Universities shun universal verities

If the object of study is to understand something as it is in reality, then one is obliged to understand the lives of people who, everyday, act on the basis that the decisions they have made are good. The Socratics concluded that everyone makes decisions on the basis of what they think is good and the fact that we can comprehend this, and discus it, and argue against it, means that such decisions are capable of being objectively understood and the better ones discerned from the reasons given.

A Liberal Education, such as universities originally provided cultivated human reason on the basis that men were truly happy by being just and decent and moderate in their desires. The multivarsity education has now replaced this with a scientific education, which asserts man’s activities derive, not from questions of right and wrong, but fundamentally from the irrational desires; that is, that he has animal origins – reason being merely a tool that he uses to achieve his desires. It is not surprising, therefore, that having been indoctrinated to believe that he is merely an animal that he should behave like one.

One should never despair of the future, yet, given the hands into which the education of this nation’s young has fallen, one could be forgiven for believing that all is lost. The universities themselves now protect their position by demanding an adherence to the prevailing methodology which has become an orthodoxy.

A return to the freedom of thought that characterised the early universities is not easily achievable. To begin with, the place of the positivist methodology could be challenged from within those departments that purport to study the overt behaviour of man by a frank admission that there research is as ridiculous as the general public believe it to be when the topics of funding are announced.

Alternatively the government with the power of the purse over the universities could either hold an enquiry into the value of social science research; or establish a limited number of small colleges (perhaps two) which would provide a small number of students with a level of scholarship and opportunity not currently available at any Australian university. The choice of academics to provide such leadership could not be entrusted to any current Australian. Mind you, the establishment of such colleges would be an Orwellian task but it is one that would appeal to someone who had the character of Alexander the Great.