they reject the idea of an absolute foundation for attaining knowledge, do suggest that the practice of theoretical knowledge is not wholly and clearly separable from other kinds of practice. They do this in that they make the idea of a theoretical knowledge of objective reality much less a function of the object and much more a function of practice. One consequence that can be drawn from this position is that the distinction between theoretical practice and other practices is significantly diminished. Theoretical practice thereby becomes one form of practice among many, rather than a special case that is removed from other practices on the basis that it accurately explains the ways that autonomous things behave
193 and change and how they are composed. More importantly, theoretical practice that seeks to accurately explain reality as it is already conceived to be becomes only one form of theoretical practice, rather than the only form. The work of the postmodern philosophers that I examined in Part Two can be interpreted as, among other things, efforts to broaden the scope for what counts as theoretical practice in the absence of an absolute foundation for the attainment of knowledge. If so, the following questions arise. Does the lack of a self-justifying foundation mean that "what counts" can be justified only to the extent that it provides knowledge, and fosters skills and attitudes, that can be used for other ends? Does the postmodern critique of objectivism necessarily imply that the value of higher education is primarily instrumental? Does the pursuit of knowledge then require only an instrumental foundation? Does postmodern philosophy simply dissolve any distinctive notion of theoretical practice? Or can postmodern philosophy formulate alternative ideas of theoretical practice and of the meaning of "for its own sake" that are different from those assumed by the “project of modernity” and are not simply instrumental? In short, what would a postmodern idea of theoretical practice mean? First, it would mean presupposing an idea of regarding the attaining of knowledge that is not dependent on an absolute foundation. Specifically, it would mean an idea of attaining knowledge that is not dependent upon pursuit of knowledge of reality. This means that theoretical practice or theoretical practice would not be limited by this idea. Now the pursuit of knowledge of reality can be construed as providing potentially limitless possibilities for knowledge. The ideal of free inquiry has meaning and value partly on the assumption that there are no bounds to what the pursuit of knowledge of reality may reveal. Therefore, the pursuit of knowledge should
194 not be constrained by any principles that might impede the capacity of intellect to discover, apart from ethical considerations concerning the means of the pursuit. However, the pursuit of knowledge of reality is itself a constraining principle. It is only within this principle that the possibilities of thought are allowed to be potentially limitless. Since the “absolute” stature of this principle in effect is manifested and maintained in the form of disciplines, the rejection of the pursuit of knowledge of reality as is already conceived to be would be manifested, in part, in the form of a structure in which the disciplines would not have an absolute stature. The idea of a postmodern university as an idea of attaining knowledge that is not dependent upon pursuit of knowledge of reality becomes, then, an idea of a university in which the disciplines are not in effect the absolute foundation of intellectual activity. How would this idea be formulated, what would it be, and most importantly, why would it be desirable? If an idea of the postmodern university is nascent in the idea of a modern university, and if the latter is erected on the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge, then a postmodern idea of a university that is not grounded on the disciplines is nascent within the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge itself. The question then becomes, first, how are the disciplines absolute in effect? Second, how is this absolute effect of the disciplines belied by actual pursuit of knowledge? In other words, what are the characteristics of the disciplines that give rise to, and offers guidance for, an idea of the postmodern university in which the disciplines are not absolute? Third, how do these characteristics suggest that the disciplines unjustifiably constrain theoretical practice? That is, even if the pursuit of knowledge of reality according to disciplines is a “constraint” on theoretical practice, on what possible basis is this “absolute” constraint undesirable? More specifically, an
195 argument has to be made to show that this absolute constraint is undesirable in a significant way, that this undesirable aspect is overcome by a postmodern idea of the university that rejects this absolute foundation, and that this idea would retain most or all of the significant features of the modern university. If such an argument cannot be made, then it would be difficult to find a convincing reason to support the position that a postmodern university is desirable. The “Absolutism” of the Disciplines and Disciplinary Fragmentation In the modern university, the pursuit of knowledge primarily takes place in disciplines, which are forms or categories of knowledge of reality. The ancient idea that knowledge of reality can be classified into a hierarchy of discrete categories was initially developed in greatest depth by Aristotle. These classifications included first, the theoretical sciences, which seek knowledge for its own sake, and include the disciplines of metaphysics, physics, and mathematics; second, the practical sciences, which aim for knowledge as a guide to good conduct; and third, productive sciences, which are comprised of knowledge for making useful or beautiful things (4). In the schools of ancient Greece, seven basic disciplines were distinguished and placed in two groups, known later in Roman civilization as the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium consisted of grammar, logic, and rhetoric; the quadrivium was composed of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and musical theory. With occasional variation, these seven disciplinae liberales or artes liberales were subsequently adapted as the basic curriculum in the Christian universities of the Middle Ages, and were preparatory for advanced education in the disciplines of theology, law, and medicine (5). Although the medieval curriculum has not survived as the core of the modern university, the idea
196 that knowledge of reality conforms to categories or disciplines remains the essential logic on which the modern pursuit of knowledge is organized. In the modern university, the disciplines are basic structures of knowledge that in effect shape a priori just what “reality as it is already conceived to be” shall mean in terms of the content and pursuit of knowledge. The idea that there are discrete categories of knowledge of reality is usually taken to imply that although the theories found within a category are diverse, and often embody alternative accounts, they nevertheless share some fundamental, meaningful inherent characteristics. That is, the fact that there are categories of knowledge reflects the belief that particular “pieces” of knowledge share common features that justifies grouping them together in a category. These common features have to do with the subject matter of a discipline. The subject matter indicates how reality is conceived and what aspects of reality are studied in a discipline. In this limited but significant sense, the knowledge within each discipline or category is unified, and forms a unique self-encompassing “whole.” In a broader sense, this idea of a unified disciplinary “whole” is that ideally, particular inquiries within a discipline are contributions toward the progressive realization of a coherent body of knowledge. In both of these senses, the idea of disciplinary knowledge suggests that reality and knowledge of reality are stable and orderly. Another basic attribute of categories or disciplines of knowledge, in the modern university at least, is that theoretical knowledge “progresses” dynamically within the disciplines. This dynamism is reflected in the increasing depth and diversity of theoretical explanations, methods, and schools of thought that emerge over time. It can be conceptualized in a spatial metaphor along “vertical” and “horizontal” dimensions. First, the pursuit of knowledge within the disciplines is vertically dynamic in the sense
197 that existing theories are developed, refined, and extended. Further, existing theories are replaced by new theories that are deemed to be better explanations. Second, intellectual activity within the disciplines is dynamic in a horizontal direction. That is, new modes of inquiry, or sub-disciplines, creating new kinds of theoretical knowledge, emerge within the disciplines alongside established modes. Sometimes a new mode of inquiry replaces an established mode, but more often the former are additions to the latter, and the theoretical knowledge they provide takes a place next to the theoretical knowledge that is already in the discipline. Although there are disputes about what constitutes legitimate modes of inquiry, subject matter, and theories with a given discipline, the disputes are usually incorporated into the discipline along with the new ideas. Indeed, the presence of theoretical, methodological, and philosophical disputes is usually interpreted to mean that a discipline is in a “healthy” state. Thus, if one looks within the disciplines, at the theories, methods, and “schools of thought” that they contain, the disciplines are dynamic. It would seem, then, that rejection of the absolute stature of the disciplines is patently undesirable because the pursuit of knowledge in the order of these structures is very productive. However, an important distinction can be made between the disciplines as structures that contain knowledge, on one hand, and the contents of these structures, on the other hand. In other words, one cannot simply assume that the disciplines and their contents are identical. I stated above that the dynamism of the disciplines is a characteristic of their contents. What effects does the dynamism of the pursuit of knowledge within the disciplines have on the disciplines as structures of knowledge? The increasing depth and diversity of theoretical knowledge within the disciplines means that the disciplines are expanding, in that they encompass ever-
198 increasing quantities of knowledge. Indeed, the idea that modern inquiry is progressive over time is most visible in this sense. The expansion of disciplinary knowledge can be interpreted as a sign that the disciplines are robust structures. However, it can also be interpreted to mean that the disciplines are increasingly incoherent structures. That is, the dynamic production of knowledge within the disciplines renders the disciplines as structures of knowledge increasingly unintelligible. In this regard, expansion in the horizontal direction is particularly significant. The profusion of new, diverse modes of inquiry, especially in the last thirty years, has destabilized the disciplines. The increasing diversity of modes of inquiry has made it difficult to view disciplines as coherent knowledge realms. The most significant evidence of this incoherence is the “blurring” of disciplinary “boundaries” as a result of intellectual activity that pursues knowledge by combining, or seeking to combine, theories or modes of inquiry from more than one discipline. The horizontal expansion of inquiry is partly an overlapping of disciplinary boundaries. It is often not clear under which discipline a cross-disciplinary mode of inquiry properly belongs. Unity and autonomy would seem to be presupposed by the fact that the disciplines structure the pursuit of knowledge a priori as discrete realms. Yet the increasing diversity of inquiry, especially the blurring of disciplinary boundaries, suggests that the disciplines are fragmented rather than unified, autonomous “wholes.” If so, then the order that they impose a priori for the pursuit of knowledge is not a posteriori justified. It could be argued that interdisciplinary institutes, if well-conceived, may adequately “cure” disciplinary fragmentation. However, although the emergence of interdisciplinary institutes such as regional studies may mediate fragmentation to some extent, institutes do not make the disciplines
199 more coherent. In fact, their emergence can be interpreted as an indication of fragmentation. Moreover, interdisciplinary institutes, which are in a stage of infancy, are themselves not particularly coherent. In addition, they are often considered less important than the disciplines. At least in part, they can be viewed as modest “stopgap” efforts to accommodate the fragmentation of the disciplines. Thus, interdisciplinary institutes solidify the absolute effect of the disciplines despite disciplinary fragmentation. Institutes do not, however, cure the incoherence of the disciplines. Nor do they really challenge the viability of the disciplines. They are sites where modes of inquiry across disciplines can be combined outside the disciplines that has the effect of preserving the absoluteness of the disciplines. Yet even if the disciplines are “fragmented” structures, this condition can itself be interpreted to mean that the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge is a productive and creative foundation for intellectual activity. That is, it could be claimed that the disciplines have proven to be flexible structures in that they expand to accommodate new approaches and ideas that emerge within them. In addition, new disciplines emerge on occasion when new realms of knowledge of reality are discovered. On this basis, it could be argued that the absolute status of the disciplines is justified a posteriori even if they are “fragmented.” Further, even if fragmentation means that the disciplines are not unified wholes, it could be argued that the grouping of knowledge a priori according to disciplinary structures is justified on the basis that these structures are effective in maximizing the production of knowledge. It might even be argued that having categories of knowledge is justified simply because they provide a convenient way of managing the rapid production and enormous amount of diverse knowledge. For these reasons, the absolute
200 stature of the disciplines could be defended even though they are increasingly “fragmented.” How, then, is the absolute status of the disciplines an unjustified constraint on theoretical practice? The spatial metaphor that I used to describe the dynamism of the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge is only twodimensional. If that metaphor is a reasonable portrayal of the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge, it suggests that knowledge can only be conceptualized, and progress, in a field or plane constituted by “flat,” all-encompassing disciplinary structures, just as a round marble cannot leave the floor on which it rolls and still be a marble except in name only. The seemingly limitless potentiality of reality and knowledge is severely limited by the assumption that a person who is seriously engaged in an intellectual activity for the purpose of enlarging human understanding cannot leave this “flat” disciplinary plane. One can only enlarge or diminish it. Further, although the pursuit of knowledge within the disciplines is dynamic, the reality that is already there, in the form of theories, methods, and schools of thought, largely determines what “reality as it is already conceived to be” can mean for inquiry. The progress of knowledge usually proceeds along paths that have been determined in the past. Even if disciplinary boundaries are blurred the disciplinary plane remains, just as the paper on which two colors of paint are mixed remains. Therefore, even if the disciplines are flexible to a degree, they are not so flexible as their absolute stature would seem to require, assuming that the core value of academic freedom implies in part that the pursuit of knowledge is potentially limitless. The postmodern rejection of the absolute stature of the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge of reality is desirable because it would expand the possibilities for fruitful intellectual activity by making it easier to move
201 inquiry off of the “disciplinary plane.” The dynamism of what occurs within the disciplines is an indication that the disciplines as they are constituted are fertile grounds for the growth of knowledge to some extent. However, this dynamism can be interpreted, at least in part, to mean that thought strives to go beyond the disciplines as a priori structures. Similarly, the “blurring” of disciplinary boundaries is only a relatively small indication of where progressive inquiry can go, since this blurring is largely, or perhaps even exclusively, confined to the disciplinary plane and therefore does not significantly challenge the absoluteness of the disciplines and the kind of pursuit of knowledge that they manifest. This does not mean that the pursuit of knowledge of reality would not be a foundation of postmodern higher education. Nor does it mean that the disciplines would disappear. It does mean, however, that this foundation and its disciplinary manifestation would not be "absolute" in effect. A postmodern idea of theoretical practice would seek to reform the disciplines so that they would not determine the shape of legitimate intellectual activity. Reformation of the Disciplines The problem, then, is how to reform the disciplines in a way that removes their stature as absolute structures, while retaining the vitality of the pursuit of knowledge within them, so that the pursuit of knowledge is expanded, and its possibilities really are potentially limitless. If the guide to this reformation is nascent in the disciplines, what is this guide? Since the "blurring" of disciplinary boundaries is a significant challenge to the absolute stature of the disciplines, it would seem that reformation of the disciplines in order to expand the possibilities for what may count as theoretical practice would extend this idea in some way. The “blurring of boundaries” suggests
202 that even though the disciplines as structures are absolute in effect, some intellectual activity within the disciplines does not follow this principle but is trying in part to move out of these boundaries. Cross-disciplinary inquiries are efforts to pursue knowledge without being essentially constrained by the structure and content of a single discipline, including subject matter, predominant theories, typical methods, or primary schools of thought. Cross-disciplinary efforts imply a general desire to conceive knowledge and theoretical practice in new ways. This general desire can be understood as two basic themes underlying cross-disciplinarity that together can be used as a guide for a postmodern idea of theoretical practice that does not give the disciplines the stature of an absolute foundation. First, cross-disciplinarity suggests an emphasis on the "particularity" of inquiry. Since crossdisciplinarity involves a "transgression" of the disciplines as singular, bounded wholes, it violates the "mandate" that theoretical practice be essentially grounded in disciplinary structures. A postmodern amplification of this idea would not limit this transgression to combining two or more disciplines rather than being constrained to one. That is, cross-disciplinary inquiry can be interpreted as manifesting a general desire to allow the impetus of a particular inquiry to not be bound or constrained by established theoretical parameters, metaframeworks, and modes of inquiry. For this reason, cross-disciplinarity suggests an idea of theoretical practice in which an inquirer essentially constructs a particular ground in the course of inquiry. One might think of this process as something like composing a narrative, in that the ground of a particular inquiry is shaped by what emerges in the course of that inquiry itself.
203 Such an idea of a theoretical ground is "local," borrowing a term initially used by cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz, in that here inquiry is explicitly dependent on a particular constellation of contexts that are essentially defined by a knower or group of knowers engaged in a particular inquiry rather than the constellation being "already there" in a discipline or disciplines (6). A local constellation of contexts is not primarily aimed at either supporting general explanations or at yielding particulars that become general explanations themselves. Rather, it seeks to be a rationale that legitimizes a particular inquiry by giving it a "locale" of parameters that emerge in the course of the inquiry itself. The meaning of a new ground or local constellation of contexts could go well beyond reliance on a combination of distinct but compatible theories that already exist in two or more disciplines. In addition to utilizing existing theories in this way, a new ground could emerge by borrowing particular elements from existing theories without importing the entire theories, and/or by creating new elements using particular elements as metaphors. Reformation of the disciplines would then mean in part that disciplines and existing theories would not function primarily as "top-down" structures but would be generated and changed "bottom-up," amid the diversity of particular inquiries. The disciplines would remain places where the pursuit of knowledge is carried out. However, they would not be structures that define forms of inquiry. Further, they would not be fundamentally distinguished on the basis of subject matter. Instead, disciplines would be determined by forms of thought that emerge in the course of particular inquiries that have points of compatibility and thus can serve as links across particular inquiries. Disciplines would be dynamic, temporary networks of linkages that provide intellectual guides for thinkers to orient their thought
204 amid the flux of ideas. They would always be potentially subject to change, dissolution, and replacement as different linkages emerge and networks are reconfigured. These discipline-networks would manage the flux of particular pursuits of knowledge so that particulars can inform each other for the purpose of creating new lines of inquiry and new linkages rather than establishing themselves as general explanations. The second theme underlying cross-disciplinarity that can be used as a basis for postmodern theoretical practice is a general desire to not be constrained by what I have called the disciplinary plane and by the idea that the pursuit of knowledge is pursuit of knowledge of reality as it is already conceived to be. Cross-disciplinary inquiries manifest not only the desire to traverse the boundaries of specific disciplines; they also display a general desire to traverse the "absolute" boundary, the pursuit of knowledge of reality, and the disciplines as this boundary's collective manifestation. Since these absolute boundaries are predicated on an assumption that I analyzed earlier, namely, a relationship between intellect as a thing that seeks to know reality as reality is already conceived to be, and reality as that which is already there, and on the assumption that theoretical practice is the study of reality so conceived, the postmodern blurring of these absolute boundaries means that the boundary between reality and its representation in the form of theoretical knowledge is also blurred. Reality becomes something that is produced in the course of inquiry rather than an object that is essentially separate from the inquiry and that inquiry seeks to discover, accurately represent, and explain. In this sense, theoretical knowledge of reality is an irreducible combination of intellectual activity and what intellect works with, including language, ideas, and material things.
205 The blurring of object and inquiry means that in a postmodern university theoretical knowledge would not be limited to explanations of what is already there or elaborations of such explanations. In addition, theoretical knowledge would include particular expressions, proposals, and visions of how reality can be conceived and what it can become. Further, if knowledge of reality is produced in the course of particular inquiries, then these inquiries move off or leave the disciplinary plane. Leaving this plane means leaving the idea that one studies what is already there. This situation would necessitate something more than reforming the disciplines. It would mean creating a space "outside" the disciplines. The "blurring" of the pursuit of knowledge and its object involves conceiving a space that is outside disciplinary boundaries as well as conceiving a reformation of what goes on within them. This is not surprising, since it would be difficult to think that simply reforming the disciplines from the inside would remove the absolute effect of the disciplines. Without this space, there would still be primarily disciplines. Further, the idea that the disciplines function as an absolute boundary suggests a boundary that is selfenclosed. An absolute boundary creates two spaces, a space inside and a space outside the boundary, and these two sides are kept from each other by virtue of the boundary. Therefore, rejection of the absolute stature of the disciplines also implies opening up a relationship between a space outside the boundaries and the space within them. How, then, is this space outside the disciplines, or off of the disciplinary plane, and its relationship to that plane, to be conceived? It is a space where multi-dimensional foundations for theoretical practice would be pursued and composed, based on local pursuits that move away from the idea of theoretical practice as pursuit of knowledge of reality. The movement
206 away from this idea is the movement toward non-disciplinary, multidimensional foundations. For example, the idea that I expressed above, that a local constellation of contexts can be composed using particular pieces of existing theories as metaphors, suggests an idea of knowledge different from knowledge of reality. Thomas S. Kuhn’s idea of scientific revolutions as foundation-altering paradigm shifts and Paul Feyerabend’s critique of method, to cite two important examples of what I have called postmodern philosophy of science, do not imply a diminution of the pursuit of scientific knowledge (7). In fact, these ideas manifest the desire to enlarge the opportunity for scholars to pursue knowledge by advocating characterizations of this pursuit that depart from the disciplinary plane without removing it. What would be removed is the absolute status of the disciplinary plane; new non-absolute, multi-dimensional foundations could be built outside the disciplines. Further, the disciplinary plane would be altered, and conceivably even be “fragmented” into multiple dimensions that deviate from the three basic supra-disciplinary planes, namely, the physical and natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. The non-absoluteness of these foundations of knowledge in a postmodern university would be a function of their diversity and their multiplicity. A Postmodern Idea of Theoretical Practice The two themes that I have derived from cross-disciplinarity and amplified suggest that rejection of the pursuit of knowledge of reality and of its collective manifestation in the form of disciplines as absolute foundations provides a clearing for the creating of grounds that make plausible new forms of knowledge. Rejection of this absolute in the practice of higher education would mean an expansion of the possibilities for fruitful intellectual activity
207 by (1) reforming the disciplines into networks composed of dynamic linkages between particular inquiries; and (2) making it possible to move inquiry off of the disciplinary plane and thereby create new planes or foundations. In these ways, postmodern theoretical practice would open up the complex, interactive, varied relationship between knowers and reality, and would therefore liberate intellectual community and legitimate intellectual activity from the constraining absolute effect of the disciplinary knowledge of reality. It would create and institute a legitimate space for post-objectivisitic ideas concerning reality, knower, and knowledge of reality. However, assuming Derrida's position that the idea of absolute cannot be simply transcended, this conception must retain a substitute for, or revision of, the idea of absolute in some limited form. This requirement is also necessitated on recognition that the view that an absolute foundation is problematic would itself have the effect of an absolute claim. The problem here is not an issue of self-contradiction, because postmodern philosophy does not demand, but in fact rejects, the requirement that foundations be internally consistent. Rather, what is required is that the problematic of an absolute foundation leaves open the possibility of moving outside the problematic. From the standpoint of the meta-structure of postmodern theoretical practice, what would be left open would be the possibility that the disciplinary plane could become insignificant amid a multiplicity of theoretical foundations. The problem that chapter V leaves for further development, then, is that an idea of a postmodern university must be based on a philosophical framework that provides a conception of theoretical practice that passes beyond the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge, yet is capable of sustaining the latter in a form that does not have the practical effect of its being absolute. It
208 must be a framework that provides a basis for making the intellectual community an all-inclusive whole without negating the heritage that postmodern philosophy emerges from and that provides values that postmodern philosophers themselves usually deem important. In the next chapter, I develop an outline of this philosophical framework. It is a framework that moves intellect outside the sorts of relationship between knower and reality normally assumed in the original project of modernity defined most prominently in the French Enlightenment and by modern successors such as the various brands of positivistic thought. What is needed to make this possible is a broader notion of theoretical practice than the pursuit of knowledge of reality. This broader notion implies that there can be other ideas of the pursuit of knowledge that are justified in themselves in some contingent sense, but no more than the pursuit of knowledge is contingent on the idea that a theory must refer to reality as it is already conceived to be.
209
Notes to Chapter V 1.
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 8; Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 8.
2.
Cf. Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: New Left Books, 1977); Mary Hesse, Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science (Brighton, England: Harvester, 1980); Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed., 1970); Imre Lakatos, "Falsification and the
Methodology of Research
Programmes," in Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959); Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); NelsonGoodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978); Jack W. Meiland and Michael Krausz, eds., Relativism, Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982); Jack W. Meiland, "On the Paradox of Cognitive Relativism," Metaphilosophy 11, no. 2 (April 1980): 115-126; Jack W. Meiland, "Concepts of Relative Truth," Monist 60, no. 4 (1977): 568-82; Hilary Putnam, Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990); Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); W.V.O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953).
210 3.
Cf. Michael Mulkay, Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1979); Michael Mulkay, Sociology of Science: A Sociological Pilgrimage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).
4.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. W. Jaeger (Oxford Classical Texts, 1957), Book VI, 1025b.
5.
Bruce A. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986), chap. 2; John W. Baldwin, The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages, 1000-1300 (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1971), 62-67.
6.
Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
7.
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Feyerabend, Against Method.
211
CHAPTER VI POSTMODERN THEORETICAL PRACTICE: THE PURSUIT OF INTELLECTUALLY COMPELLING IDEAS A distinctive idea of postmodern theoretical practice that is capable of existing outside the disciplines must manifest an idea of intellectual purpose that is not limited to the pursuit of knowledge of reality. If postmodern theoretical practice is not essentially about making truth determinations of a knowable reality in the modern sense of theory, then what can a broad conception of theoretical practice, one that includes and goes beyond the pursuit of knowledge of reality, be comprised of? Since I have assumed that the postmodern is nascent in the modern, this broad notion of theoretical practice would be nascent in the modern pursuit of knowledge. Since modern theoretical practice is predicated on a particular kind of relationship between knower and reality, a postmodern idea of theoretical practice must address the constituents of this relationship, namely, knower and reality, and other terms that are basic to modern theoretical practice, in a way that reflects the postmodern rejection of the typically modern characterizations of this relationship. Now this relationship, and terms such as "reality" and "idea" carry many different meanings across and within the disciplines. The point of postmodern departure does not begin from any one of those meanings, or any specific characterization of the relationship between knower and reality. Rather, this relationship and associated terms need to be rewritten as postmodern terms.
212 The task is to come up with meanings for such terms that reflect the modern in its nascent state, before there is a pursuit of knowledge of reality or independent of such a pursuit. I will also introduce terms or phrases that are not basic to the modern intellectual lexicon but that emerge in my postmodern interpretation of modern terms. The key concept that I will introduce and outline is the concept of "intellectually compelling ideas." In its articulating basic modern terminology that is associated with the pursuit of knowledge of reality in postmodern terms, my development of a broad notion of theoretical practice also indicates the creation of a postmodern vocabulary. In doing this I am responding to Rorty's call for the creation of new vocabularies or languages. The outcome of the following discussion, then, will be a framework and vocabulary that I can then apply in the final chapter to further develop a space in the university for postmodern theoretical practice outside the disciplines. In each of its aspects, this discussion is meant only to serve as a modest explication of this framework and vocabulary rather than a comprehensive exposition; the latter would likely constitute a large monograph in itself. Postmodern Reality: A State of Indeterminacy What happens to the idea of reality, if it is not essentially something to know as it is already conceived to be? If absolute foundations are rejected, then the disciplines are not the ground of theoretical practice. In other words, knowledge of reality is not then essentially disciplinary. Further, there is no new absolute ground for theoretical practice. Instead, the disciplines are to be seen as collections of local or particular knowledge. Theories are local, for reality as something to know in any absolute or general sense is left indeterminate. For the postmodern, "general" in any
213 literal sense refers to a general context of indeterminacy. Thus, in a general sense, postmodern reality is a general state of indeterminacy. What is the significance of this conception of reality for a postmodern conception of theoretical practice? A basic aspect of the modern idea of theoretical practice is a willingness critically to reexamine foundations that have been held to be indubitable. At least from Descartes on, modern intellectuals have continually posed difficult problems for themselves for the purpose of discovering, improving, and enlarging knowledge. This modern willingness to be critical has almost always been critical against an absolute standard, namely, the idea of gaining accurate knowledge of some aspect of reality independent of the knower, even if the knower is conceived to be an element of the aspect of reality that it seeks to know. In contrast, in presupposing a general state of indeterminacy, critique for the postmodern intellectual means a willingness to depart from ideas and concepts that have heretofore grounded, and thus set boundaries to, theoretical practice. This intellectual attitude is nascent in the modern idea of critique, in that the willingness to be critical is present, to all intents and purposes, before the idea of knowledge of reality is erected as a standard for intellectual critique. Notably, a critical intellect precedes knowledge of reality in that the idea of knowledge of reality implies the capacity to make rational distinctions. When this idea of knowledge is removed by the postmodern, what remains is critical intellect in a general state of indeterminacy. Similarly, the distance between theory and practice in the idea of theoretical practice is diminished. Theories are not limited to being mirrors of reality. Postmodern critical intellect is practical in that it is able to depart from or change intellectual preconceptions when they impede or constrain theoretical practice. In thinking of reality as essentially indeterminate, the postmodern
214 opens up space for theoretical practice well beyond the modern, since the latter limits the ground of justified theoretical practice to the determination of reality as it is already conceived to be. While this postmodern conception of critique and theoretical practice comes "before" the idea of knowledge of reality is erected, this does not mean that these conceptions are absolutely original. Rather, these conceptions comprise an intellectual attitude that is partly "outside" the opposition between object and subject, between that which is thought of and that which thinks. The modern usually construes the object as existing before the pursuit of knowledge commences. Yet even those moderns who construe the knower as the ground of the object usually treat the subject as having an absolute status, if not literally, then at least practically (an example of this latter case is Sartre). In contrast, for the postmodern what is original between intellect and object of intellect is their irreducible oppositional relationship. The postmodern focuses on this oppositional relationship, in its irreducible form, "before" the modern moves to the idea of theories as reflections of an autonomous reality. The presence of the irreducible opposition between knower and object does not mean that the modern pursuit of knowledge is impractical. In fact, the pursuit of theoretical knowledge of reality as a comprehensive whole is construed by the postmodern as a practical response to this irreducible condition. Yet the postmodern asserts that the pursuit of theoretical knowledge is only one practical response. Only when the pursuit of knowledge is the ground of all other intellectual responses, when the pursuit of knowledge of reality becomes institutionalized in the form of the disciplines, when it becomes "for its own sake" in the narrow modern sense,
215 does it become impractical, because it then precludes other practical intellectual responses to this condition and without justification. The postmodern willingness to make critical departures from the given means a willingness to take intellect beyond the modern idea that reality is essentially something to know. Yet since the postmodern does not seek to replace the idea of knowledge of reality with another foundation that is beyond transformation, this general willingness to make critical departures from the given has a broader meaning than going beyond knowledge of reality. This broader sense of postmodern critique means a willingness to leave any and all specific intellectual frameworks for a general state of indeterminacy, in order to be intellectually active. Thus, for the postmodern, the general state of indeterminacy of the object is complemented by a general intellectual attitude of the thinker that is more open, and thus more intellectually practical, than the modern attitude. The postmodern attitude rejects the idea that theoretical practice is determined by, or in terms of, a particular intellectual discourse, or a group of discourses, including the group of discourses called the disciplines. This attitude disallows any discourse from having the de facto effect of absolute knowledge. In transferring the idea of "general" from absolutely determinable reality to indeterminate reality, the postmodern seeks to create opportunity for theoretical practice without predetermined limits. Although the vast majority of modern educated people rarely, if ever, think about philosophical notions of absolute foundations in their particular disciplinary, subdisciplinary, or cross-disciplinary pursuits, there is definitely a tendency to think that one is engaged with others in establishing an evermore detailed and comprehensive understanding of some objective aspect of reality. In this sense, even ostensibly "local" knowledge in the modern
216 university takes on the quality of being an objective reality, as a local portion of the whole. In the modern university, the authority of this idea of reality remains even when there are paradigm revolutions. In this case, a new theoretical framework is believed in, and its supposedly objective reality contributed to, by efforts simply to fill in the remaining gaps in a theoretical framework. The postmodern intellectual attitude rejects this strict conditioning of inquiry as placing an unjustified and unnecessary constraint on theoretical practice and intellectual self-determination. In making this practical decision, intellect is provided room to think away from the given, toward the conception of new ways of thinking. This intellectual attitude is nascent in the dominant Western intellectual tradition as far back as Socrates' radical questioning of the unquestioned adherence to received beliefs as if they are absolute. It is also nascent in the modern analytical practice of challenging a philosophical truth assertion, by moving the intellect to a position outside what is explicit in the assertion in order to evaluate the assertion and attempt to locate exceptions or unseen implications that contradict it. This position can be thought of as reflecting a general state of indeterminacy. For the postmodernist, a mistake that Socrates made, one that set a pattern for Western intellectual history to the present, was to assume that there are in fact absolutes to know, if only we would clear our heads of culturally given beliefs in order to think critically toward knowledge of reality. Similarly, modern analytical critique of received theories often seeks to establish a new absolute ground in the course of showing the flaws of the assertions that are critiqued. As I have argued, this problem remains throughout the modern university, even though the idea of absolute is not considered in practice. Modern intellectuals unduly limit themselves to disciplinary thinking because they are unwilling or
217 unable to think outside the pursuit of knowledge of reality. The modern ultimately prefers to seek approximate certainty, rather than work with the ambiguity of indeterminacy. In contrast, the general willingness to think in a state of indeterminacy allows the postmodern educated person to engage its intellect without becoming stuck in a particular foundation. The Postmodern's Threefold Relationship with Reality Postmodernists, as presented here, do not claim that reality is a mirage. Even if the idea of reality is in general indeterminate, postmodern theoretical practice must still involve some kind of postmodern relationship with reality. What, then, is this relationship? For the postmodern, "reality" can be constructed as a relationship with intellect in three aspects. Reality is that which the intellect is (1) immersed in; (2) interacts with; and (3) alters. I am not proposing these three aspects as truth claims. Rather, they are proposed as a practical way for intellect to approach the condition of indeterminacy, given the postmodern rejection of absolute foundations. Despite this general condition, the postmodern educated person seeks to think intellectually, to use its intellect to encounter reality in substantive ways. For this reason, these aspects, or implications, of indeterminacy are practical. They are ideas that I am constructing in order to create a framework for what indeterminacy entails for intellect. I will now discuss the first two aspects of postmodern reality: reality as that which the intellect is immersed in and interacts with. The general indeterminacy of reality means that postmodern intellect is immersed in an encounter that it cannot step wholly outside of, in order to know the nature of the encounter "in itself." Nor does intellect, on the basis that it is so immersed, have an insider's untrammeled access to reality in
218 itself. Instead, given the irresolution of differance, postmodern intellect is partly outside and partly inside reality. Further, these parts cannot be essentially distinguished and thereby known in themselves. Therefore, representations of reality, as truth assertions, are inherently problematic. On the other hand, the apparent fact that there are "vanishing points," ultimately unknowable distinctions, between knower and object makes possible alternative, often contradictory accounts of the nature of the encounter, or of what is yielded by the encounter, each having a rational basis. Postmodern theoretical practice expands upon this productive intellectual capacity, by moving away from a focus on knowledge of reality and moving toward a focus on producing alternative ideas. Moving away from knowledge of reality means not limiting intellectual alternatives to competing alternatives about what is true. This postmodern position presented here acknowledges that intellect does have the capacity to reflect on the nature of its encounter with reality and to reflect on the nature of reality. However, this condition of immersion renders problematic the effort to reflect on the encounter and on reality in order to determine their natures "in themselves." This position does not mean that the pursuit of knowledge of reality is wholly rejected. Rather, it means that the pursuit of knowledge of reality is problematic, such that it cannot be the ground of theoretical practice. Being immersed in reality, this postmodern intellect encounters reality as an ultimately indeterminate aspect of an interaction. "Interaction" signifies that when the educated person engages in intellectual activity, its intellect acts with something, in that the encounter involves intellect with something, apparently not itself, the otherness of which is a problem to work with rather than to solve. Even intellect or knower as something in itself is
219 viewed by the postmodern as itself a problematic idea. This postmodern intellect, in its capacity to reflect, carries a tacit assumption that it shares, with reality, an ontological status that makes it possible to believe that reality can be known, but that the nature of what is shared is indeterminate. Therefore, the belief cannot be justified as the ground of intellectual activity. Thus, the encounter between intellect and object cannot be reduced to some stable variant of the form knower-object-representation because these elements slide into each other without resolution. The modern effort to represent reality and to stabilize the relationship between these three allegedly distinct elements is viewed by the postmodern as an unjustified constraint on intellect that gets it "stuck" in the idea that this interaction must be explained as an absolute philosophical ground for theoretical practice. Just as reality is indeterminate and not knowable in itself, an interaction with indeterminacy is not something to know, to determine, in itself. Consistent with Rorty's rejection of epistemology, the attempt to ground theoretical practice in a theory of knowledge is for the postmodernist unjustified. Since the postmodern rejects reality as it is already conceived to be as the ground of theoretical practice, any attempt to limit theoretical practice by determining the grounds or criteria for such determinations is viewed by the postmodern as an obstacle to fruitful theoretical practice. However, if the educated person is immersed in an interaction with reality such that it cannot determine reality in this way, what can be done? I will now develop in more detail just what an idea of theoretical practice that is not limited by the pursuit of knowledge of reality means, with particular focus on the notion of "intellectually compelling ideas." This notion will then lead into the third
220 aspect of postmodern reality: reality as that which the educated person alters. The Experience of Intellectually Compelling Ideas Postmodern intellect, as presented here, works with the condition of indeterminacy in which it is immersed, rather than with being determined by the interaction. Intellect intervenes with reality by having ideas. What is a postmodern idea, since it is not limited to being an assertion about reality as it is already conceived to be? What is an idea worth pursuing, if it is not limited to hypotheses or conjectures about aspects of reality as it is already conceived to be? To answer these questions, I will first provide a definition and an elaboration of such an idea. I will then illuminate this definition by showing how this postmodern conception of an idea worth pursuing is nascent in the modern pursuit of knowledge. An idea worth pursuing in a postmodern sense is an idea the difference of which strikes a particular knower or group of knowers as intellectually compelling. By "difference," I mean that the idea is not an idea that the knower is familiar with. It is not an idea that the knower already knows. By the phrase "strikes a particular knower as intellectually compelling," I mean that the difference or unfamiliarity of the idea (1) stimulates the knower's intellect to become more familiar with the idea, because (2) its different rationality suggests to that knower that the idea may be a basis from which to (3) pursue and develop the same or a new compelling idea. An idea worth pursuing is an idea whose unfamiliar rationality suggests that it may be possible, in the opinion of a particular knower who is exposed to the idea, to use the idea as the stimulus to adopt a different ideas or as the beginning of a path toward the formation of a new strikingly different and compelling idea
221 (or ideas). One believes that further investigation and reflection of the unfamiliar idea has the potential to provide a tangible opening that compels one along a new path of inquiry that culminates in a new compelling idea for the inquirer. The opening or clearing is a ground from which to think in a way that departs from what the knower already knows in order to come up with new ideas. It provides a way for one to think outside the bounds of one's present thought, in and to a place that is not already familiar. It is also a way to think outside the bounds of the unfamiliar idea itself, toward a new idea that is the knower's own. Without intellectually compelling ideas, one would simply repeat, and remain in, what one already knows. What Rorty and Lyotard are trying to say, using rather volatile language such as "abnormal" and "paralogical" that tends to instill indignation in many modern intellectuals, is that an idea that is worth thinking about is an idea that differs, or departs, from the ideas that an educated person experienced before and in a novel way, such that it attracts intellectual curiosity as an idea worth thinking about further. By being different in this way, in a way that strikes an intellect as compelling, the idea is temporarily liberating, and thereby, useful. An intellectually compelling idea is at least temporarily liberating and therefore useful in that it is a fruitful way of mediating the general state of indeterminacy. On the basis that its difference appeals to an intellect, the idea takes that intellect temporarily out of the general state of indeterminacy into a state of intellectual self-determination. Intellect is compelled to pursue the idea, to think about it, and to use it as a point of departure for new intellectually compelling ideas, ones that are the product of one's own intellect. One is compelled to attempt to leave what one already knows for new ideas. In this leaving, one seeks to give compelling reasons to not
222 believe what one previously felt compelled to believe. My use of the word "striking" is meant to indicate that an intellectually compelling idea is something that is experienced rather than known in itself, and that the experience of an idea is a very important, though not absolute, aspect of an idea. When I state that such an idea is striking, I mean that the idea takes an intellect temporarily out of indeterminacy by compelling that intellect to have other strikingly different ideas, other thoughtful interventions with reality. This postmodern attitude reflects the tendency, nascent in modern theoretical practice, to find ideas intellectually compelling not because they are true of an object but because they are significantly different, possibly fruitful ways of expressing the idea of reality. The modern pursuit of knowledge of reality has always been pregnant with the intellectual desire to "see" or envision objects and reality in novel ways. Verification, or the marshaling forth of evidence to show that a significantly different way of perceiving reality is true of reality, is part of the novelty. Demonstrating that a novel idea is true contributes toward making that idea an intellectually compelling one. Yet the primary reason intellectual perceptions are compelling to an educated person is not that such perceptions are "right." Educated people do not limit their study of thought only to those ideas that are true according to contemporary criteria. Rather, ideas, old and recent, attract the educated person's interest because of their intrinsic worth as perceptions of objects or reality that vary from the particular thinker's own perceptions. Even where there are substantial similarities between contemporary thought and the thought of the past, when the latter is intellectually compelling it is because it involves similar perceptions of at least one differently situated thinker.
223 The modern notion of progress obscures the intellectually compelling nature of such ideas. The modern adds, to the relationship between intellect and idea, the "metanarrative" that there is some tangible, comprehensive understanding that finally explains reality as it really is, that "gets it right," and that educated people are trying, individually and collectively, to move forward across the history of Western thought, even if a modern position may reject the view that this understanding will ever be realized someday. Specifically, the modern injects the belief that an intellectually compelling idea has to be couched in terms of knowledge of reality according to some discipline-based criteria in order for it to be a legitimate intellectual idea. The idea has to contribute to the disciplinary march toward complete and certain knowledge of an absolute, objective reality. For these reasons, this notion of progress complicates and constrains the relationship of previous ideas to contemporary theoretical practice. The former have to be the true building blocks of the latter to be meaningful. Otherwise, they are the mistakes of the past, above which the metanarrative of progress according to the disciplines distinguishes itself, thus justifying its practical status as, in effect, the absolute foundation of intellectual activity. The postmodern rejection of knowledge of reality removes this requirement from theoretical practice. It allows what is nascent in modern theoretical practice to be active, unencumbered by the need to have knowledge be true. An intellectually compelling idea is compelling in itself, rather than compelling because it conforms to, or includes, an alternative set of contemporary truth-criteria. The postmodern claims to recapture a broader, more useful notion of "knowledge for its own sake" by going beyond knowledge of reality, in that knowledge of reality is not necessary for an idea to be intellectually compelling. Ideas of the past are used to create new
224 intellectually compelling ideas, rather than being mere building blocks or mistakes. What makes an intellectually compelling idea "for its own sake" is the intellectual experience of the idea: it is the experience of an intellectually compelling idea that makes such an idea "its own end." The Aristotelian desire to know, so much at the core of the modern idea of the educated person, is thought of by the postmodern as only an instance of the desire to have intellectually compelling experiences. The postmodern, in seeking to have intellectually compelling experiences for their own sake, seeks to express what Heidegger, in his critique of received interpretations of Aristotle, was trying to know: the postmodern thinks of "the Being of beings" as an intellectually compelling idea rather than, as Heidegger would have it, an account of reality that finally "gets it right." For the postmodern, there is no core to know, but there is an intellect to express. In the sections that follow, I will develop this concept of intellectually compelling ideas further, beginning with the third sense of the postmodern relationship between intellect and reality: the alteration of reality. The Postmodern Alteration of Reality In claiming that the modern unjustifiably limits theoretical practice to the pursuit of knowledge of reality, the postmodern, as presented here, claims that intellectual possibility is diminished. One way that intellectual possibility is diminished lies in the modern distinction between knowing and using an idea. This distinction is actually what Derrida calls a hierarchical opposition: it is or may contain the opposition between the theoretical and the practical. One shortcoming of this opposition, according to the postmodern, is that it constrains the utility of ideas by the idea of knowledge
225 of reality. Ideas are useful in the pursuit of knowledge only if they can be used to produce more knowledge of reality. In contrast, in the postmodern view ideas are useful if they lead to different ways of altering reality. Postmodern ideas are not limited to preexisting states of affairs called reality: they alter reality, or rather, people alter reality by expressing ideas as manifestations of languages. In this way, the postmodern opens up the modern idea of open inquiry: the postmodern allows thinking to lead itself, rather than knowledge of reality. Postmodern theoretical practice always involves objects and ideas. Yet objects and ideas are not essentially things for the postmodern to know as they already are. They are things for the postmodern to use for the sake of producing new intellectually compelling ideas. In this sense, reality is altered rather than known. Postmodern theoretical practice is thus a thoughtful intervention with reality, in that it involves objects and ideas that are not simply given. A thoughtful intervention with reality alters reality through an intellectually compelling idea. Reality in its third aspect, then, is that which is altered as a consequence of a thoughtful intervention with objects. In altering reality, the postmodern transforms the objects that it encounters through intellectually compelling ideas. What is altered are the particular, received relationships between an intellect and the reality that it encounters. It is a local alteration within the general state of indeterminacy. Alteration is "local" in that the realities that are worked with are composed of particular constellations of contexts. There is not a finite number of realities but multiple, shifting realities that are themselves consequences of other multiple, shifting alterations of realities. Thus, postmodern theoretical practice alters reality on two levels. First, it alters the general state of indeterminacy in which one
226 is immersed, by acting upon, or thoughtfully intervening in, that state. Second, it alters the local realities, including those that have become established as if they were absolute, in spite of that general state. Since the general state of reality is indeterminate, local realities are never fully established. Instead, they are always subject to alteration. This concept of alteration, like intellectually compelling idea, is nascent in the modern pursuit of knowledge. The modern, in seeking to know reality, seeks to give it form. It seeks to alter what is given, whether that be the "previously unknown" or received knowledge. However, the modern constrains this alteration in terms of a determination of knowledge of reality. The postmodern rejection of this limited form of knowledge means that this constraint of intellect is unjustified and unnecessary. What the modern calls a description or explanation of reality then, is, for the postmodern an expression of an idea that alters reality, rather than an assertion that ascertains what it is. The intellectual appeal of a compelling idea lies in its being significantly different from the particular, or local, realities in which one is immersed and to which one is accustomed. Thus, the alteration of reality involved is contextual. The appeal of such an idea also lies in its difference allowing one to take leave of that in which one is partially immersed and in one's thereby experiencing a distinctly intellectual freedom. Postmodern intellectual freedom is precisely the capacity of the intellect to take leave of that in which it is immersed. In this leaving, the local realities to which one is accustomed are experienced as not binding. For this reason, taking the position that reality is essentially indeterminate enhances the sense of intellectual possibility. Rather than indeterminacy's being something finally to overcome, the postmodern thinks of indeterminacy as essential to the
227 exercise of intellectual freedom. In an alteration of reality by means of confronting an intellectually compelling idea, the tendency of previously expressed ideas to be experienced as if they are authoritative, final determinations, is relinquished and rendered ineffectual. Compelling Ideas and the Alteration of Reality An intellectually compelling idea is the means by which reality may be altered by intellect. What is altered are, in fact, received constellations of contexts. Received constellations of contexts compose the local realities in which a particular intellect is immersed and with which it interacts . A received constellation of contexts is comprised of two basic elements. First, it contains a more or less coherent linguistic expression of an idea or ideas. Second, it contains a material arrangement of words and/or other external objects, for example, a book or essay composed of written or printed sentences, a painting, a multi-media presentation, and the equipment and materials that compose a laboratory experiment. Since there is no such things as a wholly original idea or language, an intellectually compelling idea is possible only in an encounter with received constellations. The creation of an intellectually compelling idea may serve to produce a new constellation of contexts that differs from received constellations in intellectually compelling ways. In the process, the particular realities in which a particular intellect has been immersed are altered. Any alteration involves some interpretation of received ideas. The postmodern tends to make a distinction between interpretations of reality and interpretations that alter reality. An interpretation of reality as I mean it does not have to be fundamentally critical of received accounts of reality. Upon first exposure to such an account, the account may be intellectually
228 compelling for a particular interpreter simply because it is unfamiliar. In contrast, often received accounts are interpreted in ways that are consistent with interpretations that one has previously made. Accordingly, reality is often implicitly treated in modern theoretical practice as something that is generally consistent and lawful. Inconsistencies and differences are viewed as resolvable, illusory, or insignificant by the interpreter: they are capable of being "explained away," if not now, then in the future, based on better information. The well-educated person is one who is willing to make departures into unfamiliar terrain, to make interpretations of reality that differ in compelling ways from what that person has already known. This person seeks to make, or finds oneself eventually making, interpretations that alter reality, interpretations that differ from previous interpretations in intellectually compelling ways. Such an interpretation is at second remove from an interpretation of reality. Postmodern intellect thus "takes a step back" from a local reality to interpret it in intellectually compelling ways, in ways that strike the intellect by their difference. This is why an intellectually compelling idea is the means by which reality may be altered by intellect. What is altered are local realities, the constellations of contexts that an intellect already knows. An intellectually compelling idea may lead to a new constellation that presents an alteration of these local realities because it differs from them in ways that have struck an intellect and its difference compels the thinker to entertain, perhaps eventually to adopt, it as indicating a new reality, thence a new point from which to depart and to produce still further intellectually compelling ideas in the future. Further, for an idea to be intellectually compelling, it needs to be rationally expressed in a language the difference of which from received
229 constellations strikes the intellect. The rationality of this alteration of reality is the activity of making sense of received constellations in intellectually compelling ways. The rational character of an intellectually compelling idea is a function of the different sense that it makes of other ideas, other constellations of contexts, through their encounter with the interpreter's intellect. One alters reality by making sense of received constellations in their interaction, or "collision," with one's intellect. In this critical activity of finding and fitting together previously expressed constellations, the product of one's intellect is necessarily conditioned in part by the constellations that one is immersed in. Intellect is a site for this collision or interaction. One seeks to make sense of this collision by taking it "out of" mind, into externally expressed language, and rationally arranging it in ways that alter received realities in intellectually compelling ways. This alteration of reality is partly composed of the material element of a local context that is created out of collisions of the kind just mentioned. Ideas spinning in one's mind do not alter reality, because they do not affect reality in material ways. They cannot take hold of reality, nor can they take hold of a mind. An idea must be put into practice, and it can be put into practice only by being taken "outside of" mind, into speech or some other tangible material form. Ideas in themselves do not have an affect on reality, except in the mind. For the postmodern, the relation between mind and other is not knowable as carrying a strict dichotomy in itself. Mind is not alone: it is involved in an irresolvable interaction with an "other," with that with which it is not identical. The aim of postmodern theoretical practice, then, is rationally to alter reality by arranging the collision between intellect and received constellations in expressions that may serve to produce new intellectually
230 compelling ideas. The modern pursuit of knowledge of reality is to be seen, then, as only one particular arrangement that thoughtfully alters reality. It is an arrangement that has been accorded a status, by the modern, of being in effect the standard form of reality. For this reason, the modern is to be seen as severely limiting the possibility of altering reality in intellectually compelling ways. Any particular modern description or explanation of a piece of reality is but a variant of this particular language, the language of knowledge of reality. The postmodern asserts, in contrast, that there is potentially an infinite number of other particular languages that can be intellectually compelling interventions with reality besides the pursuit of a supposed knowledge of reality. Since an intellectually compelling idea is linguistically expressed rather than simply known in itself, postmodern knowledge resides in the expression of ideas. In altering reality, an intellectually compelling idea is known as an expression of language, not as an inert and private, sequestered idea. To know or understand means to express a language that interprets or alters received languages in intellectually compelling ways. Since postmodern knowledge is an activity of linguistic expression, knowledge is potentially being made whenever intellectually compelling ideas are experienced. Ideas are not intellectually compelling a priori. They are made intellectually compelling in their expression. Yet insofar as ideas are involved in the alteration of reality, this activity is not comprised simply of the translation of existing languages into new forms. It includes the alteration of intellect itself and thus of how it thinks about the realities in which it is immersed. Further, the received languages that one encounters as constellations are never pure, intact expressions in themselves. They are a consequence of that person's interpretation and alteration of what remains
231 from previous alterations of reality. Part of what remains is the material element: a book, for example. The material element of a constellation remains to be interpreted, perhaps altered, and used to make new compelling ideas. Modern intellect imagines a linear, progressive movement of accumulated ideas over time. In contrast, the postmodern, having relinquished knowledge of reality in the narrow modern sense, has no predetermined direction, other than that it seeks to produce intellectually compelling ideas. Postmodern ideas are not parts that contribute to the progress of a whole. They are altered and thereby partially replaced, rather than established and progressively revised. However, postmodern theoretical practice is not simply arbitrary for the way ideas are expressed is critically important if they are to produce intellectually compelling experiences. Ideas, and the languages that express them, may well imply alterations of contexts, but they are not contextually bound by virtue of this character. What a person brings into an encounter with a language of another comes from outside the language that it interprets, and those origins are vast, in a state of flux, and indeterminate. What progresses is the complexity of intellect and its capacity to interpret received ideas in compelling ways. This postmodern condition of complexity places significant responsibility on educated people to communicate clearly. Clarity is not for the sake of knowledge of reality. While indeterminacy, in part, makes intellectually compelling ideas possible, another element of this possibility is the intellectual effort to communicate and understand the linguistic expression of ideas. Thus, for the postmodern, the effort that educated people make to communicate clearly is not for the sake of knowledge of reality, but for the sake of enhancing the capacity of intellect to create compelling ideas.
232 The intellectual effort to interpret languages, and to express one's own, requires that languages be intellectually accessible. This accessibility is never whole: one's interpretation of a language is not strictly identical to the language that one is interpreting. For an idea to be experienced as intellectually compelling, to be made rational sense of, it must be accessible. The intellectual effort to communicate an intellectually compelling idea seeks to engender new ideas: if little effort is required, then the idea is probably not intellectually compelling. Yet this effort must involve an attempt to communicate clearly, if an idea is to be useful as the raw material for new compelling ideas. The Public Expression of Compelling Ideas An intellectually compelling experience may occur in private or in public, but postmodern theoretical practice is undertaken with an intent to make ideas known in a public communication. In the activity of making known one's ideas to others by making linguistic expression of ideas in public, one is making the activity of one's intellect available for use by others. Privately, the postmodern educated person is engaged in interpreting constellations and in making one's ideas known to oneself by expressing them as languages. In this sense, one is having intellectually compelling experiences in solitude. Yet such activity is only preparatory. One expresses languages to be read, seen, heard, and felt. For the postmodern, ideas are interpreted and expressed to be communicated, to alter reality in intellectually compelling ways, rather than to be known "in themselves." The alteration of reality is not essentially a private matter. The postmodern educated person seeks to have an impact on its social world. Solitary theoretical practice is important, but it is only
233 preparatory to the public communication of ideas. Private theoretical practice is done with the aim of making ideas known, by expressing them linguistically in public. For this reason, the production of an intellectually compelling idea culminates in a public act. Immersed in a general condition of indeterminacy, the postmodern intellectual seeks the acknowledgment of its thinking by others. In this sense, intellectual self-determination is an experience with others. It is the activity of communicating an intellectually compelling idea to others, with the hope that they may find it intellectually compelling too and will thus possibly use it for the sake of producing other intellectually compelling ideas. By public communication of ideas, one seeks to alter the realities of others. I will use scientific experimentation as an example of an intellectually compelling idea and its public communication. From a postmodern perspective, a scientific experiment is an attempt to produce an intellectually compelling idea. It is a thoughtful intervention in the collisions between intellect and received constellations that attempts to alter reality. The organization and carrying out of an experiment is the expression of an idea in a language, based on collisions between one's ideas and received languages, namely, the results of previous experiments carried out by oneself and/or by others. One conducts the experiment with the aim of altering the local constellations that are composed by the results of previous experiments. In making one's experiment available for replication to the public, one is expressing a language in a public communication that makes it possible for others to have intellectually compelling ideas, by repeating the experiment and using it to produce new experiments.
234 The most intellectually compelling ideas persist as the raw material for new ideas, whether in the form of scientific experiment, an essay, a painting, or a machine. Similarly, the postmodern erases the sharp distinction that is made in the modern university between the pursuit of "basic knowledge" and theoretical practice that "applies" that knowledge: an application is also an interpretation of received constellations through their collision with intellect. In both cases, the aim is to alter local realities in intellectually compelling ways. The most compelling ideas are those that persist as the fruitful basis for the production of new compelling ideas. Since theoretical practice culminates in a public communication, postmodern knowledge is a communicative public act: knowledge is the linguistic expression of intellectually compelling ideas in public. Ideas are communicated and interpreted by others. What moves across minds is the possibility of intellectually compelling ideas. It is this possibility that is fundamentally shared among postmodern educated people. Postmodern intellectual community is the rendering of this possibility. Knowledge is a theoretical practice of public communication in which intellectually compelling ideas are linguistically expressed and interpreted in the promulgation of further intellectually compelling ideas. Thus, intellectual self-determination, an alteration of a general state of indeterminacy, is ultimately an act of interdependence rather than autonomy. A postmodern intellectual community is an interdependent community in which the possibility of intellectually compelling ideas is always moving across minds. This notion is nascent in the modern idea of intellectual community. Yet what has held that community together, what kept the "Great Conversation" going, has been the idea of an enduring, publicly accessible object of knowledge. Solitary contemplation was rendered communal by an
235 object held in common. With the rejection of reality in itself, that idea of community is gone. This loss does not mean, contrary to the perception of some moderns, that the postmodern annihilates the idea of self and denies the need for intellectual community. There is a self to determine intellectually, though the postmodern self is not the modern ideal of autonomy. The postmodern self is dynamic in a general condition of indeterminacy. Indeed, this postmodern condition is all the more reason why that self must be determined in community. This emphasis on intellectual interdependence in the form of communicative acts is consistent with the emphasis that Lyotard, Schrag, and Rorty give to communicative practice. In the previous chapter, I argued that the disciplines tend to take on the authority of absolute foundation. In this way, they contribute toward conditioning and limiting theoretical practice to pursuit of knowledge of reality. In contrast the postmodern university, rather than resting on knowledge of reality, manifests a general willingness of its intellectual community to leave any and all specific theoretical frameworks for a state of indeterminacy, so that intellectually compelling ideas can be produced. Whereas modern university culture is a culture attached to knowledge of reality, the postmodern university culture expresses a willingness not to be so determined, so that the possibility of intellectually compelling ideas can be enhanced. Postmodern theoretical practice is a mediation of the general state of indeterminacy, rather than a determination of reality as it is already conceived to be. I also suggested earlier that the activity of the pursuit of knowledge itself assumes a natural quality that claims to be its own justification and ground. I further claimed that theoretical practice as pursuit of knowledge of reality practically defines the limits of academic freedom within the
236 university. To be a part of the intellectual community, one's theoretical practice must be about the pursuit of knowledge, and the terms of this freedom are maintained according to the authority of the disciplines. This modern idea of academic freedom can be contrasted with a postmodern idea of academic freedom. Affirmation of the instability of reality, ideas, and languages suggests that postmodern academic freedom means that the willingness toward indeterminacy is a willingness to foster conditions that enhance the possibility of intellectually compelling ideas and experiences. Since postmodern theoretical practice is ultimately a public act, this willingness is also a willingness to listen with an intellect unencumbered by the idea that there is a right way to think and that the right way is grounded on the pursuit of knowledge of reality. This position is consistent with Lyotard's assertion that language games entail an obligation to be a hearer before one is a speaker (1). The postmodern university, as a space where intellect works in spite of indeterminacy, is a space for thinking and instituting without bounds. It makes possible the kind of unrestricted dialogue that Rorty imagines. It is a place that compels intellect to think beyond the idea of reality as it is already conceived to be. In the final chapter of this Part, I will apply this broad idea of theoretical practice to show how the idea of the postmodern university reforms and moves beyond the idea of the modern university.
237
Notes to Chapter VI 1.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois and Thebaud, Jean-Loup. Just Gaming. (Wlad
Godzich, trans). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985, 35-
37.
CHAPTER VII POSTMODERN HIGHER EDUCATION: THEORETICAL PRACTICE OUTSIDE AND INSIDE THE DISCIPLINES In this chapter I will apply the broad notion of intellectually compelling ideas to further develop an expanded idea of higher education that accommodates but is not dominated by the pursuit of knowledge of reality. First, I will show how disciplinary knowledge of reality is a particular intellectually compelling idea. Second, I will claim that the postmodern rejection of absolute foundations implies that theoretical practice even within the disciplines is a pursuit of ideas that goes beyond knowledge of reality. Third, I will describe how theoretical practice outside the disciplines makes alternative pursuits explicit as proposals for what reality can be rather than what it is so far taken to be. Finally, I will explore the nature of the relationship between theoretical practice outside and within the disciplines that results from the notion of intellectually compelling ideas. I will suggest how theoretical practice outside the disciplines provides an extra- or adisciplinary space for the pursuit of intellectually compelling ideas that are not about knowledge of reality and will contrast it with the typical approach to interdisciplinarity. I will then show how provision of this space could help a particular inter-or cross-disciplinary dialogue overcome the constraints of the disciplines. 238
239 The Disciplines and Knowledge of Reality as Local Contexts The compelling quality of each discipline lies in its association with knowledge of reality. To understand the intellectually compelling quality of the disciplines, one must understand: (1) the compelling quality of knowledge of reality, and (2) the compelling quality of the disciplines in terms of knowledge of reality. For the ancient Greeks, the striking difference of the idea of knowledge of reality was its difference from myth. What struck Greek intellect is the idea that there is an inherent, intimate connection between the human being and an enduring reality on the basis of reason, rather than a relationship that is understood in terms of myth. The striking quality of knowledge was and is the idea that this enduring reality is accessible to human reason. For this reason, Aristotle could speak of the pursuit of knowledge as being "its own end." This idea may be seen to be intellectually compelling as an experience of the way things really are rather than an experience for the sake of gaining and accumulating accurate information about the way things really are. On this basis, the ancients could meaningfully connect the idea of knowledge of reality with the idea of how to live. Access to reality through intellect meant that the human being could live with reality as a fundamental part of it. The idea of knowledge of reality also struck the ancient intellect as a diversity that human reason could access and categorize in a way that yielded a comprehensive understanding of reality. This understanding would be the means of informing the human being of its proper place and purpose in the order of reality.
240 One form of this categorization is the disciplinary matrix. The intellectually compelling quality of the idea of each discipline is twofold. First, the idea of a discipline is that it is a unique and basic form and category of knowledge of an enduring reality that is accessible through reason. Each discipline is striking as a general avenue to knowledge of reality. Second, the intellectually compelling quality of the idea of a discipline is that it is a complementary part of the whole of reality. On these bases, each discipline is accorded the status of its object, an enduring reality. The striking difference of ideas within each discipline is a matter of their novelty as explanations of: (1) what is true of reality in terms of the discipline that the idea falls within, and/or (2) how to know reality in terms of that discipline. Specific intellectually compelling experiences are interpreted by the modern as containing within them evidence of an enduring object that falls within a discipline. Since the evidence is discipline-bound, the enduring object of knowledge is a disciplinary object. A person who has a proper understanding has an understanding that conforms with the way a disciplinary object "really is." This person has an understanding that qualifies as expert knowledge of that object. The modern idea of disciplines attempts to accommodate the practical fact that intellectually compelling ideas are not always susceptible of falling neatly within any existing discipline's criteria for knowledge. That is, the modern seeks to accommodate the fact that intellect persistently seeks to express compelling ideas that cannot be proven, or even articulated, according to the criteria that are established in the disciplinary matrix as that matrix is given at any point in time. Thus, the modern allows new disciplines to appear on occasion (sometimes replacing existing disciplines),
241 and subdisciplines much more often (the explosion of the latter relative to the former is an indication of the practical hold of established disciplines). For the modern, the parameters of what constitutes intellectually compelling ideas are ideas that are known to be true in disciplinary terms. On this basis, the disciplines have maintained the intellectual status of the object that ultimately grounds them, knowledge of an enduring reality. The postmodern rejects this ground on the basis that the idea of an enduring reality that can be absolutely known cannot be justified. The idea of knowledge of an enduring reality is one particular intellectually compelling idea of intellect. It actually points to a constellation of contexts, defined as disciplines. A constellation of contexts, from a postmodern point of view, is a particular, limited alteration of indeterminacy. The idea of a disciplinary knowledge of reality is thus seen to alter indeterminacy in particular, limited ways. Each discipline is also, in turn, a constellation of contexts, namely, the various theories, methods, and schools of thought within it. The disciplines are contingent groupings of local contexts rather than determinants of those contexts. The Pursuit of Intellectually Compelling Ideas Outside the Disciplines What are the consequences of viewing the disciplines as local contexts without an absolute ground? If knowledge of reality is a particular intellectually compelling idea, then theoretical practice does not have to be grounded in knowledge of reality. The disciplines can be expressly altered by other considerations. They can alter reality in ways that go beyond the effort to arrange words and objects to accurately represent reality.
242 The postmodern university would make these other possibilities explicit by conceiving an intellectual space outside the disciplines. This theoretical practice would not pursue accurate representations of reality. Instead it would pursue possibilities that may be within various intellectually compelling ideas of reality. Words and objects that have been arranged to produce constellations of local contexts of knowledge within the disciplines would be rearranged to produce constellations of local contexts that diverge from disciplinary contexts in intellectually compelling ways. These constellations would not be alternative accounts of reality, or about what reality is, but would be intellectually compelling ways of thinking about how reality can be. They would depart from discipline-based efforts in favor of proposing ways of approaching reality that deviate from the assumptions and methods of those efforts. This theoretical practice would seek to alter received contexts so that intellect may move beyond disciplinary accounts of reality . The aim of this pursuit would be to broaden the possibilities for intellectually compelling experiences rather than to broaden the aegis of a theory or a realm of knowledge. Theoretical practice, thus conceived, brings together ideas that, from particular standpoints within the disciplines, do not belong together as consistent parts of a disciplinary constellation. From perspectives of disciplinary knowledge of reality, these alternative constellations appear to be disparate or paradoxical arrangements. They present what Lyotard calls "allusions to the unpresentable." (1) Disparity or paradox ends theoretical practice only if one insists on limiting theoretical practice to the pursuit of knowledge of reality. Theoretical practice outside the disciplines seeks to make sense of the disparate or paradoxical by working with paradox instead of either resolving it or throwing it away as nonsense, though the latter two
243 stratagems might still be possible. It pursues what can be done with disparate local contexts in order to alter reality in intellectually compelling ways outside the pursuit of knowledge of reality. In this space, intellect fits the words and objects that compose fragments of knowledge together in novel ways with the aim of creating, and making a persuasive case for, what strikes it as a compelling idea of what reality can be. These expressions are not arguments that seek to prove that a particular assertion is true of some aspect of reality. They are arguments that propose intellectually compelling ideas of reality outside the pursuit of knowledge of reality. These arguments do not follow specific preconceived purposes concerning how realities can or should be altered. They are the particular arguments of the individual thinkers who experience and express them. The postmodern perspective justifies this activity of combining pieces of what the disciplines yield on the basis that there is no absolute whole that fits the myriad of particular discoveries about reality together. The contemporary fragmentation of knowledge is not an abnormality to be overcome by unifying its pursuit according to the idea of knowledge of reality. Fragmentation is the consequence of the final inaccessibility of reality. It reflects the fragmented nature of the pursuit of knowledge of reality. The pursuit of knowledge of reality can only express the idea of this experience in conditional fragments or constellations of local contexts. In this sense, representations of reality are allusions to the compelling idea that reality can be known as it really is. Fragmentation means that knowledge of reality is altered by particular inquiries that yield compelling ideas. Fragmentation as a modern phenomenon is a problem that results from two conflicting and unresolvable intellectual desires: the desire to have
244 a comprehensive knowledge of reality that unifies the diversity of its particulars and the desire to subject knowledge to doubt so that intellect can create different, intellectually compelling explanations of reality. This condition is reflected in the fact that the idea of absolute foundations is ignored in the practice of most modern educated people even though it conditions that practice in the form of the disciplines. The proliferation of subdisciplines and growth of cross-disciplines manifests the desire of educated people to have intellectually compelling experiences despite the hold of the disciplines. The postmodern perspective does not necessarily view fragmentation as a problem. Fragmentation means at least in part that the course of knowledge is not stable because stability is not finally satisfactory to intellect. Intellect desires to be active without the requirement that it must do so within the pursuit of knowledge of reality. The postmodern makes this tacit modern desire explicit so that the power of intellect can be released from the constraints of this idea. Rather than attempting simply to repair fragmentation, as if the disorder of the university were a congeries of abnormalities to be fixed, postmodern intellect works with the myriad of "fragments," reconceived as local contexts, to shape them in ways that produce intellectually compelling alterations of reality. Instead of accumulating knowledge of reality, postmodern intellect works with the products of the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge of reality to produce effects of intellect that alter reality in intellectually compelling ways that are not limited to knowledge of reality. That is why it must work outside the disciplines. It seeks to depart from knowledge of reality in intellectually compelling ways. It is always seeking a way out of the given.
245 This notion of departure is nascent in the modern pursuit of knowledge of reality, for the pursuit of knowledge of reality is fueled by a desire to depart from the given. The original departure, the departure of the ancient Greeks, is a departure from mythos to logos, from unreasoned determinations to reasoned determinations. Subsequent departures are departures from given reasoned accounts of reality to accounts the differences of which from the given are intellectually compelling. These departures of modern logos are always movements "toward" the enduring object: efforts to get closer and closer to the way aspects of reality "really are." They are, in effect, alterations of reality that seek to know reality as it is already conceived to be. In contrast, the postmodern departure is partly a movement "away from" the enduring object, toward indeterminacy. Yet it is not a movement away from reason. In taking a step back from the object, postmodern intellect takes with it the fragments of logos that are produced in the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge, including the disciplines themselves. Nor is the postmodern departure simply another form of logos. In piecing together fragments, the postmodern attempts to locate, express, and develop positions concerning how reality can be altered in ways that are not disciplinary. It works "between" logos and mythos, between evidence of reality and intellectual desire, not with an aim to resolve them in favor of one or the other but in order to construct alternative notions of reality that are intellectually compelling. Thus, postmodern departure is "before," or nascent in logos, in that it is theoretical practice before it is constrained by knowledge of reality. It is "after," or post- logos, in that it takes the fragmented products of the disciplinary pursuit and rearranges them to produce intellectually compelling experiences that are not constrained by knowledge of reality. The
246 postmodern focus on intellectually compelling experiences regains the experiential notion of reality that struck the ancients, but only as a fragmented experience, rather than an intellectual apprehension of the way some aspect of reality is. In this practice, the postmodern makes explicit what the modern pursuit of knowledge of reality obscures: that the pursuit of knowledge of reality ultimately has to reject what is given in order to think about reality in intellectually compelling ways. Modern intellect has to reject the notion that there are enduring aspects of reality that are finally knowable as such in order to pursue knowledge. The postmodern departure is the irresolution of the opposition between logos and mythos that results from this intellectual condition of having to pursue, yet having to doubt. Since this departure is composed of fragments of knowledge and aims to propose how reality can be, it is concerned with the practical question of how the products of the pursuit of knowledge of reality are to be used. For this reason, the determinations that are made outside the disciplines are critical determinations or postmodern critique as opposed to disciplinary determinations of reality. This critical activity combines the products of particular disciplinary inquiries as the raw material for intellectually compelling ideas that are not constrained by the pursuit of knowledge of reality. In doing so, it creates constellations of local contexts that are new grounds for particular disciplinary inquiries. In the absence of an absolute foundation, they give intellect directions in which to pursue knowledge. These directions are not absolute foundations. They are critical foundations because they are critical of (move outside) received foundations without asserting themselves as absolute. They pursue the blurring of the boundaries between representation and reality and what this blurring means
247 for theoretical practice. In doing so, they seek to change the meaning of knowledge of reality and the meaning of the pursuit of knowledge of reality . In a broad sense, postmodern theoretical practice is a two-way "conversation" or "play" between particular inquiries within disciplines and ideas outside of them. Ideas outside the disciplines impact what knowledge of reality can mean and the ways in which knowledge of reality is pursued, while the latter provide the raw material for the construction of compelling ideas that cut across the disciplines. In this way, each side continuously affects the nature of the other. The ultimate aim of this productive tension is to move beyond the opposition between logos and myth. To further illuminate this relationship, I will briefly contrast it with the relationship between interdisciplinarity as it is usually conceived and the disciplines. I will then examine a particular interdisciplinary inquiry and suggest how it would be approached in terms of the relationship between postmodern theoretical practice outside and inside the disciplines. This discussion will then lead to the Conclusion. Postmodern Higher Education, Interdisciplinarity, and the Comparative Study of Social Transformations Interdisciplinarity is the most commonly discussed "alternative" to the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge (2). It is often presented in the context of a critique of the disciplines. Yet modern forms of interdisciplinarity typically do not mediate the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge of reality. Interdisciplinarity emerges in response to problems defined in terms of the disciplines and is usually advanced as a way of enhancing the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge of reality. Interdisciplinarity is therefore a service to the disciplines that defines itself in terms of them.
248 Most significantly, the emphasis of interdisciplinarity is the unification of knowledge as a whole. It does not replace the disciplines but fills in alleged gaps between them by creating "cross-disciplines" that are in effect additional disciplines. The purpose of going "between" the disciplines is to realize unity. Modern interdisciplinarity seeks to resolve sharp disciplinary distinctions in order to render the pursuit of knowledge into a coherent totality. It tries to repair the modern fragmentation of knowledge and bring the disciplines together so that the disciplinary project of knowledge of reality can be realized. Interdisciplinarity is largely an uncritical extension of the disciplines for their sake rather than a critical alternative. It is a implicitly an idea of the absolute. In contrast, the postmodern idea of the disciplines does not view the fragmentation of knowledge as an abnormality that needs to be repaired so that the normality of unity can be restored. Postmodern disciplines are groupings that manage the flux of particular pursuits of knowledge so that these particulars can inform each other for the purpose of creating new pursuits rather than establishing themselves as absolute in effect. The aim is to create intellectually compelling pursuits of knowledge that are different from what is given. Outside the disciplines, theoretical practice seeks to bring disparate fragments of knowledge and particular intellectual desires together in order to create different intellectually compelling experiences that are not about reality as it is already conceived to be. The diverse products of the pursuit of knowledge of reality are things to use in order to go beyond them with the aim of altering reality in other compelling ways. The postmodern seeks to extend the capacity of intellect rather than disciplinary modes of inquiry. It is not constrained by the assumptions and methods of particular disciplines
249 or particular forms of inquiry; it creates possibilities for inquiry. Inside and outside the disciplines, disparate ideas are not brought together to resolve them but to bounce them off of each other to create intellectually compelling experiences that are different from what was previously known. Postmodern theoretical practice seeks to locate and develop exceptions from what is predictable and expected rather than to solidify and extend what is predictable and expected. I will now illustrate how interdisciplinarity would look in terms of this postmodern dichotomy by examining a particular interdisciplinary dialogue that has attempted to overcome the constraints of the disciplines. This dialogue is the Comparative Study of Social Transformations (CSST) at the University of Michigan (3). CSST primarily involves historians, sociologists, and cultural anthropologists, and to a much lesser extent, scholars from the humanities. The ambitious aim of the founders of CSST was to engage in an intensive, systematic cross-disciplinary "interchange" of ideas in order to pursue this question: "How do groups of actors constituted and constrained by social and cultural structures act so as to transform the very structures that constituted them?" (4) The belief that a cross-disciplinary interchange can answer this question is based on the claim that cross-disciplinary borrowing of theories and methods in these fields is "converging on a new approach to the study of social transformations." (5 ) We believe that this convergence makes possible potentially dramatic breakthroughs in theory and research that could significantly reconfigure all three disciplines, and perhaps other social science disciplines as well (6). The emergence of social history, historical sociology, and historical anthropology within history, sociology, and anthropology respectively is cited
250 as examples of this trend (7). The problem is that the utility of these borrowings has been limited by the reluctance of scholars in these subfields to break free of established disciplinary aims and practices (8). CSST sought to overcome these limitations by developing a three-way interchange that "has the potential to radically restructure existing disciplinary paradigms in a three fields--to fundamentally change and invigorate our modes of thinking and styles of research." (9) Seven years later, CSST continues to function as an ongoing dialogue that also includes scholars from the humanities. It has provided many individual participants with an awareness of approaches from other disciplines other than their own. However, the dialogue has encountered some obstacles that have hindered realization of the ambitious aims of CSST's founders. Among the early obstacles, the greatest stumbling block for many participants was the difficulty of accepting approaches from disciplines outside their own. For example, there was a general unwillingness to read outside one's own discipline. Historians would seek to understand anthropologists by reading historians who incorporate anthropological approaches. This resistance was blamed, in part, on the institutional centrality of academic departments for professional identification and rewards. Another early obstacle that CSST encountered was a concern that the dialogue was leading toward relativism. This lead to the exodus of participants who sought objective, scientific knowledge of social reality. An obstacle for those who favored structuralist social explanation was the interest of many members in exploring postmodern thought, especially the ideas of Foucault. CSST remains a viable interdisciplinary dialogue in which participants are exposed to diverse inquiries. It primarily benefits scholars in their individual pursuits. Exposure to ideas outside of their disciplines
251 provides open-minded individuals with broader perspectives on their own discipline-based inquiries. However, CSST has not realized its ambitious metatheoretical aims because it has not really come to terms with the problems that arose early in its existence. These problems are related. They reflect the absolute status of the disciplinary pursuit of reality in itself as the basis for theoretical practice. The underlying conflict involves this factor and the intellectual desire behind the original aims. The desire is to find a way out of the constraints of the disciplines in order to develop new social critiques that can serve as bases for progressive social, economic, and political transformations. This desire is explicitly reflected in the subject matter of many of CSST's working papers, especially those authored by its founders and directors (10). It is also reflected in a book of essays edited by three of its founders and directors, Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (11). The conflict between the absolute hold of the disciplines and the desire to take critique outside of them is exhibited in the Preface and the Introduction: We see ourselves as contributing to an emerging politics of knowledge . . . In one sense, this is a continuation of the agendas opened by the late 1960s. But in another it reconstitutes the latter in an environment that has become profoundly changed . . . transcending of the disciplines--a kind of creative disobedience--is taking place. . . . . . The volume is organized by a set of definite and strongly held commitments--to the indivisibility of knowledge, in the sense of the complex and subtle interconnectedness of matters that intellectual and political conservatives would sooner keep apart; to historical contingency, cultural specificity, and the changeability of things; to the constructedness of the world and its categories; to feminism and its challenges to the given ways of knowing; to theory; to the transgression of disciplinary boundaries; to the critique of all reductionisms; and to the axiom that a better understanding of the world is indispensable to the chances of changing it. Running throughout the volume as a whole are two recurring motifs:
252 showing the pervasiveness of the inequalities of the power relations through which the world is ordered; and thinking about how the order can be upset (12). the critical awareness proposed in this series, our insistence on the necessary linking of culture with power with history, is meant to challenge fundamental assumptions in academic writing. It may be useful to think of the three terms in the set of our title as supplements, in Derrida's sense . . . Supplementarity suggests why every dialectical structure must remain open, why no synthesis can be anything more than provisional . . . What follows in this reader is meant to point the way toward further supplements--shaping, shifting, and sharpening new disciplinary configurations and theoretical commitments, without ever losing hold of the restless and relentless concern for truth that, for all its misuses, we must continue to sustain (13). The perpetuation of the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge of reality in the guise of interdisciplinarity cannot effectively overcome the problems that have hampered realization of the critical aims of CSST (14). An intellectual space outside the disciplines that is not constrained by the pursuit of knowledge of reality would allow intellect to express intellectually compelling ideas of what social transformation can be without being restricted to the pursuit of what social transformation is. This space would utilize the specific, mutable, contingent local contexts that are expressed within and across the disciplines by combining them in intellectually compelling ways. The ideas that would be produced would serve as critical foundations that enable new particular pursuits within the disciplines. Since these pursuits are not bound to given disciplinary modes of thought, the latter would change and possibly be replaced if they do not reflect the similarities across the local pursuits that emerge within them. In this postmodern framework, the idea of interdisciplinarity is different from the ways that is typically conceived. It is not a basis for
253 overcoming the fragmentation of knowledge and the gaps between the disciplines by a unifying the divergent pursuits of knowledge of reality. Postmodern interdisciplinarity is a dichotomy between dynamic groupings of particular constellations and critical thinking outside of these groupings. The meaning of inter- here is that these groupings are impermeable because they are not structured as absolute wholes. Their structure is a consequence of the dynamic quality of the dynamic, particular constellations that define them. Postmodern cross-disciplinary encounters and collaborations do not synthesize divergent ideas, but use them to produce compelling ideas that are not limited by the disciplines. Disciplines and the basic modern divisions that organize them are therefore always subject to change, dissolution, limited mergers, and replacement. Postmodern interdisciplinarity would refer to what takes place in localities across the disciplines, on one hand, and to the relationship between intellectual activity within the disciplines and outside them, on the other. The postmodern structure of knowledge and the postmodern curriculum could be based on identifying areas of basic consensus and dissensus among scholars in terms of Rorty's corresponding notions of normal and abnormal discourse, respectively. Normal ideas would be those ideas that relatively large numbers of knowers find compelling. The pursuit of intellectually compelling ideas within the disciplines would be organized in groupings of normal ideas, and the pursuit of compelling ideas outside the disciplines would be organized in the same way, except these latter groupings of abnormal compelling ideas would be smaller, since they are less popular. The aim of this postmodern framework would not be to normalize inquiry but to create new compelling discourse, to change what is normal. Thus, normal discourse would be thought of as that which is subject to change, rather than
254 that which seeks to reach agreement on what is knowledge. Disciplinary or normal discourse is local and dynamic: it does not seek to extend itself, but to change or remake itself, and the impetus for this dynamic are the contributions of abnormal discourse. This would include contributions toward altering the particular constellation of contexts that is comprised by the disciplines. Given this dynamic, it is conceivable that what is normal knowledge of reality would eventually leave the disciplinary plane altogether, and that knowledge of reality would mean something very different than knowledge of reality. The key to this dynamic is the theoretical practice that occurs outside the disciplines. This abnormal activity uses the products of the divergent particular pursuits of knowledge and draws intellectual implications that alter reality in compelling ways. These alterations serve as foundations for the development of new local pursuits within the disciplines. This space provides the impetus for the kind of theoretical practice that CSST aspires to express. Conclusion: The Postmodern Meaning of Knowledge for its Own Sake and of what it means to be Well-Educated The work of philosophical and historical reflection is put back into the field of the work of thought only on condition that one clearly grasps problematization not as an arrangement of representations but as a work of thought (15). Where can one look for examples of the kind of "abnormal" interdisciplinary theoretical practice that would be outside the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge? One need look no further than the work of Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, and Rorty. Each of them embodies what I mean by postmodern interdisciplinarity. Derrida and Rorty work outside philosophy
255 and literature, Foucault works outside philosophy and social history, and Lyotard works outside science and intellectual history. In this practice, they produce intellectually compelling ideas. For example, Lyotard's idea of metanarrative is a strikingly different way of characterizing the modern pursuit of scientific knowledge. Rather than being an autonomous, self-justifying realm about reality as it is already conceived to be, Lyotard's compelling idea is that the status of modern science depends is socially legitimated based on metanarrative. In this way, metanarrative provides a way of thinking about scientific knowledge that localizes it. Specifically, Lyotard's idea is that the positivistic claims of modern science are dependent upon two particular stories about the social utility of science. They are the French Enlightenment "political" story of emancipation and the German Enlightenment "philosophical" story about universal Spirit (16). Most importantly, these stories comprise two or more constellations of contexts that can be used as points of departure for new compelling ideas. Metanarrative provides intellect with a compelling reason to think about science in ways that depart from the idea that what counts as scientific knowledge is knowledge of aspects of reality that exist independent of and before their pursuit. For Lyotard, the new compelling idea is that postmodern science is marked by discontinuous, paradoxical petit narratives. As I have shown earlier, these ideas of meta- and little narrative can be applied to the context of the pursuit of higher education. The visions of Hutchins, Whitehead, Giamatti, and Pelikan are dependent on various ways of depicting the pursuit of knowledge as, in effect, an absolute foundation. In Lyotard's terms, these absolute foundations are metanarratives about the collective, emancipatory progress of knowledge and civilization. As I have argued, even if these metanarratives do not reflect the beliefs of most
256 scholars, the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge of reality is, in effect, the absolute foundation of theoretical practice. If there is no metanarrative left to accompany this absolute foundation, then the state of theoretical practice reflects the postmodern condition that Lyotard develops, namely, that knowledge is comprised of little "islands of determinism." (17) In fact, this compelling idea of local knowledge has been a point of departure for the idea of postmodern higher education that I have developed and that I find compelling. Rorty's critique of these thinkers on the basis that they become enmeshed in proposing absolute foundations is mistaken. Differance, power, and paralogy are not intended to serve as truth foundations. Rorty can be excused because Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard sometimes express these notions in language that suggests that they are making absolute claims. Their ideas are not fully removed from the problematic of absolute. However, these thinkers can also be excused for leaving ambiguities, because they do not claim that the idea of absolute foundations is an entirely empty placeholder. Derrida explicitly asserts that it is not simply transcended. What is "discovered" and experienced through this theoretical practice that is not constrained by the idea of knowledge of reality are compelling alternative bases upon which to predicate local, contingent knowledge. Differance, power, and paralogy are not absolute foundations for knowledge of reality. Postmodern knowledge "for its own sake" means theoretical practice as a consequence of the unstable, overlapping relationship between logos and mythos . The postmodern educated person is one who understands that logos and mythos are not absolutely distinguishable and is able to use them together in order to produce and communicate intellectually compelling ideas.
257 By creating a space outside of the disciplines for critical activity and removing the disciplines as the absolute foundations for theoretical practice, the postmodern idea of the university is a radically different place from the modern. Yet the questions that emerged from my analyses of Rorty, Lyotard, Schrag, and Foucault reflect that the postmodern university is nascent in the modern. The postmodern meaning of knowledge for its own sake and for what it means to be a well-educated person reflect questions of what the intellect is for and its relation to the question of how to live, and these are questions that were asked in ancient Greece. The difference is that the postmodern rejection of absolute foundations means that the perennial responses to these questions are no longer adequate. My analysis of Rorty produced the question of the object of knowledge for a postmodern educated person and its relationship to Rorty's idea of coping. Knowledge is an intellectually compelling experience. The desire to know is the desire to have intellectually compelling ideas. Knowledge is not a pure theoretical comprehension of reality in itself but involves the creation of intellectually compelling ideas that mediate the condition of indeterminacy. The postmodern educated person seeks to cope practically with this general condition by seeking to have particular intellectually compelling experiences. Coping is a local activity that alters received contexts in compelling ways. What endures is not an accessible reality but the capacity of intellect to express ideas in languages that strike the intellect as different from previously experienced ideas in compelling ways. By having these local experiences, the educated person uses its intellect to alter the general condition of indeterminacy with particular determinations that are not final.
258 Inside the disciplines, an alteration is a local pursuit of contingent ideas that differ from those that have been previously realized in compelling ways. Knowledge of reality is a diversity of ultimately disparate local projects that are in constant flux. They come and go as particular inquiries rather than contributing toward the progress of a whole knowledge. These local pursuits are ultimately disparate because each of them is contingent on the particular assumptions, the constellation of contexts, that are made in each case. Since there are no absolute foundations, the grounds of the assumptions that are made in a local pursuit are critical and practical. These grounds emerge from the theoretical practice that occurs outside of the disciplines. They are critical and practical in that they are compelling expressions of what reality can be. They are exceptional in that they work with disparate fragments of knowledge without trying to resolve them in a permanent unity. My analysis of Lyotard left the question of what the postmodern educated person is a part of in the absence of absolute foundations. Since there is no whole to permanently establish, the postmodern desire to depart from received contexts and foundations is not an act that rejects intellectual community but continually makes it The ground of this activity is the communal experience of intellectually compelling ideas rather than the progressive accumulation of discoveries. Both within and outside the disciplines, postmodern intellect seeks to produce compelling ideas with the aim of communicating them. Intellectual community is the perpetuation of this dynamic communicative activity in specific encounters between individuals. A well-educated person is part of something larger than itself in that (1) the desire to have compelling intellectual experiences is common across intellectuals (2) this desire is not accomplished without using the ideas
259 of others to produce new compelling ideas and (3) the experience is ultimately consummated with realization of the desire to share the new idea in order to enhance the possibility of new intellectually compelling ideas. The community progresses in the sense that the capacity of intellect to work with complexity in the creation of these ideas is enhanced over time due to more practical experience engaging in increasingly complex intellectual activity. The modern pursuit of knowledge of reality on the disciplinary plane is only the beginning of this activity and only the beginning of proposals about what reality can be. It is also the beginning of what intellectual community can be. In every local act of intellect lies the enduring question of how intellect is to be without knowledge of an enduring, accessible reality. For the postmodern educated person, theoretical practice is not only a matter of attaining knowledge but of expressing intellect. The movement of thought is at least as important as the determination of thought. The inaccessibility of reality in itself thrusts the intellect to the center of theoretical practice. Intellect is theoretical in that it is the irreducible locus of ideas. If there are no ideas of local realities, then there is no educated person. Yet the theoretical significance of intellect is dependent upon its practical capacity to express and communicate ideas. Since communication of compelling ideas is the consummation of postmodern theoretical practice, the practical significance of language is elevated for the educated person. Language is not a mirror of an underlying accessible reality. Ideas and intellect are inaccessible in themselves: intellect must make linguistic expressions of ideas in order to have compelling experiences. Therefore the manner in which intellect expresses itself is crucial for an intellectually
260 compelling experience to occur. Language is the "allusion to the unpresentable." My analysis of Schrag produced the question of how the "other" is a desirable object to know. The significance of communication means that the other is the experience of another intellect in the act of expressing compelling ideas. The actual encounter of one intellect with another is the core of postmodern theoretical practice and intellectual community. The desire to know (have) compelling experiences is partly the desire to know another through this communicative act. The other is not an object to know in itself but is an ultimately unfathomable being that one seeks to experience through the ideas that this other being expresses. One seeks to be struck by the difference of these ideas from the ideas that one has previously experienced. One seeks to be compelled by the other's ideas to express new compelling ideas. In this sense, one seeks to think for oneself through others. The inaccessibility of reality in itself thrusts intellect to the center, not as a coherent, autonomous Cartesian subject, but through the permeability of intellect relative to the intellects of others. This interaction across intellects is the basis for enhancing the capacity of intellect to have compelling ideas. It is both a vertical and a horizontal intellectual experience. It is vertical in that intellect seeks to think in terms of abstract ideas that are beyond knowing in themselves. Intellectual experience is horizontal in its linguistic expression to others. Horizontal and vertical experiences are mutually stimulating. Since ideas, reality, and self are inaccessible in themselves, the well-educated person grows in terms of its vertical capacity to cultivate compelling ideas rather than by accumulating and integrating a body of knowledge. This growth is not an act of a single mind but is stimulated by, and stimulates, the
261 growth of the intellect in its horizontal capacity to experience the linguistic expression of others as different and compelling. The greater this capacity, the wider the difference that can be experienced as compelling rather than nonsensical. My analysis of Foucault led to the question of what is left for the intellectual to be, as a distinctive individual capable of making intellectual determinations, in the wake of the loss of the autonomous self. The postmodern self is indeterminable in itself. It realizes itself in the experience of compelling ideas. These temporary realizations are also the basis for intellectual freedom. Intellectual freedom is not only the freedom to pursue knowledge of reality but the freedom of engaging in the expression of compelling ideas because they (1) are not bound to an autonomous reality; and (2) they manifest the capacity of intellect to give itself and reality form against a general condition to indeterminacy. In the expression of this capacity to not be finally determined by indeterminacy, the postmodern educated person makes sense of Aristotle's notion of self-thinking thought. Theoretical practice outside the disciplines that expresses what reality can be is not a vision of reality but an intellection of reality. The metaphor of vision implies that there is something that really is there independent of the act of seeing and that theoretical practice represents in order to gain knowledge of something. Since the postmodern rejects this limitation of the real , a better metaphor for the activity of expressing what reality can be is intellection. Thought is cognizant of itself not as a thing to know and that knows. Instead, thought knows itself as intellect in action that has no final bounds, and that is limited only by the contexts in which it finds itself and by the particular degree to which it is
262 capable of expressing different ideas that alter those particular contexts in compelling ways. To think outside the disciplines is to be in a space that acknowledges the final indeterminacy of boundaries. It is to engage freely in the expression of ideas that are compelling exceptions from received foundations and that are thus critical of the latter. This activity makes it possible for local pursuits of knowledge to not be constrained by the disciplines. Ultimately, it makes it possible for the university to not be constrained by itself. The final indeterminacy of boundaries means that the division between the welleducated person and other persons, a division that Foucault critiques in his critique of the idea of the modern separation of the politically progressive intellectual from its object, society, is not justified. Postmodern theoretical practice is not an isolated from society. Since thinking of what reality can be is a departure from what is given, and since what is given is not given purely in mind but is shaped by contexts that are lived and interpreted, the postmodern university opens up thinking to make better lives. The welleducated person recognizes that the ideas that compel it are ideas that can make realities in ways whose difference is striking because they are better ways to live. The question that my analysis of Derrida left is what a generalized notion of intellectual purpose for its own sake would be, how the idea of a foundation would be retained within it, and what this means for the organization of the pursuit of knowledge in higher education. This generalized notion is the pursuit of intellectually compelling ideas for their own sake. What is foundational is the need of intellect to think in compelling ways. The organization of this foundation is a structure of knowledge that provides intellect with (1) flexibility within the disciplinary pursuit of
263 knowledge such that the disciplines become dynamic groupings that are determined by the nature of the particular inquiries within them rather than determining the nature of those inquiries, and (2) a space outside the disciplines to pursue compelling ideas of what reality can be, and thus alter what knowledge of reality and the pursuit of this knowledge can be, thereby taking the pursuit of knowledge off of the "disciplinary plane." While postmodern contingency encourages the liberation of the creative intellect from the constraints of the modern disciplinary pursuit of knowledge, I think that it also implies a complementary movement of thought, a coming together of minds. This idea emerges from human limitation, an important consequence of contingency that has not, but needs to be, confronted by postmodernism. If postmodernism rejects the possibility that reality is a big puzzle for the community of knowers to piece together with the goal of someday achieving complete or essential knowledge, then it also removes the common object that provides educated people with a basis for being a part of something larger than their individual, seemingly finite selves. The removal of that object leaves only these individual, limited selves. Postmodern contingency, then, creates a void that can only be filled by the activity of individual minds coming together, however temporarily and ad hoc, in order to cope with this condition. For this reason, postmodern higher education would give dialogue an emphasis that perhaps does not currently exist in universities. As I see it, the purpose of coming together is, fundamentally, to achieve simple human affinity in order to cope with the postmodern condition. In so doing, the effort to locate points of agreement, normal and abnormal, provides the inquirer with signposts, places of relative coherence and sources of guidance amid the flux of contingency and contexts that
264 postmodern inquiry is faced with. These signposts are not permanent, because postmodern inquiry seeks to change them. Since they are the product of dialogue, it is likely that they will be comprised of elements that would not have occurred to a given thinker independently. Thus, they are also the source of new ideas for thinkers interpret and apply to their own effort to create and convey abnormal discourse or new languages. The postmodern educated person uses its intellect to produce compelling new ways of looking at, and coping with, the postmodern condition. In so doing, the ideas that it generates are potential contributions toward the realization of other human beings, both within and outside the university: not toward the advancement of "society" as a fundamentally unified whole, but as ways of thinking that provide possibilities for individuals and groups to make their lives better. A distinctive element of postmodern intellectual activity is dialogue. If, in its need to overcome what Bernstein calls "Cartesian anxiety", the knower cannot turn to the object, then it would seem that it needs to turn to the intellectual resources of other knowers in concert with its own, to live well (18). If the possibility of producing new compelling ideas is contingent on exposure to other compelling ideas, then it seems that the well-educated person needs to cultivate (and not simply tolerate) the creation of new languages or abnormal discourse out of intellectual integrity. A positive response to postmodernism would recognize the need to utilize the intellect to communicate, and receive, ideas that in particular, diverse ways, respond to, ameliorate, and explore the possibilities of, the postmodern condition of apparent limitation. It is here that an argument can be made to ground the desire for knowledge of "the other": desire would be inferred from the common human subjection to this condition of limitation.
265 In the rejection of the modern university's absolute foundation, knowledge of reality, the philosophical basis for intellectual community would seem to lie somewhere within the condition of limitation itself. Acknowledgment of the postmodern condition requires an outward generosity toward alien discourse, because of the human need to create languages to cope without an objective absolute foundation. Further, in the wake of the object-in-itself, perhaps a "new space" is opened for heretofore unfamiliar theoretical insights that profoundly and variously express, and seek to advance, ideas that identify and question patterns of belief and action that unjustifiably limit local, practical determinations and achievements of the human good. In part at least, the postmodern acknowledgment of human limitation would seem to create a space for ideas that are compelling for the way in which they address the practical consequences of the contingency of human reason The educated person would then be part of a community that is distinguished from other human communities not in kind but in purpose: a part of a place that is consciously devoted to exploring, understanding, and creating new languages, and thereby, new possibilities for mediating human suffering and living well. Since a compelling idea is known in an experience, to say that intellectually compelling ideas are their own end is to say that thinking that is worthwhile is thinking that is for the sake of how people might experience better lives. Moreover, since this activity is communal, thinking for the sake of how people might live better is thinking for the sake of how people might live better with each other. What implicitly drives the Rorty, Lyotard, Schrag, Foucault, and Derrida to think outside the modern is the desire to go beyond the pursuit of knowledge of reality to think of ways to make life better that cannot be thought within the confines of the modern university and the
266 modern pursuit of knowledge of reality. The postmodern rejection of this absolute foundation renders intellect free in each pursuit of intellectually compelling ideas to think about these questions: What can be done in the local spaces where we think? Who can we be in those spaces? What can we call these things, and what can they mean for others? Finally, the work and careers of these five thinkers suggests that the philosopher has a role in the postmodern university that is different from the role of the philosopher in the modern university and yet is nascent in the modern. Ideally, the modern philosopher has sought to have a central role, though it has not been realized in practice: to clarify the grounds of the pursuit of knowledge of reality and the grounds of knowledge of reality for other disciplines. If the pursuit of knowledge of reality is not justified as an absolute foundation, then is there a central role for the philosopher in a postmodern university? I suggest that there is, and that it would be the role of an intellectual catalyst. Postmodern philosophers would not belong to a distinct discipline, but would think throughout the university, and seek to engender the production of intellectually compelling ideas within, across, and outside disciplines by providing compelling paths across received boundaries to thought, so that others can break free of them and find compelling paths of their own.
267
Notes to Chapter VII 1.
Jean-Francois Lyotard, "Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?," in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 71-82.
2.
Cf. Julie Thompson Klein, Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 1990); Mary E. Clark and Sandra A. Wawrytko, eds., Rethinking the Curriculum: Toward an Integrated, Interdisciplinary College Education (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1990); Joseph J. Kockelmans, ed., Interdisciplinarity and Higher Education (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1979). For a modern critique of the first two books, see my review essay, "The Case for Interdisciplinary Knowledge and Practice: A Review of Interdisciplinarity and Rethinking the Curriculum," The Review of Higher Education 16, no. 2 (Winter 1993): 127-40.
3.
The account of CSST given here is based on a series of interviews and e-mail correspondence that I conducted Winter Term, 1994 with four current or past longstanding CSST members, several of whom served as CSST Director. They include: Professor Terrence McDonald and Professor Geoff Eley of History, Professor Nick Dirks of Anthropology and History, and Associate Professor Michael Kennedy of Sociology, who is the current Director.
4.
William Sewell, Terrence McDonald, Sherry Ortner, and Jeffery Paige, "Program in the Comparative Study of Social Transformations," CSST Working Paper no. 1, May 1987, 7.
5.
ibid, 1.
268 6.
ibid.
7.
ibid, 2-7.
8.
ibid, 4,5,6,7.
9.
ibid, 8.
10.
Cf. Michael D. Kennedy, "Sociology's Trajectory at Century's End: Smooth Extensions, Normalized Discontinuities and Reflexive Turns," CSST Working Paper no. 93, April, 1993; Geoff Eley, "Is All the World a Text? From Social History to the History of Society Two Decades Later," CSST Working Paper no. 55, October, 1990; Margaret R. Somers, "Narrativity, Culture, and Causality: Toward a New Historical Epistemology or Where is Sociology After the New Historic Turn?," CSST Working Paper no. 54, October, 1990; Nicholas B. Dirks, "Is Vice Versa? Historical Anthropologies and Anthropological Histories," CSST Working Paper no. 53, October, 1990; Terrence McDonald, "What We Talk About When We Talk About History: The Conversations of History and Sociology," CSST Working Paper no. 52, October, 1990; Margaret R. Somers, "Does Social History Need History? Reflections on Epistemological Encounters in the Social Sciences," CSST Working Paper no. 33, August, 1989; Geoff Eley, "Taking Stock: The First Year of CSST," CSST Working Paper no. 21, February, 1989; Mayer Zald, "Sociology as a Discipline: Quasi-Science and Quasi Humanities," CSST Working Paper no. 12, October, 1988.
11.
Nicholas B. Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner, eds., Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
12.
ibid, preface ix, x.
13.
ibid, Introduction, 39.
269 14.
A similar critique of what Stanley Fish calls "radical interdisciplinarity" is made in his essay "Being Interdisciplinarity Is So Very Hard To Do," in Stanley Fish, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech (New York; Oxford University Press, 1994), 238-40. Fish's main claim is that radical interdisciplinarity would simply replace the domination of disciplines by the domination of other forms of thought and that the disciplines are in fact flexible enough to accommodate new challenges. I think that Fish is mistaken in making this characterization of the disciplines, which he seems to fall back on in lieu of a better alternative. What both Fish and the radical interdisciplinarians whose ideas he critiques overlook is that what dominates the modern university is not the disciplines per se, but what
the disciplines
in their modern form manifest, namely, the unjustified assumption that the absolute foundation of intellectual activity in the university is the pursuit of knowledge of a reality that exists before and independent of the pursuit. 15.
Michel Foucault, "Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations," interview with Paul Rabinow, in The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 390.
16.
Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, 31-7.
17.
ibid, 59.
18.
Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 16-20.
270
CHAPTER VIII EPILOGUE: THE LIBERAL INTELLECTUAL SPIRIT OF A POSTMODERN UNIVERSITY Based on the analysis and exposition that I have presented in this dissertation, what would intellectual life in a postmodern university be like? Assuming Lyotard's assertion that the postmodern is nascent in the modern, a cogent response to this question should describe the postmodern university in terms of the modern university's traditional missions of research and teaching. If a postmodern university is nascent in the modern, these two basic purposes would be present in the postmodern university in a postmodern form. A major claim of my study is that, in effect, the disciplines are the absolute foundation of intellectual practice in the modern university. Further, since postmodern philosophy rejects absolute foundations, intellectual practice in a postmodern university would not be determined by the disciplines. In a postmodern university, the disciplines would be reformed and the possibilities for what counts as legitimate inquiry would be expanded. A guide for this reformation and expansion of inquiry is the "blurring" of disciplinary distinctions that is evident in cross-disciplinary inquiry. Cross-disciplinarity implies at least two things that are important for the idea of a postmodern university. First, a postmodern inquiry would be self-organizing in that its particular foundations would emerge in the course
271 of the inquiry rather than be predetermined in the form of discipline-bound theories, methods, and schools of thought. Second, cross-disciplinarity suggests that postmodern forms of inquiry could move beyond the disciplines entirely toward other forms of theoretical knowledge. These other forms would not be constrained by the modern assumption that any legitimate pursuit of knowledge is essentially concerned with theories that explain some aspect of reality that is allegedly present independent of its pursuit. I will now show that rejection of this assumption also means that in a postmodern university, the modern distinction between research and teaching is blurred. I will then describe what a university that blurs this distinction would be like. The Meaning of the Blurring of Research and Teaching The modern distinction between research and teaching is associated with a particular idea of research and a particular idea of teaching. The purpose of the pursuit of knowledge in research is to gain an accurate understanding of a thing or idea (or some aspect of a thing or idea) that was previously unknown. The researcher hopes to gain knowledge through a carefully planned, direct experience (hypothesis, assumptions, methods, tests, arguments, and conclusions) with the thing or idea. In contrast, the usual objective of teaching is to provide the results of research to students. This knowledge may include intellectual and applied skills as well as knowledge of things and ideas. The teacher hopes to give knowledge to students by providing an indirect or reproduced experience with an object of the pursuit of knowledge to students in the form of a lecture, discussion, and assignments (for example, a scientific experiment, or reading a book of literature or philosophy). Thus, in the modern university, the pursuit of
272 knowledge is a precondition to teaching even though a teacher does not have to be a researcher. However, in both research and teaching, emphasis tends to be placed on gaining knowledge in order to have it. Although lovers of knowledge and learning may think of the pursuit of knowledge as a never-ending enterprise, in the modern university the aim is to contribute to an ever-growing accumulation of bodies of knowledge. One engaged in the modern pursuit of knowledge seeks to gain something tangible, and this means gaining knowledge of something that exists independent of the knower, even if knowledge of the object can only be approximated. The idea that the pursuit of knowledge is "for its own sake" usually implies that the object of knowledge is independent of the knower. This emphasis on knowledge as something to gain has a number of dimensions, such as having, giving, accumulating, refining, improving, extending, deepening knowledge. What is less valued in the modern university is the doing or activity of the pursuit for its own sake apart from whether or not it realizes new knowledge, even though every modern knower would readily acknowledge that there is no knowledge without the doing of the pursuit. Further, even though most knowers value this activity, it is valued chiefly because it potentially yields new knowledge. This disparity between the object of the pursuit and the activity of pursuing knowledge is reflected in its most acute form at the present time in the intense competition in research universities for research funds. One must convince a potential provider of funds that useful knowledge is likely to be gained in the research, where "useful" is at least generally defined by the provider. The relative devaluation of pursuing knowledge as an activity may indicate why teaching is accorded a secondary status in research universities. Teaching is often
273 thought of as an activity in which one merely transmits existing knowledge. Even though knowledge may be transmitted in compelling ways for both teacher and students, teaching is often perceived as primarily doing with something already known, whereas research is doing in order to know something not yet known. While significant effort has been made to place greater emphasis and value on teaching in some universities and colleges, including conducting research on teaching and learning with the aim of improving this process, the idea of teaching itself has not fundamentally changed except that at some institutions, undergraduate students are given the opportunity to be involved in faculty research to an extent. Having knowledge implies drawing boundaries between ideas. Since a postmodern university asserts that absolute foundations cannot be finally known and justified as the basis for theoretical practice, distinctions between ideas and other ideas and between ideas and things cannot be certain and final in postmodern intellectual practice. This epistemological condition means that in a postmodern university, the activity of the pursuit, which is nascent in having knowledge, would be given much more emphasis in the daily life of the university and in its aims. In a postmodern university, knowledge would be conceived as something one does and thus has at least as much as it would be something that one seeks to have by doing certain things. That is, the distinction between the object of knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge would be blurred in that the relative status of the pursuit would be elevated without negating the object. Equally important, since the distinction between research and teaching is associated with the idea of knowledge as something one pursues to have, the postmodern blurring of pursuit and object means that the distinction between research and teaching is blurred as well.
274 How might this condition be manifested in the activities and organization of a postmodern university? To answer this question, one must understand how ideas and objects would be conceived if epistemological and ontological boundaries between ideas and between ideas and objects are blurred. This rejection is an opportunity to expand the meaning of intellectual purpose beyond the pursuit of an assumed preexisting reality. Ideas become, in effect, both mental and physical. By "mental" I simply mean thought. By "physical," I mean (1) the bodily movement of the knower who does something with thoughts in the course of the pursuit of knowledge, (2) material things that are produced by a knower in the course of the pursuit (e.g., a particular painting), (3) material things that exist independent of the pursuit but that are unknowable as such (e.g., a particular bear), (4) things that are an obvious conflation of (1) through (3) (e.g., an artistic object composed of found objects, or a nature preserve). In a postmodern university, (1), (2), and (3) would not be sharply distinguished from (4). For example, all artistic materials can be thought of as found objects in the sense that they are composed or derived from material things that existed in previous states, such as the paper that one paints on is derived from a tree. Further, a bear is found intact yet study of the bear requires bodily intervention (radar, captivity, dissection) in order to know it-but then one never absolutely knows it as a preexistent independent thing. The point is that in all four senses of physical, the knower does something with preexisting materials in an activity in which received ideas, methods, and objects are "raw" materials that are worked with in the doing or practice of knowledge. In a postmodern university, then, knowledge, research, and teaching would be considered practically inseparable aspects of activity.
275 Knowledge of the bear is something one does or practices in an activity of research/teaching. This emphasis on doing is nascent in the modern liberal spirit of inquiry for the reason that modern intellect is always searching for an opening or gap in what is already known in order to find a way to gain more knowledge. Further, an opening is often found by finding reasons to reject what was believed to be knowledge. The difference is that the postmodern liberal spirit is not confined to a linear notion of progress in which openings build on and/or refute earlier ones. Instead, one seeks to have knowledge in order to do something further, to engage in more doing; in this way, one uses knowledge. What progresses in the postmodern process is the capacity of mind to work with greater complexity in compelling ways. The account of an idea as both mental and physical and the emphasis on knowledge as something one does mean that two basic organizing principles in the modern university would not be recognized in the postmodern university. First, it means that segregating ideas by disciplines and elevating disciplines proper, namely, disciplines that pursue objective ("basic") theoretical knowledge over theoretical knowledge of practice (professional and applied schools) would be rejected. Second, the segregation of theoretical knowledge, whether that be of an independently existing reality or of existing practice, from the doing of practice (whether that be human practices or bear practices) would also be rejected. If so, then how might intellectual activity be organized in a postmodern university? I will answer this question in three dimensions: the basic institutional form and aim of postmodern intellectual activity, institutional administration, and pedagogy and curriculum.
276 Intellectual Activity in the New American University: Postmodern Research Programs The institutional form of intellectual activity in a postmodern university would be postmodern research programs. A postmodern research program would be a group of thinkers who come together with the aim of pursuing an intellectually compelling idea or ideas. The stimulus for the formation of these groups would be ongoing intellectual forums. Forums would be open campus events in which scholars present ideas. The aim of a presentation would be to share one's idea with the hope that others will find the ideas compelling enough to discuss forming a research program. That is, a thinker would seek to cross paths with others did not know the thinker's idea before the presentation and find the idea different from what they knew previously in a way that strikes them as compelling. Forums seek to set intellectual "sparks flying" as Rorty would say. Forums could be daily events, both on campus and by electronic conference. Since the disciplines would not be, in effect, the absolute foundation of intellectual activity in a postmodern university, forums would be organized by topic rather than by discipline. Initially the thinkers that would be members of a postmodern university would be people who have been educated in the disciplines simply because a postmodern university would have to start with what is given, namely, the disciplines. The kinds of ideas that would be presented at forums would be ideas that would be considered unjustified or "abnormal" in the discipline(s) yet are compelling to the person who presents them. The aim of taking such ideas out of the disciplines would be to allow them to be pursued without being constrained by disciplinary assumptions. Since disciplinary assumptions manifest the basic modern assumption that
277 justified intellectual activity is the pursuit of knowledge of a preexisting reality, the ultimate aim of taking ideas out of disciplines would be to allow their pursuit without being constrained by this basic assumption. To free intellectual activity of this assumption is to make it possible for intellect to pursue ideas of what reality can be rather than what it already is. The formation of a research program would be recognized by a compact whose purpose would be to help members organize their endeavor without determining a priori where it might lead. The compact would be comprised of a description of the idea or ideas that would be the object of research. A participant would be free to enter and leave the program at any time and participants could revise the compact, divide into more than one program, or start new ones depending on how ideas coalesce and/or disperse over the course of the program. Individuals could pursue compelling ideas unilaterally and offer them as contributions to the program as well as pursue ideas with other members. The flexibility of research programs would be like the flexibility of Lyotard's language games. One implication of this flexibility is that in a postmodern university, a well-educated person would not be a person who is an expert in some particular body of knowledge, such as a particular discipline or sub-discipline. Rather, a well-educated person would be highly skilled at (1) making order out of disparate contexts in ways that are compelling and (2) using that order to pursue new compelling ideas. The fluidity of forums and research programs and the emphasis on doing rather than having knowledge would discourage the entrenchment of ideas. The most significant entrenchment in the modern university is the idea that legitimate intellectual activity is essentially pursuit of knowledge of a preexistent reality in the form of the disciplines. Initially, research programs would be used to pursue two basic objectives in order to overcome
278 this entrenchment. These objectives would be (1) reformation of the modern disciplines and (2) the pursuit of ideas beyond accounts of a preexistent reality. Pursuit of these objectives would occur in a single process that moves from modern disciplines to groupings of postmodern research programs that would not limit intellectual activity to pursuit of knowledge of preexistent reality. Forums would be used to create cross-disciplinary research programs. The only condition that would govern membership in a program is that only one or two individuals from a modern discipline could join although an individual could belong to more than one program. Further, membership in a research program would include individuals from at least two disciplines. Thus, research programs would not be bound a priori by disciplinary boundaries or by established cross-disciplinary compatibilities in the pursuit of compelling ideas. Members of a program would share the ways that their disciplines would typically interpret and pursue the compelling idea with the group. These disciplinary approaches would constitute a "constellation of contexts." A constellation would be considered the objective starting point and point of departure of the particular inquiry. Thus, "objective" is, in effect, what the group decides will be the departure point for a research program rather than a term that refers to a preexistent reality or a term for what counts as science. The disparity across disciplinary approaches within a program would be used as the basis for moving inquiry beyond disciplinary constraints in the course of pursuing the idea. The group would seek to comprehend and account for the differences across disciplinary approaches in order to pursue the idea in compelling ways. Participants would seek to make the divergence across disciplinary approaches intellectually compelling by creating a path or paths of reasoning
279 that use the diversity of approaches in order to pursue the idea. However, the focus of research would be the idea; the idea would take precedence over any particular disciplinary approach. In effect, the disciplines would be the raw material for the pursuit of forms of reasoning that would not be constrained by established disciplinary and interdisciplinary structures and boundaries. Modern disciplines would then function as points of departure for new paths of thought rather than top-down a priori structures that largely determine the nature and course of particular inquiries. Most important, a research program would not be limited to disciplinary accounts of a preexistent reality. That is, research programs would seek to make sense of compelling differences between the logic of different disciplines in order to stimulate and develop particular conceptions of knowledge and reality that are not constrained by the hegemony of modern disciplinary accounts of preexisting reality. Over time, two or more research programs might affiliate. Affiliation would be an agreement by the members of two or more programs to work together to pursue intellectually compelling ideas. The purpose of this affiliation would be to facilitate thoughtful interaction between programs by making potential compelling relationships of ideas or program approaches explicit and comprehensible in a formal agreement of program affiliation. Affiliation would be motivated by recognition of the compelling potential of working together by the programs' members based on a combination of program agendas. A compelling combination of ideas would not necessarily mean similar or complementary program agendas. Indeed, the compelling quality of the relationship is likely to reflect the striking difference in program agendas. Members of such programs would be struck by the difference in their respective ideas and/or by the difference in how each group
280 works with disparate disciplinary approaches. The purpose of program affiliation, then, would be to pursue these ideas or relationships. A postmodern grouping would be comprised of three or more programs that have formally affiliated with each other. Compelling groupings would be composed of research programs that interact in compelling ways or that have the potential to interact with compelling results. Like individual programs, groupings would always be subject to change as the compelling potential of particular groupings of programs is not realized, is exhausted, or if participants in a research program decide that more compelling directions lie in other groupings. Postmodern groupings would be highly permeable so that at any point in time a research program that might be formally located in a grouping could interact with programs in other groupings. Thus, the concept of interdisciplinarity would be very much a part of the postmodern university. however, unlike many modern formulations of the concept, postmodern interdisciplinarity would not have the effect of unifying disciplines and solidifying their absolute, constraining effect on intellectual activity. Rather, postmodern interdisciplinarity would describe the highly fluid interaction and transformation of research programs and groupings composed of program affiliations. This function of interdisciplinarity reflects that the only purpose of disciplines in a postmodern university is pragmatic. Postmodern groupings would be dynamic, compelling groupings of particular research programs that would be in constant interaction. Research programs could interact and affiliate with one another both within and across groupings. Groupings would overlap because affiliations between two programs could cut across formal groupings and chains of linkages across groupings could also occur. It is conceivable that some
281 compelling research programs, affiliations, and groupings would be very fruitful sources of new ideas over long periods of time. However, their fruitfulness would not be absolute in effect. Instead, the longevity of a program would be a function of the program's vitality as the source of compelling ideas, its flexibility in ever-changing combinations with the ideas of other research programs, or both. The perpetuation of a program, affiliation, or grouping would be a function of its capacity to generate compelling new ideas. In effect, a vital and/or flexible program would itself be in a state of virtual ongoing transformation. Thus, the compelling quality of a program, affiliation, or grouping as reflected in the compelling ideas that it generates cannot result in an a priori entrenchment. The ultimate aim of research programs would be to develop conceptions of knowledge and reality that would go beyond accounts of preexisting reality altogether. In this process, modern disciplines would ultimately be the raw material for their own eclipse in processes of reasoning that would seek compelling reasons to alter discipline-bound ideas of knowledge and reality. In effect, this is what the five postmodern philosophers that I analyzed in Part Two do with disciplinary knowledge. Foucault does it with history, Lyotard with science, Rorty and Schrag with philosophy, and Derrida with the whole Western intellectual tradition of truth, particularly in regard to its "presence" in philosophy and literature. As I have argued that each of these thinkers has done, successful research programs would create new foundations in the course of their departure from modern disciplinary constraints. These foundations are critical in that they move away from the disciplinary model and the particular kind of knowledge that the disciplines embody. To engage in this endeavor of moving beyond disciplines is also to move beyond the modern European model of the
282 university toward a more pragmatic one, a post-European, distinctly American university. The Blurring of the Mind-Body Distinction and its Pragmatic Implications for a Postmodern University Perhaps the most important modern foundation to overcome in the blurring of the distinction between idea and object, and between mental and physical, would be the sharp distinction between mind and body. The blurring of sharp distinctions between ideas and between ideas and objects means blurring the distinction between the knower's mind and the knower's body. That is, the postmodern pursuit of knowledge would go beyond the idea that the aim of the pursuit is to accurately represent external bodies with mental ideas, in which the mind is thought to be like a mirror and the knower's body is thought to be like a thoroughfare between external bodies and internal intellect. This means that the ways that mind, body, and their epistemological relationship are conceived would be radically expanded. If the human body is not simply an empirical or functional thoroughfare and secondary to mind in the pursuit of knowledge, then there would be nowhere else for the knower's body to go except into the pursuit of knowledge as an integral aspect of doing knowledge. Similarly, the limited status of intellect would be altered in that intellect would become something more than a mirror or an a priori structure of a knowable reality. Mind also becomes an active aspect of the doing of knowledge, in conjunction with body. Consequently, the nature of intellectual activity would become something different from a relation between minds and external reality. In addition, the pursuit of knowledge would mean doing something to alter reality with the knower's mind and body. This concept is nascent in modern
283 empiricism since it gives the bodily parts that are used in sense experience a status that did not exist in classical inquiry. Yet modern accounts usually place the body (and mind) in an observational role, and research usually attempts to minimize or at least account for the state of the inquirer's mind and body in an ordered inquiry, with the ideal being essentially a state of no body and a God's-eye view of mind. In contrast, the postmodern approach would recognize that the doing of knowledge is something done with mind and body such that observing reality is only one extreme form of knowing reality. Thus, what counts as legitimate intellectual activity in a postmodern university would not be limited to the pursuit of ideas that can be logically demonstrated with mental concepts or empirically confirmed by observing, measuring, and predicting external bodies. Postmodern research programs would be pragmatic in a distinctly postmodern sense: they would move minds and bodies from theory to practice. Discourse would be understood as only the important beginning of a practice that ultimately aims to take ideas out of mind into the world. This implication is nascent in the activities of putting ideas on paper or into speech. However, in a postmodern university these activities would not be understood as simply a means of comprehending and communicating knowledge of reality. Rather, they would be understood as the penetration of mind into the practical world of bodies. Further, the practical side of the pursuit of knowledge would not stop on the page or in the voice and ear. Paper and pen, word processor and printer, vocal chord and auditory canal would be recognized as only the merest beginning of theoretical practice, or what might be called theoretical pragmatics. Since postmodern ideas can be physical as well as mental, the pursuit of knowledge would extend into other material forms besides those that represent external reality.
284 In a postmodern university, processes of reasoning would have to do with the ways that received ideas, in both their mental and physical senses, are ordered. A research program would strive to organize thoughts and material objects in compelling ways. This concept is nascent in the modern pursuit of knowledge in that the researcher seeks to organize her or his thoughts and the materials employed in research in an order that is compelling because it accurately represents reality. However, the extent of this reasoning process is severely limited by the assumption that knowledge of reality is accurate representation of preexistent reality. The pragmatism of postmodern theoretical practice is the liberation of mind (and body) from the constraints of this particular unjustified assumption. The raw material for this intellectual activity would potentially include the entire spectrum of external objects that can be organized in compelling ways, including the physical configurations of the university itself. Theoretical practice would conceivably go beyond even the physical buildings of the university as well, in some ways like the medieval universities that were not officially recognized by ecclesiastic authorities were often comprised of a collection of thinkers without a campus. Thus, the postmodern pursuit of intellectually compelling ideas would go beyond the walls of the ivory tower into society. This is nascent in the modern idea of forms of applied and social action research that seek to make the practice of living more comfortable and equitable for others. The difference is that this idea would not be limited to schools of medicine, engineering, law, social work, education, and other "applied" schools. Ideas would penetrate into material life from all quarters of the university--indeed, the distinction between university and society would be blurred in this pragmatic sense. Social activism could conceivably come out of all inquiry, so that knowers
285 would not have to step out of their professional roles to act in society in compelling ways. Thus, giving ideas a physical aspect, blurring the distinction between pursuit and object, and taking the pursuit of knowledge beyond representation would mean, in part, coming up with compelling ideas that alter the ways that human bodies are ordered in society, as Foucault strove to do. Postmodern pragmatism also means that since the pursuit of knowledge would go well beyond representationalist organizations of ideas, "knowledge for its own sake" in a postmodern university would be something radically different from the pursuit of arrangements of thoughts into scientifically demonstrable theories that explain aspects of preexistent reality. Going beyond the mirror has to mean that the pursuit of compelling ideas would seek to alter the way that people arrange themselves and other things, because there is nowhere else for ideas to go. Thus, the intrinsic worth of knowledge would not be dependent upon its being located in a realm of intellectual thoughts separate from the conditions of practical living. In a postmodern university, "knowledge for its own sake" would mean the doing of knowledge for the sake of how to live, in contrast to the position that "how to live" leads to a life of contemplation. Intellectual Community, Administration, and the Elevation of Teaching and Students in a Postmodern University The blurring of mind and body in research programs also implies a blurring of the modern distinction between the university as an idea that is thought about and conceptualized and the university as an institution that is administered or practiced. In a postmodern university, the administration of the university, including its operational activities, planning, policies,
286 procedures (not only in their promulgation but in the practice of carrying them out), and physical arrangements would not be sharply distinguished from the intellectual activity that these elements support. This university would not make a sharp distinction between intellectual purpose (pursuit and transmission of knowledge) and the practical institutional organization of that purpose. Instead, the administrative organization would itself be explicitly understood as intellectual activity. The university as it is administered would be pursued as a compelling idea that is subject to change and alteration. This idea is nascent in the modern practice of faculty governance, but modern universities tend to be hierarchical organizations, often with sharply distinguished academic and administrative aspects. Moreover, in the modern university faculty who are paid to administer become administrators, at least while they hold a formal administrative position. A postmodern university would blur this distinction such that the dynamic basic levers of intellectual activity, namely, forums and research programs, would basically compose the university in practice. In this sense, the administration of the university as an institution would express at least some of the compelling ideas that are generated by the intellectual community. Conceivably, the practical configuration of the university as an organization would be a consequence of the order of ideas at any given point in time. As research programs change, so too would the organization of the university change in ways that embody the movement of ideas in those programs from theory to practice. Further, faculty would have an important role in the actual administration of the university, perhaps something like their expansive role in previous centuries. Certainly a highly responsive administrative operational structure would be needed to enable the changes in institution that would happen as ideas
287 change, but it would be supportive rather than being largely determinative of the university in practice. This blurring of the university as idea and as institution means that the university as a living intellectual community would be explicitly constituted by what emerges out of research programs. The postmodern university would be an experimental community derived from the courses that intellect takes. Since it would also be a community that is not sharply distinguished from other particular communities, its experimental nature would aim outward, toward involvement in other communities, rather than construing society as, for example, an object of inquiry and critique that intellect seeks to change based on the historical ascertaining of general truths. Further, since the pursuit of compelling ideas is not determined by previous ideas except as the latter can be used as points of departure for new compelling ideas, the willingness to experiment would mean that the postmodern intellectual community would express an openness to previously overlooked and oppressed communities. Indeed, the postmodern university would be a vibrant multicultural community. The blurring of the distinction between the pursuit and the transmission of knowledge means that pedagogy and curriculum would also be significantly altered. The importance of teaching and the importance of students would be substantially elevated in the postmodern university. Forums and research programs would be places of instruction as well as research, and they would be vastly different from the modern classroom or laboratory. Students would have the opportunity to share ideas in forums and become members of research programs. In being a part of this activity, they would engage in a postmodern liberal education. It would be postmodern because the distinction between research and teaching would be
288 blurred: faculty would teach by doing in forums and research programs and students would learn by doing as participants. It would be liberal in that the student would be a seeker of new compelling ideas. The only canon would be a duty of faculty to encourage student pursuit of compelling ideas by example and by involving students in their own pursuits. Thus, teaching would become integral to research rather than essentially the after-the-fact transmission of its results. Teaching would not be something one does in addition to or instead of research but something one does through and in the course of research. Research would become a means of teaching rather than an end in itself. Similarly, the undergraduate curriculum in a postmodern university would not be sharply distinguished from research but would emerge from it. Since research programs would be dynamic and flexible rather than accumulative and progressive, the curriculum would change as ideas change. Classes would be based on what is happening in research programs. Ideally, they would not conform to the lecture/discussion dichotomy but would be research programs themselves in which students would have an active formative role and faculty would primarily serve an active facilitative one. Indeed, the relationship between this "live" curriculum and faculty research programs would be two-way, since compelling ideas that emerge in the classroom could affect the course of faculty research. Moreover, since a compelling idea is initially alien to its pursuer, a well-educated scholar would seek to move back and forth between relative positions of knower and novice in pursuit of compelling ideas. In this sense faculty would always be new students themselves. Each faculty member would have both graduate and undergraduate students as student colleagues who would accompany faculty to forums and
289 research programs and engage in seminars composed of both graduates and undergraduates. An undergraduate student would reach graduation and is deemed to be well-educated when he or she demonstrates a general facility with both normal (disciplinary) and abnormal (postmodern) ideas by a planned forum presentation as evaluated by faculty invited to attend. The decision on when the student is ready to make this presentation would be determined by the student and her or his faculty advisor rather than by the accumulation of a specified number of course credits. A graduate student reaches the level of candidacy when the student formulates an abnormal idea to pursue that is recognized as compelling by faculty that the student and mentor identify to review the idea. At this point the student forms a dissertation committee, which would constitute a research program constituted by a compact. A dissertation would be the graduate student's pursuit of an abnormal intellectually compelling idea. While this pursuit would be the candidate's own, it would not be primarily a secluded one. Rather, the pursuit would be composed of presentations and participation in forums and involvement in other research programs as well as solitary work. Like teaching, then, the pursuit of a dissertation would be woven directly into faculty life. The elevation of the activity of knowledge, of teaching as an integral aspect of that activity, and of students as active participants in the research process, hearkens intellect to a place in time well before modernity. The liberal postmodern spirit is nascent in ancient Greece as well as in modern Europe: it is the activity of intellect engaged in by the student-teacher Socrates in dialogue with others. Yet the postmodern spirit seeks to go beyond both modern and classical thought by using the history of ideas as
290 only the beginning of human activity and of what knowledge and reality can, in effect, mean.
291
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