In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on September 23, 2008

Canadian universities are suffering from an ethical failure of nerve.

Many of us have become diffident about our roles as professors, administrators, staff and students. We seldom engage in genuine debate about the university’s role in society. We seldom discuss the good and bad uses to which our research might be put. We seldom ask ourselves the purpose of postsecondary education.

Source: Christine Overall, University Affairs, October, 2008 (h/t to Max Forte for this)

Overall’s piece is the first of a regular column that will be appearing on ethics in University Affairs and it’s a column that I will be following with interest, since I feel that it is a crucial discussion.

I have, on the whole, been less than impressed with most of the so-called “ethics” debates taking place inside the academy.  This reaction has less to do with the content or stance of the debates so much as it does with the structural assumptions of the debates.  In particular, I am totally unimpressed with the lack of any solid discussion of the metaphysical assumptions that underly and structure these debates.  That there are metaphysical assumptions is made quite clear in the selection of certain words such as “role” (both of individuals and institutions), “good”, “bad”, “purpose”, etc.

Elsewhere, I have argued that there are several meta-epistemologies that dominate perceptual stances and reflect and refract various metaphysical positions.  And yet, much of the current debate is dominated by the assumption of a very limited sub-set of these positions.  Very crudely, the “university’s role in society” debate is dominated by a pragmatism-empiricism-materialism stance on the part of many university administrations and an idealism-romanticism stance by many academics (see here for these stances).  Nowhere in this “debate” do I see much of a discussion of individual ethics, merely a discussion (if one can call it that) of corporate morality.

I should probably make my own position clear: I am a radical individualist in the tradition of Xenophon’s Socrates (not Plato’s version); a “Romantic” as my friend Stan Reber likes to say, but with a very strong “in the world” bend.  In Christian theological terms, that would be a radical protestant with strong gnostic leanings.  I prefer to style myself as a “Scientist” in the early modern mode of Newton.

Given this stance, it is perhaps inevitable that I draw a sharp distinction between the operation of individual and institutional “ethics”.  At the present time, I see almost all of the “ethics” debates as concentrating on the level of institutional “ethics” (aka “corporate morality”) and none examining the level of individual ethics except inasmuch as the individual should be subservient to the morality of the corporate body. Personally, I find this limitation extremely repugnant – “debates” over which “master” one will serve allow no room for individuals to choose and grow and, most importantly, to not be slaves to a corporate morality of some form.

I believe that the root of this limitation has come from a philosophical choice made by many in the West which artificially separated the Mind from Body; a position advocated by Descarte, and later repudiated by Bateson.   This dichotomy was, in many ways, supported by most Christian Churches (certainly the major Western ones) and re-inforced in the Evolution vs. Creation debates.  This artificial distinction has, in many ways, meant that “science” has accepted the monopolistic claims made by “religion” surrounding individual ethics and individual growth, in effect leaving the study of individual growth to religious institutions (NB: this was not a position supported by Newton).  Even the secular science of psychology had to adopt pseudo-religious framings (cf Jung and, later, NLP) at the individual level.

To make matters worse, the universities have, over the centuries, moved to become “secular” institutions that, in keeping with the rest of science, have abandoned the role of individual growth, change and exploration.  This “role” has been mutated into a perception that individual growth will be achieved by accepting a new “master” stance – a role that is in no structural way different from programming students to accept a religious doctrine despite rhetoric to the contrary.  This structuring is now playing out in the so-called “ethics debates”; debates that centre on which “master” one will serve and deny the importance of the individual as an individual.

This is what I find missing in these “debates” – the question of how an individual grows as a scholar, and academic and an integrated individual.  This final point is, to my mind, crucial and overlooked; hidden if you will in the discussion of our “role” as teachers, scholars and “professionals”.  The purpose of human institutions should be to serve individuals, not the reverse.  And yes, that is an axiomatic assumption on my part; a fundamental metaphysical and meta-epistemological stance.  So where is the discussion of the ethics of individual growth and integration via the university and/or disciplines?  Sadly, it does not seem to show up except in the fringes.

Category: Ethics
Tags: Ethics, Mind-Body Dualism, University Ethics