Time, space and education

Philosophy or English literature might not be profitable pursuits, but we can never question their value in the academic community

It takes time to think things through and it takes a space to think in. These elementary observations draw attention to the unusual portion of time and space that a university carves out, and to the opportunities we’re afforded by it. It’s not at all trivial to ask what, in a wide sense, can justify the existence of these opportunities, given that they’re essentially propped up and funded by many people who don’t share in them.

What purpose can this time, in this space, be seen to serve? And where will we look to draw our replies?

On the one hand, I once heard someone express the view that education is about expanding and deepening the range of our pleasures. This view has a certain charm, and there’s no doubt that there’s some truth to it. But it has that awful flavour of self-indulgence. Proust and particle physics bring joy, if you bother to take a look, but joy alone won’t justify much.

On the other hand, imagine a world in which the universities are dragooned into becoming training camps at the service of the next iTrinket du jour, the latest soothing pill or whatever will best convert ingenious effort into private wealth.

This is the view of education as beholden to market demands, with universities’ existence ratified by products and currency. The prospect of that world is a dismal one, in large part because it flattens the university into a single dimension, with its space and time transformed into a conveyor belt dropping saleable bits off the far end.

Now, lest I be misread, let me express my abiding gratitude to the many generations of people far cleverer than me who have brought us hot running water, painless dentistry and reliable phone service. But we need to refine our conception of progress, which education is meant to bring about. More goods don’t bring more good themselves.

In any event, my point isn’t to suggest something between self-indulgence and the boilerplate of competitive innovation, but rather something different by way of thinking through my own role in a discipline; philosophy, famously lampooned as both self-indulgent and unproductive (unproductive, certainly, of either trinkets or wealth, believe me). It’s a curious space and time to inhabit and a delightful one most days of the week. But where to look to find its reason to exist?

I have no decisive theory to propose, but there are clues. For my part I find it very reassuring to know that there are people who think deeply about freedom of the will, the nature of causation, gravitational waves, prime numbers and Persian prosody. I find this very comforting precisely because there are people thinking deeply and passing on that thought as the outcome of considered judgement. Here we find clear and serious thought about what there is good reason to believe, whatever the subject-matter of the inquiry happens to be.

Now, philosophy is partly about taking a view of thought itself, and the very structure of what we have good reason to believe, why those reasons are the good ones, and how to discern and rule out the bad ones. Philosophers are intrigued by some of the most familiar—and therefore most central—aspects of our experience of the world: how we ought to see our way through tough choices, how we can spot good grounds for action and belief, how we come to know any of this at all.

None of this is idle, of course, because while the process can be painful, slow and jarring, its outcome can be transformative, not just of the self but of the world as well. The objectivity of inquiry in any field is threaded with many strands of value. And that, I hope, is the point of time and space spent in thought: a world made fractionally better. Plainly, it often doesn’t work. But this really must be the goal.

So much for the high-falutin’ stuff. All of this brings me to teaching. The topics of my lectures and the discussions that arise often have only a vanishingly thin connection to that better world we ought to have in view. The philosophy of mathematics, for instance, is about as remote as you can get from the concerns of the starving and the oppressed, and I feel this vividly.

But the justification for this time, in this space, lies in what I can offer by way of teaching something about how and where to find good reasons, whatever the subject matter may be. Thought about abstract topics is a mode of action in the world.

I try to pull off this task in a number of different ways. I try, both in individual classes and across a whole cluster of sessions on a theme, to build a narrative. The narrative is not just some story, because the goal is to get closer to the truth rather than just telling a tale. But the structure of a narrative connects the parts to each other, and also offers a glimpse into how the overall tale has a reach outside itself into the world of our real and pressing concerns.

The point of education—this time, this space—isn’t just to relay a body of information but to lay bare the shape of critical thought. Philosophy at its best can allow us to achieve the more objective view we get from seeing around our own blindspots. Those who are equipped to think clearly, with minds that are both disciplined and open, will have a crack at seeing the world aright and maybe sorting it out when it’s bent.
Mark Smith is an adjunct assistant professor in the philosophy department.

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