The Idea of a University
The universe is one whole of which we are part, in which we exist, discoverable by the human mind, the source of universal truth that transcends place & time. It is the basis of a university.
Americans witnessing displays of moral bankruptcy infused with utter foolishness within American institutions of higher education—nearly all of which are subsidized by American taxpayers—are tempted to dismiss universities as worse than useless.
Given that many universities, in our postmodern age, have become citadels of tribalism, nihilism, and moral emptiness, that temptation is understandable.
If there is any hope for the future of a higher form of education that is good and worthy of the name, we should step back and recall the idea of a university, intrinsically connected to the idea of the universe itself.
Weapons of Truth: Free Minds, Free Speech, & Open Debate
Thomas Jefferson authored the first draft of Virginia’s “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom” in 1777, which was later enacted into law, in 1786, by Virginia’s General Assembly.
Near the end of this historically unprecedented legislation, Jefferson left for posterity an important reminder:
That truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
Reflect on Jefferson’s words for just a moment.
Truth is not only “great,” it will “prevail” over “error”—truth has “nothing to fear from the conflict” with error—so long as truth is armed with “her natural weapons,” which are “free argument and debate,” which means people speaking freely, openly, without threat of legalized censorship, torture, imprisonment, or other punishment.
Erroneous opinions are not “dangerous” so long as truth “is permitted freely to contradict them.”
Free speech is both a good in itself—choice worthy for its own sake—and it is the handmaid for truth. Free speech serves the noble quest for truth.
Jefferson’s legislative language could be the mission statement for every university in the United States and, arguably, every university in the world. It is perhaps the perfect statement of what a university ought to be, and why universities ought to exist.
Sadly, most postmodern universities in our postmodern United States today care little about truth, even less about free speech. American universities have become bastions of progressive identity politics that is the basis for a kind of tribal, identity education.
One now finds all kinds of restrictions on speech and censorship on university campuses, where progressive political correctness is the new religion and what Jefferson described as “free argument and debate” is tantamount to heresy.
If you doubt this, walk onto a typical university campus today and try discussing freely the proposition that a human being with one X and one Y chromosome is a male, properly referred to as “he” or “him.” Or, suggest that Israel has a duty to eradicate an enemy who will not stop attacking until Israel is no more. See for yourself how little free speech there is in the postmodern academic world of higher education.
How did this happen? How did universities go from places devoted to free speech in pursuit of truth to institutionalized advocacy, marketing, and cheerleading for partisan political agendas? The answer almost reveals itself if we recall what a university is, or ought to be.
The Idea of a University
The Latin root uni means one. The idea of “universe,” therefore, is one world, one whole of which we are part, in which we exist, that is discoverable by the human mind, yet is bigger — more comprehensive — than any of us, than all of us.
The idea of one universe is intrinsically connected to and inseparable from the idea of one, objective, universal truth that transcends time and place. One world; one truth; one-ness.
The one-ness that unites the world as a coherent whole was described by Plato as the mysterious, inscrutable Idea of the Good, the ultimate being-beyond-being that renders the infinity of particular beings in the world intelligible.
If the idea of “chair” includes and comprehends all actual, particular chairs, and the idea of “tree” includes and comprehends all actual, particular trees, and the idea of “star” includes and comprehends all actual, particular stars, and the idea of “dog” includes and comprehends all actual, particular dogs, and the idea of “man” includes and comprehends all actual, particular human beings, then what includes and comprehends all ideas?
Answer: The one Idea of the Good, the one Idea of all ideas, the one form that all ideas share in common.
The one-ness that unites the world as a coherent whole was attributed by Jewish holy texts and oral traditions to El, or Adonai, the mysterious and inscrutable one and only Sovereign God of the one and only universe, who renders intelligible the infinity of particulars in the world.
One could spend a lifetime exploring what Plato’s writings and the Hebrew Torah have in common, and it would not be wasted time. It would be a profound opportunity for a mortal, time-bound human being to explore that which exists outside time and space.
The mind, after all, is not bound by limits of time or space.
These great conversations — intelligent agreements and disagreements — between claims based on reason and claims based on revelation point to the highest questions we human beings can contemplate. These debates between reason and revelation have been the source of unmatched intellectual vitality within Western Civilization, and they make sense only within the context of a universe that all human minds can experience, observe, and study.
The very premise of the “university,” as an institution of higher education, is the idea of a universe, a one-ness, including the possibility of one truth that exists and can be understood by human minds, at least to some extent.
After all, we human beings are the only Earthly beings whose consciousness and memory is not limited to what we experience through our own sense perception. We see, hear, smell, taste, and touch our immediate surroundings, it’s true. And, we can learn what others in far-away places, or centuries away in time, saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched.
Time & Space Travelers
Even more, we can learn what they thought. We, today, can be challenged by insights or abstract arguments or practical advice offered by thinking minds long ago. And, we can respond to them. We can agree or disagree with them, and we can articulate why.
Within each of us is a living demonstration of the immateriality and immortality of the soul. We know this about the soul by the simple (or miraculous) fact that each of us can live, in important respects, outside our own time and place.
We can know what it was like to walk and talk with Aristotle better than many Athenians who lived when Aristotle did.
We can immerse ourselves in Elizabethan England through the plays of Shakespeare.
We can know, better than many Americans did in the 1850s, the ultimate stakes of denying the self-evident truth of human equality, by studying the letters and speeches of Lincoln.
When one begins with the premise that there is truth and it cuts across time and space, then we see the real purpose of a university is to expand our own understanding and insight—beyond the limits of our time-bound mortal lives—by engaging great minds from far-away places and the distant past, minds who thought deeply about the ultimate human questions.
If there is universal truth, confined neither to space nor time, then every university professor should be influenced by the intelligent scholarship of every professor in the same field, including professors who live nearby as well as those who live on other continents. Any legitimate scholarly or scientific discovery should be added to the canon of knowledge, within any academic discipline, regardless of who made the discovery, or when, or where.
For these reasons, it makes no sense at all to have ethnic studies programs, or women’s studies programs, etc, because the human mind has no color or gender. Human knowledge has no color or gender. Truth has no color or gender.
There is no black math, or black history, or black economics, or black chemistry, or black philosophy. There is math, history, economics, chemistry, and philosophy.
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates was not seeking to understand “white justice.” He wanted to know what justice is, the answer being something of importance to all human beings, of all colors.
The teaching by American Revolutionaries that taxation without representation is wrong applies to everyone, not merely those with white skin. It is equally wrong for “people of color” to be taxed without representation.
When Jefferson explained that errors and false opinions are not dangerous so long as truth is free to contradict them, he was saying something true not merely for white people, but for all people. False doctrines are dangerous for black people, too, if they are not free to contradict those doctrines and speak what is true. False doctrines are dangerous for all people who are not free to contradict those doctrines and speak what is true.
Perspectivism Replaces One-Ness
If there is one truth that virtually all educated postmodern Americans agree transcends cultures, locations, and time, today, it is the transcendent truth that there is no transcendent truth.
The nonexistence of truth, they insist, is not merely their own prejudice or perspective. It is true, they tell us, usually while they blink, unaware of the glaring contradiction they’ve embraced.
If there is no truth that transcends time, then there is no one universe in any comprehensive sense of the word; there are only multiverses, many different cultural perspectives, and no transcultural standard by which any particular culture can be judged objectively.
If there is no universe, there is no principled foundation or premise for a university. The discovery of a professor who lives far away and in a very different culture, or who lived long ago, is irrelevant for a professor who lives here, now. If the mind is genuinely confined to a particular cultural contest, then what can a professor of white chemistry possibly learn from a black chemist? What can someone who specializes in European philosophy possibly learn from an African thinker?
Indeed, in place of the university, we have substituted black studies programs, and women’s studies, and other gender and ethnic and cultural studies, all of which are nothing but assertions of various and differing cultures, different perspectives, that somehow we are asked to consider as “equal” precisely because there is no truth.
Yet, if there is no truth, then why is it true that all cultures are equal? What if my personal “truth” is that some cultures are vile, debased, and low, while other cultures are morally superior? Who within our postmodern citadels of nihilism can explain why I might be wrong? Once one has rejected the possibility of truth, what does it even mean to be “wrong?”
The transformation of the university into various cultural studies represents the cultural victory of philosophic nihilism and cultural relativism over truth. It also raises deep and serious questions that some students and faculty attempt to answer with protests, riots, and occasional violence.
In A Post-Truth World, What Does It Mean to be Educated?
If there is no truth, after all, then what can it mean to be “educated,” or “intelligent?” Typically, today, educated, postmodern nihilists within American universities woo and wow and impress each other by denouncing the culture of which they are part—our American culture—they denounce the United States and everything for which it stands.
This is how you demonstrate your “woke” bona fides to fellow woke progressive Americans.
Within American universities, tenured professors peddle nihilism, tribalism, and progressive identity politics in the form of progressive identity education. They seem to believe that the human mind, human knowledge, and truth itself has a color, a gender, a race. The premise academics now promote on university campuses is the same basic, underlying premise of the Third Reich.
Whether academics today are aware of this or not, I do not know. It would not surprise me if there are academics who don’t know what the Third Reich was. Perhaps German history in the 1930s and 40s was on a different part of the color-wheel from the color-bound history classes postmodern professors took when they themselves were students?
Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that the schooled class of Western university students and faculty is once again calling for Jews to die?
The idea that a mind today can travel through time and space and contemplate eternal truth — and engage in intelligent, purposeful, relevant conversations with greater minds and better thinkers from far away distances and distant pasts — is lost on many professional academics today. They are too tribal, intellectually, to grasp the one-ness of the universe that used to be the one-ness, the truth, that served as the mission of most universities.
Perhaps, now, the best for which we can hope is that more representatives of American universities show up in public venues and speak about the institutions in which they work, putting the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the modern academy on display for all serious, thinking people to hear and observe. Perhaps, then, more Americans will stop funding these postmodern citadels of nihilism, and demand that their own government stop sending tax dollars to them as well.
Excellent piece Tom - thanks!