Comment from Odysseus Makridis

My first reaction to the President’s Survey was one of narcissistic gratification: It was certainly satisfying to me as a teacher of philosophy and the history of ideas to find my pet texts and favored authors inexorably selected among the most highly recommended. If my preferences smack of solipsistic ivory-towerism, and are tainted with incorrigible classicist nostalgia, this is evidently the case of many a University President, I thought. Of course, I am reminded that a double fallacy may be involved in this argument – appeal to authority and vicious circularity. To be sure, I have independent reasons and tested arguments as to why I would have selected – some – of the all-too-popular “great books” produced by this survey.

On a more sober note, the stakes are high and the whole issue is not to be taken lightly. Many would find the results unsettling: I can see an unholy alliance composed of otherwise irreconcilable foes joining forces to deplore the findings as a sign of academic atavism. On the left, feminists and post-modernists would be appalled; but so would be their usual enemies – the scientific positivists, a few enduring behaviorists, and the emergent sociobiologists. Both sides take themselves to be representing cutting-edge, no-nonsense, state-of-the-art discourses; moreover, they see their disciplines and approaches to be rectifying and remedying a long train of theoretical abuses, excesses, omissions, and embarrassing errors. They would be upset at the apparent absence of their favored authors from the list. Nevertheless, I hope to show below that the choices are more plausibly to be seen as pragmatic rather than ideologically conservative.

To be sure, it does not come as a surprise that the classics of philosophy endure and reverberate throughout the hoary ages. Philosophical problems exercise the mind; conversely, failure to practice philosophy risks producing illogical, narrow-minded, and boorish individuals.

Even Plato – to whom most professional philosophers no longer pay homage – was included in the list; in fact, he topped at least one of the rankings.

This verdict comes as no surprise. The fiction that college education is credentialist has long been put to rest – by hard statistics and through hard-won real-life success stories. We have been pointing out to many an incredulous administrator that a great percentage of the most successful professionals, the highest LSAT scorers, the most stellar CEOs, and the most creative paragons of the arts majored in such maligned subjects as philosophy.

It is particularly enlightening that the Presidents of European institutions – a system that generally puts a premium on specialization at the undergraduate level and lacks the American tradition of a four-year college – also bowed to the merits of a classical education.

[By classical I do not mean necessarily limited to ancient Greek and Roman; it is possible to be pluralistic and global and, at the same time, “classical” in the sense of gravitating toward the themes, issues, authors, personas and texts that have withstood the test of time or are presently emerging as uncontestable representatives of our era for posterity. Notwithstanding their strategic tributes to politically appealing shibboleths, third-world universities also evince this predilection for traditionalist verities, if I am not mistaken.]

It is not a coincidence of course that, on the other hand, the oldies of scientific accomplishment – having suffered the unspeakable embarrassment of many a paradigm shift since their halcyon days – are cast into oblivion, to be replaced by contemporary scientists, and popularizers. Although we are not up to par yet with such oddities as quantum mechanics and given that our intuitions remain Newtonian in many crucial respects, one cannot help noticing that the famous mathematical physicist Hawking is included in the lists. [Newton, and Einstein, are missing – which is not greatly surprising. But so are Darwin and Dawkins, a credible and erudite popularizer of what is emerging as a dominant, and vastly ambitious, scientific trend – evolutionary (socio)biology.] Perhaps the difficulty lies in how to effectuate a synthesis between the last word of (increasingly specialized and obscure) scientific research, on the one hand, and the social and human sciences, on the other; indeed, sociobiology’s forays into grand synthesis are often perceived as pompous and arrogant.

All the more reason, then, to make sure that we do not omit the study of traditional and tested disciplines – like philosophy, which hones analytical skills, enlarges intellectual horizons, and prepares mind and spirit for any, even the most astounding, encounters. In this respect, too, the results of the President’s survey are quite encouraging – and, at a deep level, they are not surprising.

An enduring belief is that no one can consider himself or herself an educated person without having stolen at least a fleeting glimpse of the giant minds of the past. It was Nietzsche who said that even the errors of great minds are worthier, and more challenging, than the vapid platitudes of mediocre intellects. After all, we want students to become versatile and mentally agile, to learn to think and be tolerant of ambiguity, to travel along the path of inquiry forged by pioneering ancestors of today’s humanity; we should even wish students to suffer the fate of committing the occasional error engendered by noble intellectual ambition and to learn and grow through such creative mistakes. It is through this travail that young students – alas, ill-served by their meager high schools in this country – can evolve into independent thinkers, responsible citizens, and creative professionals. This is what college provides to the professions: ability to think independently, logically, analytically, and originally – not specific expertise which professional programs and hands-on training can and will provide more efficaciously.

It is encouraging to see that most University Presidents still believe that certain books and authors are more likely than others to educate and elevate, to hone minds and forge matrices of skills. When this is taken into consideration, the Presidents’ choices are actually pragmatic, notwithstanding the ostensible tinge of romantic or old-fashioned traditionalism.

Nor are the Presidents’ selections ideologically conservative. From among the currently respectable ideological traditions, the one that is widely represented in the lists is classical liberalism. Tocqueville is present - and so is the always relevant tract On Liberty by John Stuart Mill. Radicals do not fare as well – although Marx’s Das Kapital is not forgotten. Radical conservatives (Plato’s case is too complex to classify) are also absent and so are abhorred ideologues – fascists, racists, and so on. The selections seem to gravitate toward a respectable and moderate middle – perhaps pragmatically recognizing the values and ideas that have, for better or worse, shaped our political systems and way of life in the west and are nowadays due for exportation to other climes.

Arguably, even the homage paid to the Bible may have been conceived in a similarly pragmatic vein. After all, the impact of the Bible on values and behaviors has been decisive and is not quite moribund yet. This may sound surprising or far-fetched, but here is a tell-tale sign: The Coran is also included – an eminently pragmatic selection as we try to understand our world in the era of modern terrorism.

I was very pleased to note that certain books, which academic dilettantes tend to fashionably denigrate today, are actually included. Whether one likes these authors or not, there is no cause to be alarmed at their inclusion. At a minimum, the Presidents are showing a marked independence of mind in being ready to resist or ignore trends. At best, the reasons for including such “incorrect” or musty authors are substantive and profound – and it is for the fortunate students to discover these reasons. I have in mind the inclusion of Dostoevsky’s works, Tolstoy’s novels (obsessive diatribes and all,) and even old-fashioned Moby Dick. [It would, of course, be too heretical even for our irreverent times to omit Shakespeare.]

Stunningly, popular reveries on contemporary post-nihilist emptiness are missing: Notwithstanding their intellectualist celebrity and high-school popularity, Catcher in the Rye and Camus’ The Stranger are glaringly absent. And, mercifully, so are much admired contemporary French intellectuals. [I personally wish, however, that Nietzsche, the tragic prophet of it all, had not been left out.]

If I am to indulge myself in donning my erstwhile classicist’s garb, I would only lament one absence – the omission of an author who was read most broadly and respectfully, next to the Bible of course, by colonial and early post-colonial Americans: the erudite and sagacious Plutarch, who might have something important to teach us today about civic virtue and moral dimensions of character.

Odysseus Makridis is a lecturer in philosophy and came to Fairleigh Dickinson University from Brandeis University. Makridis has also taught at Bentley College, the Holy Cross School of Theology, and, as Teaching Fellow in Ethics, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.