Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.
-Dr. Ian Malcolm
Americans’ habitual contempt for speculative reason never fails to dismay me, though our great country’s myopic fascination with pure practicality is hardly surprising. A brief survey of our history reveals a clear preference for asking, “What should be done/how should we do it?” over “Why should we do this/what does it mean?”.
From before the time of Plato; through Aristotle and Aquinas, the chief concern of Western philosophy was to address important questions through dialogue based on appeals to first principles (i.e. speculative reason). This noble tradition’s downfall can be traced to the work of a single German philosopher. No, it’s not Karl Marx. To pinpoint the moment when speculative reason toppled from its throne, we must go back yet another century to the work of Immanuel Kant.
Frustrated by the perceived lack of stability in classical metaphysics (despite probably having read very little of it), Kant restricted the sphere of rational knowledge to experience and empiricism–despite the fact that doing so requires an appeal to sources of knowledge beyond experience and empiricism. Likewise, he failed to anticipate the catastrophic results of undermining natural law-based ethics while absolutizing personal autonomy.
If you’re a typical postmodern Westerner, you probably couldn’t care less about anything in the post above (except for the Jurassic Park quote–man, is it amazing how well that movie holds up or what?). You can be certain that I understand your deeply ingrained impatience with history, ontology, and philosophy in general. Rest assured that I’ll explain why you should be gravely, intimately concerned with the airy notions that a bunch of Greeks and Germans discussed in the forgotten dark age that gripped the world before last Wednesday.
Exhibit A in my case for speculative reason is this article by Matt Saccaro. I cite this piece as a perfect example of 1) the practical reason-fueled utilitarian bias that dominates American culture and 2) the self-refuting absurdity of that bias. In support of his proposal to cut liberal arts disciplines from college curricula, the author argues that these fields of study serve only to shelter “intellectual cravens” unfit for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics degrees. Removing “soft disciplines” like literature, fine arts, etc. would keep the riffraff out of college and in their rightful place as blue-collar laborers.
Mr. Saccaro’s belief that, “the realities of the 21st century world make it true” that students whose natural gifts and dispositions lead them to non-STEM vocations have no business in college is less self-evident than he assumes. I could build a counter argument based on declining STEM job security due to the glut of outsourcing and work visas, along with the need for authoritative standards in fields like law, education, and yes, art; but that would mean first accepting the current zeitgeist’s false, biased terms. No, all that’s needed to show the faults in Saccaro’s position is to ask, “How do you know that?”
Setting aside the flagrant hubris of pigeonholing all human beings in either STEM or Intellectual Craven categories (I’ll take Mr. Saccaro’s identification of skilled tradesmen with college washouts more seriously when he demonstrates enough skill to install water and gas lines for a laundry room without flooding/blowing up his home), I’ll point out that asserting the supremacy of STEM fields over liberal arts involves a value statement. I.e. to avoid circularity, arguments from utility must appeal to principles discovered through metaphysics. Practical reason depends on speculative reason.
I couldn’t cast a silver bullet more lethal to utilitarian bias than the one Saccaro uses to shoot himself in the foot:
There are two possible fates for the American postsecondary education system. One is for it to maintain its current status as a factory that produces debt-slaves and baristas that can recite Emmanuel Kant’s passages from memory. The other is for Universities and Colleges to become leaner, more-functional institutions that remove all unnecessary coursework, and focus only on what matters.
That whirring sound is Kant spinning in his grave.