Critical Theory, Great Books, Liberal Arts

Why I Read the Great Books

by Dave Seng

So, let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is further and further to discover truth. – Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning.

I began my educational journey as a liberal arts student in the late 1990’s, about the time when postmodern critical theory was winding down and scholars were trying to figure out whom won the battles over over the “canon” of great literature and whom lost the “theory wars.” I remember it well. Are we all Marxists, Freudians, or Historicists now? Those who gave up on these language games simply shrugged their shoulders and became Neo-Pragmatists. Leaving this intellectual climate behind, I decided to investigate the nature of the so called canon and the Great Books that are associated with it, to determine for myself where such a curriculum is correct, possibly incorrect, and why it is considered controversial. (I realize that many Great Books programs exist and not all hold to same list, so when I use the term Great Books, I am referring to the collection edited and published by the Encyclopedia Britannica.) With this background in mind, I intentionally reflect on my journey through critical theory as an undergraduate to exploring what I have discovered about the Great Books as a university professor.

When I consider my formative undergraduate years at a private liberal arts college, steeped in postmodern rhetoric, I discover an amazing thing about the Great Books. Those involved in the theory wars, or those bent on advocating their particular critical position often held to schools of thought founded by the Great Authors of the Western intellectual tradition. Those most critical of the Great Books claim that the canon is intolerant, exclusive, and written by “dead white males”. Interestingly, these same theorists usually uphold schools of thought founded by Hegel (historicism), Nietzsche (perspectivism), Kierkegaard (existential subjectivism), Marx (Marxism), or Freud (analytic egoism)—Great Authors, all. Try as one might, it is not an easy thing to discard the inherent value of the Great Books. The reason for this is simple. One must accept the foundational truth claims of the Western intellectual tradition in order to criticize it. Furthermore, the Great Books speak to timeless concerns of human importance that transcend the “isms” and academic fashions of the day. Rather, they seek to enlighten us as to what it means to be rational and thoughtful individuals in the pursuit of truth. These significant insights have helped me make some important applications in my own teaching career.

First, however, we see that foundational and essential truths about reality and logic cannot be denied. Even the most committed existentialist or postmodernist accepts the law of non-contradiction when asserting the subjectivity of truth or that all reality is historically and culturally determined. Every postcolonialist or social justice warrior has to accept the values of the West in order to point out perceived errors. Have you asked yourself, “what is the nature of justice”? So did Plato, Aristotle, and Thucydides—they and others in the Great Books investigate this very question deeply and significantly. In a sense, postmodernism, itself, is part of what is known as the “Great Conversation.”

The Great Conversation, a term coined by Robert Hutchins and explicated by Mortimer Adler, recognizes inquiry, discussion, informed rational debate, pursuit of truth, and free exchange of ideas. As enduring values, this conversation began with Plato, Herodotus, and Aristotle, and continues today. Postmodern critical theory owes its very existence to the Western tradition because inquiry and informed debate are foundational values. The tradition of questioning a received tradition is indeed a tradition unto itself, and is discovered in the Great Conversation when one actively reads the Great Books. Plato’s Socrates often confronts skeptics regarding truth and the nature of reality. Hume, Hobbes, and Descartes, just to name a few, often criticized the scholastic tradition that preceded them. In this sense, postmodernism is just emphasizing one side of the Great Conversation (although one of the discontinuities of postmodernism is that very few in the Western intellectual tradition gave up on the idea of truth). There are very few genuinely new ideas in contemporary culture, and when I read the Great Books, I am often reminded that not only are there rarely new ideas, thinkers in previous generations articulated the same ideas we have today with much more perspicuity and lucidity. In addition, since critical theory, itself, is influenced by Hegel, Marx, Kierkegaard, Freud, and even Heidegger, postmodernism ironically demonstrates the enduring values of the Western tradition. While postmodern critical theory has lost its standing in the pantheon of academic fads (many just accept postmodern premises as true and move on), it is important to maintain the critical spirit of inquiry that the Great Books teach us. We must ask ourselves, “what if Descartes, Marx, or Frued were wrong”? And what insights could we gain from such discussion and investigation? One thing I have learned from teaching college students is that they are more than willing to challenge what they think is received authority. Something magical happens when one learns how to rationally, logically, and critically engage Great Ideas and discover enduring truths.

Another thing I learned while reading the Great Books is that every curriculum and field of study holds to a particular canon. One claim against the Great Books is that it is elitist and selective. In truth, however, all fields of human thought have a set of selected, received texts. Consider any course at any university, anywhere. At the class level, every professor identifies a selected book list from which his or her students will learn. Let us take an example from outside the humanities. In computer science, one could hardly be considered competent or knowledgeable in the field without knowing about Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Konrad Zuse, or Grace Hopper. Of course, others can and should be named, but the point is that it is not elitist to draw on the most foundational thinkers in any field. The Great Conversation is simply the development and transmission of Western core values and knowledge—even if this foundational knowledge is sometimes tacit as Hayek, Popper, and Polanyi are apt to remind us.

Moving beyond critical theory, I discovered that the Great Books speak profoundly even in fields in which they may not be apparent. When I became a professor at a large research university, I began to see how my Great Books training served as a deep well from which I could draw, even though I do not teach courses immediately associated with the liberal arts or humanities. Upon a deeper examination, however, the economics of information course which I teach relates to ideas of Marx, Smith, Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Keynes, and Weber, and involves timeless truths regarding the nature of wealth, government, and democracy. While it must be admitted that our own culture and technology have changed dramatically since these authors wrote, the enduring truths of which they speak—social cooperation, voluntary exchange, and the nature of supply and demand—persist and remain extremely relevant today. The principles of how value is determined in economics are true whether one is discussing the nature of free markets, digital information goods, or Bitcoin. In my Open Source Culture and History of Hacking class, we not only examine the foundational figures of the field, but explore timeless questions about the nature of reason, rationality, and consciousness as we explore what it means to be rational, intentional beings in an age of artificial intelligence (AI). Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas, and Descartes still have important things to say about the nature of rational beings that directly relate to AI research issues today. And many of the Great Books have insightful things to say about the effects of technology on society. In all honesty, I have never had a student complain about one of these Great Authors; in most cases they are fascinated and excited that they can apply the information they have learned in a general education or philosophy course to what they are learning in one of my classes. Far from being irrelevant, these great texts have wonderful things to say about the nature of our lives in the Twenty-First Century. Even today, the Great Books provoke interesting and challenging ideas.

Culture, Education, Philosophy

Postmodernism Today

by Dave Seng

metaphysical truth

More than one person has told me that postmodernism is dead. I do not share that position. Recently, I conducted a quick scan of books and journal articles that were published in the past several years (of course one can find postmodern theory going back to the 1960s or even earlier, but I wanted to keep the search current), and found a quick sampling of the following titles. For books, I found Pixar’s Boy Stories: Masculinity in a Postmodern Age, Postmodern Theory and Blade Runner, and Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern. For academic journal articles, I found these: Heidegger’s Wrong Turn (Heidegger is sometimes used as a stepping stone to postmodernism), Postmodern Truth?, and the oddest of all, Toward a Postmodern Pragmatic Discourse Semioethics for Brain Injury Care: Empirically Driven Group Inquiry as a Dialogical Practice in Pursuit of the Peircean Aesthetic Ideal of ‘Reasonableness.’ This is a small selection, of course, but the point is, postmodernism is far from dead. To augment this assertion, search for terms like “deconstruction,” “poststructralism,” and “critical theory” in any academic database and you will find more than enough articles speaking to postmodernism’s current state.

But what is postmodernism and why do I think it is alive and well, against the opinions of my respected friends and colleagues? According to philosopher Ed Miller, postmodernism is “a contemporary interdisciplinary movement stressing the pragmatic, historically relative, and theory-laden character of judgments and knowledge” (Questions That Matter, pg. 589). Bruce Thornton explains postmodernism as a cultural and intellectual mood that denies “a stable creative order that can substitute for the fragmented social world and provide an alternative foundation for human meaning and identity,” for the postmodernist, “there are no foundations, neither for human meaning, identity, art, nor morality. Everything is fragmented and free-floating, including artistic forms, which are now completely open to unbridled experimentation, and the individual, who is no longer psychologically integrated but rather a bundle of neuroses, complexes, and multiple identities battered by indifferent cosmic, historical, and social forces” (Humanities Handbook, pg. 101). Postmodernism, therefore, encompasses a whole host of critical theories such as poststructuralism, postcolonialism, Marxism, and various literary interpretive schools generally based on racial, class, gender, and social justice issues. The most popular postmodern theorists at least during the 1990s were Rorty, Lyotard, Derrida, and Foucault. Many others can be cited as well. One can go back further, of course, and discover that in various ways Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Dewey, William James, and Heidegger were forerunners of postmodernism and one of the reasons I believe postmodernism is alive is that most academics have been trained in schools of thought founded by one or more of these thinkers. (I think it is a legitimate line of inquiry to ask what genuine needs of contemporary society help to explain the prevalence and acceptance of these philosophical doctrines. But that will be a topic for another post.) The idea that there are no facts, just interpretations, and all interpretations are equally valid—is part of our current postmodern condition. These core convictions of the last 50 years have not changed. Going further back in time, it is easy to see how Kant’s idealism, Hegel’s historicism, Nietzsche’s perspectivalism and even Kierkegaard’s subjective epistemology all share a postmodern anti-realism, and frankly, a conceptually incoherent approach to truth and reality. In the larger cultural and intellectual sphere, however, I don’t really see individuals or society comprehending or assimilating the logical implications of the law of non-contradiction or accepting absolutes in their lives, even when everyone functions from the assumptions of absolutes in all aspects of reality and the world (even if, ironically, the only absolute that one can accept is that there are no absolutes). In our current postmodern (or should I say postphilosophical?) cultural climate it is often forgotten that the cars we drive, the building we work and live in, the technology we use and consume, and the very economic lives we lead are built on and created by very strict standards.

There are, however, some interesting cases to be explored regarding the failure of postmodernism in some fields, and this might explain why my friends think postmodernism as an academic fad is over. It is true that some fields have returned to a common sense understanding of reality. Take the field of literature, for example. After a period from about the 1970s to 2000, when experimentation with plot structure was all the rage, imaginative literature returned to narrative and largely looks like the structure Aristotle set out in his poetics. Admittedly, this was largely due to fact that people stopped buying novels without a plot or were in other ways inscrutable. But even fields such as anthropology and sociology have experienced some misgivings of postmodernism. When I was a graduate student completing my second master’s degree, I attended a lecture by a senior anthropologist who also taught in the Honors School of the institution I was attending. This instructor gave a decidedly structural view of social order (this was a younger professor, not an older one or of a conservative bent. He was simply well versed in postmodernism but rejected it). After the lecture, I told this professor that many poststructuralists would have been sorely disappointed with his lecture. He responded to me quickly that a poststructuralist is someone who has never recovered from a head injury. The point is not that it is necessary to be intellectually mean-spirited to postmodernists but rather poststructuralism is not the final court of appeal in some academic circles. When a literature professor tells me that postmodernism is dead, what she is really saying is that the whole experimentation with plot and confused narrative is over. On the other hand, however, the racial, class, and gender struggles which are so popular today and really have their foundations in late modernity (just read Hemingway, Faulkner, or Fitzgerald on these issues) are now the adopted children of postmodernism. As an academic appellation, postmodernism may not be as fashionable as it once was. Nonetheless, the idea that all reality is historically and culturally determined is far from absent—both in academics and popular culture.

Education, Liberal Arts

STEM and The Value of a Liberal Education

by Dave Seng

dude reading

An institution I recently worked for just eliminated their Liberal Arts program and is focusing on something it is calling “leadership studies.” I do not know the entire situation and motivation behind this decision and I certainly do not intend to disparage this particular university. It very well could be that they are still strongly committed to a humanities or liberal arts education and the program, as implemented, just did not work out for whatever reason. I fully understand the economic factors involved (I teach a class on the economics of information), but I do think this institution made a significant error of judgment. As important as the economic situation is for any school, at what point do those of us as educators—those who believe in the enduring achievements of our Western intellectual heritage—stand up and say there might be very good reasons to have our future leaders be broadly, liberally, and generally educated? Of course, specialization is an important reality of our knowledge economy and we all must specialize to some degree. Time is always scarce and brings with it the ever-present reality of opportunity cost. Specialization, which in many cases amounts to vocational training, should not preclude one from being generally educated.  In our knowledge economy, it is far too easy to develop what we call leaders into technological bureaucrats.  A humanities based education will help address this concern.

Whenever a university eliminates a liberal arts program it makes a tragic mistake. Without a background in the humanities or liberal arts, it becomes harder for the student to specialize and make important intellectual connections because they simply will not have the foundation and skills to do so, and it will be more difficult for the student to understand and comprehend the masters in his or her field if the student decides to make that extra step. The classes I teach draw upon the intersection of intellectual history, philosophy, and technology. I have found that even my most motivated students have difficulty understanding how the great thinkers and innovators of the past have contributed to their own field of study.  I firmly believe that an education which includes logical reasoning that corresponds to reality (not all approaches to logic succeed at that), and an exploration of the human element which always shapes our artistic and technological reality, is the best educational service that a school or university can provide to their students. After all, technology brings with it that most peculiar and vexing trait of the human condition itself—it is always an amalgam of good and evil. With an education that includes the liberal arts, STEM students will be better prepared to understand why the great ethical questions that surround our technological society matter and will come to an understanding of what it means to live a meaningful life.

I recently re-discovered how a brilliant mind can influence a field when reading through A.N. Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World. Whitehead, of course, is a great early Twentieth Century logician, mathematician, and philosopher. Whitehead draws on early Greek thought, Roman Stoicism and legal theory, and even shows how medieval Benedictine monks contributed to science and technology. In short, he uses illustrations from literature, philosophy, and history to demonstrate how math and science have contributed to the world we live in today. It is true that Science and the Modern World is not Whitehead’s most significant work, but it is his most accessible and rewarding work for the generally educated reader or for one who wants to be. Those specializing in mathematics will certainly be (or should be) familiar with his work, but I wonder how accessible his examples are for those without a broad liberal education? The same could be said of Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, or Albert Einstein—all intellectual leaders of their fields and well versed in the great Western thinkers that shaped so much of our philosophical, artistic, and historical understanding. We need leaders and specialists in STEM fields but we must give them the foundation and conceptual tools to help them understand the masters of their own field. It does not matter where one falls on the cultural or social spectrum either. Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx were all classicists and broadly educated. Freud, of course, used his foundational knowledge to develop an entirely new area of study, analytical psychology and, along with Marx, became one of the most influential thinkers of the Twentieth Century. How will universities who eliminate the liberal arts help our future leaders understand these great social and philosophical influences of our day and aid them in carefully weighing their ideas? Similarly, it is easy to see how Whitehead, Planck, or Heisenberg became specialists in their respective fields. They were able to draw from history, literature, and philosophy to make significant contributions to math, physics, and science. They built their theories using tools given to them from those who came before them. Their generalization prepared them for specialization. The insights of Planck and Heisenberg were so profound that they contributed to a re-birth of Aristotelian metaphysics—a significant accomplishment considering the previous four hundred years of intellectual and scientific history.

A generally educated student will be able to make connections, weigh evidence, communicate clearly, and understand what went right and what went wrong in the past. These insights and skills will serve students very well as they specialize in any field. The intellectual historian Irving Babbit reminds us, “The discipline that helps a man to self-mastery is found to have a more important bearing on his happiness than the discipline that helps him to a mastery of physical nature. If scientific discipline is not supplemented by a truly humanistic or religious discipline the result is unethical science, and unethical science is perhaps the worst monster that has yet been turned loose on the race” (Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism, 1919, 383). Given that science and technology are so fundamental to our human situation today, why would any school or university seek to eliminate a program which focuses on the greatest of human achievements and helps us to understand what it means to live a deliberately meaningful life?