quote: The irony being that much of academia is so far away from reality and common ordinary experience, they gaffaw at it when they see it.
What is the difference between a full time writer or any other artist, and someone who is in academia? Why is one out of touch with reality and the other isn't? What is common ordinary experience? I ask because it seems to me that sometimes the Ivory Tower suffers from the same kind of pigeon holing that a lot of other groups suffer from. For instance, I've heard your criticism of the Ivory Tower, with a few modifications, thrown at anything from white people to Christians to poor people.
I realize that it feels good to make fun of our opposite numbers sometimes. I do it. Invariably, when I do, people ground me by saying 'hey, you're really no better.' And it's true.
So, I guess that's what I'm doing. Or asking. Is the Ivory Tower really that much worse than any other group?
posted
No. It's just another form of exclusive community, and one that's wrongly seen as being powerful and influential. It's human nature to resent such a community, if one isn't part of it.
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posted
I think you are right, Storm - they aren't any worse. In fact, they are a probably a bit better than most, because they are at least somewhat concerned with trying to overcome that natural bias to see the truth.
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posted
Well, let me add real quick like, that saying that 'You're no better' is sometimes a cop out. Each culture and community often does have its own set of problems that it should strive to overcome. I'm not generally saying that academia doesn't have problems. I'm specifically asking if it's any more out of touch with 'reality' than any other community.
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posted
is anyone "in touch"? consider: we all do some sort of job, and it likely takes up the majority of our time. for some, it's an office; for others, it's academia.
being in academia, i would seriously challenge that i am out of touch with reality and/or ordinary experience... is scottr still laboring under the delusion that teachers live at school? people are as "in touch" as they choose to be- very few jobs require that you go out and live viscerally in the world. therefore, the experiences that you choose to have outside your job likely comprise your "ordinary experience". sure, academia is populated largely by liberals, but as storm is saying, most communities are, to some degree, homogeneous.
maybe i'm just not understanding the question.
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Prof: Rhetoricians are pulling away from Aristotle and reading the more obscure authors.
Student: Is there a push to create a greater unified theory with the other authors, or are they are being held as Aristotle's replacements?
Prof: Well, there is no longer a sense that there is a unified theory to be found.
Student: If there isn't an end goal to the research, what's the point?
Other student: Keeping our jobs?
Prof: That's the moment when someone says the emporer has no clothes. Literature studies is finding themselves near this, and most classics departments have already gone that way.
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Very enlightening. And a bit disheartening. Now I'm not sure what I'm going to do.
One of my major problems is that they are NOT influential. That it seems like there are lots of clever people talking to only each other while the rest of the world goes on its merry way without them. Maybe the research isn't pointless in and of itself, but for crying out loud, will someone make the heads of these departments take a PR class or two? I do NOT hold with Plato that a full life consists of only conceiving of beauty, because I do not believe that one can live a full or virtuous life in a cocoon.
In other words, you can't reject the world and be a leader of it at the same time.
posted
I'm sorry, Stormy. Let me think of it another way.
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It's a constructed, romantic world. It's like...learning divination from Madame Trelawny. The professor teaches and the students learn how things SHOULD work, but don't, actually.
Now, I'm fine with that. I love knowledge of all kinds, and if we don't know how things should work, how do we know what to shoot for?
This is almost the classic debate of theory versus practice, and those types of knowledge are NOT antithetical to one another. But you'd never know it from the messages coming out of some humanities departments.
posted
kat, I'm still not clear where you are coming from. I assume when you say 'Humanities', you basically mean 'the arts' and their study.
How should things 'really' work in the arts? If you are talking about the products of imagination, how is it possible to have a baseline?
I guess I am still unclear as to how a professor, in this case in particular a humanities professor, isn't any more grounded in reality than me, or you, or OSC. Is the amount of time they actually talk to other people outside their profession part of the criteria, and if that is the case, I can think of many people who really only speak to people in their community as a matter of course and don't get out that much.
How do you know that they aren't corresponding with many different types of people?
Am I getting what you are saying. Am I being overly obtuse?
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I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think it's a matter of theory versus practice, and the institutionalization of artistic studies.
In order to do "research" in literature, for instance, you can form a theory, examine texts based on that theory, and then posit meanings and philosophies based on those texts. Other people agree/disagree, and you all talk some more, and that gives other ideas for papers, and so on.
Now, crumb, I love this. Heck, that's basically what Hatrack does. The problem is that very little of it is verifiable.
Plato had a theory that there was a "hyper-reality" that held the perfect form of everything that existed, and that this life was merely a shadow. True beauty, virtue, and happiness was to be found by discovering and mimicking as closely as possible that hyper-reality.
The major flaw in this theory, as far as I can tell and the part that makes me irritated every time I read Plato, is how are you supposed to know when you're close? The idea was that logic would bring you close, and the truly reasonable would come to the same conclusion, and the best collective guess had the greatest likelihood of being the truth.
Baloney. Katie's Opinion: That absolute Plato spoke of does exist, but you can't find through a careful line of logic. Human beings are too different and culture and preconceptions render logic a handy tool for earthly endeavors but useless for discovering absolute truth.
It doesn't work, and that has become obvious. The truths in the canon that people had thought they discovered (Dickens is a deity; nineteenth-century sentimental poetry is crud) left out too many authors and too many items of worth.
So, redefine the canon. Better yet, get rid of a "canon" altogether.
Part of the much-over-hyped postmodernism criticism/thinking (as opposed to created works of art, such as movies) is there is not an absolute ideal of literature. That the creation of a canon leaves out too many to be useful. That there is no such thing as an absolute standard of literature, so you sample a bit of everything. All of which is fine.
The problem comes when you realize the academic structure - tenure comes to those who do research - based on the idea that research actually goes somewhere. Teaching is secondary because anyone can teach, but it takes the truly great minds to discover that truth, and they need to be in a position to search for it.
But if there is no absolute/Platonic truth to discover, what's the research for? *watches literary studies creep further and further into irrelevancy*
posted
Oh, but you asked for "grounded in reality."
Katie's Opinion: When the point of your Work and your life is the creation of untestable theories that sound nice and get published so you can have a steady job and, for the good ones, do what you love which is teach, there's an idea that that gives one a looser hold on reality.
posted
You know, what you wrote in the preceding sounds a lot like the search for spiritual truth....
To respond directly to what you wrote, this seems to me to be an obvious 'issue' with studying works of art. What is really 'good' art?
Now, as long as people don't try and say that their theories on art should be the way life really works, I see no problem with this. If the person who studies art does not assume life immitates are, we should be o.k.
The problem is that I think this misses what people are saying when they describe academia as living in an Ivory Tower. I don't think that they're exlusively saying that people in academia are studyign things not connected to 'reality', though that is part of it, I think they are saying that academia are not living the same kind of existence as the rest of us. That they're some kind of lotus eaters who just can't 'get it'.
It's the second part that I'm really addressing, but understand for the first part that if your criterion for how 'real' someone is is the reality of their output, you can pretty much throw every artist, like OSC, in there, along with those who study things like philosophy, probably. (Or at least that would be the perception.) Their output is pure 'fantasy', is it not?
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quote:It's the second part that I'm really addressing, but understand for the first part that if your criterion for how 'real' someone is is the reality of their output, you can pretty much throw every artist, like OSC, in there, along with those who study things like philosophy, probably. (Or at least that would be the perception.) Their output is pure 'fantasy', is it not?
Are you asking for my own theory of "good" art?
I don't know. This is a problem, and the question of who funds the arts and the study of them has been going on for ... millenia. The patron system had problems, the ivory tower system has problems, the work a second job system has problems, and the give the public what it wants and try to squeeze some art in there system has problems.
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posted
You say 'holy ghost', other people say 'eureka' or 'intuition'. Words are funny things. In either case, you're dealing with an invisible world.
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posted
No. I'm not asking what good art is. I'm saying that a lot of people would consider anything that they couldn't touch or 'use' to be impractical and fantastical and not based in reality. For some people this is philosophy, for others it's religion, of others it's going to be romance novels....
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If literature is the subject of English departments (and there are those who would debate that), then literary academics should engage more fully with fiction -- with multiple genres, with the publishing world, with the audience(s), with translating and reviewing, with literay production -- instead of using literature simply as a backdrop in which to 'do' theory.
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quote:AND now, I said, let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: - Behold! Human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.
I see.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.
You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?
And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?
Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?
Very true.
And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?
No question, he replied.
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.
That is certain.
And now look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision, - what will be his reply? And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, -- will he not be perplexed? Will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?
Far truer.
And if he is compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take in the objects of vision which he is able to see without pain, and which he will conceive to be in reality clearer than the things which are now being shown to him?
True, he now
And suppose once more, that he is reluctantly dragged up a steep and rugged ascent, and held fast until he's forced into the presence of the sun himself, is he not likely to be pained and irritated? When he approaches the light his eyes will be dazzled, and he will not be able to see anything at all of what are now called realities.
Not all in a moment, he said.
He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?
Certainly.
Last of he will be able to see the sun, and not mere reflections of him in the water, but he will see him in his own proper place, and not in another; and he will contemplate him as he is.
Certainly.
He will then proceed to argue that this is he who gives the season and the years, and is the guardian of all that is in the visible world, and in a certain way the cause of all things which he and his fellows have been accustomed to behold?
Clearly, he said, he would first see the sun and then reason about him.
And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?
Certainly, he would.
And if they were in the habit of conferring honors among themselves on those who were quickest to observe the passing shadows and to remark which of them went before, and which followed after, and which were together; and who were therefore best able to draw conclusions as to the future, do you think that he would care for such honors and glories, or envy the possessors of them? Would he not say with Homer,
Better to be the poor servant of a poor master,
and to endure anything, rather than think as they do and live after their manner?
Yes, he said, I think that he would rather suffer anything than entertain these false notions and live in this miserable manner.
Imagine once more, I said, such an one coming suddenly out of the sun to be replaced in his old situation; would he not be certain to have his eyes full of darkness?
To be sure, he said.
And if there were a contest, and he had to compete in measuring the shadows with the prisoners who had never moved out of the den, while his sight was still weak, and before his eyes had become steady (and the time which would be needed to acquire this new habit of sight might be very considerable) would he not be ridiculous? Men would say of him that up he went and down he came without his eyes; and that it was better not even to think of ascending; and if any one tried to loose another and lead him up to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death.
No question, he said.
This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed whether rightly or wrongly God knows. But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally, either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.
-Plato's Republic, The Allegory of the Cave
The question at hand, I suppose, is whether non-academics are simply doing what Plato predicted - calling the shadows reality, and saying academics are out of touch with that reality. Or are the academics the ones who've locked themselves in a cave to speculate about shadows?
I'd argue some of both (even if it is a cop-out answer. )
quote: Nope. Not a semantic issue. But I suppose this is fodder for a different thread.
By the way, I dare you--yes, I even double-dog dare you--to defend this position without making your whole argument an appeal to authority, or one that is solely based on individual experience. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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When I said 'dare', I was being playful. If you don't want to write it, that's fine. I don't care beyond the fact that I would be interested in seeing if you could do it within the parameters I mentioned.
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posted
kat, no one except humanities professors ever claims that the humanities are practically useful for anything.
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posted
The problem, kat, is that most of the useful aspects of the humanities -- like the application of philosophical theory and the creation of art -- aren't actually done by academics.
History and sociology and the like have genuinely academic purposes, and are advanced by study; I'm not at all sure that philosophy, art, or music are, however.
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posted
>> What are the other goals of research in academia? <<
The pursuit of knowledge. Learning things about things.
I don't believe in God, and I don't accept Plato's notion of absolutes. Does this mean there's no point to my switching careers and pursuing a career in academic literary circles?
Of course, in my field, all research is either already applied or applicable. But I'm in an inherently practical field.
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posted
But you're an artist. I mean, you're a musician. You're following the art-funded-by-self model of creation.
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posted
Storm, I'm wondering about the topic here. I thought you were asking one question, but Katharina seems to be answering another.
My thoughts on what you meant by ivory tower. I think every group thinks that another group isn't living in reality. The folks in D.C. probably have no idea how much a gallon of milk costs, or how difficult it is to raise a family of four on $20,000 a year. How hard it is to figure out child care, transportation, cooking, cleaning, etc. all at the same time, because they have people who do that for them. Their wives/housekeepers/nannies take care of those types of problems while they try to pass legislation intended to help the people who are doing things they couldn't do if they tried. Like they live in the "real" world and have a clue how to solve the problem.
Likewise, people from the North are always amazed (or amused) by people from the South. And the South holds nearly as much disdain for the North. Neither thinks the other lives in the real world. The Northerners think the Southerners are stupid, racist, and inbred while the Southerners think the people in the North are rude, self-important pompous asses. Both groups think the other lives in an inferior culture and look down on each other. I think the South thinks that the North creates the madness/franticness in their lives and the North thinks the South just flat out refuses to be part of the "real" American culture. City folks don't think country folks live in the "real" world and country folks the the city folks are fools for rushing around like rats in a maze.
Everyone lives in their own definition of the "real" world and most don't recognize any other form of living as being "real." Academia, when used in conjunction with "ivory tower" seems inanely petty. I believe when someone uses "ivory tower" they are bitter about something in academia. Their kids are being taught liberal ideas, or something along those lines. (They get paid how much to do nothing but think outrageous ideas?) The problem is, unless all these teachers are forbidden to have a newspaper subscription, internet connection, discussions with students who've outside contact with the real world, it's rather silly to say they don't live in it. They actually live in it more than the folks in Washington. They probably go to the grocery store and could tell you how much a gallon of milk costs, and are probably more involved in local culture/politics. I've never understood the thought process that sees the Universities as closed campuses where the professors are locked up at night and forbidden to talk to anyone outside their department. People naturally hang around people like themselves and this type of segregation is normal. I don't see a whole lot of city folks racing out to the country to hang out with farmers. Does that mean they aren't living in the real world? People who refuse to look up from their own situation to see the plight of others are the ones who aren't living in the real world. They are living in "their" real world, but they only have on piece of a much larger picture.
Katharina, I thought this quote, "Plato had a theory that there was a "hyper-reality" that held the perfect form of everything that existed, and that this life was merely a shadow. True beauty, virtue, and happiness was to be found by discovering and mimicking as closely as possible that hyper-reality," sounded very much like religion. Change "hyper-reality" with "heaven" and that's exactly what I thought.
"The major flaw in this theory, as far as I can tell and the part that makes me irritated every time I read Plato, is how are you supposed to know when you're close? The idea was that logic would bring you close, and the truly reasonable would come to the same conclusion, and the best collective guess had the greatest likelihood of being the truth."
That is the problem I have with religion. How do you know which one is the truth? Change "logic" to "Holy Spirit" and do see how someone who isn't as in touch with the Holy Spirit as you are could see why they sound alike?
I don't understand why you use your personal religious beliefs in these threads and then when someone asks you to explain, or explain it without using doctrine as an authority, you get all mad. I was particularly distressed a while ago when you had someone go to the trouble of making an opposing for you and then you refused him the common courtesy of answering his question.
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posted
Folks make fun of the ivory tower because of sentiments like this:
quote: because they are at least somewhat concerned with trying to overcome that natural bias to see the truth.
-Xap, way up above
When I was coming close to finishing my degree and pondering grad school, I found myself on the losing side of petty disputes in both my major and minor programs. So I didn't go to grad school. But my whole college experience was thoroughly bizarre and can't be used as an example for anything.
posted
kat, I can only answer for myself, but I found graduate study in philosophy to be invaluable in developing rigorous thinking. I'm too tired and befuddled (and woozy) to be very clear, but I'll try to dig up something I wrote about specific examples.
Mind you, rigor of thought process is usually not needed in day-to-day activities. (How much do you really need to think in order to open a can of peas, or stop at a red light?) But when applicable, it is useful in the extreme.
I'll have to back that up later. Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I loved my philosophy classes for the same thing. I hope I didn't give the impression that I found them useless - I didn't. I loved every bit of my floating around the humanities departments. ---
I don't know how to take this. I value all my little Mormons on this site equally. You're all special to me in your own special, little ways.
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quote:The problem, kat, is that most of the useful aspects of the humanities -- like the application of philosophical theory and the creation of art -- aren't actually done by academics.
But just because someone else uses the theory, does that make the creation of the theory itself not useful? I mean, maybe it's Jefferson who actually wrote the Constitution and the Americans who put it into practice, but does that mean John Locke's theorizing was pointless?
quote:Folks make fun of the ivory tower because of sentiments like this: quote: because they are at least somewhat concerned with trying to overcome that natural bias to see the truth.
You think they should be made fun of for trying to be unbiased?
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quote:I mean, maybe it's Jefferson who actually wrote the Constitution and the Americans who put it into practice, but does that mean John Locke's theorizing was pointless?
*thinks*
I think my feeling is that if John Locke did the theorizing merely to keep his job, and if no one ever used his theory to build anything with it, then yeah.
Not that much of all of our activity doesn't dissapear into the ether, so in that light, much of what we do is pointless.
posted
I haven't read the whole thread, but I think the problem a lot of people have with the Ivory Tower is that they say they're unbiased, when really they're just as biased as anyone else.
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posted
Well, to say they were unbiased would be a mistake. It's a claim a lot of academics do make, especially in the scientific fields, and I think there's definitely bias.
However, it's also unfair to the academics to not recognize that they are (often obsessively) concerned with eliminating that bias. It's a bit different than, for instance, churches or political parties.
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posted
I think churches are perhaps less likely to FIND the truth, because it's highly unlikely that any given church which discovers truth that contradicts its own teachings would be willing to accept that truth.
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quote:Do you think churches are less concerned with searching for truth than academics?
No, but they are very much less concerned with eliminating bias. After all, the religious method for finding truth does not depend on being unbiased.
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posted
I agree. I don't believe I've said anywhere on this thread that I find institutional research into the humanities particularly worthwhile. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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