Abstract
Wisdom is essentially tied to a certain modesty of reason—a modesty that consists essentially in the recognition of limit. The commitment to truth is itself tied to such a recognition of limit, and so too is the possibility of any genuine critical engagement. It is thus that wisdom, understood in just these terms, can indeed be said properly to stand at the heart of any genuine form of teaching or research. As such, it is wisdom that must underpin the activity, as well as the organisational structure and governance, of educational institutions, and especially of universities. It is, however, precisely the idea of limit that is refused by the corporatism, managerialism and economism that dominates contemporary institutions of teaching and research, especially in the English-speaking world. Moreover, as is evident in the work of Adam Smith, as well as in a range of other thinkers, the idea of limit, and so of the modesty that comes with wisdom, is applicable not only in intellectual endeavour, but in all human activity—even in the realm of the economic and the financial.
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- 1.
Smith’s concern is with the ethical, but one might say that the concern with the limits of reason that is at issue here adumbrates Kant’s later concern with the limits or bounds of reason in an epistemological and ontological sense.
- 2.
Although, as I note in the discussion below, it might be argued that it is taken up, if sometimes problematically, in the idea of phronesis or practical wisdom.
- 3.
Though see Ozolinš’ (2013, 2015) work. In the latter publication, Ozolinš (2013) argues for similarities in the views of Peters and Newman on education and specifically for both as committed, in spite of the fact that neither uses the term, to a conception of education as essentially oriented to the cultivation of wisdom. Ozolinš aside, there is a larger body of work on wisdom in higher education, but little that has appeared in the last decade—in relation to that older body of work see, e.g. Barnett (1994).
- 4.
See Schwartz (2012). Although Schwartz shows no awareness of the potential tension in his championing of wisdom as an ‘employability’ skill, elsewhere (2006) he argues for the importance of values, rather than any utilitarian purpose, as necessary to underpin the role and mission of the university. At the time of his comments on wisdom, Schwartz was Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University, and prior to that had developed a reputation as an aggressively ‘reformist’ Vice-Chancellor at Murdoch University, in Western Australia, and then at Brunel University, in the UK—here ‘reform’ means, of course, the promotion of a corporatist and market-oriented conception of higher education. One might thus argue that not only is there an odd tension internal to Schwartz’s position (especially his championing of wisdom as an employability skill), but that this reflects a tension between some of his public commentary and his actual practice as a university administrator—a practice that led, during his time at Brunel, to his being one of the top ten highest-paid Vice-Chancellors in the UK and his nomination by the academic teaching union as the ‘UK’s worst boss’. Such tensions, and the superficiality of discourse that accompanies them, seem characteristic of much of the rhetoric that comes from contemporary university administrators, politicians and governments with regard to the nature and role of universities, and university teaching and research. One conclusion that might be drawn from this is that the rhetoric is just that—mere rhetoric—and that it both reflects an emptying out of genuine discourse as well as being a means to conceal or promote quite different agendas and directions.
- 5.
Newman’s position was one shared by Mathew Arnold and, as I note below, by John Stuart Mill, but opposed by Thomas Huxley—see Silver (2003, pp. 4–5). To side with Newman et al. on the issue of the fundamental non-utility of knowledge or wisdom is not, of course, to take sides with Newman and against Huxley with respect to all of the points in dispute between them. Indeed, Huxley also emphasised the independence of the pursuit of knowledge from all practical considerations: ‘the primary business of universities is with pure knowledge and pure art—independent of all application to practice; with progress in culture, not with wealth’ (Huxley, quoted in Halsey 1958, p. 148).
- 6.
To some extent, this distinction may also be seen to mirror that between ‘substantive’ and ‘formal’ rationality—see, e.g. Weber (1947, pp. 184–186) who argues for the limitations of markets as instances only of formal rationality.
- 7.
Here, as in so much else, contemporary practices and conventions operate entirely against the advice of Adam Smith. With respect to any public proposal that comes from what we would now think of as the business sector—what Smith refers to as the ‘dealers’ or the order of men who ‘live by profit’—Smith urges that such proposals ‘ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention’. This is for the simple reason that, as Smith says, the interest of the ‘dealers’ is not the same as the interest of the public, and the former have indeed ‘an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and … accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it’ (Smith 1999, p. 359).
- 8.
See Plato (1966), 23b. Socrates also comments on the wisdom assumed by the craftsman who, ‘because of practicing his art well… thought he was very wise in the other most important matters’ (Apology, 22d)—an observation that today probably applies best to the contemporary CEO, though in this case, it is probably less the capacity to practice one’s craft well that leads to the presumption of wisdom, than the mere possession of wealth and status.
- 9.
Becket’s line, ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better’, is often quoted as if all Beckett intended was a sort of rephrasing of the old saying ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’, which would suggest that the emphasis is on failure as a pathway to eventual success, but this is clearly not Beckett’s intention. Indeed, if anything, the line aims to subvert the original saying to which it perhaps alludes, the emphasis being on the inevitability of failure, and the recognition of that inevitability as nevertheless founding action. The human life is thus a failing life, but a life whose failure does not entail surrender.
- 10.
Although some of their discussions are now a little dated (especially in relation to computing technologies), two books that still provide useful and important analyses of the relation between technology and failure are Tenner (1996) Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences and Perrow (1999) Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies.
- 11.
The same idea is repeated at several other places in Heidegger’s writings.
- 12.
Dreyfus’s first detailed account of practical wisdom or expertise is in Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus, Mind over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer (New York: Free Press, 1988), but the ideas are repeated and developed over many other publications over the course of Dreyfus’ career both earlier and later—see, e.g. Hubert Dreyfus, On the Internet (London: Routledge, 2001).
- 13.
In the ‘Postscript’ to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn (1970, pp. 184–187) argues that this is achieved through the way shared values within a disciplinary matrix nevertheless allow for differences in individual judgments of value—see also D’Agostino (2005, pp. 201–209). The title of Kuhn’s (1977) The Essential Tension refers to just the dynamic relation between tradition and innovation, convergence and divergence, that is at issue here.
- 14.
An important influence on Mill here is the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt, and especially Humboldt’s (1854) The Sphere and Duties of Government. An epigram from Humboldt appears at the beginning of On Liberty: ‘The grand, leading principle, towards which every argument unfolded in these pages directly converges, is the absolute and essential importance of human development in its richest diversity’ (von Humboldt 1854, p. 65).
- 15.
On the inappropriateness of taking Mill to suggest a direct modelling of epistemic endeavour on the operation of the market, see Gordon (1997, pp. 235–249).
- 16.
On the problems relating to political interference in research, see Resnik (2009). He makes the interesting comment that ‘The most likely explanation of US success in science and technology is that scientists in the United States have greater autonomy than in almost any other country in the world’ (p. 66).
- 17.
In respect of De Mandeville, Smith (1976) writes: ‘the notions of this author are in almost every respect erroneous’ (p. 487).
- 18.
See Arendt (2000, pp. 555–556): ‘Seen from the view-point of politics, truth has a despotic character. It is therefore hated by tyrants, who rightly fear the competition of a coercive force they cannot mo-nopolize, and it enjoys a rather precarious status in the eyes of governments that rest on consent and abhor coercion’. See also Malpas (2010).
- 19.
See von Hayek (1982, p. 54): ‘[…] the only possibility of transcending the capacity of individual minds is to rely on those super-personal “self-organizing” forces which create spontaneous orders.’
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© 2018 Jeff Malpas, under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore, part of Springer Nature
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Malpas, J. (2018). Wisdom’s Limit: Truth, Failure and the Contemporary University. In: Peters, M.A., Rider, S., Hyvönen, M., Besley, T. (eds) Post-Truth, Fake News. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8013-5_5
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