[MD] The Futile Quest for Academic Approval

[John Carl]

The index of worth in a closed academic world where conformity, patronage,
provincialism, enclavism abounds is the "footnote".

"Many citations to an individual's work indicates he or she is important;
conversely few or no references implies someone is unknown and irrelevant."

Russel Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of the
Academe, pg. 127

Connected with this type of academic philosophy is a narrow, authoritative
view of what counts as "true", "quality" philosophical work in a particular
area.  In political philosophy, such work would be in the tradition of
Locke, Mill, and Kant, or Rawls and Nozick, that is, of liberalism with its
emphasis on the market and the minimal state, rights, justice, contract
theory, and a universally justified neutral polity.  In social philosophy,
the "real" view of social life would be utilitarianism, where social action
is guided by interests, with the greatest good for the greatest number
equaling the sum of individual interests.  In psychology the accompanying
doctrine is of an egoistic, instinctual psyche pitted against organized
society but needing its civilizing influence.  The point is that Royce
provides a critical and alternative view to this kind of social and
political philosophy as well as the accompanying view of the psyche.  Thus
he would not easily fit the notion of "social political philosophy" that
underlies Kuklick's evaluation.

Ignoring those who are outside of and counter one's views has, of course,
condemned a number of creative and excellent philosophers to the margins of
academic concern, including many philosophers in classical American
philosophy.  Even Dewey, acknowledged by many outsiders as the last of the
great "public philosophers", has been thus marginalized.

Further, the liberal social-political philosophy so fundamental to
"academic" philosophy is now under strong attack from within philosophy and
without and is itself in retreat.  This liberalism sees humans as
exclusively and unmanageably self-regarding and human association as a
necessary evil.  The role of the polity is to accommodate civilly the
clashes of individual and group interests.  This philosophical liberalism,
exalts the supremacy of self-interest and the development of institutional
means for pursing these interests.  Yet no nation could remain a
self-governing, communicating whole if it were only a precarious assemblage
of mutually suspicious segments.

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Royce's philosophy is, in fact, of one integrated artistic piece; his
metaphysics and epistemology are ground in and interweave with his ethics
and his social and political philosophy.  Indeed, Royce's philosophy of self
and his metaphysical understand of the nature of the individual an d the
relationship of individuals to each other and to the community are what give
substance and fecundity to his social and political philosophy, making
Royce's work peculiarly relevant and useful to today's needs.  Much of the
vacuum in public philosophy that operates with with a hidden and unexamined
metaphysics and epistemology-- a reductionistic betrayal of human selves,
their relationships, and the reality they encounter.

The dominant American social and political thought is a "detached
individualism," which is based, in turn, on an "ontological individualism"
that claims that reality is composed ultimately of individuals only.  All
communities then, are seen as mere collections of individuals with no
essential reality of their own other than the sum of individual thoughts and
actions.  Royce attacked this belief system which he called "nominalism"
(and MoQists call "SOM)

In contrast to such a metaphysical view, Royce sees reality as essentialy
social and affirms the reality of both individuals and communities.
 Likewise in epistemology, Royce asserts the essential social nature of all
knowledge-seeking and, with Peirce, argues for a third type of knwledge,
interpretation, which is triadic: social, community building, and the
essence of knowledge of mind (and self), whether one's own or that of
another.


J. Kegley