The Old Liberalism and the New Conservatism
HOOK, SIDNEY
Issues in the academic community The Old Liberalism and the New Conservatism By Sidney Hook The great intellectual paradox of our time is the triumph—in great measure—of the liberal program and...
...Some of these protagonists of a unified university write with a kind of wistful admiration of the philosophical world-view which is taught as a required subject in every Soviet institution of higher learning—not so much because they agree with this particular philosophy but because it is an overarching pattern into which everything is fitted and which informs all its details...
...God's existence depends on truth...
...When they control programs and projects, as they often do, they will sometimes invite some dyed-in-the-wool reactionary, close to the lunatic fringe, to state his case, as if that were the only alternative to their position...
...I begin with what is nearest to home for me—the academy or university...
...They feel strongly the lack of a sense of unity or unifying purpose which would integrate belief and serve as a guide to concerted thought and action, or, failing that, to differences within a common universe of discourse and commitment...
...With respect to the philosophy of education, we seem to be in the very floodtime of our discontent...
...Once we become more interested in the state of the students' souls than in their minds, we run the risk of inhibiting intellectual development and restricting the course of study...
...It made and still makes provision for the research team as for the lone wolf...
...If the marriage of welfare and freedom be considered the principle of socialism, there is more socialism in the United States than in most countries which call themselves socialist...
...What is true for metaphysics and theology as a unifying principle of the life of the academy is true for "overarching" secular ideals like the Democratic Way of Life or National Security or what not...
...This philosophy considered the university to be a center of research, study and teaching in which scholars would seek to acquire new knowledge, new insights, new ideas on the basis of the methods of warranted inquiry in their fields...
...He also criticizes scholars for whom knowledge is not so much a knowing that but a knowing how, for whom values are considered as only "abstractions" (as if when one talks about them they can be anything else...
...It in no way presupposes agreement about the nature of knowledge...
...After all, if Plato's challenge to democracy, or Lenin's, lacks merit, it should not he difficult to indicate it...
...The truly religious person should be willing to grant that, if God exists, His existence is compatible with any truth about the world...
...Indeed, any metaphysics which claims to be the hub and the circumference of academic studies has these terroristic tendencies implicit within it...
...More and more, it makes it possible for the university to concern itself with great problems of social concern...
...The liberal philosophy which gave spirit and direction to the liberal program over the years was not a coherent, tightly developed ideological system...
...Just as the alternative to a worship of the democratic way of life is not necessarily the je-m'en-foutisme of France, with its absence of common loyalty to the democratic process, so the alternative to a curriculum in which Democracy plays the same role as God, Natural Law or the Dialectic is not one in which anybody can study anything and reach any conclusion...
...On the other hand, if it essays the rule of critic or censor of the results won in the scholarly disciplines, it must work hand in hand with the police...
...A university doesn't need a doctrine or a religion to fulfill its proper function...
...One can argue that there is no intrinsic value in knowledge as such, e.g., the knowledge of how to lie or how to torture and degrade human beings, that intrinsic value qualifies not knowledge as such but its objects and uses...
...The democratic community cannot be as zealous and as fanatical about its beliefs as the totalitarians are about theirs without ultimately losing 01 changing the character of its democratic sentiments...
...But were his conviction concerning the dependence of academic freedom on a special theory of knowledge to be acted upon, that plight might very well become real...
...is not an education based on the unchallengeable axioms of democratic faith but a consequence of inquiry, of finding out, of exploring imaginatively and historically the alternatives of policy and action open to men in deciding how to arrange human affairs...
...Or they make a great play about the virtues of controversy and non-conformity but run from the effective controversialist who says and proves that non-conformity can be just as stupid and dangerous as conformity, and that neither the one nor the other is a virtue in the realm of mind, where we need above all intellectual independence and courage to agree or disagree with anybody or anything on reasonable grounds...
...Any scholar was free to follow his own bent...
...No God could make seven equal to three and three...
...The nature of knowledge—its roots, tests and justification—is a subject about which one may entertain many different philosophies provided only that there exists freedom to discuss them...
...At the same time, it did not prevent cooperation among the searchers for the truth...
...This would make the life of scholarship absurd...
...Must I have the correct answer to a problem before I can point out errors in a proposed solution...
...The more truths we reach this way, the more we discover, in the eyes of the believer, about God and His work...
...Those who wish to enstate religion as central to the disciplines of higher education are really interested in salvation, not in objective truth...
...If we apply the rough pragmatic test to the American liberal philosophy from Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to both Roosevelts and into the present, we find that by and large it justified itself by the results...
...Hence, our task is to get on with the discovery, publication and transmission of the truth...
...It requires allegiance or loyalty to no antecedently held doctrine about God...
...Today, almost every one of the principles of the traditional liberal philosophy is under attack in the academy, in the community, in the political arena...
...According to Dewey, all tested knowledge is practical because experimental...
...Academic freedom is a system of rights and responsibilities which facilitates the acquisition of knowledge...
...With respect to plenty, we have more of some things than of others—more radios, refrigerators and television sets than art, music and book centers...
...It is not required that any particular philosophy of knowledge or any particular philosophy of education be a prerequisite for a freely functioning academic community...
...There are other institutions whose responsibility it is to attend to the needs of salvation...
...Liberals should be identified not so much by their talk or the "principles" they enunciate as by the practices they approve or disapprove, condone or condemn...
...But it does not make such concern mandatory...
...For obviously, if it sets itself up as the basic guide to integrated inquiry in all fields of knowledge, it can permit no alternative philosophy to challenge it...
...If religion is to pervade the entire curriculum and extend beyond the present study of religion as a mode of experience and its influence on history and culture, if it means more than the setting of moral example and the study of moral values, with which it is often confused, it may disorganize the curriculum by suggesting that there is not merely a true history of events but a Christian history or Jewish history, not only physics but perhaps Christian physics or Moslem physics...
...It cherished the rights of the minority but at the same time had faith in the democratic rule of the majority...
...It loved variety— compossible variety preferably, but conflicting variety if the conflict didn't spell civil war...
...nature or man before conferring the rights and privileges of master intellectual craftsmen on its devotees...
...Knowledge is not the only or, at any given time, necessarily the highest of values in the moral economy...
...But according to any system of logic, the statements are demonstrably false...
...John Wild, Harvard Educational Review, spring 1956) This view is contrasted scornfully with the "vague materialism and naturalism" current in many departments of philosophy, "which shed no light on the world as a whole, on the mysteries of existence and the matters of man's ultimate concern...
...historians, economists, literary critics, musicians, artists and philosophers...
...One Harvard philosopher writes of the Soviet doctrine of dialectical materialism: "At the present time, it includes fundamental ontology based on evidence accessible to all which can give an intelligible account of the results of the different sciences, a philosophy of man and human history which takes account of many facts, an ethics which claims to be grounded in the dialectical laws of nature, and a penetrating analysis of class conflict which has already offered unequivocal guidance for social action and which has a profound appeal to many scientific minds and to millions of oppressed people all over the world...
...One can believe anything he pleases about the nature of knowledge, one can hold any theory of knowledge and still press resolutely for an educational system which recognizes and sustains academic freedom...
...And if it is difficult to answer the challenge, perhaps we ought to take another look at it to see if it contains more than we thought...
...But it is not being too sanguine to hope that in time even such centers will grow and that popular taste will prove to be less inane...
...Democrats simply cannot believe as totalitarians do, forswear their skepticism and awareness of their finitude, lose their sense of humor, proportion and tolerance, and still remain democratic in spirit and intent, whatever they are in name...
...But one must believe in more than the truth to assert that there are such arguments...
...No matter if the world were quite different from what it is, no matter if water had a different chemical composition and bodies attracted one another differently from the way they do according to Newton's gravitational law, these truths would still be perfectly compatible with the existence or non-existence of a Creator...
...I should like to discuss briefly some of the criticisms of liberal philosophy in various fields, to see how strong their claims are and where they would take us if we were to act upon them...
...It recognized that men worshiped at many altars but that, in a world of plural inspirations and revelations, truth was an affair of reason or of intelligence...
...This leads, according to Professor Maclver, to the prevalence of destructive criticism, which in turn undermines academic freedom...
...This metaphysics has been a rationalization for intellectual terror...
...Belief in them is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of defense of academic freedom...
...This overarching philosophy which "gives an intelligible account of the results of the different sciences" has led to purges of physicists, biologists, psychologists and physicians...
...There is another school of thinkers which regards Soviet metaphysics as a secular religion and, therefore, a bad religion...
...But, true or false, these observations are irrelevant to the nature of academic freedom...
...Before we can make an adequate analysis of the nature of knowledge, we must be in the possession of knowledge...
...It is instructive, however, that this particular philosopher, who refers to the profundities of dialectical materialism, is silent about the fact that it is a premise for the most ruthless suppression of free inquiry and the most rigorous coordination of the curriculum of higher institutions that the world has ever seen...
...One ardent representative of this school, Russell Kirk, declares not only that he is of the opinion "that the fountain of learning and of liberty is religion" but "that men who will not acknowledge the author of their being have no sanction for truth, and that men who take this world for their only reality are actually in Hell, and that men who talk of 'the dignity of man' without confessing that we derive that fleeting dignity from a yearning and an example more than human are bladders of wind...
...The present plight of academic freedom in America exists largely in Professor Maclver's imagination...
...In comparison with the profound dialectical materialism of the East, it is a weak and partial construction which fails to meet the philosophic needs of man, incapable of awakening any wholehearted commitment or devotion in the human soul...
...There is no intrinsic value in the encyclopedic scholarship of card sharps...
...It was pluralistic in attitude...
...Truth doesn't depend on God's existence...
...To the extent that a unifying metaphysics does not function this way, it can be demonstrated that its fundamental principles have no bearing whatsoever on any true empirical discovery in any field...
...Issues in the academic community The Old Liberalism and the New Conservatism By Sidney Hook The great intellectual paradox of our time is the triumph—in great measure—of the liberal program and the challenge to the liberal philosophy...
...But from a comparative point of view—that is, a point of view which compares the present and the past, the here on this side of the curtain and the there beyond the curtain—we have achieved the greatest of all welfare states in the history of mankind...
...The ritualistic liberals are the greatest sinners on this score...
...This view makes truth depend on God's existence and asserts that the truth of God's existence is a basic premise on which all other truths depend, so that ultimately the denial of the truth of God's existence leaves us with fragmentary, unsubstantiated assertions...
...The principle of socialist morality, social equality or equality of concern, which goes beyond liberalism, is often repudiated even when some practical measures move faintly in that direction...
...This, it seems to me, would be a piece of gratuitous presumption even if Professor Maclver's theory were sound—which is questionable...
...There are few thinkers who share this admiration for Soviet metaphysics as a unifying educational ideology...
...But we still have far to go to guarantee employment and to provide equality of opportunity for all, especially some of our minority groups, to develop their best talents...
...In one sense, it is a misnomer, of course, to speak of our economy as a welfare economy if we mean that welfare is spread everywhere and equally spread...
...I can understand a rejection of destructive criticism on the ground that it is false, but not on the ground that we must not criticize unless we can put something better in its place...
...All this has now become a source of alarm among those who find the intellectual pursuits of a university too pluralistic and unrelated...
...There may be arguments for His existence, so far unknown, which are valid...
...Professor Robert Maclver, in his book Academic Freedom Today, asserts that the presence of a theory of knowledge which regards knowledge as "a merely instrumental good" or which denies the spectator theory of knowledge and asserts the operational nature of all significant concepts contributes to the very sorry plight in which, according to him, academic freedom in America finds itself...
...Otherwise, as the history of philosophic thought shows, it invites the pluralism and strife of systems right back again...
...The democratic way of life is not a premise of an educational curriculum: it is a consequence of a curriculum when it aims to teach the truth about fact and render with fidelity the great moral values in human history and experience...
...Second, if it essays only a modest rule of synthesizing truths discovered independently of its heuristic principles, it is completely superfluous as a guide in the day-by-day researches of the arts and sciences...
...Even Aquinas recognizes the primacy of the concept of truth to that of divinity, else how could we "prove" the existence of God...
...Finally, in this connection, I should like to consider the view that academic freedom requires that those who believe in it hold some special theory of the nature and significance of knowledge...
...It maintains that the function of a university in its very quest for objective truth and knowledge cannot be fulfilled without enstating at the heart of the curriculum a true non-secular religion...
...by the liberal program I mean the blueprints of welfare and plenty—plenty of jobs, plenty of opportunities, plenty of groceries, and plenty of civil rights...
...At am rate, it should be objects el\ studied not only as an abstract ideal but as a functioning svstcin...
...Further, no specific truth about the world, established by the special disciplines, follows from God's existence...
...This means that the academic curriculum at the university level must study the democratic way of life and not be (earful of reaching conclusions which seem to challenge it...
...But what is relatively new is the attack on the philosophy of higher education in America—a philosophy which, even if unformulated, was still adequately reflected in institutional practices...
...True or false, adequate or inadequate, does that make Dewey an unwitting enemy of academic freedom...
...Sometimes it is better not to know some things...
...It needs independent thinkers who follow their own bent in the never-ending quest for clarity and truth without concern for public relations either here or in the hereafter...
...This is a continuation of an old story...
...If criticism is solely destructive and never constructive, if we seek to pull down the old residences of human values without building new ones or at least proposing better residences instead, then we become the unwitting agents of social chaos...
...But what is really objectionable here is that Professor Maclver is making his own interpretation of the nature of knowledge a necessary condition for the free pursuit of it and charging that those who disagree with his theory are unwitting enemies of academic freedom...
...Sometimes this is denied even by liberal thinkers...
...geographers, demographers, statisticians and philologists...
...I do not say it caused these results, but it influenced them in indirect but very real ways...
...Too often, liberals who are caustic about the failure of conservatives to observe intellectual due process, so to speak, will themselves violate it by refusing to permit alternative positions to their own to be stated...
...Unlike Marxism, it finds no place for universal moral norms grounded in the nature of things...
...There are orders of studies, each of which has a discipline which we can partly prescribe anil partly leave open to choice without imposing a common pattern upon everyone independent of need, interest or capacity...
...Never have so many bemoaned so much the character of our instruction, the low level of student capacity and interest, and the negligible quality of its results...
...But they are careful to exclude the realistic or critical liberal who can show that ritualistic liberalism suffers from the same unintelligent absolutism as ritualistic reaction...
...Counterposed to it is a cluster of positions and principles called conservative—some drawn from Burke, others from Plato and Aristotle, and still others from Aquinas...
...According to some systems of religious thought, this is very dubious theology...
...The common assumption that we must develop a democratic faith and passion (which will energize the capacities of citizens of the democratic community in the same way that the totalitarian myth orients and disciplines the habits and aspirations of its believers) or else lapse into the permanent disorder of French political life is highly questionable...
...Education for democracy, as John Dewey conceived it...
...It cannot permit its fundamental metaphysical premises to be called into question...
...They betray their weakness if the)' require a captive audience or a captive mind...
...The scholar," declares Maclver, "cannot fulfil his obligation to the defense of academic freedom unless he is also devoted to the intrinsic values of scholarship...
...Metaphysics is logically irrelevant to empirical science—even to education and politics—but psychologically it affords a very convenient emotional premise to justify correcting scientific truths in the light of some alleged philosophical principle...
...Science has developed in every age in the teeth of the metaphysical principles held at the time...
...For, obviously, if certain beliefs or doctrines imperil the eternal salvation of the student's soul, it would be our pedagogic and religious duty to suppress the teaching or the teacher or both...
...They are convinced they have a better metaphysics to substitute for it...
...By the liberal philosophy I mean the love of freedom fostered by the arts of intelligence...
...One may cheerfully grant that God may exist even though all the known arguments for His existence are invalid...
...It believed that only individuals were the carriers of values, and that the enrichment of personality was the ultimate test of social policy...
...And if we can't prove His existence but must only assert it on faith, how can any theory be known to be true which is based on it...
...More important than any particular system of beliefs in a liberal civilization is the system of institutions, procedures and processes whose presence defines the free market of ideas...
...It imposed no point of view on its practitioners...
Vol. 40 • July 1957 • No. 27
