HUMANS IN THE
WORLD: INTRODUCTION TO RADICAL PERSPECTIVISM
HUMANS IN THE
WORLD: INTRODUCTION TO RADICAL PERSPECTIVISM
Other Chapters:
Copyright © 2003
Posted November 20, 2003
Alexander Makedon, Ph.D.
Professor, Educational Foundations
Department of Educational Leadership, Curriculum
and Foundations
Chicago State University
Chicago, Illinois 60628
USA
Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Midwest Philosophy of Education Society, Chicago, Illinois, November 15, 2003
Morality as Reciprocity
Academic institutions are moral to the extent that they are universally reciprocal and radically perspectivistic. By "universally reciprocal" we mean using our considerable chest of knowledge, whose proverbial tree we have been nourishing for thousands of years, to benefit not just ourselves, but the universe as a whole. By helping other universal parts survive, such as, by using our university-generated knowledge altruistically, instead of for destructive purposes, we return to the universe, the favor the universe made us in evolving us as "human." We have an obligation, in the narrow mathematical sense of equal returns, to return the favor by helping our "mother nature" herself survive.
Our reciprocal actions are in the end helping us, also, since as humans we depend on our surroundings not only for survival, but also ontologically for who we have become, and how we may evolve to be in the future. Thus any way one looks at it, either from a strictly utilitarian point of view, or more abstractly Kantian or mathematical, it makes sense that we develop a morality of universal reciprocity, the more so, the more potently destructive, or alternatively beneficial, our university-generated knowledge becomes. Our universities are an exercise in the universal representation of knowledge, and therefore, assuming altruistic applications of such knowledge, a living example of ethical life.
Unlike God's aversion in the Old Testament to humans knowing, as exemplified in prohibiting Adam and Eve from eating from the Tree of Knowledge, the Aristotelian conception of humans is intimately intellectual: humans are not without a developed mind. If Aristotle were to redesign Paradise, he might redefine the tree of knowledge as necessary for human happiness, if not human existence itself. Instead of seeing learning as evil, as implied by the proverbial eating from the Biblical tree, he would see it as the basis of ethical life. This is so because by definition being ethical implies being aware of one's actions, as opposed to living as a fool, albeit obedient to God. According to Aristotle, even if humans were possible without such intellectual fruits as the Tree of Knowledge could provide, they may find such existence distasteful. On that point, Aristotle may have agreed with his more puritanical teacher Plato, and by extension Socrates, that an unexamined life is not worth living.
Biblical versus Aristotelian versions of the Good life
Although Aristotle never commented on the Old Testament, it is not inconceivable that were he given the opportunity to do so, he would want us humans to become agriculturalists, except instead of planting actual flora, we would plant intellectual trees that feed the mind. To a certain extent such vision has been realized through the founding of universities, which, thanks partly to Aristotle, whose ideas influenced the founders of the first modern university(1), have blanketed the earth with intellectual fruits of all kinds.
Universities return to humans their rightful choice to not only think and learn, but also become ethical. Instead of being seen as mere "pawns" obedient only to God, as exemplified by their description in the Old testament, humans are now liberated to think and choose for themselves. They become, in other words, not only human, but also free. In fact, their thinking is so liberating as to liberate them even from themselves as "human." They are now able through their imagination and critical thinking abilities to represent the world. Their sense of identity becomes universally perspectival through a process of selfless lending to the world of their thinking abilities. Instead of bowing down to God as might a piece of furniture, and let God sculpt them in his own image, they join the larger God of a universal existence through a self-conscious ethical process of empathy, critical thinking and representation.
Our ability to understand, analyze, and think critically, and by extension imagine, may be seen as gifts bestowed on us by nature. Humans can use their naturally given gifts either to benefit themselves alone, in which case one day they may regret they ate from the progenitor Tree; or benefit the universe as a whole, in which case one can say, allegorically, that humans are truly God-like.
In this paper we crack open a universal ethics that demands, on the basis of a mathematics of equal returns, that humans live in harmony with their larger family of universal parts, as opposed to living with our heads buried in the sand. As we expand our intellectual "farming" practices in universities worldwide, we lead humanity ever closer to a God-like ethics of universality.
Universities as Intellectual Utopias
While the "libertine" may bemoan his mortality by comparison to the numerous possibilities for amorous adventure, the intellectual may resign himself to the fact that no matter how little his time, his books could never be too many. This is so because we are assured through the organized body of knowledge preserved by universities of always having access to the knowledge of the past. Assuming a selfless use of such knowledge to help and represent, the knowledge bearer is also the embodiment of a practical ethics of humans becoming ever more representational (as contrasted to "powerful"). Perhaps this is the reason why ever since universities were founded, they have become laboratories of representation: scholars invent new ideas; undress emperors of all kinds; and live with a commitment to their profession that comes not from financial or temporal rewards, but from the pleasure they get from learning something new. As torchbearers of knowledge, university faculty are the harbingers of changes brought about by their thinking, than by their boldness, money, or fame.
One of the most extreme examples of what may be referred to as our "cognitive potency," meaning, the potentially harmful applications of our knowledge, are in modern times the creation of weapons of mass destruction, such as, nuclear weapons, whose abuse has already led to historical demonstrations of their destructiveness, including dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; or any number of what are being referred to in the media or by political leaders today as "terrorist" weapons, although ironically also possessed by non-terrorist states, such as, militaristic applications of chemical and biological agents, from anthrax to smallpox. None of such applications could have been made possible without that deadly mixture of human vanity and scientific understanding. To the extent that universities aid in the design of destructive applications of their considerably large "tree of knowledge," as, for example, did scientists at the University of Chicago in developing the atomic bomb, to that extent, on the basis of morality as reciprocity, they engage in unethical behavior. It is perhaps their realizing the potential harm their knowing about nature can cause that humans developed a sense of "cognitive guilt," including imagining themselves in their myths as deserving of some type of punishment. Witness, for instance, their self-portrayal as the protagonist Prometheus suffering tied to a rock, or sinful Adam and Eve laboring away their lives as punishment for disobeying a presumably anti-intellectual God.
Morality as Radically Perspectivistic
By "radically perspectivistic" I mean using our powers of thinking and imagination to represent the other, including non-human perspectives, for example through role playing exercises (2). Such selfless lending of our powers of intellect to representation is also, if coupled with altruism, benefitting us humans because of the essentially interdependent nature of human existence. University studies help us gain citizenship in an interdependent world by making us aware of so much that exists out there that is not strictly human. Perhaps this is why we refer to "educated people" as being better able to understand: they have reached a higher stage of intellectual nirvana where their physical being and perceptions are now seen through the crystal ball of their intellectual eye, instead of the mere pull of immediate gratification. Their existence becomes distorted in a double mirror of representation where perspective is intellectualized to the point of becoming non-human, and therefore a stranger in a familiar body. Historically this led to any number of dualistic philosophies of human existence, most prominently among them Plato's, in which man made himself his own worst enemy, not realizing that his mind were never really his to fight over.
Under a theory of radically perspectivistic ethics, we are no longer the center of the universe, but instead we center the universe inside our selfless identity. We begin to see ourselves as relatively insignificant collections of cells, no more or less worthy than any other collection of anything, except also capable of being aware of ourselves and others, and therefore potentially capable of transcending our limitations. As intellectuals within or without university walls we are led inevitably, no matter how practical our goals, such as, getting a job or getting a problem solved, through a process of "awaring."
In universities we begin to represent the universe in microcosm. Even beyond Abraham Maslow's highest stage of universal empathy is our ability as humans to allow the universe a voice, as in a universe-"awaring"on itself through humans. It is in that sense that, to quote from another paper I wrote on the universal aspects of universities, that
Universities have traditionally come closer than any other human institution to ... representing the universe.. Unlike other institutions that are designed mainly to dominate, help humans survive, deceive, or eulogize, universities have been since the beginning driven by a thirst for detached, disinterested knowledge, and therefore, to a large degree, by learning about perspectives so far foreign or unknown. ... They stretched the human imagination beyond the world of the provincially egotistic self. University studies became an exercise in the philosophical understanding of the world... As a detached entity capable of interpretation, the mind is thus "objective," meaning, not strictly human-owned, but universal, as in "university studies... Since university communities center around the workings of different minds, we could say that universities are the human laboratories of a universe in microcosm reflecting on itself (3).
In universities the "other" is no longer stranger, but subject to entering our minds, and therefore by definition part of our larger identity as selfless scholars. Drawn to its logical conclusion, such engulfing of the other within our academic identity leads ultimately to a larger human self that encompasses the whole universe. It is in that ontologically expanded sense of human identity that it may be argued that when we speak, think, create, write, or communicate, the universe speaks, thinks, creates, writes or communicates through us. On the basis of morality as radically perspectivistic, this means that what we do reflects on our citizenship in a diverse universe. For example, even the current emphasis on diversity on university campuses pales by comparison to the larger diversification of our thinking in a universe where neither political correctness nor cultural diversity are sufficient by themselves alone to represent it.
Morality as reciprocity overlaps morality as radically perspectivistic: being able to reciprocate implies being aware of the other, including empathizing with the other's own particular perspective. Alternatively, being radically perspectivistic has a reciprocal agenda, including not only representing the other, but also benefitting it to the maximum extent possible. Even as one role plays the other, he or she is already redefining himself or herself, if only temporarily, in terms of what the other needs, aims for, or is like. When the two, radical perspectivism and morality as reciprocity are combined they offer us a powerful paradigm of not only how to develop or organize knowledge on university campuses, but also to what ends such knowledge should be used. Should we accumulate knowledge merely to gain power, as in "knowledge is power?" "Control" nature? Get a job? Enlighten ourselves? Or should we use it, instead, as a catalyst for universal harmony? The former uses of knowledge imply that at bottom we never changed our agenda from the days of our barbaric, because so self-centered "struggle for survival,"albeit now done more delicately using education as an expedient tool.
I submit that universities are the first human institutions to break loose from a self-centered use of knowledge. Without such cutting of the umbilical hord from ousreelves, we couldn't possibly become "educated." It is in this sense that education is a revolutionary activity. For as long as universities continue to exist, they will provide politically acceptable covers for revolutions that humans have learned to live with, and may have sensed by now cannot do without. Although by no means devoid of self-centered, materialistic, or often egotistic motives, as Robert Maynard Hutchins made us all too aware (4), or more closely to our own lives on campus, anyone who ever participated in a university committee probably knows, nevertheless by comparison to other institutions universities remain cradles of disinterested inquiry and research. On the basis of a radically perspectivistic ethics, such inquiry is the morality of a humanity finding its teleological Golden Fleece.
Utilitarianism and Universal Understanding
The altruistic use of our intellectual powers is morally justifiable on the basis of any number of traditionally well known theories of ethics, from the more practically utilitarian view concerning the largest possible amount of benefit done, to the more mathematically reciprocal one of biblical and Kantian ethics. For example, it is morally justifiable on utilitarian grounds because humans are morally "better" the more such universal parts they benefit. It is morally justifiable on mathematical grounds because, as I explained earlier, humans return a universal favor regarding their own coming-to-be.
When humans become destructive of other world parts, as when they use their knowledge, much of which today is generated within universities, to convert, restructure, or dominate parts of nature for their own aggrandizement, as through the development of what may be referred to, to paraphrase Marx, industrial tools of environmental exploitation, then they engage in unethical behavior. Such applications of knowledge are more often than not generated outside universities within commercial enterprises, such as, pharmaceutical and engineering companies, where the bottom line is more important than the representational power of the brain. When overtaken by greed than magnanimity, humans risk surrounding themselves with a self-generated version of hell, as through the pollution of our environment, or the elimination of rain forests. I discuss this process in more detail in the chapters on punishment, morality and ethics in Humans in the World (5). Suffice it here to mention that such seemingly self-inflicted destruction, which is somewhat comparable to self-inflicted albeit unwittingly performed suicide, is the universe's way of doing away with destructive humans. Thus being ethical from a radically perspecivistic angle is not just a matter of an intellectually justifiable theory, as it can be from any number of philosophical paradigms, but also proof of our practical ability as a species to outsmart our destructive tendencies.
Universities have finally come of age. It may have taken us humans centuries since the founding of universities in the Middle Ages to match their institutional expectations, as witnessed by the fact that by now almost everyone is expected to attend, but anyone using common sense could have told you from the start that our universities would become our match made in heaven. As dynamically detached, disinterested, and multidimensional, universities have always provided us with a beacon of hope that one day humanity will don its universal cap as thinkers, and transform itself into altruistic scholars.
University life is better suited, both ethically and environmentally, to carry us over to an Information Age that depends increasingly on what we know, than on our possessions. Anywhere you look on campus you see this emphasis on selfless representation, and therefore, on the basis of an ethics of universal reciprocity, of academic morality as a future ethics in the making. This is the ethics of a superman who is not at war with himself or other wills, as is Friedrich Nietzsche's (6), but on the contrary lives in universal harmony with everything. The abundance of books on campus is "paperized" evidence of the need to learn more about the other, than close in on ourselves alone. Even when studying ourselves as humans, as in such fields as psychology, sociology, anthropology and biology, we do so on the assumption that we are no longer to be taken for granted, but see even ourselves as anything else strange or foreign, and therefore equally selflessly and phenomenologically. Books stand as symbols of what drives university life, not because of the material they are made of, of course, but because of what they are intended to do to humans: wake them up from their egocentric materialism and remind them of their universally representational, and therefore perspectivistic, responsibilities.
But books alone don't make university life. Universities are not glorified bookstores, although bookstores by virtue of the emphasis in universities on waking up our intellectual potential usually thrive on campus, at least to the extent that students must turn somewhere to buy their textbooks. Instead of just sitting passively on shelves, books are symptomatic evidence of a larger war against ignorance. The engines that drive this war are the university's reward and socialization structures. Classrooms are nesting grounds for transforming so many budding chrysalises, not all of whom are younger students, into ethereal thinking butterflies that begin to fluff their intellectual wings. Faculty themselves are a self-selected group of intellectual leaders that now must wrest some of their own students from lethargy. They are role modeling for their students how to read a book, conduct valid research, engage in reasonable debate, or write scholarly papers, all of which are at their core nothing less than mindful representation. Ultimately this process leads, whether through a Hegelian dialectic, or more commonly the daily exercise of our thinking abilities, to our genealogical metamorphosis into intellectual sainthood.
Universities are not churches, as also are not, as Ivan Illich so aptly described in his book Deschooling Society, our elementary and secondary schools. Their version of sainthood is an intellectual awakening, as opposed to mystical or even mysterious process. In universities we depend on understanding to gain our flying wings, not merely on faith. But fly we do, often aided by encyclopedias, dictionaries, and reference collections. Faculty themselves have proven their worth through their doctoral studies, which are both in form and substance relatively extreme forms of intellectualization. It is in that sense that universities provide an alternative lifestyle to religious existence, and may come to replace completely blind faith, with selfless help and representation. As we continue to immerse ourselves in our studies, there is less a need for our prophets to use religion to force an otherwise ignorant and passionate humanity into its universal role. Such force in the end may lead to contradicting our intellect. Instead we pick up where Aristotle left us, except that much wiser for having experienced selfish wars and the greedy commercialization of knowledge to make sure this time that we live in harmony with ourselves and others as-humans-that-assist-and-represent.
1. See Hastings Rashdall's works on the establishment of modern universities during the Middle Ages, such as, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages , 2 vols, Oxford University Press, 1936. Also Nathan Schachner, The Medieval Universities, London, George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1938. Aristotle's curricular proposal in his book Metaphysics was translated word-for-word from the original Greek into Latin. It became in college studies in the Latin west the trivium and quadrivium, which today are known as the Liberal Arts. See also A. Makedon, "Campus Politics in Historical Perspective," Paper presented at the annual conference of the Midwset History of Education Society, Chicago, Illinois, 1977 http://webs.csu.edu/~amakedon/articles/CampusPolitics.html
2. Based on a philosophy of radically perspectivism developed by the author in the early 1990s. See his forthcoming book Humans in the World: Introduction to Radical Perspectivism, AuthorHouse Publishers, summer 2006.
3. "Universe and the University: What Do they Have in Common?" Paper presented at the College of Arts and Sciences Lecture series, Chicago State University, Harold Washington Hall Room 202, March 19, 2003. http://webs.csu.edu/~amakedon/RadicalPerspectivism/Book.html
4. Robert Maynard Hutchins, The Higher Learning of America, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936.
5. Http://webs.csu.edu/~amakedon/RadicalPerspectivism/Book.html
6. See Nietzsche's book, Thus Spake Zarathustra.
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