Free Speech, Religious Freedom, the University, and Distress

During the summer of 2021, the Wilberforce Academy held its annual meeting at Worcester College, Oxford.  On the agenda was discussion of abortion and homosexuality from an orthodox, Christian understanding.  Subsequently, the Provost of the college, David Isaac, apologised to students from the college (on summer break) for allowing the college’s facilities to be used to host the event—and this despite his previous record of defending free speech at institutes of higher learning.[1]  An excellent response to this decision has been published as an open letter from the General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Toby Young.[2]  What Provost Isaac appears rather clearly to have done is set his college on a path to fall afoul of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill aimed at those opposed to freedom of speech by de-platforming speakers, cancelling classes, and so forth at British universities in order to advance their own viewpoints and not allow others to present their views.

The European discussion of free speech has lagged far behind the United States of America, which secured such freedom in its First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

This incident highlights the problems facing cultures as they move decidedly away from their Christian heritage towards something else as yet undefined.  This involves deconstruction and cancelation while yet still uncomfortable with opposing freedom.  Yet freedom is clearly a roadblock in Late Postmodern tribalism.  As but another example of how this is developing in England, the Court of Appeal in England and Wales has ruled against a Christian foster child agency for upholding its Christian value that children should be given a home in families of a father and mother—not in homes with some new definition of ‘marriage’.[3]  England still has an official religion—the Church of England—and yet it is in the United States that religious freedom is not so easily dismissed because of the First Amendment.  The Amendment prohibits laws that impede the free exercise of religion, which is precisely what the Court of Appeal is doing by forbidding the foster child agency to operate according to its Christian convictions.  Of course, America’s Title IX is the route being used to undermine the First Amendment’s prohibition against laws prohibiting the free exercise of religion.  Moreover, the US Supreme Court infamously redefined the legal definition of ‘marriage’ (Obergefell vs. Hodges in 2015)—a subjective outrage against millennia of civilizations.  Both the UK and the USA are on trajectories to overthrow Christian values of the past and establish new laws and practices for a post-Christian culture, but paths to these unfortunate ends are slightly different.

European protection of speech has tended to start not from a view on freedom but from a concern about ‘hate speech.’  This is why the UK’s Higher Education Bill is so important, introducing freedom as the operating value.  Otherwise, one ends up with a prohibition of free speech on the flimsy grounds that allowing others to use college facilities for a conference has caused students ‘significant distress’ by the Wilberforce Academy’s defense of long-held beliefs in ‘Christian’ England that have come to be derided only within the last generation.

Some reflection on how changing values are expressing themselves in the changing culture might be helpful.  In the post-Enlightenment period of Modernity, which I would consider to be an approximately 200-year period ending around 1980, freedom was upheld as a cardinal virtue.  It was enshrined in the American and French Revolutions of the late 1700s, attended with another cardinal virtue of equality.  These virtues were sustained by convictions in Modernity that were based in creation (America) or nature (France)—universal, objective truths.  Truths guaranteed certain ‘rights’ that were not attached to one or another group but that were for all human beings.  A Judeo-Christian understanding of creation, that all humans are created in the image of God, or a scientific interpretation that required a view of objective truth (the laws of the universe) could come together to guarantee such rights.  The redesigned chapel of Worcester College in the mid-19th century contains both images of faith (e.g., Christ’s death on a cross to save us from our sins) and creation or nature (animal carvings, e.g., on pews)—attesting to belief in objective truth in both faith and science. Though a Deist and apparently not a Christian, Thomas Jefferson still thought in universal terms and believed in human rights because of them, as his wording in the Declaration of Independence demonstrates: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’  Even as many Modernists turned away from Christianity, they continued to uphold a concept of rights based on universal truths—so much so that the United Nations Charter in 1948 is wholly dependent on the Modernist concept of ‘rights,’ being titled, ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights.’

Postmodernity, with roots back to Jean-Jacque Rousseau and developed by others like Friedrich Nietzsche under different names (‘Romanticism,’ ‘Existentialism’), found its day in the sunlight of Western culture sometime around 1980.  It became a defined movement earlier in some fields of study, such as architecture.  It seems to have gained particular force in the university in the 1970s as historical and scientific studies gave way to literary interpretations.  Under the reign of the literature department in the university, meaning was severed from the author and his or her intention, and the pursuit of truth was replaced with interpretation.  Readers were encouraged to introduce their own interpretations into discussions around texts, not to declare one reading as the right reading.  New virtues derived from new values were moved into the list of cardinal virtues alongside freedom and equality: diversity, tolerance, and inclusion.  These new virtues created a tension with the older notion of the purpose of a university to discover universal truth through the various disciplines.  Literary studies insisted, on the contrary, on the truism (!) that there was no truth, only interpretations, and virtues like diversity, tolerance, and inclusion encouraged novel interpretations for novelty's sake.  The perspective of Modernity that there was ‘truth’ was considered negatively as a totalising, monocultural metanarrative.  Alongside the interest in novelty was a concern to deconstruct hegemonic authorities and established views of the past.  Freedom, still a cardinal virtue, was redefined by its new fellows.  It had to shift from being a virtue within a divinely created or natural world of objective truth to a virtue within a personally created or subjective world.  Politicians trained in this period of Early Postmodernity will speak of ‘his’ or ‘her’ truth—there is, in this world of subjectivity, no such thing as ‘truth.’  Freedom became the right to live according to one’s own, subjectively created reality.  In Early Postmodernity, freedom of speech could still be valued, albeit now as a defense of the value of subjectivity and related virtues like diversity.

Advocates of Early Postmodernity abound but are, however, out of date, since the culture has moved on to Late Postmodernity, as Worcester College demonstrates.  One hears the same person articulating rhetoric from Early Postmodernity but advocating Late Postmodernity.  The shift from the dominance of the literature department to the dominance of the social sciences has come quickly, with too few understanding the significance of this.  Truth is now said to be neither factual nor subjective (and this objectively stated) but is defined functionally according to some other values in Late Postmodernity.  This is Critical Theory in a nutshell.  Politics, economics, anthropology, psychology, and sociology (the social sciences) are studies about how things work, but they evaluate how things work based on values derived not from efficiency but from some view of ‘the good.’  Late Postmodernity is characterised by tribalism—hence the shift to the ‘social’ sciences over against individualism that was based on universalism during Modernity and diversity in Postmodernity.  On this view, freedom is actually problematic, and it would be fair to say that Late Postmodernity has removed freedom from the list of cardinal virtues for Western society.  It has become, at best, a respected, great grandfather now in his dotage, consigned to a corner chair out the way of his active progeny.  Late Postmodernists also dislike tolerance as a virtue, unless it is reserved for a circle around their own views alone.  Someone else’s ‘free speech’ must not be tolerated if it undermines ‘the good.’  In Late Postmodernity, ‘the good’ can only be defined by what the dominant tribe declares it to be.  There are no rational arguments, only emotional inclinations.

So, then, the Provost of Worcester College finds himself in the awkward position of an Alice in Wonderland.  A group, the Wilberforce Academy, shows up for a conference that upholds the Christian tradition that the college’s forebears would equally have defended and that, even in the long centuries of Modernity, would have been upheld.  Founded originally as Gloucester College in 1283 by 13 Benedictine monks, its heritage was certainly for centuries favourable towards Christian faith and ethics.  It is met, however, by young minds still in their formative stages but already formed by Early Postmodern academics only lately come into the sunlight in academic circles.  These views elevated diversity and tolerance to cardinal virtue status but introduced deconstructivism as a means by which to introduce and champion new views over old views.  Yet the students are Late Postmoderns, lacking an interest in diversity and tolerance, extending the deconstruction programme of Early Postmodernity with their tribal, cancel culture activism.  Freedom is, on this scheme, offered only to entitled groups and is not tendered to others.  As such, it is not only demoted to a lesser virtue but is redefined.  In its place is a psychological value, negatively defined—‘not causing distress’—which rejects freedom, diversity, and tolerance in order to establish a tribal society based on subjectively chosen, emotive values.

The Church of England, moreover, has ridden the culture’s wave right to shore.  It offers no critique of Late Postmodernity for it has lost its own moorings in the historic faith.  It is, as Ezra Pound might have put it, an ‘old bitch gone in the teeth.’  The Church of Wales has wholly embraced this climate change, leaving Evangelicals stranded on a sandbank amidst the tidal surge, too late in responding to the weather warnings.  Islam will prove eventually to be the great challenge to the West’s Late Postmodernity as it emerges with an entirely different understanding of ‘truth,’ ‘freedom,’ and other virtues and values.  Let in the front door as an intersectional saint by Late Postmoderns, it will eventually reveal its contrary values in Europe to those who still do not understand.  It shares with Late Postmodernity a commitment to intolerance of anything that causes distress, but defines what causes distress and for whom totally differently.  And it shares with it an intolerance of freedom, valuing above all submission. This leaves us all intrigued to see if the UK government will be able to enforce its defense of free speech in the current and emerging context. Already there are indications that the Higher Education Bill will be undermined through a variety of practices in universities, such as processes for recruitment and grant applications.[4] 

In this post-Christian, Late Postmodern world, about all that Christians can do is point out the glaring inconsistencies to tribal warlords who monitor success by how much self-concocted, psychological distress the tribe is under at any one time.  Fear of inconsistency is hardly a cure for persons seeking a psychiatrist’s couch under great distress.  And, if the current crop of Worcester College students passing through its halls in a brief three years find the Wilberforce Academy’s Christian views distressing, they must surely find their own age-old prayer tradition before meals a matter of great distress too.  The prayer begins with, ‘We unhappy and unworthy men’—distress appears to be a feature of the college’s men and women.  It further appeals to God to feed them above all with ‘the true bread of heaven, the eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord.’  This affirmation of God, commitment to Christ’s Lordship, and desire for God’s Word that is prayed at the college but is also the bedrock of the Wilberforce Academy’s values stands squarely opposed to Late Postmodernity and must cause the already distressed students a tidal wave of more distress.  Yet their new Provost’s response so far is to drown out the freedom of speech that centuries of Worcester College students enjoyed. In tribal Postmodernity, only certain people’s distress counts.


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Alasdair MacIntyre and Tradition Enquiry

Alasdair MacIntyre's subject is philosophical ethics, and he is best known for his critique of ethics understood as the application of general, universal principles.  He has reintroduced the importance of virtue ethics, along with the role of narrative and community in defining the virtues.  His focus on these things—narrative, community, virtue—combine to form an approach to enquiry which he calls ‘tradition enquiry.’[1]

MacIntyre characterises ethical thinking in the West in our day as ethics that has lost an understanding of the virtues, even if virtues like ‘justice’ are often under discussion.  Greek philosophical ethics, and ethics through to the Enlightenment, focussed ethics on virtue and began with questions of character: 'Who should we be?', rather than questions of action, 'What shall we do?'  Contemporary ethics has focused on the latter question alone, with the magisterial traditions of deontological ('What rules govern our actions?') and teleological ('What goals govern our actions?') ethics as examples.  But surely an ethic of doing should be based on a moral vision of the sort of character we wish to uphold or become.

In his Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition, MacIntyre suggested that ethics of various sorts can be understood as three types of inquiry: encyclopaedia, genealogy, and tradition.  None of these terms are in general use, and so some further explanation is required.  By 'encyclopaedia', MacIntyre means primarily ethics since the Enlightenment as we find it in those authors who believe that clarity in moral quests might come through scientific application of principles and criteria.  By 'genealogy' he means the criticism of all such constructions--a deconstruction of all systems, which might take place through an inquiry into the 'genealogy' of such constructions.  This anti-foundationalism for ethics functions as a gadfly for any positive attempts to establish a morality.  By 'tradition' MacIntyre means ethics pursued upon the presuppositions of a given tradition, not universally applicable but nevertheless foundational inasmuch as tradition offers a foundation for a people committed to it.

Encyclopaedia

MacIntyre’s prime example for the encyclopaedic version of moral enquiry is the Ninth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  Thomas Spencer Baynes, the editor of the Ninth Edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (1873), described the scientific method of encyclopaedic version of inquiry as follows: ‘The available facts of human history, collected over the widest areas, are carefully coordinated and grouped together, in the hope of ultimately evolving the laws of progress, moral and material, which underlie them, and which will help to connect and interpret the whole movement of the race’ (Vol. 1, p. vii).[2]

MacInyre further describes this encyclopaedic method of inquiry when he distinguishes between the culture of 19th century Great Britain (representing the assumptions of the encyclopaedic method) and today:

(1) ‘They assumed the assent of all educated persons to a single substantive conception of rationality; we inhabit a culture a central feature of which is the presence of, and to some degree a debate between, conflicting, alternative conceptions of rationality’;

(2) ‘They understood the outcome of allegiance to the standards and methods of such a rationality to be the elaboration of a comprehensive, rationally incontestable scientific understanding of the whole, in which the architectonic of the sciences matched that of the cosmos.  We are confronted with the multiplicity of types of enquiry and of interpretative claims on their behalf, so that the very concept of an ordered whole, of a cosmos, has been put radically in question’;

(3) ‘And finally they saw their whole mode of life, including their conceptions of rationality and of science, as part of a history of inevitable progress, judged by a standard of progress which had itself emerged from that history.’[3]

Rene Descartes’ method of beginning with doubt and admitting back to belief whatever could be proved beyond doubt—the Cartesian Method—also functions as a fine example of this Enlightenment version of moral inquiry.  The Cartesian Method not only emphasises the role of reason; it also understands reason as capable of initiating inquiry from no perspective, only from first principles (‘I think, therefore I am’).[4]

Immanuel Kant argued that, although the Empiricist David Hume is correct in saying that empirical data cannot lead us to a priori truths, there is indeed a priori truth.  Just as Copernicus produced a revolution in astronomy by overturning the assumption that the sun revolved around the earth, so too in epistemology one must see that it is not data gained from the senses which are imposed upon our minds to produce understanding but the mind imposing its categories upon what is observed that produces understanding.  The mind is no clean slate written upon by sensory data.  Rather, it imposes reason upon what we see and experience; we order the world around us through fundamental forms and categories of thought itself.  Kant believed he could identify these categories: all minds work with two forms of perception (space and time) and twelve categories of understanding (e.g., cause and effect).  These together form a grid through which all sensory data pass.

Ethics, however, is different from the scientific world.  It does not deal with the world of phenomena or things but with the world of noumena or thoughts.  The latter can be known to exist but only by thought, and so ethics is not something to be grounded on observation.  One would not, for instance, ground ethics in an observation about what the greatest good would be for a certain action (utilitarian ethics).  Yet Kant found the same rationality at work in both the phenomenal and noumenal worlds.  Ethics begins with a certain sense of right and wrong and can be further analysed according to a principle, the ‘categorical imperative’: what is right to do must be universally right to do.  If it is wrong for me to lie in this situation, then it must be so in all situations for everyone.  If a person should be treated as an end and not as a means to an end, then this must always be the case.

In the nineteenth century, we find an ongoing belief in the encyclopaedic approach.  G. W. F. Hegel followed Kant’s proposal of an objective rationality which we all share by speaking of a cosmic rationalism: ‘What is real is reasonable and what is reasonable real.’[5] One way in which Hegel saw this cosmic reason operating was in his view of history: every event had its logical place in a grand, linear progression towards a certain end.  This grand design, as Johann Fichte had previously argued, often worked through a dialectical process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

Nineteenth century views of society and history followed this idea that history was progressing positively according to some rationality.  Hegel argued that history could be divided into three main phases: the Asiatic, with its absolute monarchy, the Graeco-Roman, with its individual freedom, and the Germanic-European, which fused the earlier two in a political theory of freedom within a strong state.  Similar analyses of history were offered by Auguste Compte and Karl Marx.  Comte saw history in terms of a dialectic of modes of thought: the theological (itself developing from fetishism to polytheism to monotheism), the metaphysical, and the ‘positive’ or scientific.  Marx saw history as a technological-economic dialectic progressing from primitive communism to ancient slave society to feudalism to capitalism to communism.  For Hegel, Compte and Marx, underlying the often surprising events in history, is a logic which fits the pieces together in some grand scheme.

Another major ethical perspective in the 19th century was utilitarianism, a form of consequentialist ethic which argued that the outcomes of various action could be calculated and weighed according to a principle of their utility, such as seeking to do the greatest good to the greatest number of people (so John Stuart Mill).  While utilitarianism, as a consequentialist ethic, seems to be directly opposed to an ethic holding to absolute rights and wrongs, it in fact assumes a prior commitment to some definable and incontestable good.  Thus, Mill's utilitarianism and Kant's deontological ethic are both examples of an encyclopaedic method of moral enquiry.

Enlightenment ethics entailed the pursuit of right principles which could be applied rightly and reasonably, once the situation was fully understood.  Hence ethics begins with an accumulation of data so that the situation might be rightly assessed; it then proceeds to the application of the right principles to determine the right course of action.  Whether following the epistemological arguments of Descartes or Kant, or the ethics of Kant and Mill, an 'encyclopaedist' method is in view, an approach seeking to construct something upon certainties which cannot be doubted and which are logically or scientifically verifiable apart from any perspective.

Genealogy

The key spokesperson for the antithesis to the encyclopaedic approach came towards the end of the 19th century in the person of Friedrich Nietzsche: ‘That things possess a constitution in themselves quite apart from interpretation and subjectivity is a quite idle hypothesis…,’ averred Nietzsche (Der Wille zur Macht, 560).  In this he agrees with Kant.  But Nietzsche lacked Kant’s belief in the rationality of mind, whether for science or religion.  He preferred S`ren Kierkegaard’s (b. 1813) rejection of the Enlightenment belief in objective reason: the individual chooses his or her own moral precepts.  Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Genesis 22, Abraham’s binding and near sacrifice of his son Isaac, explains this rejection of objective reason.  One can see in Abraham’s obedience to God, in his being willing to sacrifice his son when told to do so, that moral choice is not a matter of rational argument but of choice prior to logic.  The result of this sort of speculation is an increase of the role of the will over against rational argument.

Nietzsche, however, not only rejected objective moral precepts guiding choices but also followed Arthur Schopenhauer in supposing that life is irrationality.  He spoke of a cosmic Will (rather than Reason) which was in fact one’s predetermined character and basic human motives.  Schopenhauer argued that these basic human motives are self-interest, malice, and compassion, but Nietzsche excluded compassion and spoke of a single motive which might include self-interest and malice: the will to power.  A rational argument, averred Nietzsche, amounts to nothing more than the dressing up of one’s will to power in rational garb:

Truth is ‘a mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms, a sum, in short, of human relationships which, rhetorically and poetically, intensified, ornamented and transformed, come to be thought of, after long usage by a people, as fixed, binding, and canonical.  Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions, worn-out metaphors now impotent to stir the senses, coins which have lost their faces and are considered now as metal rather than currency’ (U(e)ber Wahrheit und Lu(e)ge im Aussermoralischen Sinn I).[6]

The term ‘Genealogy’ applied to this line of thought derives from Nietzsche’s own use of the term in Der Genealogie der Moral. In this work Nietzsche sets himself the task of exhibiting ‘the historical genesis of the psychological deformation involved in the morality of the late nineteenth century and the philosophy and theology which sustained it….’[7]  This study of origins uncovers the will to power behind the pretence of a will to truth as well as the substitution of the aristocratic nobility of ancient heroes with a priestly set of values concerned with purity and impurity but which really had to do with malice and hate.[8]  Here we have not only an opposition to the place of reason in philosophy and ethics but also a hermeneutic of suspicion arising from a fundamental belief in the exercise of will.

In literary theory, the term ‘deconstructionism’ is used.  For me, it is more descriptive than ‘genealogy’ in that it expresses both the study of the ‘construction’ of different systems and then pokes around here and there to find weak spots in such constructions in order to bring them toppling down.  Whatever term we use, we are speaking about a paradigm with does not believe that any construction of reality holds.  The reason for this is best expressed by existentialists as due to the fact, so it is maintained, that existence precedes essence rather than the other way around.  If so, whatever existence is asserted remains arbitrary and indefensible, even if we still do act  somewhat parasitically with appeals to this or that logical construction.  But all activity, no matter the construction we offer to explain our acts, is only a matter of exerting our will to power.[9]

Genealogy replaces the encyclopaedic belief in an overarching, rational interpretation of the world with the irrational will to power and a hermeneutic of suspicion; it replaces the study of being (ontology) with the study of metaphor; it replaces the method and object of study as science with the study of self; it replaces the belief in a single perspective with a multiplicity of perspectives; it replaces a notion of the objectivity of truth with that of ‘truth-from-a-point-of-view’; it replaces the expectation that the audience will agree with the learned lecturer with the expectation that the audience will reject a speaker's logic; it replaces the postulating of a theory with deconstructing and abandoning theories; it replaces the encyclopaedist’s concepts of duty, obligation, the right, and what is good with their ‘pre-Enlightenment predecessors’.[10]

There is a natural progression from the encyclopaedic to the genealogical approach: (1) the proliferation of knowledge in the encyclopaedic method can result in (2) a specialisation within fields, (3) a demise of linkages with other, even related, fields, (4) a fragmentation of unifying theories (of history, society, beliefs, etc.); (5) a de facto challenge to attempts to do so in previous decades; (6) an increasing gulf between the average person and the expert in a field, the former unable to pursue the latter’s thought and the latter disinterested in the exertion necessary to enlighten the former.  The result is that one could take an agnostic stance still sympathetic to the encyclopaedic method of inquiry by deciding that we will henceforth be less assertive about how to put it all together until we gain more knowledge.  Or the result could lead to a shift toward the genealogical method, in which one disallows the possibility of putting it all together and opposes the programme outright as an attempt by seeming experts to control everyone else.  Knowledge is no longer the subject of inquiry; the will to power is.  Already in 1975, Roland Stromberg saw this progression in the West:

The Western intellectual tradition is doubtless the most complex ever known.  It is now an old rouJ of civilization, which has experienced everything and seen through all myths.  It now finds it difficult to believe in anything; it tries, but it is too self-conscious, it knows that its faith will be a myth.  But the specialist has taken over at the expense of a general culture, and amid a wealth of specialized techniques for unearthing scientific, factual knowledge, modern man has the greatest difficulties finding values.[11]

The advance in electronic technology is not only an achievement for science.  It is an achievement for the individual. While the knowledge necessary to achieve this technology could produce an argument for the notion of progress through knowledge, the use of this technology by individuals represents an achievement for the genealogical interpretation of life.  Now the individual is empowered to gain access to knowledge and put it together apart from how others, particularly those who have controlled the access to and interpretation of knowledge in the past, put it together with peer review.

Tradition

MacIntyre finds two features in common between the encyclopaedist’s and the genealogist’s approaches.  (1) Both form a unified view of the history of philosophy, whether of the progress of reason or of how reason disguises everything.  (2) Both separate reason from ‘the particular bonds of any particular moral and religious community’.[12]  In place of these two approaches, MacIntyre proposes a third version for moral inquiry: tradition. He defines ‘tradition’ as a ‘historically extended, socially embodied argument,’[13] or ‘an argument extended over time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict’—that inside and that outside the tradition.[14]  Over against the modernist understanding of reason of thinking without and against perspectives so that it can be universal and impersonal, MacIntyre avers that

…reason can only move towards being genuinely universal and impersonal insofar as it is neither neutral nor disinterested,… [and] membership in a particular type of moral community, one from which fundamental dissent has to be excluded, is a condition for genuinely rational enquiry and more especially for moral and theological enquiry.[15]

The history of this approach to moral inquiry stretches from Socrates to Thomas Aquinas.  I will enumerate some of MacIntyre's points which define this approach based on several chapters in Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry.

(1) First, philosophical enquiry was perceived as requiring a prior commitment to a certain perspective.  This was phrased in terms of making oneself an apprentice to a craft (techne), and so philosophy involved the practice (ergon) of a craft to achieve what is good—the good for me at my stage of learning as opposed to what is good without qualification, and the good for this craft as opposed to what appears good.[16]  Furthermore, one entering a craft becomes part of the history of that craft.  In saying so, MacIntyre argues that one within a tradition is part of its dynamic flow.  Indeed, successful inquiry itself can only be written retrospectively and is therefore open to review at a later date.[17]  Encyclopaedists, by contrast, believe in a neutral history: the past is waiting to be discovered independent of characteristics from some particular point of view.[18]  Tradition, however, recognises that history is always written from a point of view.

(2) Tradition has a narrative view of history.  MacIntyre speaks of a narrative structure to different theories of history, entailing different views on how actions and transactions of actual social life are embodied.  The encyclopaedist believes that the narrative structure involves the progression of reason.  This denigrates the past and appeals to timeless principles separate from the traditions which shaped them.  Tradition is to be sifted by our standards, and there is no need for a prior commitment to religious belief or tradition to understand these principles.  Genealogy, on the other hand, seeks to disclose what the encyclopaedic narrative has concealed by undermining that narrative and offering its own version of history.  Tradition seeks to learn from the past by identifying and moving toward a telos more adequately through identifying the questions which the tradition of inquiry poses, such as the following: What is the telos of human beings?  What is right action towards the telos?  What are the virtues which issue in right action?  What are the laws which order human relationships so that we may possess these virtues?[19]  Tradition also recognises the political (i.e., roles and social life) dimensions to tradition.

MacIntyre says that

‘modern moral philosophy has in general been blind to the complementary character of narrative and theory both in moral enquiry and in the moral life itself.  In moral enquiry we are always concerned with the question: what type of enacted narrative would be the embodiment, in the actions and transactions of actual social life, of this particular theory?…the encyclopaedic, the genealogical, and the Thomistic tradition-constituted standpoints confront one another not only as rival moral theories but also as projects for constructing rival forms of moral narrative.’[20]

Lucian, the second century satirist, saw this clearly: in depicting the various views of current philosophies as slaves to be sold in the market, he required each to describe the type of life (enacted narrative) which accompanies his understanding of the world (Philosophies for Sale).

(3) Tradition locates authority in (a) a given community (e.g., Thomistic scholarship), (b) in authoritative texts (e.g., Scripture), and (c) in a tradition of interpretation of these texts by the community through history.[21]  The encyclopaedist’s version of moral inquiry entails a separation of the individual, reasoning subject from authority, while the genealogist’s version resists all authority.  Tradition, on the other hand, requires thinking in community—apprenticing and practising one’s craft in the guild.  Tradition also appreciates the temporal reference of reasoning: the encyclopaedist seeks timeless, universal and objective truths, whereas tradition understands truth with respect to its history so far:

To share in the rationality of a craft requires sharing in the contingencies of its history, understanding its story as one’s own, and finding a place for oneself as a character in the enacted dramatic narrative which is that story so far.’[22]

Thus, one must become committed to a certain community with its unique tradition rather than work by means of reasoning from first principles, and one will find that the subject for investigation is not simply our tradition but ourselves.

In making this case for the nature of tradition as a means of enquiry, MacIntyre examines the Augustinian tradition through to Thomas Aquinas’ combination of this tradition with the Aristotelian tradition.  Some further points helping to describe Tradition emerge from this survey.

(4) Tradition appreciates the roles of the reader and teachers in interpretation.  Interpretation of these texts requires ‘a prerational reordering of the self …before the reader can have an adequate standard by which to judge what is a good reason and what is not’.[23]  This argument stems from Augustine’s understanding of the will as perverted, over against Aristotle’s trust that the mind will seek out the good and, having discovered it, do it.  But for Augustine, a transformation of the reader needs to take place in order to read with understanding.

If the reader needs a prerational reordering of the self in order to read rightly, what one needs is a trusted teacher to guide one during initial readings.  Humility, then, is a required virtue of the reader of texts and of education.  Contrast a Nietzschean opposition to such humility before tradition: what Nietzsche called for was a ‘nobility of instinct’.

(5) Tradition has a different understanding of reasoning.  It uses dialectic, arguing  towards 1st principles.  Reasoning is ‘on the way’, it is exploratory, representing the state of the craft at this time in its history.  Encyclopaedia, on the contrary, argues from 1st principles and concerns itself with methods and principles.  These methods and principles are thought to be without influence from the interpreter's perspective, and the means of communication in education is therefore the lecture, a rather straight-forward presentation of facts which the student must learn.  Questions and answers in such lectures are for clarification, not for probing the argument through dialectic inquiry.  MacIntyre writes that now the genealogist view of the lecture often holds: it is seen as only an episode in a narrative of conflicts.  But tradition sees the lecturer and his or her audience as interpreters of texts to be dialectically explored because both agree on an authority beyond themselves—the Divinely revealed, authoritative Scriptures.[24]

If reasoning is 'on the way', then tradition is incorrectly understood when it is thought to be an encrustation of the past.  MacIntyre insists that tradition is dynamic: it develops as any 'craft' facing its own questions arising out of its past history.


[1] Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, IL: University of Notre Dame, 1990),

[2] As quoted by MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 19.  MacIntyre also gives the purpose behind the Gifford Lectures as an example of the encyclopaedic method.

[3] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, pp. 23f.

[4] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, ch. 3 (‘Too Many Thomisms?’). MacIntyre argues that the encyclopaedic method begins prior to Descartes: post-Aquinas systematising of Aquinas’ philosophy represents the beginning of the move away from tradition toward an encyclopaedic approach.

[5] Cf. Roland N. Stromberg, European Intellectual History Since 1789, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975), p. 78.

[6] As quoted by Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 35.

[7] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 39.

[8] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, pp. 39f.  Cf. the role of malice in Schopenhauer’s description of human motives.

[9] MacIntyre primarily discusses Michel Foucault as the heir to Nietzsche, although in Biblical hermeneutics we usually turn to Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida.  MacIntyre notes that Nietzsche has an early predecessor in Meister Eckhart of the Univ. of Paris in the 14th century.  Yet, if we wish to reach back into history for beginnings, the  alternative between encyclopaedia and genealogy is one form of the philosophical alternative expressed at the beginning of (written) Western thought: can one step into the same river twice?  If we see the river as static (being--so Heraclitus) or dynamic (becoming--so Parmenides), we answer the question differently.  But Nietzsche's argument poses the true alternative to an encyclopaedic method of moral inquiry.

[10] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 42.

[11] Roland Stromberg, European Intellectual History Since 1789, p. 306.

[12] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, pp. 58f.

[13] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 222.

[14] Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice?  Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), p. 12.

[15] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, pp. 59f.

[16] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, pp. 61f.

[17] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 150.

[18] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 152.

[19] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 80.

[20] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 80.

[21] In medieval religious education, tradition developed as questiones related to the text.  These questions were first written in the margins of the Biblical text and, over time, were expanded into accompanying texts.  Questions arising from commentary on the text pertained to the three or four senses a text of Scripture was thought to have: the plain historical, the moral or tropological, the allegorical or mystical, and (sometimes added) the anagogical or spiritually educative sense (MacIntyre, p. 85).  Abbot Hugh of St. Victor (1125-1141) developed this Medieval approach to the text by emphasising the importance of the plain historical text and unifying the senses through encouraging a curriculum covering all three: the plain historical meaning calls for exegesis based on a knowledge of history and geography, the moral sense calls for a study of moral theology, the allegorical calls for a study of theological doctrine, and the tropological calls for a study of what work we have to do in the natural world and an understanding of the natural world so that we can do our work in the world well.

[22] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 65.

[23] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, p. 82.

[24] MacIntyre notes that medieval theology also made use of distinctions (distinctiones) in types of sense, a method which made radical intellectual dissent possible, as in the case of Abelard.  This point overlaps with the history of Roman Catholic tradition after Abelard in Aquinas’ combining two distinct traditions in his Summa Theologica.

  

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Christians and Academic Enquiry in a Postmodern Age

The problem of the nature of academic enquiry is now a very serious concern in light of philosophical shifts in the West over the past 60 or so years, but especially in the past 20 years.  It is rocking the very foundations of education.  The problem is not contained in the public square, particularly the universities, but is also present in faith-based institutions, both Christian colleges or universities and even in seminaries. 

There are four options that seem to be possible, but the challenge to any serious discussion of them is that the dominant option of the last 20 or so years is highly charged with political agendas and has the goal of shutting down all discussion.  Christians, therefore, face both the problem of playing defense as a minority in this public debate and being shut down by activists who refuse to give any platform to opponents.

The four options for academic enquiry are:

1.     Tradition Enquiry: faith seeking understanding;

2.     Modernist Enquiry: understanding built on faith-less foundations of science;

3.     Early Postmodern Enquiry: dynamic understanding gained through consensus of diverse voices;

4.     Late Postmodern Enquiry: fundamentalist understanding gained through critical theory privileging certain voices and de-platforming others.

Tensions over the nature of enquiry have escalated over recent decades as both versions of Postmodernity have attacked Modernist Enquiry.  Two persons will be noted here who have articulated the problems being faced and have offered some solutions.  Chris Newton’s solution to the attack of Late Postmodernity is to return to Early Postmodernity, which at least had some hope for a short while of allowing Christians (Tradition Enquiry) into the conversation (listen to diverse voices).  Peter Boghossian takes a similar approach, although his views seem to rest more in Modernist (‘scientific’) Enquiry: while all views should be heard (Early Postmodernity), there is a right view (Modernism) that students will come to if given the opportunity to explore ideas.  ‘Liberal’ education—not Liberalism—was the foundation of the Modernist university system: open enquiry in all disciplines, with the expectation that scientific enquiry would eventually lead everyone to a consistent universality—the ‘university’ was working towards a unified truth.  Of course, Postmodernity rejects the very notion of truth in the sense of some unified and objective understanding based on certifiable facts.  If ‘truth’ is to be spoken of at all, the Postmodern university would have us believe that it is perspectival (truth for the interpreter or researcher) and locally constructed rather than universal.

What follows are presentations of Newton’s and Boghossian’s viewpoints.  The purpose of this brief report is to identify, in their own words, the challenges being faced in academic education from Late Postmodern Enquiry and hint at how this is a challenge in Christian institutions as well, and to raise a concern over the inadequacies of battling Early and Late Postmodernity with a defense of Modernist Enquiry or a suggestion that we can rely on Early Postmodernity.  Tradition Enquiry is left out of the public conversation altogether, and therein lies the problem for faith-based institutions of higher learning.  A separate study, not offered here (but outlined in the next blog post), is necessary to explore that approach further, as Alasdair MacIntyre has done.[1]

The UK government is pursuing legislation to protect free speech at universities.  In an article by Chris Newton,[2] the problem the government is addressing is explained:

‘… academics have been subjected to event cancellations, petitions calling for their dismissal, or witch trial style disciplinary procedures…. Academics have been denounced for defending Brexit, arguing that British history contains good as well as bad aspects, and for saying that biological sex is scientific fact. These views have been met with cries of “xenophobe”, “racist“, or “transphobe“, among other slurs....  The past few years have witnessed the emergence of “critical theories” or “critical social justice”, once a fringe element, as a powerful force on campus, particularly in the humanities and social sciences.

“Critical theories” include postcolonialism, critical race theory, and critical gender studies, and are descendants of Marxism and Postmodernism. They believe that Western societies are structurally unequal, and ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals, and transgender people are systemically oppressed.

There is no room for individual agency; power dynamics are structural and pre-determined by group identity. An ideology that believes that those who question their claims regarding systemic oppression are “complicit” in the discrimination is not exactly going to be open to alternative views.

There has been an increasing expectation from university diversity officers that the whole institution should reflect this new orthodoxy. This is reflected in initiatives such as “decolonising the curriculum”, which seems to be more interested in deleting fundamental content than genuinely making courses more diverse.

Leicester University proposed to ditch Geoffrey Chaucer and Beowulf from the English curriculum in favour of more modules about race and sexuality. Exeter University’s library requested that lecturers decolonise their reading lists, “look beyond traditional textbooks”, and embrace “grey literature” such as tweets. Musicologist Professor Paul Harper-Scott has just resigned from Royal Holloway in London due to the “dogmatic” nature of the decolonising agenda.’ 

Newton applauds the government’s bill to protect free speech at colleges and universities, but he says the efforts are not sufficient.  He explores several additional recommendations, such as (1) a government group to monitor recruitment and grant applications; (2) establishing new institutions (or at least courses/programmes) committed to philosophical pluralism; and (3) an additional bill to protect viewpoint diversity.  Of these, he prefers the third.

Newton mentions Peter Boghossian’s resignation letter from Portland State University because it highlights problems in higher education.  He captures the challenges facing higher education (and, of course, in primary and secondary education as well).[3]  Some excerpts from Boghossian’s letter capture the problem and indicate his view that the answer is free speech and the liberal exploration of diverse viewpoints.

‘I never once believed —  nor do I now —  that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.

But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division….

I noticed signs of the illiberalism that has now fully swallowed the academy quite early during my time at Portland State. I witnessed students refusing to engage with different points of view.  Questions from faculty at diversity trainings that challenged approved narratives were instantly dismissed. Those who asked for evidence to justify new institutional policies were accused of microaggressions. And professors were accused of bigotry for assigning canonical texts written by philosophers who happened to have been European and male….

I decided to study the new values that were engulfing Portland State and so many other educational institutions — values that sound wonderful, like diversity, equity, and inclusion, but might actually be just the opposite. The more I read the primary source material produced by critical theorists, the more I suspected that their conclusions reflected the postulates of an ideology, not insights based on evidence….

In 2018 I co-published a series of absurd or morally repugnant peer-reviewed articles in journals that focused on issues of race and gender. In one of them we argued that there was an epidemic of dog rape at dog parks and proposed that we leash men the way we leash dogs. Our purpose was to show that certain kinds of “scholarship” are based not on finding truth but on advancing social grievances….

I was found guilty of not receiving approval to experiment on human subjects….

Every idea that has advanced human freedom has always, and without fail, been initially condemned. As individuals, we often seem incapable of remembering this lesson, but that is exactly what our institutions are for: to remind us that the freedom to question is our fundamental right. Educational institutions should remind us that that right is also our duty.’ 

A defense of Modernist Enquiry—liberal education—in light of the aggressive attacks of Late Postmodern Enquiry, as witnessed by Boghossian at Portland State University, will not suffice for Christian enquiry.  A major agreement between Tradition Enquiry and Modernist Enquiry, one that made it possible for Christians to pursue degrees at universities for centuries, is that there is objective truth.  Christians believe that God is consistent and therefore faith is reasonable.  The tension between the two approaches arose where Modernist universities rejected faith as a basis for enquiry, preferring the Cartesian approach of doubting everything and then seeing what could be discovered for certain.  Moreover, the tension expanded as Modernity sought to establish certainty only through scientific enquiry, thus pitting science against religious convictions, such as sacred texts, theological convictions, and fidelity within an historic community (Church) and tradition.  In non-scientific fields of enquiry in the university, the scientific method prevailed (until the 1970s).

Christians are quick to give a platform to voices challenging Postmodernity in both its forms.  The suggestion in this essay is to be aware that a Modernist approach to Enquiry was itself often antagonistic to the Christian faith.  What is needed is a clearer articulation of faith-based learning.  It will involve a defense of a minority community, not a championing of how things ought to work in a post-Christian West or elsewhere, for that matter.  Newton’s warning that the protection of free speech at the university is not at all a sufficient solution for anyone, let alone Christians, is an important challenge for Christians to think more seriously about the nature of faith-based education.  As a final note, we can be certain that, if we do not take up the challenge, Islam will.  This is true not only as one version of this debate takes place in primary and secondary schools over sex education; it will also be true in the universities of tomorrow.


[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre Dame, IL: University of Notre Dame, 1990).

[3] See his full letter: https://peterboghossian.com/my-resignation-letter (accessed 22 September, 2021). 

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