A professional academic friend reacted angrily to a piece I published, which argued that universities should stick to pursuing knowledge & understanding, rather than political activism.
It turned out that his supervisor had inculcated in him a belief that scholarship demands a mission, to be pursued out in the world. He had then devoted his career to this mission and seemed shocked (and, I imagine, personally slighted) that I didn't see this as an obvious good.
My personal encounter with this desire in the academy to affect and control was quite the eye-opener.
Incidentally, I'm enjoying these explanations of the role of 'political reason' in our culture and jump onto every Uncibal piece as soon as it appears.
I'm curious as to what is going on here, since Oakeshott’s essay comes a century after Newman's lectures which were collected as the book The Idea of a University - yet Oakeshott's essay has the same title. Had he read Newman? On the same lines, do you know Alasdair MacIntyre's 2009 piece "The Very Idea of a University: Aristotle, Newman, and Us"? This is worth checking out if you don't know it.
I find it hard to believe that he hadn't read Newman. He had a bad habit of not citing sources anyway, but the article I'm citing here was in any case written for a magazine (The Listener) and had no footnotes. In itself it says a lot that an article like this, and written in this style, could have appeared in a mass market magazine in 1950.
Aye, it was a different time to be sure - I won't say a 'better time', as there were so many terrible things to offset the better things, as is often the way. Nonetheless, the entire twentieth century saw a reworking of discourse, and not for the better. As for not citing sources - I actually approve, to some extent! The ritualistic citation formats in academics journals have, in my view, increased the labour of writing papers without adding anywhere near the value claimed.
Forgive this brief rant, but putting a page reference by quotations is ludicrous when many cited books have dozens of editions. It adds labour to creating papers, but benefits essentially no-one. I have repeatedly experimented with better formats, and the one that I think is most helpful is that I deployed in my final philosophy book, The Virtuous Cyborg. While I provide a complete reference list of every source I used, I do not provide any in-text citations and instead include what I think is far more helpful: a set of 'Author Notes' by chapter, discussing the relationship between the sources and the prose in each chapter. This is less work than detailed citations, but provides all the possible benefit I can imagine would accrue to providing sources, and indeed more so as it 'shows my working'.
Anyway, thank you for all you do at News from Uncibal, and enjoy your weekend!
PS: That MacIntyre essay was part of the background to this piece of mine, which I know you already read but I link here for the benefit of any of your readers who missed it and might have an interest:
"Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education".
- John Alexander Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford University, 1914.
If only more people nowadays were able to tell when a person is talking rot. Apparently not one in a hundred can. Although of course marketing, advertising, selling, and government - which deploys all of those continually - consist almost entirely of talking rot for selfish gain.
The lowering of standards to achieve Blair's 21st century ambition of 50% of school leavers going to university instead of the 2.5% it was in 1960 was always going to ensure that Oakeshott's recondite idyll would vanish. I'm sure that was the point. You can't usher in the NWO with the loose cannon of 'thinkers', who haven't been bought with research grants potentially asking awkward questions.
A professional academic friend reacted angrily to a piece I published, which argued that universities should stick to pursuing knowledge & understanding, rather than political activism.
It turned out that his supervisor had inculcated in him a belief that scholarship demands a mission, to be pursued out in the world. He had then devoted his career to this mission and seemed shocked (and, I imagine, personally slighted) that I didn't see this as an obvious good.
My personal encounter with this desire in the academy to affect and control was quite the eye-opener.
Incidentally, I'm enjoying these explanations of the role of 'political reason' in our culture and jump onto every Uncibal piece as soon as it appears.
Thanks for a good read.
Will have to read Oakeshott.
If only I could mint hours I would be truly wealthy.
I'm curious as to what is going on here, since Oakeshott’s essay comes a century after Newman's lectures which were collected as the book The Idea of a University - yet Oakeshott's essay has the same title. Had he read Newman? On the same lines, do you know Alasdair MacIntyre's 2009 piece "The Very Idea of a University: Aristotle, Newman, and Us"? This is worth checking out if you don't know it.
I find it hard to believe that he hadn't read Newman. He had a bad habit of not citing sources anyway, but the article I'm citing here was in any case written for a magazine (The Listener) and had no footnotes. In itself it says a lot that an article like this, and written in this style, could have appeared in a mass market magazine in 1950.
Aye, it was a different time to be sure - I won't say a 'better time', as there were so many terrible things to offset the better things, as is often the way. Nonetheless, the entire twentieth century saw a reworking of discourse, and not for the better. As for not citing sources - I actually approve, to some extent! The ritualistic citation formats in academics journals have, in my view, increased the labour of writing papers without adding anywhere near the value claimed.
Forgive this brief rant, but putting a page reference by quotations is ludicrous when many cited books have dozens of editions. It adds labour to creating papers, but benefits essentially no-one. I have repeatedly experimented with better formats, and the one that I think is most helpful is that I deployed in my final philosophy book, The Virtuous Cyborg. While I provide a complete reference list of every source I used, I do not provide any in-text citations and instead include what I think is far more helpful: a set of 'Author Notes' by chapter, discussing the relationship between the sources and the prose in each chapter. This is less work than detailed citations, but provides all the possible benefit I can imagine would accrue to providing sources, and indeed more so as it 'shows my working'.
Anyway, thank you for all you do at News from Uncibal, and enjoy your weekend!
PS: That MacIntyre essay was part of the background to this piece of mine, which I know you already read but I link here for the benefit of any of your readers who missed it and might have an interest:
https://strangerworlds.substack.com/p/after-universities
"Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education".
- John Alexander Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford University, 1914.
If only more people nowadays were able to tell when a person is talking rot. Apparently not one in a hundred can. Although of course marketing, advertising, selling, and government - which deploys all of those continually - consist almost entirely of talking rot for selfish gain.
> Where we go from here is anyone’s guess.
What about...
* A forest fire of useless HE capacity, after which universities can re-grow
* Stop selling young students useless debt with the promise of prosperity and status.
* Accept traditional university structures are not eternal platonic ideals but contemporary the solutions of the challenges of the past
* Clarify expectations of a leisured education and a trained mind, via a clear account in arts and culture
* Rethink expectations of how many trained thinkers society needs e.g. graduate requirement for administration, police, etc
* An end to maoist superfluous graduates, useless but for revolutionary activism
* Stop forcing the non-academic population to pretend they are of the class of leisure and reflection.
* Value trades and technical work, and educate accordingly
* Accept that the nation state is the only alternative to a bleak and destructive globalism
* A nationalist scheme of civilisation, prosperity and flourishing, measured in generations.
The lowering of standards to achieve Blair's 21st century ambition of 50% of school leavers going to university instead of the 2.5% it was in 1960 was always going to ensure that Oakeshott's recondite idyll would vanish. I'm sure that was the point. You can't usher in the NWO with the loose cannon of 'thinkers', who haven't been bought with research grants potentially asking awkward questions.