The University's Uncommon Community

The University’s Uncommon Community

SUZY HARRIS

In the UK, as elsewhere in the world, the global financialcrisis has focused attention on the cost of public services andthe need to reduce expenditure, not least in respect of highereducation. This, however, raises a set of prior questions:What kind of society do we want? What is important todemocratic society? What kind of higher education isdesirable? The article takes Alasdair MacIntyre’s critique ofwhat he calls liberal capitalist society as a starting point forconsidering questions concerning the kind of highereducation that would be valuable and relevant to a healthydemocratic society. His thesis is outlined and theimplications of this for the university set out. The articleexamines MacIntyre’s notion of community, which heelaborates in relation to medieval religious worldviews, andargues that whilst his conceptualisation is more intellectuallyand educationally coherent than some others, it is ultimatelytoo restrictive. The article argues instead for a recognition,within education, of what is uncommon. This may opengreater possibilities for keeping alive the serious questionsthat we must constantly attend to, beyond and within ourcommunities, secular or religious.

I

The failure of the British Labour Party to win the General Election of May2010 and retain power was due in no small part to the global financial crisis.The success of the Conservatives was, however, mitigated by the fact thatthey had failed to win a majority and ended up forming a coalition gov-ernment with the Liberal Democrats. The coalition government’s priorityhas been to reduce the budget deficit as quickly as possible, with drasticcuts across the public sector, including higher education, and including inparticular the funding of teaching in the humanities and social sciences.There have been staff losses, and the closure of some courses has beenannounced. As one vice-chancellor put it, ‘the university is going to lookvery different’. He could have added, ‘for those that survive’.

At the height of the crisis the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, spokeof the excesses of the free market and the ‘right wing fundamentalism thatsays you just leave everything to the market . . . that free markets should not

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just be free but values free’ (Gordon Brown, Labour Party Conference,October 2009). His comments could be seen as a response to the public andmedia fury at the lack of regulation of banks and the financial sector—ananger that has scarcely abated with the current round of bankers’ bonuses.Any suggestion that this signalled the beginning of the end of neo-liberalism, however, now looks decidedly premature. For example, beforeand after the General Election there was much media speculation about theoutcome of the election and about how this would affect the stock markets.When the result was a hung parliament, what was of utmost importance,so it was urged by many politicians and commentators, was not so much toallow the democratic process and political negotiation to take its course butfor a government to be formed as soon as possible in order to ‘reassure’ themarkets. And, since the first days of the new coalition government, the olddiscourse of choice and individual freedom has continued to hold a promi-nent place. One of the first pronouncements by the new Education Secre-tary, Michael Gove, was a declaration of intent to set up Free Schools.These are to be run by teachers and parents dissatisfied with currentprovision in their area, and they will receive central funding. This initiativeextends the already diverse school system, one that includes faith schoolsand academies that were set up under Labour, but it is in many waysa continuation of the earlier Conservative policy that introduced CityTechnology Colleges and Grant Maintained Schools. As the research dem-onstrates, the discourse of choice has helped middle class parents to securethe best education possible for their children, and it has extended thegap between the better off and the poor in British society, manifested instatistics that were particularly embarrassing to the out-going Labourgovernment (see, for example, Reay et al., 2008).1

In 2011 various demonstrations took place as well as public sector strikesagainst government cuts and pension plans.2 2012 opened with both Con-servative and Labour parties desperate to win over public support for their‘vision’ of how to address the problems of capitalism and how to restoreconfidence in the system. The leaders of both parties have made variouspronouncements on the need for a ‘fairer’ version of capitalism, appealingto notions of a ‘moral capitalism’, a ‘responsible capitalism’ and a ‘popularcapitalism’. What these phrases actually mean and whether they mean thesame thing are not at all clear. Nor is it clear at this stage whether suchremarks signal the beginning of a serious debate about the purposes ofeducation. Of course, this may, given the urgency of securing economicrecovery, be regarded as irrelevant or indeed as a diversion. It is important,however, that questions to do with deeper moral and ethical matters aboutthe nature and purposes of education are not lost in the immediacy ofeconomic concerns. What kind of society do we want? What is importantto democratic society? What kind of higher education is desirable? Indeedeconomic questions cannot ultimately be addressed in the absence ofconsiderations such as these.

Such a line of thought recalls Alasdair MacIntyre’s observation twentyyears ago that the absence of public debate exposed a wider malaise inwhat he refers to as liberal capitalist societies. His philosophical thought

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© 2012 The AuthorJournal compilation © 2012 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain

remains provocative and relevant to broader debates about education, as isexemplified in the 2003 special issue of this journal, which was devoted tohis work. In the present article I take the critique he develops in relation tothis malaise as a starting point for considering questions concerning thekind of higher education that would be valuable and relevant to society. Inthe next section a brief outline of MacIntyre’s thesis and his critique ofmodernity will be given. Following this, Section III will consider theimplications of his account for the university, especially in the light of theimportance he attaches to the Catholic philosophical tradition. The finalsection of the article examines further MacIntyre’s notion of community,which he elaborates in relation to medieval religious worldviews. I shall tryto show that, while his conceptualisation is more generous and expansivethan others, it is ultimately too restrictive.3

II

MacIntyre adopts a radical position: it is not enough to try to adapt orchange neo-capitalist society; in fact, modern political traditions, fromliberalism to Marxism, are exhausted and do not offer any alternative. Whatis required is a turning away from the ideology of neo-capitalism and awayfrom any modern politics that rejects the tradition of the virtues—a tradi-tion, epitomised by the virtues of truthfulness, courage and justice, that canbe traced back to Aristotle. It is the morality found in Aristotle’s andAquinas’s writings that MacIntyre believes to be both superior to, andhostile to, that of modernity.

It is vital to MacIntyre that the tradition of the virtues is restored becauseit is this that sustains social traditions, and in so doing restores the focus ofconcern from the individual and individual actions to social practices: it issuch practices that he considers to be central to our ethical lives. What isrequired is a return to the tradition of the virtues, a socially embeddedtradition and a tradition of practical rationality, found most fully in Thom-istic Aristotelianism. MacIntyre identifies three important aspects of thevirtues: practices, individuals and community. Virtues are ‘those qualitiesof mind and character without which the goods internal to such humanpractices as those of the arts, and the sciences and such productive activitiesas those of farming, fishing, and architecture cannot be achieved’ (from,‘An Interview with Giovanna Borradori’: MacIntyre, [1991b] (1998), p.262). He continues, virtues ‘are those qualities without which an individualcannot achieve that life, ordered in terms of those goods, which is best forher or him to achieve’; they are ‘those qualities without which a communitycannot flourish, and there can be no adequate conception of overall humangood’ (p. 263).

MacIntyre is critical of modern epistemology and the rejection ofAristotelian teleology. The tendency during the modern period to separatevalues from facts—in a philosopher such as David Hume—accentuated theunderstanding of morality as a matter of subjective judgement, and even-tually a reduction of those ‘judgements’ to matters of feeling. In tandem

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with this, the dominance of instrumentalist rationality in the modern worldthrows the emphasis on means rather than ends. This separation of factfrom value and means from ends, and the assumption that what constitutesknowledge, as exemplified in the natural sciences, is not realisable inpolitics and ethics is deeply problematic. The problem is brought to a headfor MacIntyre by emotivism, a doctrine to the effect that ‘all evaluativejudgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing butexpressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as theyare moral or evaluative in character’ (MacIntyre, 1985, pp. 11–12). In the20th century the doctrine of verificationism goes so far as to say that claimsthat cannot be verified empirically are literally nonsense—hence, the rise ofemotivism. For MacIntyre, however, emotivism is plainly a false doctrinebecause we can make moral judgements about the best possible life forhuman beings that are more than just preferences; these are matters that wecan enquire into or seek to resolve in a rational way.

As this very brief outline of his critique of modernity begins to show,MacIntyre’s position raises some obvious problems. While I share MacIn-tyre’s view of the importance of shared and coherent moral values, I findhis idea of community too comprehensive and, hence, restrictive of thepossibility of opening questions of difference. MacIntyre questions thenature of the common, but he retains too much faith in the idea of consen-sus, of shared response and shared practice. As will become clearer in thefinal section of this article, I want to challenge this by pressing moreinsistently the question of how we are to understand the very notion of thecommon and its place within the idea of community. But before this it isnecessary to examine some of the ways that these considerations bear ontraditions and practices in the contemporary university.

III

In Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1990) MacIntyre offers a power-ful critique of the impoverished nature of political and intellectual debate,and of the inability of the university not only to enrich such debate but alsoto respond to the challenges that it faces. The central reason for this, heargues, is the absence, derived from modern culture, of a common traditionor coherence. This we have seen above. His answer to the malaise—whichhas not changed significantly in the intervening twenty years—is a ratherprovocative alternative vision, one in which a sense of community andcommon endeavour is central. The characteristics he emphasises are com-monly found in religious-based communities, and they were present in thepre-liberal medieval university, but they may also be found in, for example,communitarianism or Fabianism.

Three Rival Versions provides a history of philosophical enquiry and itsinstitutionalisation in the university, from the medieval period and throughthe Enlightenment, up to the present day. The key characteristic of enquiryprior to the emergence of the university and in the early medieval universitywas the pursuit of wisdom, the very idea evident in the etymology of the

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word ‘philosophy’. The importance of philosophy to the university was andis, therefore, central. Enquiry was perceived as a long-term cooperativeactivity that involved a systematic overall understanding of theory andpractice; intellectual enquiry was understood in terms of progress towardsperfection. Its purpose was to offer a unified vision of the world and of theplace of learning within it. The idea, in ancient philosophy, of the cosmosas expressive of human purpose supported a conception of knowledge ofnature as part and parcel of what it means to be human. For Aristotleenquiry is a moral or virtuous enterprise: enquiry is committed to thegaining of understanding not just at a theoretical level but also as embodiedin a particular time and in the enquirer herself. In the three major theistictraditions theology is the hegemonic discipline in accordance with whichthe secular disciplines are ordered (MacIntyre, 2009a).4 In the West,Augustine considered philosophy independent of theology but at the sametime dependent on it because the purpose of the enquiry and the signifi-cance of its conclusions could only be understood from within a theologicalstandpoint. Whereas for Aristotle it was the mind itself that achievedknowledge, for Augustine the will stood in the way of the intellect and thedesire to seek truth; thinking directed by a will that was not informed byhumility would be susceptible to being led astray. There had, therefore, tobe trust in authority in order that learners come to understand the textsstudied: they could not read texts by themselves. And, for Aquinas whofollowed Augustine’s theology and Aristotle’s philosophy, membership ofa moral community was a condition for rational, moral and theologicalenquiry. From a Thomistic perspective then we can only understand whatthe university should be if we understand what the universe is. The ends ofeducation can be developed only with reference to the final ends of humanbeings. Philosophy begins with finite things and through enquiry intoknowledge of God, so philosophy and theology have a common subjectmatter; failure to understand the universe leads to defective knowledgeof God. The world is only fully intelligible if understood in relation to God.

On MacIntyre’s account, the wider political and religious changes insociety in the later medieval period made it more difficult to pursue anoverall systematic mode of thought, and the Thomistic conception ofrationality that had informed the university altered: philosophy and theo-logy became distinct forms of enquiry and were thus institutionalised inthe university. Two quite different conceptions of rationality emerged: theencyclopaedic and the genealogical. MacIntyre describes the encyclopae-dic conception of reason as impersonal, universal and disinterested,whereas in the genealogical conception reason is seen as the unwrittenrepresentative of individual, private interests. In a Thomistic conception,reason is neither universal nor disinterested; and rational enquiry necessar-ily depends upon membership of a moral community and tradition.5

For MacIntyre what distinguished the pre-liberal modern university fromits successors was the consensus over fundamental beliefs: disagreementand debate could take place because there was a shared starting point andagreed standards of rationality. He gives the examples of Scotland and theUnited States in the 18th and early 19th centuries, in which institutions were



created where academics agreed on standards of rational justification.6 Hewrites:

Our present philosophical problems and our present philosophicalresources are what they are only because of what they have become inthe course of enquiries by and debates among our predecessors, andthey are only fully intelligible when they are understood as issuingfrom that history (2009a, p. 169).

MacIntyre’s comment here concerning the importance of understandingthe philosophical tradition is, of course, relevant to other disciplines. Thisremark is from his 2009 book, God, Philosophy, Universities, which isbased on an undergraduate course he taught at Notre Dame University. Thebook is of interest not only in terms of its central themes but also in theordering of the words in the title: they are separated by commas with noconjunctions, hinting immediately at a continuity between these conceptsand at the importance of understanding traditions and their histories.Religion, concerned not only with belief in God but also with the naturaland social world as created by God, has a longer history than the practiceof philosophy, and philosophy predates its institutionalisation in the uni-versity. The book’s subtitle, ‘A Selective History of the Catholic Philo-sophic Tradition’, makes clear the parameters of MacIntyre’s study: hisconcern is with the future of the Catholic philosophical tradition. Thefuture of this is critical, he argues, because philosophy has an ‘integrativefunction in the Catholic tradition’, in the sense that philosophical enquiryshould not be isolated from other forms of enquiry, and because the fun-damental questions do not concern any one group or groups but everyhuman being (p. 179).

The book is aimed at undergraduates and the Catholic community and isperhaps an attempt to begin to rectify what he sees as the break in ‘oursense of relation with tradition’, an observation MacIntyre made in aninterview for Cogito in 1991 (MacIntyre, [1991a] (1998), p. 266). There hehad argued that this break arose from the fragmentation of ideas, discon-nected from their tradition, that accompanied the Enlightenment and thedevelopment of institutional academic enquiry, and this line of thought isextended in the book.

The target of MacIntyre’s attack is the contemporary university wherethere is a place for everything and, in consequence, a disintegration of thecurriculum. He characterises the ‘modern research university’ as operatingas a business corporation where there is a wide range of research going on,specialisation and professionalisation, and curriculum fragmentation.There are obvious problems in talking in such general terms, not leastbecause of the diversity of the university sector and the implication, forexample, that specialisation does not also allow for discussions acrossspecialist areas or disciplines. What I consider worth attention here is theidea of the university as a place for anything rather than something. Forexample, the importance attached to the contemporary mission statement isprimarily as a branding device, in service of the demand for constantrepackaging. The irony is that this reflects a lack of mission at its heart.

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For MacIntyre the expansion of subjects and increasing specialisationhas led to the disintegration of the university curriculum and the fragmen-tation of enquiry. There is no common thought. If one were a member of areligious group, one would share a background of beliefs and ways ofseeing the world, and these would provide the vocabulary for emergenceand articulation of difference. But today, the fragmentation of disciplinesinto sub-disciplines and different schools of thought is such, he maintains,that there is nothing which brings academics together, at a fundamentallevel, in order to properly engage and discuss different arguments. Theabsence of debate is not even considered a problem. There is, he argues, nosense of the nature of the order of things or of a single universe; it is, hesays, an ‘irrelevant concept’ (p. 16).

There is, he continues, no concern for enquiry into the relationshipsbetween the disciplines or any conception of the disciplines as each contrib-uting to a single shared enterprise. For example, physics can tell us that weare made up of particles, economics that we are rational profit-maximisingmakers of decisions, and psychology and sociology that we shape and areshaped by our perceptions, emotions, social roles, and our institutions. But,how, MacIntyre asks, do these relate to each other? In what does the unity ofthe human being consist? How do the findings of the various disciplinescontribute to our understanding of ourselves and of our place in nature?These are the kinds of questions that in the past philosophy asked. Theyremain important questions for the university today. He looks to Pope JohnPaul’s encyclical letter of 1998, Fides et Ratio: on the relationship betweenfaith and reason,7 where philosophy and theology are seen as complemen-tary: philosophy considers how we need to understand the order of things inthe light of God’s self-revelation, whilst theology starts from the ‘word ofGod revealed in history’ (2009a, p. 168). Philosophy is central to theCatholic tradition; the encyclical is based on a belief that philosophicalreflection and enquiry are essential for human beings in every culture. ForMacIntyre this puts Catholic teaching at odds with the modern secular worldin which philosophy is just another form of specialised academic activity andirrelevant to most people. The idea that philosophy is essential to theuniversity, that students need philosophy, is, he says, ‘alien to the ethos of theresearch university’ (p. 175). He goes further, stating that it is the Catholicphilosophical tradition that provides the resources to address the fundamen-tal questions that we, as human beings, need to ask: What is worth caringabout a very great deal? What is worth caring about a good deal less? Whatis not worth caring about at all? (p. 178).

When ‘good’ and its cognates are used ‘intelligibly’ outside thecontext of particular practices, it is a presumption of their use . . . thathuman societies as wholes are ordered as practices, wholes of whichparticular practices, such as fishing or philosophy or cricket, areconstituent parts (MacIntyre, [1991a] (1998), p. 274).

When ‘good’ and its cognates are separated from any such context therewill be problems because they are reduced to generalised expressions of



approval or expressions of what we feel or want to feel. For MacIntyre thismeans that we need ‘to go back to the beginning in enquiries about goodand ‘good’. There has to be a discussion within the Catholic tradition itselfas well as outside this tradition. The university is the place where thisshould occur because it is here that dialogue between different disciplinesand enquiries traditionally has been found, but the current structures makethis impossible. So what is possible?

Whilst MacIntyre offers a powerful critique of modern liberal capitalistsociety and of the contemporary ‘research university’, there are threeaspects of his account that pose particular problems and merit critique.First, there is a hostility to modernity; second, his position may be seen asboth elitist and utopian in his attraction to the kind of common tradition thatexisted most powerfully in the 13th century university; and third, in hisoverly restrictive understanding of community, which is modelled on medi-eval religious communities. There is not space in this article to discuss allthree. I propose, therefore, to set the first two out briefly and then, in thefinal section, to consider the third in further detail.

There may be some similarities between MacIntyre and Allan Bloom(1987) in their shared critique of modern culture. But whereas Bloom seesthe possibility of the universal in culture, MacIntyre does not: it is com-monality that allows the framework and a vocabulary for discussion andagreement. MacIntyre can also be seen as conservative—and elitist—in hisview that subjects such as physics, calculus, a modern language for nativeEnglish speakers, and knowledge of Greek should be taught in school. Onthe surface this view may seem to echo that of the Education Secretary,Michael Gove, but, when we look closer, their positions are quite different.MacIntyre has a radical view of schools: they should produce in students‘habits of mind which would unfit them for the contemporary world’: ‘tounfit our students for the contemporary world ought in any case to be oneof our educational aims’ (2009b, p. 275). And, in the case of undergradu-ates, it is the role of the university to ‘initiate students into conflict’(MacIntyre, 2009a, p. 231). Academics have a responsibility to ensure thatthe university is ‘not an arena of neutral objectivity’ but rather a placewhere there is ‘constrained disagreement’ based on different standpointsand different traditions: these are means of introducing controversy. ForMacIntyre the standpoint on which the university curriculum should bebased is Thomistic—a unified whole—and, on the strength of this, it shouldintroduce two other standpoints. Both student and academic are put to thequestion by the texts they read, just as the texts are put into question by thereaders. ‘Knowing how to read antagonistically without defeating oneselfis a skill without which no tradition can flourish’ (p. 233). We, by contrast,have become unaccustomed to being put into question by systematic intel-lectual and moral enquiry. The fragmentation of the curriculum makes itimpossible to talk about a unity of knowledge or a unity of understanding.Knowledge and learning are reduced to things that can be easily measuredand calculated; learning is seen in a reductivist way and falsely as technical,a skill unconnected to knowledge. The emphasis on generalisable andtransferable skills suggests that study can be reduced to simple facts decon-

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textualised and compartmentalised. The student is provided with all theinformation they need to know about their course in advance—with detailsof learning outcomes, online access to course materials, specification ofcourse credits—and this is done as a matter of good practice, congruentwith the requirements of accountability and transparency. Whilst suchinformation is important there is a danger that it detracts attention from thecentrality of the relationship between student, teacher and subject matter.The teacher is seen more as a technical operative than a figure responsiblefor initiating the student into paths of learning. There is no sense of enteringinto the unknown or of the possibilities that are opened up by the subject;readiness for unpredictability and openness to mystery are stifled.

As we saw earlier, MacIntyre sees the virtues as essential, for the indi-vidual and for the community: without the virtues neither will flourish. ForAristotle, Newman and MacIntyre, membership of a moral community is acondition for rational enquiry; the tradition of the virtues allows for acommon conception of the human good. What does it mean to be human?What contribution to understanding this does the university make? ForNewman the whole of humanity is ultimately the only appropriate contextof scholarship, and this implies a moral responsibility. It implies alsocompassion and personal care. So in addition to the intellectual imperativeof the university, there is a moral imperative that the university be seen asa community. What might this mean in the contemporary university, in acontext where universities typically have far more socially and culturallydiverse populations than in Newman’s day?

This brings us to the third problem: MacIntyre’s notion of community ismore comprehensive than other conceptualisations. There are few coherentcommunities as understood in MacIntyre’s terms other than religious com-munities. Many people live their lives outside comprehensive communities.So, what are such people expected to do? Convert in order to becomemembers of a community within which they can practise the virtues andmake judgements about how we might best live together? It is not clearwhat this could mean in modern pluralist societies. And yet it might be saidthat, prior to any other kind of community, we are a community first andforemost in language. And then the question might become: How do we, asindividuals, receive words and return them? We are all singularised injudgement, whether we are part of a coherent community or not. The term‘singularity’ brings to the fore notions of responsibility: we cannot cast offthe fact that each of us, as a person, is in a position of responsibility and ofjudgement. Even to ask someone else to judge is to make a judgement: it isto be responsible.

IV

MacIntyre’s theistic philosophy, albeit that he describes this as secular in itscontent, is uncomfortable for those who think that there is no place forreligion in the secular university.8 This interplay of the religious and thesecular is, however, important. We can see this clearly perhaps if we look at



higher education in the United States, which is far more diverse than in theUK, for example. There are various universities and colleges with religiousfoundations. Let me provide two examples to illustrate this point—the firstNotre Dame, a leading Catholic University where MacIntyre works, and thesecond Wheaton College, a Protestant Evangelical College. In neither case isreligious belief a prerequisite for student enrolment. What is required,however, is a respect for the objectives of the institution.

If we look at the mission statements of these institutions, a number ofthings become apparent. Take this excerpt from Notre Dame’s missionstatement, which appears on its website: it expresses a position that manyliberal secularists would dismiss out of hand. The statement begins with areference to the nature of reality.

There is an intelligibility and a coherence to all reality, discoverablethrough spirit, mind, and imagination. God’s grace prompts humanactivity to assist the world in creating justice grounded in love . . .

The University is dedicated to the pursuit and sharing of truth for itsown sake. As a Catholic university, one of its distinctive goals is toprovide a forum where, through free inquiry and open discussion, thevarious lines of Catholic thought may intersect with all the forms ofknowledge found in the arts, sciences, professions, and every otherarea of human scholarship and creativity . . .

There is no contradiction, the statement continues, between the Catholicphilosophy that informs the institution and the pursuit of academic freedomwithin it:

What the University asks of all its scholars and students, however, isnot a particular creedal affiliation, but a respect for the objectives ofNotre Dame and a willingness to enter into the conversation that givesit life and character. Therefore, the University insists upon academicfreedom that makes open discussion and inquiry possible . . .

The aim is to create a sense of human solidarity and concern for thecommon good that will bear fruit as learning becomes service tojustice.

Its mission statement is intended as a reminder that reason takes differentforms because it responds to different facets of human existence. The formof reason we see in this vision offers different kinds of insights abouthuman affairs, and these are not understood in purely this-worldly terms.And here MacIntyre does provide a useful illustration. He considers thetheoretical atheism of the Marxist university found in the former SovietUnion as, in some respects, more congenial intellectually than the practicalatheism found in the contemporary American university. This is becauseMarxist atheism came out of the ‘dialectical and historical materialistunderstanding of the nature of things, and this provided them with aframework within which each of the academic disciplines could find its dueplace’ (MacIntyre, 2009b, p. 16).

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The stance of Wheaton College is different but equally distinctive,reflecting its evangelical outlook. Faculty members are required to take thefollowing pledge which appears in the College prospectus:

We believe that God has revealed Himself and His truth in the createdorder, in the Scriptures, and supremely in Jesus Christ; and that theScriptures of the Old and New Testaments are verbally inspired byGod and inerrant in the original writing, so that they are fully trust-worthy and of supreme and final authority in all they say.

Academics are also required to write a substantial paper showing that theycan approach their discipline from a Christian perspective. Not only mustthey confirm their commitment to the stance adopted by the College but theymust also carry out that commitment in their everyday lives in their ownacademic disciplines. Surprisingly, perhaps incredibly, students must alsosign a pledge not to smoke, drink or dance—and they have to attend chapel.

Wheaton College is one of a number of institutions that constitute thefocus of Alan Wolfe’s study of the place of evangelical protestant collegesin American intellectual life (Wolfe, 2000). The strict rules have not, itseems, prevented the college from attracting high achieving students. Thevalues that inform its life derive from a radical criticism, on the part ofevangelical Christians, of the general direction of American society. Whathas struck Wolfe, nevertheless, in his observation of classes is a level ofopenness and eagerness of enquiry among staff and students that is oftenabsent at large secular institutions. The students, all dedicated Christians,are said to be ‘intellectually curious’ and life on the campus ‘resembles thatof the 1960s, when students and a few professors, convinced that they hadembarked on a mission of eternal importance, debated ideas as if life reallydepended on the answers they came up with’ (ibid.).

Although there is reason to find the stance of both these institutionsproblematic in various ways, what should be recognised is that the affir-mation and enactment of commitment is something that is important in aneducation that is ‘higher’ (see Harris, 2011). The professor, especially inthe humanities, professes a belief in something: she does not simply give anaccount of the way things are. And commitment to a subject requires a kindof humility. This is a virtue that is usually associated with religious practiceand religious ways of thinking, but it is a virtue particularly appropriate touniversity study. Enquiry involves discipline and an understanding of thediscipline and the tradition associated with it; a discipline continues todevelop through enquiry and critique and debate within the discipline andoutside it, and this in turn leads to new thinking and new possibilities. Themore the teacher pursues the enquiry, the more she may be ready toacknowledge the limits of her knowledge. Students need to come to under-stand what a discipline requires of them and in what its good consists;subjects need to be understood in terms of their subject matter and not justin terms of the number of credits or relevance to ‘employability’. The morethe student engages with the subject matter, the more the content of thesubject can open and unfold. All of which implies that learning is not a set



of skills to be acquired but a disciplined activity, the proper response towhich is a humility towards learning and towards the subject matter itself.

If we turn again to religious rather than disciplinary traditions, and if welook now at the British context, then unlike that of the USA and of someother countries, it is probably accurate to say that there are no religiousuniversities. There are, it is true, some institutions that have a religiousfoundation, some of which have merged with existing universities, as in thecase of St Andrews College of Education in Glasgow. The college wasestablished in the late 19th century as a teacher training institution forCatholics, but in 1999 it merged with Glasgow University to form a Facultyof Education. King Alfred’s College, Winchester, which was established inthe 19th century to train teachers for Church of England schools, became theUniversity of Winchester, and Liverpool Hope University has an ecumeni-cal tradition, founded on Catholic and Anglican Colleges of Education. Ina similar fashion Roehampton University was formed from four colleges,three of which had Christian foundations and one with an orientation thatis generally referred to as humanist. What is of particular interest, in thecontext of the present article, is the unease that some have felt about therelationship between secular and religious traditions, and about the rela-tionship between religious traditions themselves. For example, in the caseof St Andrews College and Glasgow University, some were critical of themerger because they feared that the religious values of the college wouldbe diminished within a secular institution. Others feared that, fromtheir liberal secular standpoint, the very idea of open enquiry, enshrined inthe university as a non-committed institution, was threatened (see, forexample, Conroy and McCreath, 1999). And yet, as MacIntyre wouldargue, there is no neutral position from which to pursue enquiry: it isnecessarily orientated by a particular community.

For MacIntyre, an institution with some religious affiliation provides acoherence that allows a better intellectual life but not one that is exclusive:it allows and wants engagement between different traditions as well aswithin the different traditions. This is not to suggest, as noted earlier withreference to the universities in the former Soviet Union, or the Humbold-tian University with its commitment to culture, that it is only in religiousuniversities that such coherence can be found. Perhaps an ecumenicalinstitution, where the ecumenical is seen in terms of the active presence ofdifferent comprehensive conceptions of the good, offers a constructivealternative to the kind of university that is the target of MacIntyre’s cri-tique, one in which there is no underlying unity to enquiry, and where theimportance of debate across the disciplines is not acknowledged.

In the examples discussed above, a different understanding of learninghas emerged, and this, as we saw, has at its centre an idea of humility: thestudent must submit herself to the subject of enquiry in order to gainunderstanding, wisdom and judgement. This attitude towards learning mayguard against the damaging effects on education and ultimately on democ-racy of an overly instrumentalist and reductive liberal secularism, for onedanger of such a secularism, driven as it can be by a functionalist need formatters to be settled and problems to be solved, is that it may provide no

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framework for purposeful debate—the very thing upon which a healthydemocratic society depends. Although the concern to settle matters isostensibly shaped by a commitment to the common good, there is a taken-for-grantedness about what the common good is. The common measurethat it seeks to achieve is informed by a sameness of thought, and this ismanifested in the large secular university. Tending towards utilitarianism,this is ultimately anti-educational in key respects.

For MacIntyre, as we have seen, the loss of any shared moral reasoning isdangerous because this also implies there can be no shared agreement aboutwhat is important—no agreement about what the common good is or aboutwhat is important for a healthy democracy. His response to this is thatinstitutions stand in need of a common tradition. I agree that a commontradition is necessary, but I would question whether this requires the kind ofinstitution that MacIntyre favours. Rather than the homogeneous institution,it is, in my view, the institution that recognises what is uncommon that mayopen greater possibilities for keeping alive the serious questions that wemust constantly attend to, even at the heart of our traditions (academic andreligious). And here it is helpful to turn to Thoreau. Rather than start from anidea of community that emphasises a kind of social cohesion, with agree-ment about the things that matter, Thoreau ponders the idea of the uncom-mon. This is at the heart of the vision of Walden with its idea that what weneed are ‘uncommon schools’ (Thoreau, 1986, p. 99). Of course the contextwithin which Thoreau is speaking—the state of educational provision at thetime he was writing—is vastly different from today, so that it becomes otioseto talk of the roles of specific sectors of education. His purpose can, however,be seen in terms of the need for education throughout our lives. In this respectthey remain highly pertinent to how we are to conceive of the university andits place in democratic society. The title of this article recalls a passage inThoreau’s Walden in which he is speculating about the ways in which the lifeof learning might be realised as a facet of a mature and healthy civilisation.This would involve a relationship to language where taken-for-grantedand accustomed ways of thinking are disturbed. The provocativeness ofThoreau’s tone intimates the kind of challenge he seeks:

We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schoolsfor infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter,and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, noschool for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodilyaliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we haduncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when webegin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities,and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure—ifthey are indeed so well off—to pursue liberal studies the rest of theirlives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever?Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under theskies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to us?Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are keptfrom school too long, and our education is sadly neglected (ibid.).



Thoreau is not speaking here of any particular institutionalised form ofschooling but rather of an education that goes on throughout a person’s life,a schooling that is never-ending. His central concern in Walden is withmeaning and understanding the world. Hence, he is not just talking aboutthe university but presenting a vision of the good society. What is importantis that we are constantly put into question over our community and over theconsent we give to our community throughout our lives. These are ques-tions that we face constantly and by which we are constantly challenged.Thoreau’s is a vision from which we might learn. It is a vision that mighthelp us to see in a fresh way the kind of responsibility the university mighthave.

This article began with reference to the global economic crisis, which hasfocused attention on the cost of public services and on the need to reduceexpenditure. That question, however, raised a set of prior questions: Whatkind of society do we want? What is important to democratic society, andwhat is not important? What kind of higher education is desirable in amodern democratic society? In any debate that is seriously concerned withthe promotion of democracy and civic participation, there must be, if thedebate is not to become moribund, an openness to think differently aboutthe questions that confront us and about how we should best respond tothese. These are the kinds of questions that should be ‘live’ in institutionsof higher education. More of the same—or more likely less of the same—isnot an adequate response. It may be that the inherent tensions in some ofthe complex, hybrid education institutions described above help to keepthem live. It is possible that such institutions have more to offer, not justfor the committed but for people who have no religious beliefs but who feelstifled in a liberal secular institution. They may also provide an alternativenot only to large, liberal secular institutions but to the institutions MacIn-tyre advocates, an alternative that is more sensitive and more appropriate,and ultimately more realistic.

Correspondence: Suzy Harris, Department of Education, RoehamptonUniversity, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5PJ, UK.Email: [email protected]

NOTES

1. Criticisms of so-called progressive education and left-wing bias in teacher training also resurfaced;in its White Paper it was stated that funding of teacher training should be given directly to schoolsrather than universities. Michael Gove is quoted in The Times (21 November 2010) as saying:‘Traditional Conservative voices always said that it is at the teacher training institutions that peopleget into the wrong habits and the wrong mindsets . . . We need to move away from the assumptionthat the majority of trainee teachers will go to a university or a higher education institution to starttheir training and then be farmed out to a school.’

2. With growing uncertainty over the Euro public protests took place in a number of Euro-zonecountries. These protests were not only against government austerity measures but also morebroadly against what protestors saw as a corrupt neo-liberal system culminating in a global day ofprotest on 15 October 2011. In Spain for example, Los Indignados protested in various cities, andin the UK a group of protestors, The Occupy London Stock Exchange, an off-shoot of the Occupy

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Movement that began in Wall Street, gathered outside the Stock Market in London on 15 Octoberand then later set up camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral.

3. Whilst some of those contributions in the special issue (37.2) engage with MacIntyre’s understand-ing of a ‘community of practice’, the intention in the article is not to contribute to this but toconsider the notion of community in a broader sense and to the purpose of the university.

4. Theism is not only concerned with the doctrines about God but also about the natural and socialworld created by God. On MacIntyre’s account, in Byzantine Christianity no independent secularstudy was allowed, and education was subordinated to the purposes of the Church; in Islamphilosophy and the sciences flourished even though, as in Byzantine civilisation, religious andpolitical institutions were integrated; in the West secular institutions existed, and it was throughthese that God was to be served.

5. He suggests that the different conceptions of rationality are found in the three seminal texts writtenin the 19th century: the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Nietzsche’s Zur GenealogieDe Moral and Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris.

6. This did mean, however, that those who did not share the dominant view were excluded and someareas of study were not included on the curriculum; it led to considerable injustice for some groups,especially Jews.

7. It is stated that Catholic philosophy is not just one more competing form of philosophical enquirybut rather that ‘when it is done to its highest standard, philosophy is carried on as it needs to becarried on’ (MacIntyre, 2009a, p. 165). According to the Encyclical, when philosophers fail in thisregard then it is for the Church to argue for renewal and to summon philosophers to this challenge.

8. Charles Taylor (2011) reminds us that secularism has to be understood in its various historicalcontexts and in relation to the various mutations that the word has undergone. In this article,however, the discussion is confined to those who would argue that there is no place for religiousinstitutions in the secular university.

REFERENCES

Bloom, A. (1987) The Closing of the American Mind (London, Penguin).Brown, G. (2009) Speech to Labour Party Conference, October. Available at: http://www.

labour.org.uk/gordon-brown-speech-conferenceConroy, J. and McCreath, D. (1999) The Challenge to Catholic Teacher Education in Scotland,

Catholic Education: A Journal of Enquiry and Practice, 2:3, pp. 312–327.Harris, S. (2011) The University in Translation: Internationalizing Higher Education (London,

Continuum).MacIntyre, A. (1985) After Virtue, 2nd edn. (London, Duckworth).MacIntyre, A. (1990) Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Notre Dame, IN, University of Notre

Dame Press).MacIntyre, A. [1991a] (1998) An Interview for Cogito, in: K. Knight (1998 ed.) The MacIntyre

Reader (Cambridge, Polity Press), pp. 267–275.MacIntyre, A. [1991b] (1998) An Interview with Giovanna Borradori, in: K. Knight (ed.) The

MacIntyre Reader (Cambridge, Polity Press), pp. 255–266.MacIntyre, A. (2009a) God, Philosophy, Universities (Plymouth, Rowman and Littlefield).MacIntyre, A. (2009b) The Very Idea of a University: Aristotle, Newman and Us, British Journal

of Educational Studies, 57:4, pp. 347–362.Reay, D., Crozier, G., James, D., Hollingworth, S., Williams, K., Jamieson, F., and Beedell, P.

(2008) Re-Invigorating Democracy?: White Middle Class Identities and Comprehensive School-ing, Sociological Review, 56:2, pp. 238–256.

Taylor, C. (2011) Dilemmas and Connections (Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press).Thoreau, H.D. (1986) Walden (Harmondsworth, Penguin).Wolfe, A. (2000) The Opening of the Evangelical Mind, The Atlantic Online, October. Available at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2000/10/wolfe.htm. Accessed 7 March 2011.



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