Stanley Fish has just posted a blog about the president of the University of Colorado's plan to endow a "Chair in Conservative Thought and Policy." This is the usual nonsense: Republicans take themselves to have cornered the market on Conservatism, define any non-Republican as therefore a "Leftist," assemble some statistics showing a disproportionately low number of Republicans among the university faculty ranks, and draw the conclusion that the universities are in the grip of "Leftist" bias and so are in need of the kind of "balance" which could be provided only by mandating an increase in the presence of conservative viewpoints on campus.
The argument is a muddle for the simple fact that it confuses its categories. This confusion results from the need to map political ideology onto party affiliation. So, all of those who are not registered Republicans are taken to be therefore Democrats (rather than simply non-Republicans), and Democrats, since they are non-Conservatives, must be "Leftists." But all of this amounts to a Disneyland view of politics. Not all conservatives are Republicans; some conservatives are Democrats; some conservatives are Libertarians; some liberals are Libertarians; some Democrats are moderates and thus anti-Leftist; some Leftists are Socialists; and so on.
The logical error is so simple, I can't imagine how people so readily fall for it: Define a position, x, very narrowly and then compare the number of persons who hold x with the number of those who don't. X will come out in the minority every time. So, let's try this: Stipulate that a "Leftist" is someone who accepts Marx's historical materialism. Now go survey the professors at any university. The vast minority of them will turn out to be Leftists. So the university is disproportionately conservative! QED.
Sorry for the long post. As with everything that Fish writes, there's the good part and the crazy part, and I don't want to let the crazy part go unmentioned. Fish writes:
A classroom discussion of Herbert Marcuse and Leo Strauss, for example, does not (or at least should not) have the goal of determining whether the socialist or the conservative philosopher is right about how the body politic should be organized. Rather, the (academic) goal would be to describe the positions of the two theorists, compare them, note their place in the history of political thought, trace the influences that produced them and chart their own influence on subsequent thinkers in the tradition. And a discussion of this kind could be led and guided by an instructor of any political persuasion whatsoever, and it would make no difference given that the point of the exercise was not to decide a political question but to analyze it.
Apparently Fish thinks that every university should be a Great Books program: we "describe," "compare," and historically contextualize great thinkers, without trying to determine what is true. What nonsense! What, exactly, is it to "analyze" a political question but to try to figure out which position is right? Otherwise, why bother?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
This is absolute madness. Perhaps we should have a Chair in Green Political Thought given their apparent lack of representativeness? (I say this as a Green Party member.) Since when should chairs be tied to ideology? Sounds like this conservative favours preferential treatment and disfavours preference based upon merit, which is curious given his ideological commitments.....
Brooks:
I wouldn't even grant this much. I think that the very claim that "Conservative" viewpoints are underrepresented on campus is nonsense until someone says what viewpoints count as "Conservative." But once *that's* attempted, the entire argument fails. Consider: does someone who supports gay marriage because he sees legally-recognized marriage of any kind as an instance of undue governmental interference count as a Conservative or a Liberal? Does someone who favors tax-cuts because he opposes the size of the military budget count as a Conservative?
I read about this a few weeks ago. But the author of that article mentioned how the Liberals didn't want this, but then the Conservatives fired back with the lack of *Diversity* on campus argument, and tried to rub the mud of *lack of Diversity, and intolerance* in the face of the Liberal campus.......
I hear what you're saying about making everything *Democrat* or *Republican*. Just seems to be the flavor of the day, and if you're anything that isn't so cut and dry, you're relegated to the world of kookdom.
dumbass:
Good points. Anyone who thinks seriously about politics (rather than about getting elected, and so on) has more sophisticated views than those represented by either major party.
Spiros:
"What, exactly, is it to "analyze" a political question but to try to figure out which position is right? Otherwise, why bother?"
Fish doesn't believe that we can do this. And believes any attempt to do this is ideologically driven. Fish puts philosophy (including logic) into the basket of "The Humanities," and has argued on his blog that the Humanities are studied "for their own sake." Aristotle is doing cartwheels in his grave, and, being among the living, I went apoplectic over it. Interestingly, Fish constructed this argument out of yet another muddled category confusion: Claims about the practical/productive uses of Humanities cannot be supported, according to him, so the Humanities must be studied "for their own sake." But, although Fish deploys the Aristotelian categories, but also denies that that endeavor of pursing knowledge for its own sake aims at the truth; this "for its own sake" is virtually empty of anything identifiably meaningful. He claims that we ought to only "describe," "contextalize," and "historically situate," and fastidiously avoid matters of truth, but at the same time, none of this can amount to Practical or Productive knowledge either--i.e. for Fish, even these descriptive practices cannot have value because they produce "critical thinking," promote tolerant citizenry, or a more erudite work force, etc.. Knowledge for its own sake, for Fish, amounts to a kind of intellectual aesthetic pleasure.
The fact that someone like this has come to represent academics is, quite frankly, sickening to me.
729:
I'm aware of Fish's broader views. And they're self-referentially incoherent in the most boring way. Just another instance of wanting to deny that truth matters while at the same time posing as a courageous *revealer* of the (or that) truth. What a fraud.
Btw, Williams very deftly pointed to this phenomenon in his *Truth and Truthfulness* book.
Post a Comment