This lengthy meditation on specialization and integration in today's Groves of Academe is essentially a clarion call by Gregorian and Sciabarra for more of the later. And it's hard to disagree with this -- enough already with this "deconstructionism" and "literary theory" crap of the past 40 years! Indeed, Chris's piece reminds me of Rand and her observation that humans intellectually and spiritually desperately need philosophy in their life because it gives them a comprehensive and integrated view of the universe and their existence -- and thus of how best to live. Personally, I agree with all of this.
The above monograph also provides an interesting gloss on Chris's specialty: his dialectic approach to truth-seeking, and guide to comprehensive, integrated, fully-contextual knowledge.
My own reading of history tells me that during the first Age Of Reason (especially from Socrates/Democritus to Epicurus/Zeno-the-Stoic) the ancient Greeks tended to regard all of knowledge as one (i.e. as "the word" or logos): they thought each piece led to and flowed into the next. Interestingly, they also regarded all virtues as essentially one -- as also leading and flowing into each other. Hence, anything which was "right" in their language [and ours] (anything true or virtuous) very quickly suggested and implied, and directed one toward, everything else which was "right" (factually correct or morally good).
Aristotle's whole university -- like his whole quietly stunning approach to knowledge -- was a marvel of integration and dialectic balance, in my judgment (Am I right here, folks?). The worlds's first Age of Reason was truly impressive.
So was the second. The Renaissance Man was almost by definition comprehensive and well-integrated in his approach to, and possession of, knowledge. He was well-rounded and fully-educated. Even more so was the Enlightenment liberal with his "encyclopedic" approach to knowledge and education. The aristocrats and well-educated elite of 1700s England, Holland, France, and America put today's over-specialized, out-of-context academics to shame. They even put today's fragmented over-Randized Objectivists and over-Austrianized libertarians to shame(!).
It seems clear to me that the world of the future will feature many rational philosophies and related, derivative rational cultures -- not just the one highly-familiar belief-system which was so fully developed by Ayn Rand. The world of the future will be led by many and diverse well-educated, well-integrated Western liberal thinkers -- not just or primarily Objectivists. It will very much resemble the highly mature and Reasonist societies of Greece in the 200s BC, Rome in the 00s BC, and Western Europe in the 1700s. These near-future folks will have a comprehensive, systematic, balanced, well-integrated, fully-contextual approach to education i.e. to gaining and using (rational) knowledge. The result will be an intensely-rational but diverse collection of educational approaches, individual life-styles, and collective world mini-cultures.
by Andre Zantonavitch on June 4, 2004 at 10:11 PM