The American Community of Scholars
by JAMES B. CONANT
1
A CENTURY ago Emerson set the collegiate world by the ears by his Phi Beta Kappa address on The American Scholar. Emerson’s definition of a scholar is as provocative now as then, but it represents so lofty an ideal as to restrict the use of the word unduly. Who of us would be bold enough to proclaim that we were not “ mere thinkers or parrots of other men’s thinking,” but “Man thinking that we were prepared to take up into ourselves “all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future.” Yet as a goad to our ambitions as men and thinkers, Emerson’s oration is well worth rereading. If I understand him rightly, he was inveighing not only against “book worms and bibliomaniacs of all degrees” (to use his own words) but also against the scholar whose work is totally irrelevant to the age in which he lives — the recluse who has almost ceased to be a man, and whose labors in the library or the laboratory differ from stamp collecting only by the courtesy of a name.
Now I realize that a quarrel can be engendered quickly if one starts to speak disparagingly of “ pure” research. Every professor worth his salt carries in his back pocket, so to speak, an eloquent address on the significance and importance of useless knowledge. He is ready to “shoot from the hip” on a moment’s notice; and I have fired more than one volley in the same direction in the past myself, and expect to do so again in the near future.
Yet we all recognize that the academic equivalent of the phrase “Art for art’s sake” is a poor recruiting slogan for our profession in these days. And when it comes to judging a colleague’s work, we have our own criteria which transcend the field of labor. Some of our friends are wasting their time, we feel sure, but what is the test? We reject the touchstone of practical use sometimes suggested by the man in the street, or social utility,” so vociferously advanced by our Marxist friends; yet we are sensitive to jibes that we work in an “ivory laboratory” or dwell in an “ivory tower.”
Personally, I like the word “relevance” and brandish it freely when attacked either by the utilitarians on the one hand or by the extreme purists on the other. To my mind, a scholar’s activities should have relevance to the immediate future of our civilization. The undertakings may be relevant either to man’s physical and social needs or to his hopes and aspirations. The difference between “Man thinking” and a “mere thinker” (to hark back to the definition of the American Scholar of a century ago) is to my mind the difference between thoughts that are relevant to modern man’s desires and activities and those which are not. And in order to wrap the mantle of the New England transcendentalist around me more securely, I shall quote again from Emerson.
“If there is any period one would desire to be born in,” wrote Emerson, “is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era? ... I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek art or Provençal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into today, and you may have the antique and future worlds.”
To illustrate how the relevance or lack of it in scholarly undertakings may be assessed, I must trisect the whole field of secular learning rather than quarter it, as is commonly done today. My divisions would be: (1) accumulative knowledge, (2) philosophy, and (3) poetry — using the words “philosophy” and “poetry " in the widest sense. The physical and biological sciences, mathematics, archaeology, and certain special portions of history, linguistics, and the social sciences, fall in the first category — accumulative knowledge. Large portions of the social sciences fall in the second — philosophy. Literature and the fine arts, of course, fall in the third — poetry.
In general, accumulative knowledge is distinguished from the other two divisions by the fact that we can readily recognize a progressive increase in our capacity to answer questions which have attracted the attention of inquiring minds for generations. Therefore, in this large area the relevance of a scholarly undertaking can be assessed easily. For I believe it is one of the premises of our present civilization that a true advance in learning will always be considered relevant. I suggest that the reaction of the American people is symptomatic of a deep-seated conviction of this sort. They are ready to cheer each new step forward in the accumulation of knowledge; they are ready to acclaim the acquisition of new territory by what has been called the empire of the future, the “empire of the mind.”
2
LEAVING aside the obvious point that we must not mistake mere acquisition of information for an advance in knowledge, we come up against real difficulty in the areas of philosophy and poetry as I have used those words. And yet it is the scholar s activities right here that paradoxically enough have the most immediate practical results. The way each one of us behaves as a friend, a relative, and a citizen is influenced far more by other men’s activities in the realm of philosophy and poetry than in the field of accumulative knowledge. The relevance of a scholar’s intellectual output is here tested not by its relation to the advancement of learning but by its immediate relation to the problems that face that section of the civilized world of which he is a part.
For example, in those times when the scholar’s constituency was deeply concerned with theological controversy, the focus of philosophy was at one point. When the concern is with matters of human adjustment to a rapidly changing physical environment, as today, it is elsewhere. Contrary to the popular conception, the more a scholar is a philosopher or poet, the more he must dwell among his contemporaries and know their fears and hopes. The more a thinker is concerned with philosophic inquiries, the less he can afford to juggle abstract notions; if his answers to age-old queries are to stand the test of relevance, he must be in close touch with the human situation of the age in which he lives.
And here I may insert a questioning footnote. The study of mathematics, like that of the physical sciences, has for three centuries represented a steady advance in knowledge; certain portions of the present academic discipline of philosophy, for example, symbolic logic, likewise must be classified as in the area of accumulative knowledge. The relevance of that type of philosophic thinking derives from the relevance of the whole complex structure of understanding about the universe which is symbolized to the public by such phrases as “modern science.”
Now it is my contention that the professor of philosophy who is concerned with ethics belongs rightly in a totally different area from his departmental colleagues who consort with mathematicians. He belongs along with the professor of jurisprudence, of comparative law, of political theory, of labor relations, of business management — men who are not concerned with accumulative knowledge, but are the true philosophic scholars. Of course, philosophy embraces much more than certain areas of accumulative knowledge on the one hand, and ethics on the other. Society looks to the philosopher to supplement the special sciences by synthesis and by inquiries dealing with metaphysics and cosmology. But it is the philosophic examination of human problems that seems most urgent in the present day.
If there is any validity in this classification of mine, may not the present depressed state of philosophy as an academic field of study be related to a basic uncertainty within the usual department as to the relevance of its work? If so, the answer would seem to be for the professional philosophers to strengthen their connections with those departments of a university which are dealing with the immediate and practical problems of the moment, to recapture their associations with those who teach political theory, economics, law, and sociology. Through one academic mechanism or another, those who are concerned with philosophical ethics might join forces with those concerned with the more empirical and descriptive procedures which arc characteristic of the social sciences.
Might it not be possible, for example, for departments of philosophy to arrange courses which would be of special interest to the returning veteran because they represented a fusion between philosophical ethics and political theory and sociology? Such courses would combine the philosopher s quest for the normative and the enduring with the social scientist s desire to analyze and influence the immediate situation. To the extent that such an interpenetration occurred, the relevance of the work of philosophers would not be confused with the academic studies of mathematics and physics. Philosophy as a modern discipline would not yield to the temptation to twist academic thinking into a framework conforming to the criterion of “Progress” — the idol worshiped so uncritically by the American public. Rather, it would be clearly recognized that the intellectual labors of philosophers fall in another category. There would then be no question about the relevance of philosophic thinking to the modern world. Like the words of present-day liberal theologians or political scientists, the writings of these professors would be hailed as significant efforts of men thinking deeply about the ominous questions concerning the individual and society which loom above the horizon at this moment.
3
BUT having been bold enough to make a suggestion to philosophers, let me go a step further and venture a remedy for the present lack of coherence and unity in the American Community of Scholars. I am using the word “scholar,” please note, to include all those who are endeavoring to be original thinkers in any field of learning. The common use of the word to embrace natural scientists, philologists, archaeologists, and historians, in itself, would be a move toward emphasizing the unity of the learned world. But no magic phrase can break down the barriers which now separate all our universities into a myriad of compartments. Unity is achieved when diverse people with different skills recognize a common set of goals and each in his own way labors to achieve these ends.
The obvious common denominator among academic scholars is a concern with education in all its aspects. Theoretically this concern is the motivating force in meetings of faculties and departments. But how often do those involved really take the time and trouble to probe deeply the issues and explore their implications? Education is a social process; colleges and universities do not operate in a vacuum. But how many university professors are scholars when it comes to thinking about education in the large? How many have endeavored to examine critically the relation of the educational system in their own state or locality to the complex social, economic, and political problems of the day?
When one leaves discussions of purely pedagogic problems within one faculty or one discipline and engages in basic inquiries in education, one runs into a multitude of vexing matters. Once started on this quest, a paleontologist or a classicist may end up by thinking about human problems at first sight far removed from his vocation. And he may find as his running mate a physicist or historian of the Middle Ages. I have a suspicion that faculties of science, of arts and letters, of law, of medicine, of engineering, have left all these matters to their colleagues in the faculty of education and have then complained about the thinking that has been done.
As I have said before, to the extent that the scholar is a philosopher or poet he will be forced to deal responsibly with immediate human issues. In a sense, the unifying force in a large section of a modern university already exists: it is a basic but immediate concern with human nature. More could be done to make this unifying force effective as between the different faculties and departments; but to move toward greater cohesion without including all those who are active in advancing knowledge would be to introduce a still greater divisive force. It is for that reason that I suggest that all members of a university community of scholars might give overriding priority to one particular set of human problems: namely, those connected with education. It is, after all, their business, and no simple affair at that. Its ramifications into the nature and structure of society are less glamorous and exciting than the headlines dealing with national and international issues with which as citizens we must all grapple as best we can. Yet in the long run, what an organized society does each generation for its youth largely determines the future of the land.
Unlike the universities of the Middle Ages, the community of scholars we call a university no longer makes pronouncements on important issues. Individual professors and college presidents talk enough in public, heaven knows. (And I should mention parenthetically that one should not confuse the metamorphosis of the “mere thinker” into “Man talking” with the realization of Emerson’s ideal, though we are all prone to do so.) Faculties legislate about their own educational problems; university senates formulate to some degree a unified educational policy for an institution. But it is rare that the intellectual resources of a university are mobilized to consider any broad segment of the problem of the relation of society to its children and its youth.
“A university belongs to the professors,” as my predecessor at Harvard was fond of saying. It is a community of teachers and part of a larger American Community of Scholars whose existence we recognize only vaguely when we talk of the learned world. The separate communities have many tasks. For the most part they perform them admirably, though only by rigorous application of the principle of the division of labor. How can we counterbalance the centrifugal forces thus created? How can we strengthen our citadels of learning by a greater unity and coherence? By what tests shall we measure the importance for society of the multiform endeavors of American Scholars?
Because of the significance of these questions, I have outlined the nature of my own tentative answers. They may at least serve to emphasize once again the century-old challenge which a new continent and a free society present to the American Scholar. Now that our abnormal wartime tasks are finished, we can proclaim the relevance of our primary mission, close our ranks, and move ahead.