False Consciousness and Moral Objectivity in Kansas

On his New York Times "Think Again" blog, Stanley Fish has added new fuel to an old debate on the relevance of the humanities for moral improvement and for the cultivation of the citizen virtues.¹ Fish, to some extent the liberal academy's very own Rush Limbaugh, unmasks as empty posturing any illusion that an education in the humanities bears special relevance for the improvement of our moral culture or for enlightening citizens. What the humanities in fact can do, he argues, is to teach techniques of interpretation and argument, which themselves are, Fish insinuates, little more than forms of puzzle solving and which therefore do little more than enhance the pleasure inherent in the activities themselves. If professors in such fields as literature and philosophy did gain moral insights as a result of their academic expertise, then surely they would exemplify these insights in their lives, but in fact they do not. Neither philosophy nor any other area in the humanities possesses special sources of wisdom that would provide moral or ethical guidance to either themselves or their students. "Teachers of literature and philosophy are competent in a subject not a ministry," Fish insists; "it is not the business of the humanities to save us. . . . What then do they do? They don't do anything if what is meant by 'do' is to bring about effects in the world. . . . And if they don't bring about effects in the world then they cannot be justified except in relation to the pleasure they give to those who enjoy them."² He acknowledges that the humanities can teach critical thinking and that this is valuable for our larger moral culture, and yet, he observes, the talk shows and their pundits and even sports radio for that matter teach critical thinking with no less success than universities and colleges. On the other hand, the moral blunders of the most learned among us (Fish names the neoconservatives Richard Pearle, Samuel Huntington, Paul Wolfowitz, and William Kristol) should make us realize that education can foster illusions and the arrogance that can accompany claims to special knowledge.

But if a humanistic education does not have any special prerogative in the development of critical thinking skills, and indeed if it can make no legitimate claims whatsoever in respect to providing moral guidance or instilling civic virtues, which is what Fish argues, then we might as well, and perhaps even do better to, turn to sources beyond the academy for moral enlightenment. In fact, in this essay, I would like to see how far this kind of turn gets us. My question is whether or not the kind of normative claims that we find beyond the academy would necessarily draw us back to professional philosophers (philosophers who work for the most part in the academy) for sources of special knowledge and insight, and if so, in what way.

One of the more interesting of these nonacademic endeavors over the past few years, especially in the context of a discussion of the manipulation of consent in American democracy, is the best seller, Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?³ My question again is whether this kind of nonacademic effort of moral enlightenment can as well as any originally more academic endeavor provide the basis for normative judgments, or, on the contrary, if philosophy offers some special source of insight or methodology beyond what such popular efforts provide for our social ethos. Fish claims that the mastery of whatever can be taught in philosophy (he typically lists literature along with philosophy, but my focus in this essay will be exclusively on philosophy) and the acquisition of moral wisdom are "independent variables." If he were right, then what one learns in philosophy would be continuous with what one might learn from talk show pundits and sports radio, and nothing more. Philosophy is a subject and not a ministry, and for this reason, at least on Fish's view, philosophy might even be said to offer less than talk shows. Unlike writers like Frank who in their capacity as authors and, perhaps even more to...