Evident
to any psychologically healthy human adult aware of contemporary international
political events is that global politics is becoming pathological on such a
scale that its proportions threaten the future of global civilization. I write
this short post to suggest that, decades ago, Mortimer J. Adler had diagnosed
the causes of this pathology and had suggested sound remedies for it.
In a 1940 article presented in New York City at a
conference on science, philosophy, and religion, entitled “God and the
Professors,” Adler maintained that, like the health and disease of the body,
cultural health consists in organizational health, the harmonious functioning
of its parts, and cultures die from lack of harmonious functioning of these
same parts. He added that “science, philosophy, and religion are certainly
major parts of European culture; their distinction from one another as quite
separate parts is certainly the most characteristic cultural achievement of
modern times. But if they have not been properly distinguished, they cannot be
properly related; and unless they are properly related, properly ordered to one
another, cultural disorder, such as that of modern times, inevitably results.”[i]
In short, Adler
was maintaining that, if we do not properly understand the natures of things, their
intrinsic principles of unity, especially of culturally-related organizations
like religion, science, philosophy, we cannot properly relate and unite them as
complementary parts of a coherent cultural whole, or healthy cultural organization.
This, however, is precisely the problem we have with solving the political
pathologies that are besetting the world on an increasingly global scale in our
time. Our international political leaders do not properly understand the natures
of things, and especially the natures of philosophy, science, and religion.
Worse, they tend to think that things have no natures, or if they do, they are
not knowable by political reason.
During the early
part of the twentieth century, international political pathologies similar to
the ones we are experiencing today were so bad that they had prompted Adler to
write his scathing 1940 Harper’s Magazine article “This Prewar Generation”
in which, among other things, he accused post-World War I American young people
of having a mindset largely similar to that of Hitler’s youth. “Our college
students today, like Thrasymachus of old,” Adler said, “regard justice as the
will of the stronger; but unlike the ancient sophist they cannot make the point
as clearly as clearly or defend it as well.”[ii]
While Adler did
not think that American youth of his day tended to reduce justice to mystical
identification with the State, to advancing the cause of the Fatherland, he
claimed that, chiefly under the influence of American higher education, post-World
War I and pre-World War II American youth had become, like Thrasymachus,
sophists who had developed habits of mind that (1) tended to identify right
behavior with a personal will to power, personal success, and (2) did not enable them to conceive of
democracy as intrinsically superior to fascism and articulate rational
arguments to defend such a superiority. Hence, Adler claimed that American
youth would continue to work for democracy only so long as democracy continued
to work for them.[iii]
Adler did not
think that post-World War I American culture alone had initially generated this
post-World War I mindset. He maintained that centuries of Western cultural
change had prepared the minds of American youth to become sophists. He argued
that this situation was “the last fruition of modern man’s exclusive trust in
science and his gradual disavowal of whatever lies beyond the field of science
as irrational prejudice, an opinion emotionally held.”[iv]
While Adler
considered “the doctrine of scientism” to be “the dominant dogma of American
philosophy,” during the early part of the twentieth century, he maintained,
this last fruition of modern thought had received its finishing touches in
university philosophy courses, all tending to reinforce the same conclusion: “only
science gives us valid knowledge of reality.”[v]
Or, in another way of putting it: The whole of truth about the physical
universe is contained in physical science. Outside physical science, all human
judgments consist in irrational prejudice: opinion emotionally held.
While those
educators who proudly proclaim the conviction that “the only valid knowledge of
reality is contained in physical science” might tend to think this claim is a
sign of having achieved the zenith of intellectual Enlightenment, in actuality,
as Adler recognized, this is simply a dogmatic claim emotionally held
analogously the same as the fideistic claim of those who declare that the whole
of truth is contained in Scripture or in the Qu’ran. By reducing the whole of
human truth to physical science, the proponents of scientism condemn all modes
of reasoning outside of physical science to be devoid of intellectual principles,
to be anarchic.
Beyond this, since
knowing is essential to knowing what we are talking about and being able to
lie, by claiming that physical science contains the whole of truth, those who
proudly proclaim that only physical science contains valid knowledge of reality
are saying that, unless they express themselves in the language of mathematical
physics, politicians cannot know what they are talking about and cannot tell
the truth or lie. In political matters, such individuals are self-proclaimed
ignoramuses.
For decades
Western higher education and every area of the world in which this Western
educational habit of mind has tended to dominate the popular culture have been
propagandizing future world leaders to be convinced that (1) political disputes
have no rational principles discoverable by rational discourse to solve political
disagreements and (2) politicians cannot use political experience rationally to
solve political disagreements. As a result, when confronted by serious
political dangers, contemporary world leaders tend to have no understanding of
precisely how to start rationally attacking a political problem in order
rationally to resolve it. This inclines them to (1) become individually
immobilized on the level of natural reason, (2) lead from “behind,” and (3) put
their trust in the collective “feeling” (opinions emotionally held) of their
political colleagues. Since they all mean well, are sincere in their beliefs,
they incline to think that their collective feelings must be “enlightened
feelings” (as distinct from the unenlightened feelings of religious
fundamentalists who believe such ridiculous myths as that the whole of truth is
contained in the manifest destiny of Mother Russia, the Qu’ran, or some other
manifest destiny or scripture. Such political musings, of course, constitute
the mindset of a fool.
In his Politics, Aristotle chiefly defined a “barbarian” as someone who, having a
slave-like nature, cannot think prudentially because he denies the existence of
natures in things, because such a person has an essentially anarchic mind.[vi]
The reason for this is that, by being incapable of recognizing principles (archai) in things, a person can never
understand their natures, the organizational unity of their parts, their
essential internal relationships, and can never anticipate beforehand how they
will act in the future.
For over a century, Western higher education has
inclined to inculcate political leaders with the mindset of anarchists,
barbarians, and fools: people who tend be devoid or exercising prudential
judgment. As a result, as Adler well
understood, no wonder should exist why Western civilization is on the verge of
collapse.
Peter A. Redpath
Rector: Adler-Aquinas Institute/CEO: Aquinas School of
Leadership
http://w
1. Mortimer J. Adler, “God and the Professors,” in Philosophy is Everybody’s Business, ed.
Max Weismann, 9:3 (Winter 2003), 7–24. I thank my friend Max Weismann for
providing, director of the Center for the Study of The Great Ideas, for
providing me with a copy of this article.
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