Aphorisms on Higher Education

If higher education (L. ex- “out” + ducere “to lead”) can be thought of most generally as the process by which a youth is led from the house of his or her parents to a house of his or her own, it occurs on both an institutional and an individual basis. An institution (L. in- “in” + statuere, “to establish”) is a distinct collection of persons and practices established in a society to perform a distinct function. An individual (L. in- “not” + dividere "to separate”) is an organic element that cannot be further divided, such as a human being. An institution is a collection of individuals, while individuals gather to form institutions.

In theory, though certainly not reality, there are two institutions of higher education, the college and the university. A college (L. com- “with” + legare, “to choose”) is an institution of specialized higher education in which professionals of a guild educate aspiring practitioners in the tricks of a chosen trade. A university (L. unus, “one” + vertere, “to turn”) is an institution of general higher education, in which doctors of various disciplines educate students in the ways of the world. Colleges teach students to carry out business, producing executives (L. ex- “out of” + sequi, “to carry”), while universities teach students to search for truth, producing academics (Gk. akadhmia, Plato’s school of philosophy).

A fact (L. factum, “thing done”) is that which has occurred. An idea (Gk. ιδειν, “to see”) is a mental image produced in response to a fact’s stimulation of the senses. Knowledge (Gk. gignwskein, “know by the senses”) is the use of ideas to explain facts. Truth (OE tríewe, “characterized by good faith”) is the collection of all facts and reliable ideas consistent with fact, in other words universally trustworthy knowledge. The university has two objectives: the dissemination of facts, ideas, and knowledge, and the instruction of the means through which to search for truth.

A form (L. forma, “shape”) is the shape or arrangement of a thing’s parts. The forms of executive labor are its guilds (OE gild, “payment”), which each collect a payment to teach certain procedures that must be followed in order to work successfully in that field. The forms of academic thought are its disciplines (L. dis, “apart” + capere, “take”), which each take a part of truth through certain procedures that must be followed in order to think successfully in that field.

An individual responds to any institutional knowledge he or she encounters in one of two ways, either dogmatically or skeptically. A dogmatist (Gk. δοgμα, “belief, opinion”) is one who practices and explains the methods and conclusions of the discipline he or she has been taught, while those traditions are rather doubted and questioned by a skeptic (Gk. σκεπτομαι, “to look about, to consider”).

Academic dogmatists are foundationalists, believing that truth exists out there in the world, which is real and can be understood with clarity and certainty when observed and analyzed according to a reliable form of intellectual rigor. In contrast, academic skeptics are anti-foundationalists, treating all thought as mediated by one’s historical, social, and personal situation so that knowledge is really a function of the disciplinary form used in an inquiry. For the skeptic, the knowledge of truth is constructed, not discovered. Viewing the dogmatist’s knowledge of truth as a disciplinary construction, the skeptic focuses intellectual analysis on a deconstruction of the dogmatist’s systems of inquiry.

While the dogmatist views truth as Plato viewed it, an ideal form of knowledge that depreciates as it is participated through the disciplines of inquiry, the skeptic reverses this scheme to suggest that the form that really matters in an academic investigation is the discipline of inquiry itself. Since knowledge is a function of form, the skeptic continues, and one can never equate disciplinary knowledge with truth, truth is not an ideal form but a deformity.

Because the academic skeptic believes that truth cannot be discovered, maintained, and disseminated in one discipline alone, through a set of formal procedures, the skeptic views truth as a deformity. Each different academic discipline uses a different formal structure to search for truth, but if truth is a deformity, then none of these disciplines possess the formal protocols that will lead to a complete and accurate understanding of truth. For the academic skeptic, truth can only be known completely and accurately from a variety of perspectives that differ from and sometimes conflict with each other.

There are two kinds of skeptics in the academy, scholastics and humanists. A scholastic (Gk. σχολή, “school”) is a skeptical academic that emphasizes the role of the institution in higher education. A humanist (L. homo, “human being”) is a skeptical academic that emphasizes the role of the individual in higher education.

In scholasticism, the body that matters is the institutional body, but in humanism, the body that matters is the individual body.

On the one hand, scholastics believe that truth should be discovered, maintained, and disseminated by an educational institution, each university becoming a corporate body unto itself by mediating the truth-claims of each discipline. On the other hand, humanists believe that truth should be discovered, maintained, and disseminated through individual education, each student becoming a university unto him- or herself, by searching for truth in as many different disciplines as possible.

The humanist believes that each individual ought to negotiate privately the variety of claims that emerge from each academic discipline, so that any conceptualization of truth includes this variety. The scholastic believes the institution ought to mediate publicly the variety of claims that emerge from each discipline, so that the panorama of these ideas amounts to a truth.

Scholasticism operates according to disciplinary formalism, humanism according to interdisciplinary studies.