Readings published his important tract about the decline of the university in 1996. The book provides a powerful description of the evolution of the German university and its decline into what Readings sarcastically calls the "university of excellence," which is "excellent" because it is committed to "quality." Readings claims that both words are vacuous. He offers in place a university based on what he claims is an equally vacuous term: "Thought." He discusses English literature's transformation into "cultural studies." His philosophical creativity is impressive. The best part of the book is his discussion of the origins of the modern university in chapter 5. There, he describes a debate between Fichte and Humboldt as to the structure of the University of Berlin and subsequent interpretations of the relationship between the nation, the university and culture in philosophers like Schiller, Schelling, Schleiermacher and Leavis. He contrasts them with Cardinal Newman's parallel but religiously-based vision of a liberal education (p. 75).
I gained much from Readings's book; his contextualization of the history of the university in terms of the German Idealists and more recent authors is essential. But I disagree with his analysis because he understates and in large part overlooks the culture-based university's moral failure. He notes that the German Idealists created not only the modern university but also the German nation (p. 62-3). He describes Schleiermacher's ethnically-based concept of evolution to the "rational state." Schiller adds that culture or the development of moral character can offer beauty as the link between ethnicity and the rational state. Schiller defines art as history and the interpretation of nature as a historical process. This argument, while intriguing, is linked directly to ethnically-based national socialism.
Readings adds (p. 64) that culture is both the object of science and the formation of character, that is, of research and teaching, the two goals of the university. Quoting Schelling he asserts that "the 'nurseries of science' must also be 'institutions of general culture." Humboldt's (p. 65) "University of Culture" both develops the individual student and, through research, the idea of culture; moreover, the university "gives the people an idea of the nation-state to live up to and the nation-state a people capable of living up to that idea." Readings adds (p. 65), "The German Idealists propose that the way to reintegrate the multiplicity of known facts into a unified cultural science is through Bildung (learning), the ennoblement of character."
Quoting Lepenies, Readings offers a limited discussion (p. 82) of the link between the culturally based university, which he fails to point out was frequently anti-Semitic, and national socialism. As well, he does not consider the possibility that the ideas of philosophers like FR Leavis led directly to totalitarianism. Leavis, Readings notes, argues that (p. 80) industrialization and economic specialization sever culture from civilization. Readings writes, describing Leavis, "a minority culture must supervene as the dialectical resolution of the opposition embodying the principle of the lost unity of culture in order to resist and reform mass civilization through the practice of criticism."
How is a minority to envision a national culture? It is possible that universities could aim to persuade the general public of their opinions about beauty and history, but might such an approach prove to be authoritarian when combined with political figures of the kind democracies, starting with Athens, have produced?
It is not accurate to say that the American university of the past 30 years has lived in a symbiotic relationship with the state or has supported the state by safeguarding its national culture (an idea that, Readings emphasizes as one of the themes of this book, has been outdated because of globalization). Rather, the university of the past 30 years atavistically insisted on failed collectivist ideology. Universities, without offering a viable "minority culture," have assaulted American culture, not as it is fragmented on cable television or reflects excessive specialization, but as it reflects the Lockean ideal of freedom that counters the substantive content that the German Idealists advocated in Germany and that led to totalitarianism. In place of freedom, American universities have offered ridiculous, failed collectivist ideology.
The insistence on collectivism can be traced in the academy's superstitious claim of the viability of Soviet communism until the very end. Even an economist of Paul Samuelson's stature continued to claim into the 1980s that Soviet communism had successfully produced industrialization, a claim that was incorrect and had been seen to be incorrect sixty years sooner by Ludwig von Mises, who fled the "organic" society of Austria only to be excluded from American universities because he was right and they were wrong.
Universities' emphasis on collectivism has not been "excellent." Excellence is a word that is intimately linked to Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics was the first book to emphasize the importance of excellence as a cornerstone of education. Excellence means achievement or fulfillment of potential on a foundation of character. To be successful universities need to provide students with a foundation of character and with knowledge that they need to achieve. The humanities and social sciences can potentially do these things, but they have not. In part the reason may be that the ideals of Humboldt and Leavis are too subtle to be institutionalized. In translation, the American university functioned as a dogmatic institutional apologist for totalitarianism, excluding from its consensus (not dissensus, which would require non-ideologically based hiring and, specifically, would have required that von Mises had been offered a job appropriate to his status) any who could have offered support to the American culture and state. The universities' failure is consistent with Leavis's claim that university professors offer a minority culture, but the minority culture that they have been capable of offering has been a second rate version of 19th century fantasies that led to Hitler and Stalin.
The University in Ruins is crucial. Readings's claim that the university has been transformed into a corporation (in today's sense) is correct, and his claim that it is a ruined institution, that the Idealist university has been replaced by a corporatist university is also correct. Readings does not, though, ultimately explain why the three alternatives he presents are the only ones: (1) the university of culture, which is linked to totalitarianism; (2) the university of "excellence," which functions along a shallow business model; and (3) the university in ruins, where thinkers pursue "Thought" among the university's ruins. A different alternative might be a university grounded in reason and focused on teaching and research aimed to improve humanity; social sciences without ideology that strive to improve widely agreed upon goals such as economic efficiency and human welfare; and the absence of the hubris that claims that university professors trained in English literature are capable of reinventing a nation's culture.
That such an option is excluded from Readings's view is consistent with its being rooted in the failed German university. A superficial university of "excellence" may not be the best alternative, but it is preferable to the ruined totalitarian one. A constructive approach would be to recognize that virtue is possible with respect to intellectual pursuit and teaching, that both can be excellent, and that both can authentically graduate students who have the skills society needs and produce research that is of value to humanity.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Talent Management Software
My article "Talent Management Software: How It Is Revolutionizing Human Resource Management" appears in the current issue of the AICPA Corporate Finance Insider.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
The Altruistic Fallacy
I recently gave a talk at Brooklyn College's Faculty Day, a delightful annual event at Brooklyn College where about 100 of the faculty come together to share ideas. I put together a symposium entitled "Why Business Schools Can't Teach Ethics" and my paper was entitled "Ethics and the Enlightenment in Business Education." The other participants were two philosophers, Professors Michael Menser and Christine Vitrano, and my business department colleague Professor Carol M. Connell. I thought all of the presentations were very good, but a breach between the business faculty and our philosophical colleagues was evident. The philosophers tended to view ethics in terms of altruism, while I do not. Professor Connell focused on pedagogical issues. I do believe that business schools can't teach business ethics; I coined the symposium's title. But I came away thinking that philosophy departments cannot do so either.
In particular, the interpretation of ethics as altruism is misguided. Aristotle gave the first rigorous alternative to Plato's confusion between collectivism and morality--he suggested that human happiness is the best moral ground. It is true that Aristotle did not like retail trade or commercialism as we know it today, but he did not at all object to affluence, which he saw as necessary to the best life, that of philosophical contemplation. His belief in affluence as a necessary condition to the contemplative life is consistent with a belief in profit-making as we know it. Aristotle did believe in the morality of household management, oiconomos, from which the word economics is derived. However, to make the distinction between retail trade and household management intelligible in today's mindset it needs to be reversed.
Aristotle's objection to retail trade rested on the absence of a mean with respect to profit. More profit is always better, hence there is no way that a retailer can strike an intermediate between profit making and alternative aims. This is analogous to today's discussion about corporate social responsibility. However, he did see the aristocratic life of the Athenian landowner and slave master as capable of a mean. The closest analogy in our experience is the life of the Southern slave owner, who did not need to maximize profit because he was assured of a graceful life so long as he managed his plantation well. Someone like Thomas Jefferson, who engaged in philosophical contemplation as well as political activity while benefiting from his slaves' labor may be closest to the Aristotelian ideal. But as we now know, and as Jefferson himself thought, Jefferson's life depended on the profound immorality of slavery.
It is evident that in today's world, household management is less moral than retail trade, for we know that Aristotle's support for slavery was wrong. (In fact, some Sophists had argued against the institution of slavery, and Aristotle rejected their arguments.) Moreover, it is possible today to balance an affluent life with philosophical contemplation because of the separation of ownership and control, that is, because of modern capitalism. In a purely socialist or altruistic society such balance would not be possible.
Grounding morality in a belief in the worth of every individual, and rejection of Aristotle's belief that it is in the character of slaves to be slaves, we can update Aristotle and so recognize the value of his ethics. Without doing so we must reject all of Aristotle; his work is only intelligible if we replace his rejection of retail trade with a recognition that achievement is possible in the economic context. For it is only through profit-making that balance is possible. This recognition is inconsistent with the claim that altruism is moral.
Aristotle could not have conceived of instruments like stocks, bonds and pension funds that permit income without one-sided fixation, and, better than an Athenian oikos, permit philosophical contemplation. Aristotle could not have visualized the enormous effect of economic and technological advance on human welfare that has only existed under profit-seeking capitalism. The pursuit of profit has tripled life expectancy, reduced hunger for billions and made widespread education possible. In a socialist state like India infant mortality remains much higher than in capitalist countries. In the former Soviet Union male life expectancy is still in the 50s.
Aristotle could only visualize retail trade as it was limited to the ancient context. Even then, as Rostovtzeff describes in his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, the Hellenistic world had made tremendous advances with respect to agriculture and manufacturing that Aristotle may not have recognized because of his aristocratic orientation and his contempt for craft and technology.
In other words, human fulfillment and morality are synonymous with profit. A rigid equation of altruism to ethics ignores Henry Sidgwick's observation that we know ourselves better than others and so are better equipped to maximize our own happiness than that of others. A system that strains the possibilities of human rationality, i.e., a system based on altruism, is bound to lead to profound immorality. Altruism's responsibility for the most egregious immorality in history evidences my claim. Adolf Hitler did not pursue profit. He pursued socialist ideals as he conceived them. The altruism of Marxism is responsible for 100 million murders, the bloodiest, most immoral outcome in human history. Altruism has been responsible for uglier immorality and depredation than any outcome of capitalism. In contrast, capitalism has improved the quality of life beyond recognition to the residents of the pre-capitalist or socialist world.
The claim that there is an inconsistency between morality and profit fails to consider the distinction between profit and theft. As Benjamin Franklin claimed in the eighteenth century and as Stanley and Danko empirically confirm in their Millionaire Next Door, written in the 1990s and very much in line with Franklin's claims, the wealthy tend to be more moral than others. They tend to defer gratification, save, and productively invest. They tend to care for their families and donate to charity when they die (not before). The deferment of gratification is very much in line not only with Franklin's but with Aristotle's vision of human happiness and morality.
Business students ought not be taught that altruism is preferable to profit seeking. Rather, they ought to be taught that profit seeking needs to be rational and balanced with other goods--that it ought not to contradict the moral foundations of a free society. To claim that the quest for economic achievement is immoral is to sink backward into the immorality of Medieval tribalism and socialism.
In particular, the interpretation of ethics as altruism is misguided. Aristotle gave the first rigorous alternative to Plato's confusion between collectivism and morality--he suggested that human happiness is the best moral ground. It is true that Aristotle did not like retail trade or commercialism as we know it today, but he did not at all object to affluence, which he saw as necessary to the best life, that of philosophical contemplation. His belief in affluence as a necessary condition to the contemplative life is consistent with a belief in profit-making as we know it. Aristotle did believe in the morality of household management, oiconomos, from which the word economics is derived. However, to make the distinction between retail trade and household management intelligible in today's mindset it needs to be reversed.
Aristotle's objection to retail trade rested on the absence of a mean with respect to profit. More profit is always better, hence there is no way that a retailer can strike an intermediate between profit making and alternative aims. This is analogous to today's discussion about corporate social responsibility. However, he did see the aristocratic life of the Athenian landowner and slave master as capable of a mean. The closest analogy in our experience is the life of the Southern slave owner, who did not need to maximize profit because he was assured of a graceful life so long as he managed his plantation well. Someone like Thomas Jefferson, who engaged in philosophical contemplation as well as political activity while benefiting from his slaves' labor may be closest to the Aristotelian ideal. But as we now know, and as Jefferson himself thought, Jefferson's life depended on the profound immorality of slavery.
It is evident that in today's world, household management is less moral than retail trade, for we know that Aristotle's support for slavery was wrong. (In fact, some Sophists had argued against the institution of slavery, and Aristotle rejected their arguments.) Moreover, it is possible today to balance an affluent life with philosophical contemplation because of the separation of ownership and control, that is, because of modern capitalism. In a purely socialist or altruistic society such balance would not be possible.
Grounding morality in a belief in the worth of every individual, and rejection of Aristotle's belief that it is in the character of slaves to be slaves, we can update Aristotle and so recognize the value of his ethics. Without doing so we must reject all of Aristotle; his work is only intelligible if we replace his rejection of retail trade with a recognition that achievement is possible in the economic context. For it is only through profit-making that balance is possible. This recognition is inconsistent with the claim that altruism is moral.
Aristotle could not have conceived of instruments like stocks, bonds and pension funds that permit income without one-sided fixation, and, better than an Athenian oikos, permit philosophical contemplation. Aristotle could not have visualized the enormous effect of economic and technological advance on human welfare that has only existed under profit-seeking capitalism. The pursuit of profit has tripled life expectancy, reduced hunger for billions and made widespread education possible. In a socialist state like India infant mortality remains much higher than in capitalist countries. In the former Soviet Union male life expectancy is still in the 50s.
Aristotle could only visualize retail trade as it was limited to the ancient context. Even then, as Rostovtzeff describes in his Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, the Hellenistic world had made tremendous advances with respect to agriculture and manufacturing that Aristotle may not have recognized because of his aristocratic orientation and his contempt for craft and technology.
In other words, human fulfillment and morality are synonymous with profit. A rigid equation of altruism to ethics ignores Henry Sidgwick's observation that we know ourselves better than others and so are better equipped to maximize our own happiness than that of others. A system that strains the possibilities of human rationality, i.e., a system based on altruism, is bound to lead to profound immorality. Altruism's responsibility for the most egregious immorality in history evidences my claim. Adolf Hitler did not pursue profit. He pursued socialist ideals as he conceived them. The altruism of Marxism is responsible for 100 million murders, the bloodiest, most immoral outcome in human history. Altruism has been responsible for uglier immorality and depredation than any outcome of capitalism. In contrast, capitalism has improved the quality of life beyond recognition to the residents of the pre-capitalist or socialist world.
The claim that there is an inconsistency between morality and profit fails to consider the distinction between profit and theft. As Benjamin Franklin claimed in the eighteenth century and as Stanley and Danko empirically confirm in their Millionaire Next Door, written in the 1990s and very much in line with Franklin's claims, the wealthy tend to be more moral than others. They tend to defer gratification, save, and productively invest. They tend to care for their families and donate to charity when they die (not before). The deferment of gratification is very much in line not only with Franklin's but with Aristotle's vision of human happiness and morality.
Business students ought not be taught that altruism is preferable to profit seeking. Rather, they ought to be taught that profit seeking needs to be rational and balanced with other goods--that it ought not to contradict the moral foundations of a free society. To claim that the quest for economic achievement is immoral is to sink backward into the immorality of Medieval tribalism and socialism.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
