• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 487 0

twentieth century, professional societies and international conferences were not enough to secure academic credibility. Publication became the currency of the realm.* Each professional society inaugurated a publication program that included journals and often book series on very narrow subjects. University presses followed suit by sponsoring a growing number of series on specialized topics. As the focus of these series narrowed, the potential market for books contracted. When financial pressures forced universities to cut back or eliminate subsidies and made it necessary for libraries to become much more selective in their purchases, university presses had to recalibrate their publishing programs. With print runs of merely three hundred to four hundred copies and sales often considerably lower than that, the scholarly monograph has no future. The problems are as bad or worse for journal publication. As double-digit cuts in library budgets are projected and the cost of journals continues to skyrocket, the situation is fast approaching a tipping point. Without radical changes, academic publishing will collapse in the near future. With its demise, the long-standing system of evaluating individual faculty members and ranking institutions will unravel and new criteria and procedures for assessment will have to be developed.

Colleges and universities are more isolated from the world and inwardly fragmented today than ever before. But the roots of this antiquated structure run deep. Indeed, the overspecialized university is the logical development of the model Immanuel Kant defined in the late eighteenth century. Since we cannot solve a problem unless we know how it emerged, we must pause to consider the ghost of Kant still haunting the halls and classrooms of today’s colleges and universities.

*I must confess that over the years, I contributed to these developments. In the late 1970s, I served as the director of research and publication for the American Academy of Religion and was instrumental in establishing Scholars’ Press (since taken over by Oxford University), which published several series of scholarly works on religion. In addition, I edited various series at other presses—Religion and Postmodernism (University of Chicago Press), Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory (State University of New York Press) and Kierkegaard and Postmodernism (Florida State University Press).

3

Back to the Future

As the cost of higher education continues to increase, many people are raising questions about the value of the liberal arts. When college and university professors are asked why liberal learning continues to be important, the most common response they offer is, “Because it promotes critical thinking.” But what is “critical thinking”? The most concise answer to this question is: critical thinking is thinking about thinking. This response is easily misunderstood because it seems to suggest that education in the liberal arts turns away from the world and has little or no practical value. This is, admittedly, always a danger; indeed, some faculty members go so far as to insist that like art for art’s sake, knowledge exists for knowledge’s sake and should not be judged by its usefulness. This attitude, however, is both misleading and shortsighted. While critical thinking is not simply utilitarian, it does have very significant practical implications. By turning back on itself, thought examines the ways in which we make the judgments about truth, value and beauty without which civilized society is impossible. The liberal arts expose students to different ways of understanding the world and acting in it. Moreover, critical thinking cultivates the skills necessary for making responsible decisions that change the lives of individuals and transform the world. Such reflection has never been more important than in this era of media frenzy and information overload.

To appreciate the abiding importance of liberal education, it is helpful to consider the historical tradition in which it emerged. The lack of historical perspective