Excerpts from NY Times: Opinionator | When Philosophy Lost Its Way
The act of purification accompanying the creation of the modern research university was not just about differentiating realms of knowledge. It was also about divorcing knowledge from virtue. Though it seems foreign to us now, before purification the philosopher (and natural philosopher) was assumed to be morally superior to other sorts of people. The 18th-century thinker Joseph Priestley wrote “a Philosopher ought to be something greater and better than another man.” Philosophy, understood as the love of wisdom, was seen as a vocation, like the priesthood. It required significant moral virtues (foremost among these were integrity and selflessness), and the pursuit of wisdom in turn further inculcated those virtues. The study of philosophy elevated those who pursued it. Knowing and being good were intimately linked. It was widely understood that the point of philosophy was to become good rather than simply to collect or produce knowledge.
The act of purification accompanying the creation of the modern research university was not just about differentiating realms of knowledge. It was also about divorcing knowledge from virtue. Though it seems foreign to us now, before purification the philosopher (and natural philosopher) was assumed to be morally superior to other sorts of people. The 18th-century thinker Joseph Priestley wrote “a Philosopher ought to be something greater and better than another man.” Philosophy, understood as the love of wisdom, was seen as a vocation, like the priesthood. It required significant moral virtues (foremost among these were integrity and selflessness), and the pursuit of wisdom in turn further inculcated those virtues. The study of philosophy elevated those who pursued it. Knowing and being good were intimately linked. It was widely understood that the point of philosophy was to become good rather than simply to collect or produce knowledge.
The scientist’s privileged
role was to provide the morally neutral knowledge needed to achieve our goals,
whether good or evil. This put an end to any notion that there was something
uplifting about knowledge. The purification made it no longer sensible to speak
of nature, including human nature, in terms of purposes and functions. By the
late 19th century, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche had proved the failure of
philosophy to establish any shared standard for choosing one way of life over
another. This is how Alasdair MacIntyre explained philosophy’s contemporary
position of insignificance in society and marginality in the academy. There was
a brief window when philosophy could have replaced religion as the glue of
society; but the moment passed. People stopped listening as philosophers
focused on debates among themselves.
Once knowledge and goodness were divorced, scientists could be
regarded as experts, but there are no morals or lessons to be drawn from their
work. Science derives its authority from impersonal structures and methods, not
the superior character of the scientist. The individual scientist is no
different from the average Joe; he or she has, as Shapin has written, “no
special authority to pronounce on what ought to be done.” For many, science
became a paycheck, and the scientist became a “de-moralized” tool enlisted in
the service of power, bureaucracy and commerce.
Here, too, philosophy has aped the sciences by fostering a culture
that might be called “the genius contest.” Philosophic activity devolved into a
contest to prove just how clever one can be in creating or destroying
arguments. Today, a hyperactive productivist churn of scholarship keeps
philosophers chained to their computers. Like the sciences, philosophy has
largely become a technical enterprise, the only difference being that we
manipulate words rather than genes or chemicals. Lost is the once common-sense
notion that philosophers are seeking the good life — that we ought to be (in
spite of our failings) model citizens and human beings. Having become
specialists, we have lost sight of the whole. The point of philosophy now is to
be smart, not good. It has been the heart of our undoing.
