Teaching and Learning > DOCUMENTS
NCP Address by George Walden
Nik Jewell
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Mr. George Walden's address to the National Philosophy Conference: Saturday 8 February 1986, at the University of Leeds
1. I am glad that you only asked me to speak for fifteen or twenty minutes, because I am not sure how much I have to say. It was suggested that I should say something nice about philosophy, so I thought I would start by quoting the nicest admonition to the profession that I know:
'For the philosopher, setting down with thorny argument the bare rule, is so hard of utterance, and so misty to be conceived, that one that hath no other guide but him shall wade in him till he be old before he shall find sufficient cause to be honest. For his knowledge standeth so upon the abstract and general, that happy is that man who may understand him, and more happy that can apply what he doth understand.'
Note the emphasis on application. But this is not of course from Sir Keith Joseph's Green Paper on Higher Education, but from Sir Philip Sydney's 'Apology for Poetry'.
2. Do we need to apologise for philosophy too? Everyone knows what that question means in the context of today's debate about vocationalism versus the humanities. In a wider sense, the question is of course meaningless. My own answer to this meaningless question is that we need to apologise for Philosophy to exactly the same degree that we need to apologise for Science: that is only when we are talking of bad or mediocre Science, or Philosophy.
3. But Sir Philip Sydney also raises the point about application. In the current great debate on education -- the one that should have taken place in the seventies, but somehow didn't -- a phoney war is raging between the pure and the applied: fundamental science versus applied science; fine art versus design and the decorative; and the humanities as a whole, in stagey opposition to science and technology.
4. This part of the debate is perhaps necessary, though occasionally wearisome. It is wearisome chiefly because the continuum from art history to textiles, from pure physics to body scanners, and from the arts as a whole to a prosperous and civilised society, is both too obvious to need proof and too complex to be neatly planned. But the debate is still necessary, because it is possible to disagree on the emphasis that should be placed on any one part of this continuum at any one time, from the pure and long-term to the immediate and practical; just as it is possible to question whether the relationships between fundamental scientific research and the production line are as they should be.
5. Public discussion on this theme has a habit of becoming remarkably heated, and theparticipants extraordinarily irritable. It was T.S. Elliot who said that irritation was a necessary condition for civilization. On that marking, it has been a very civilised debate indeed.
6. What does 'applications' mean in the case of philosophy? The letter from the chairman of the National Committee for Philosophy to the UGC stresses the versatility of philosophy graduates. It is a point that has not escaped the Government. We know that trained philosophers make good computer programmers, not to speak of the new service industries of your discipline, such as the philosophy of medicine. The Government pricks up its ears discreetly too at the mention of mathematical logic and powers of reasoning -- all welcome words. And it goes without question that the arts and humanities subjects in general develop analytical and critical skills which have their own vocational relevance -- provided, of course, they are rigorously taught.
7. But it would be philistine indeed to demand that philosophy should justify itself on these grounds alone. We may all have to live by the computer, with the computer, but not, I hope, for the computer. It is distressing enough to see the ghost slowly being banished from the machine. To watch it being slowly strangled to death in its own winding sheet would be sadder still.
8. The ultimate case for Philosophy must be Philosophy for its own sake. That, of course, immediately raises questions on which you will expect no precise answer from me: and the first, naturally enough, is how much Philosophy for its own sake is reasonable?
9. On the purely quantitative question, let me say just this. I have read the figures in your letter to the UGC carefully, and note the concerns expressed there. But let me also add to this admirably dispassionate presentation of statistics one or two of my own.
10. The first is that the number of full-time, undergraduate, new entrants to philosophy in British universities is currently 394, as against 336 a decade ago. The reduction since the peak in 1981 is about three per cent -- roughly a dozen students.
11. The second statistic comes from America, where the number of philosophy students has been more than halved since 1963, as the pendulum has swung there, as here, towardsmore directly vocational subjects. I quote these figures equally dispassionately, to fill out the picture, rather than re-paint it.
12. But there are questions of organization and quality too. No one contests the dignity or utility of the calling. But how thinly is it wise to spread this precious substance, over how many different institutes of higher education? I note that some philosophers believe that their discipline is already being diluted by a sort of intellectual dispersal; does it make sense to fragment it geographically too?
13. It is not for me to pronounce on the raw question of quality. But I imagine that philosophers would be the last people to maintain that everything that is real is rational; that everything being done is excellent, and that more excellence can be obtained by more cash. And this of course raises the deeper question of whether a shift in numbers from a particular arts subject necessarily brings a decline in the overall quality of teaching or learning in that subject?
14. This seems a good moment for me to retreat behind the veil of ignorance which so conveniently screens the DES from the UGC, in whose power it is to make such judgements. But before I disappear let me admire the ingenuity of the argument in the Committee's letter to Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, where it suggests that the reduction in funding for universities may be a reflection of a new willingness by lay people to question academic authority; that the growth of Applied Philosophy was another aspect of this; and that consequently, there should be more money for Philosophy in universities.
15. But still the question will be asked: what is the government doing for Philosophy? The answer is -- more than meets the eye, and more than it gets credit for. The current emphasis on Science and Technology in education, on the urgency to act now to secure the prosperity of this country in the future, is something of which I for one am not ashamed. High expectations in welfare, or in our cultural ambitions, and low expectations in the economy, or in education, don't add up. It makes no ethical sense either: it is not enough to commiserate with the old, the needy, or the sick: Aristotle, as I understand him, emphasised that virtue was in the action, not just the sentiment. If we wish for a decent and civilised old age for ourselves, and our elders, certain stern decisions need to be taken now in education, as in other fields. All this is more to the point than it may seem. It does not need much of a leap of imagination to see that the construction of a sounder economy, in which the universities have an important role to play, is not only a means of ensuring that we all have our hip-joint operations when we need them, but that our great institutions of higher learning will remain prosperous too.
16. The idea that universities can stand aloof from these endeavours, or go their own way without reference to the wider needs of the nation, seems increasingly idiosyncratic. Since assuming my present functions, I have been frankly surprised and encouraged by the extent to which higher education has adapted itself to economic realism, and I believe that it deserves tribute for these efforts, which have brought with them no little pain.
17. Not even the response of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals to the Government's Green Paper on Higher Education can extinguish that impression. Some of you may have felt that this response contained a single, scourging message for the Government: I thought I detected in it two themes, interlaced so exquisitely that none but the inquisitorial eye of a government department would presume to pick them apart. It seemed to me that the Vice-Chancellors were saying first that there was nothing wrong with our universities; and secondly, that energetic efforts were being made to reform and improve them.
18. The second thing the Government is doing for the arts in general, including Philosophy, is equally obvious, though just as frequently obscured. I have always been puzzled by the notion that emphasis on preparation for employment in schools, polytechnics or universities necessarily conflicts with the aspiration towards quality in the arts and humanities. Anyone -- whether art historian, philosopher, historian, or English don -- who has read the Government's White Paper 'Better Schools', or is aware of its strategy to secure higher standards and higher expectations throughout our educational system, from primary schools onwards, must surely admit the relevance of all this to his or her field of study?
19. Surely better standards in the use of the English language -- whether written or spoken -- would help us to maintain the best traditions of British philosophy? Kant praised Hume for the clarity of his style, for combining elegance and meaning. I am chauvinistic enough to believe that this is a distinctive British gift. But I am realistic enough to suspect that it is not a God-given distinction -- any more than our tradition of relative economic prosperity was in previous centuries. Traditions are earned, not just inherited. To maintain the high reputation of British universities and higher education in the future, we shall surely need not just money, but educational effort at all levels.
20. Such is the relentless insistence on cash, that there are times when it is tempting to turn the accusation of narrow materialism on the accusers. But that would be both unfriendly, and impolitic; so I won't.
21. The third thing the government is doing for philosophy is admittedly as indirect as the first two. Our policies have helped to stimulate a broad debate about the curriculum, and I am personally glad that the question of teaching philosophy in schools has surfaced in the discussion. I say personally because I am advised that the teaching of A level philosophy is a matter of some controversy amongst the experts. Governments are normally secretly gratified when the experts disagree -- especially if they are economists -- but in this case I am more gratified by the fact that the discussion is taking place at all.
22. As I understand it, the basic issue is whether philosophy undergraduates should go into higher education pre, or partly cooked, or whether their brains should be fried fresh, on campus. I have heard of a number of experiments in the field, each with its backers and detractors. 'Philosophy for Children' sounds a little startling; but the widely held view that schools do too little at present to promote -- indeed to teach -- reasoning skills is worrying too. Encouragement of a more systematic approach to logic sounds right and good; the prospect of children questioning how and what teachers teach sounds alarmingly subversive.
23. In one recent experiment, 8 year olds have apparently debated whether the mind and brain are the same thing. To some of you, that may sound encouraging; others may prefer that they should wait until they go to university to discover the answer.
24. At a higher level, I hear echoes of yet another debate amongst philosophers themselves about the dangers of fragmenting their discipline. It is a fascinating discussion: whether philosophy risks, as it spins off new applied and attractive disciplines, being left at the end of it like a burnt out Catherine Wheel; or whether the fizz and sparkle on the periphery can cast new lights on to central problems. It is all the more fascinating when one reflects that Philosophy and Theology were the original Catherine Wheel from which other disciplines -- including science -- have sprung. Yet another debate on which I and the DES are uniquely qualified not to comment, but one which we shall follow closely nonetheless.
25. Since there are so many subjects on which I am not allowed an opinion, I shall retreat into naked subjectivism and explain briefly why I personally believe that an awareness of philosophy -- at some stage, in some form -- is indispensable in an educated society. My views are those of someone who has -- alas -- had no formal education in the subject; they may therefore seem less than rigorously argued. They are earth creeping, empirical views, based largely on my previous career as a diplomat, which was punctuated with occasional moments of relief as a postgraduate in various higher educational establishments.
26. The first was Moscow University -- that well-known breeding ground for Tory Ministers. I remember sympathising with my fellow Russian students who had to do compulsory courses in dialectical materialism (Diamat as it was called), and felt for them especially keenly when they would wander the corridors of the university before examinations muttering pre-established answers to predictable questions: 'What are Trade Unions? -- Schools of Communism!' But I do not recall feeling very superior about it, only vaguely resentful that no-one had ever suggested to me during my own schooling that it might be helpful to read a little Locke or Hume if one wanted to understand the philosophical basis of our own political system. This audience will be well placed to speculate on the after effects of coming to Hume via Marx.
27. I had boned up a little on these things by the time I got to China. I am not sure how much good it did me there, except perhaps to help me calibrate the full, dizzy irrationalism of the cultural revolution. Later, in France, I was surprised to discover how many people, on the left as well as on the right, seemed to have a passionate attachment to Heidegger, which threw my tidy little insular prejudices about him into disarray. If one assumes, as I do, that a large part of our destiny will be in Europe; that the intellectual gaps between ourselves and the French and others are still very large; and that on a purely practical calculation it makes sense to know about the ideas that influence their political behaviour, given that ideas do seem to influence behaviour more there than here -- it all adds up to another case for increasing awareness. I am not yet suggesting Heidegger for eight year olds. But it is odd how everyone is in favour of international cooperation and peace, but few seem to be interested in what the foreign fellow is thinking. I am interested to hear, incidentally, that there is going to be a conference on Heidegger in Britain in April.
28. In America, what struck me most was the applied side of things, and especially the flourishing business of the philosophy of public affairs -- or if you like, the ethics industry. It was Aristotle again who regarded ethics as a branch of politics. Some of the early products of this industry would certainly seem to confirm that.
29. One of the problems about untutored amateurs is that they develop passionate partialities, and my own hero is Kant. This is partly because some of his writings link two periods in my own professional life -- diplomacy and education. A major reason for my rooted admiration for him is that the same man who could write the Critique of Pure Reason wrote Perpetual Peace as well. I know of no more sound or practical blueprint for civilised relationships between states, and it is practical precisely because it establishes so firm a link between education, democracy, and the pursuit of peace,
30. But my hero got one thing wrong. Amazingly, inexplicably, he once wrote that:
'The class of philosophers is by nature incapable of plotting and lobbying; it is above suspicion of being made up of propagandists.'
31. I would have thought that the initiative you have taken to form this association, and to organise this meeting today, was clear evidence of the contrary, I look forward to listening to the more expert contributions of others.
This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
