Remarks on accepting the Bradley Prize
To scientists, the university is divided into science and non-science; the latter is not knowledge and is likely to be mush (in this last they are right). Scientists easily forget that science cannot prove science is good, that their whole project is founded upon what is at best unscientific common sense. They do not see that the unscientific foundation of science leaves science far short of wisdom, whether practical or theoretical. Science has no idea why human beings resist science at least as strongly as they embrace it. It cannot say why knowledge is better than prejudice.
It is the job of the humanities to make non-science into something positive that could be called human in the best sense. This crucial work, which is necessary to science and, may I add, more difficult and more important than science, is hardly even addressed in our universities. Leading this trend—“leading from behind” in a recent phrase—is the humanities faculty at Harvard, and to give credit where credit is due, at other comparable universities. They are the ones who have established change as the principle that, for lack of anything better, can be agreed upon. In its more thoughtful expression, that principle is known as postmodern. What is modern is faith in science and progress, and what is postmodern merely comes after that—the modern then “still present as left behind.” Postmoderns don’t have the courage to attack, much less abandon, science and its numerous benefits; so they merely accept them, and let their ill grace serve as a sign of bad conscience.
Even before American humanities departments succumbed to leftist ideology, how many offered an education integrated with a Christian worldview? Was theology undone by trendy philosophy? Can a Straussian defend that Western intellectual tradition which is the fruit of the encounter between faith and reason?
Gutzman article
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