THE UNIVERSITY — REPOSITORY OF UNIVERSAL

AND TOTAL TRUTH

Dr. Absar Ahmad

Importance of Ideas

There is an old proverb which says that the pen is mightier than the sword. We must of course not make too much of any saying. To any proverb there is a counter proverb and one can always find proverbial support for what one believes. Nevertheless, it is interesting to distil fraction of truth that they contain. The remark about the pen and sword describes the extraordinary power of ideas. Of course, not everybody is interested in ideas as such. Indeed, most of us most of the time and all of us some of the time need to know rather what to do next, to decide on what action to take. But some people are interested in ideas in their own right. Such are called collectively intellectuals, or the intelligentsia. Often unpopular and regarded with suspicious a society would lose its direction and vitality without these intellectuals.

What makes a man an intellectual? This is not so easy to define. Evidently, it is not a matter of just being intelligent. There are many who display great intelligence in going about these affairs, but that does not make them intellectuals. Again, it is not merely a matter of education either. A man may have a most elaborate formal education to his credit and yet not he much interested in ideas. The reverse is probably less likely, some measure of literacy is needed to cope with ideas, so that an intellectual will usually have some education. Much the same holds for the ques­tion of whether a man is well informed or not while the totally uninformed cannot well be counted as intellectuals, a man may be a mine of information and yet thoroughly blind to the importance of ideas. Similarly those who subscribe to the fads of the moment are not necessarily intellectuals. The peculiar way in which intellectuals influence the development of society lies in the fact that their efforts ensure that ideas are formulated and put into circulation. It is the intellectual who translates the vague and inarticulate misgivings of man at large into coherent accounts or theories that can be communicated. The theories pertain to the questions about the being of Man and the Universe, about the idea of good; about the possibility of knowing, about the ultimate meaning of the things.

An intellectuals thinking or reflection in this context is something different from solving limited and specific problems — finding ways to grow better plants or make better tools. It is to provide a rational explanation of the Universe, to lay down what ought to be and what people ought to do, and to grapple with the ques­tions raised by the very fact that they think — that is, the problems posed by aware­ness of the thinking process itself and the awareness of existence that comes with it. This special kind of self-consciousness may, in fact, be the greatest single spur to philosophical thought.

Classical Sense of the University Plato's Academy founded in 385 A.C. and the Lyceum of Aristotle established in 335 B.C. were the earliest institutions of higher beeming. Unlike the Rhetoric School of Isocrorts (436—338 B.C.), which preceded them and which offered the highest practical training for achieving success in life, they were devoted to theoretical investigations in respect of reality and the ultimate problems relating to it. The Academy was concerned solely with philosophy, mathematics, and astronomy, and the discovery and formulation of the fundamental principles of methodology which was to provide sound bases to the structure of all scientific knowledge the main and the all-important discipline was, however, metaphysics which determined, in every detail the entire intellectual activity. Aristotle, with a slight shift in the metaphysical position of his master— Plato — was able to include the natural and social sciences in the scheme of studies at his Lyceum. However, at- both the schools philosophy was the chief discipline; and the main aim of all speculation and research remained the discovery of the universal truth and the determination of the ultimate principle of reality.

The method of discussion and cross-examination introduced by Socrates for inquiry into the nature of concepts, gave rise to the schools and academy which provided the medium of communication and exchange of ideas between the teacher and the taught. This discussion and communication was not confined to the trans-mission of knowledge, it was used primarily to discover truth by combined intellectual efforts of the teacher and the pupil. All enquiry, whether in the realm of the human mind or that of the external world, was ultimately determined in these early schools by the pre-suppositions furnished by philosophy. All the great Alexandrian teachers who did the pioneering work in variegated scientific fields were Aristotelian whose work was based on the philosophical presupposition of the master. It was the metaphysical assumptions of Aristotle and Plato which were applied by them in the-sphere of all particular sciences. In fact, in Alexandria as in Athens philosophy provided the basis of all intellectual activity. Whatever be the field of investigation, Aristotelian "metaphysics of form and matter" played the role of the final arbiter. Thus all higher education, called University education today, continued to move within the categories of philosophy which alone was considered competent to provide the foundation of all knowledge.

The word `University', according to the definition provided in the Encyclopedia Britannica, is derived form the medieval Latin term universities which was employed to denote any community or corporation devoted to universal learning and education. The more ancient and customary designation of such communities or places in medieval times was stadium and subsequently stadium generals. It is an interesting historical fact that the "Stadium General", later called universities, came into existence to replace the cathedral and monastic schools which had attained to the highest degree of reputation and influence with the rightly Church behind them. However, in the universities, side by side with the Faculty of Theology, the Faculty of Philosophy now asserted its right to independent and free inquiry.

And soon it came to be realized that philosophy covered the entire field of knowledge including theology and natural sciences, and as such, determined the character of the university.

The very idea of university includes and encompasses the whole of knowledge as an integrated whole. Though historically it is true that Bologna started with law and Pains was originally concerned with Theology and Arts, yet both of them gradually appropriated the whole universe of knowledge and ultimately became composite bodies consisting of all the Faculties Theology, Law, Medicine, and Arts. The last, however, served on the necessary means for the mental training for the study of the first three and thus acquired an independent status on the Faculty of Philosophy which included in itself all the social and natural sciences. Thus it is quite clear that the very idea of the university represents the totality of knowledge. The conception of an institution devoted to the cultivation of universal knowledge is not only an `imperative accessory as Rashdall, an eminant Poritish philosopher, has so aptly insisted, it, in fact, provides the only justification for bringing together all the faculties to one place in order to promote and preserve the universality and totality of knowledge.

Indeed this idea of the university can justified in another way also. If, as the Rationalist believe quite legitimately, the universe is really an universum, a cosmos in which all the part have `turned to me', that is, are interrelated, interconnected, and integrated into one, forming a system (system means parts set together), with no loose, insolated items, then surely the knowledge of this universe must necessarily be a system, unified and integrated, i.e. cosmic in its structure as well as in its scope. To say that the university is a composite body of scholars and students in the merely legal sense, means nothing if their knowledge taken together does not constitute a unified whole. All knowledge derives its ultimate meaning and validity from the totality of knowledge in the context of which it must finally be evaluated. If the different disciplines remain apart in the university, they would not produce cosmos of knowledge because none of them would reflect in itself the cosmos which is a systematized and unified whole Unity of the universe calls for the unity of knowledge. Particular sciences, natural as well as social, are by their nature restricted in their approach and fragmented in scope, and as such, they cannot overcome or transgress the limitations imposed upon them by their respective subject matter. The knowledge gained by each one of them individually is partial that is, is valid only in respect of its particular subject matter and does not reflect the ultimate truth in an integrated form. Universal knowledge can be attained only by a discip­line which inquires into the ultimate nature of reality taken as a whole, that is to say, by a discipline which deals with the most universal and widest possible con­cepts, applicable to the whole of reality and experience without in any way setting aside or discarding the parts.

Attenuation of Knowledge

In the present-day academic scene, however, the position of philosophy is different from the view taken of it in the above section. Though the natural sciences had required great prestige, they could not have undermined the position of philo­sophy, had rot the prevailing and dominating philosophy of the time given rise to ,a revolt against itself in its own area. The historical roots of mans present intellectual crisis can he traced back to the Elightenment and its successors' 'logical positivism', 'logical empirism' and 'utilitarianism'. The physical and spiritual crisis of the modern man is a logical outcome of the worship of the Sensuons and Scientific Fact and the divorce of values from knowledge. That the western civilization, and the intellectual framework which is its necessary concomitant, has failed mankind is now openly admitted by the pundits of the west itself. Let me here given a brief historical survey of the contemporary scene.

The epistemological and intellectual tradition which is responsible for the present status of modern knowledge and science has its roots in the Enlightenment which by many is considered to be the beginning of modern times. The Enlightenment was the work of the philosopher — the intellectuals who conceived and perfected it. These thinkers looked at science and exploration not just for new know-ledge but also for new attitude towards knowledge. From science they acquired the skeptical attitude of systematic doubt (Descartes), and from exploration a new relate istic attitude towards belief and used them as ammunition against metaphysics and flues. The epistemological concerns of this moment derived from the seventeenth century. The intellectual spokesmen of that century — Bacon, Deseat tes', Holbes, Locke, Newton ---all appealed for a rational criticism of truth. The philosophy of the enlightenment takes up this call, particularly the methodological pattern of Newtonian mechanics and begins to generalize it. This then became the basic epistemological framework of the Enlightenment. However much individual think­ers and scholars agree or disagree with the end results, they are all unified in their framework of knowledge. The new tools of 'criticism' and 'analysis', however, were not only for mathematical and physical knowledge but they were also used by the philosophers to disect all branches of human endeavour such fundamental disciplines as metaphysics, religion, politics and ethics were also analyzed in the basis of 'rea­son' and logic with a view to ending their perennial perplexities once and for all. The principles which the empiricist philosophers attempted to apply were the new scientific cannons of the eighteenth century there was to be as a priori deduction from metaphysical principles without concrete experimental evidence. Isaiah Berhin writes on this point in his characteristic style.

"This use of observation and experiment entailed the application of exact methods of measurement, and resulted in the linking together of many divorce phenomena under laws of great precision, generally for­mulated in mathematical terms. Consequently only the measurable aspects of reality were to be treated as real — those susceptible to equations connecting the variations in one aspect of a phenomenon with measurable variation in other phenomena. The whole notion of nature as compounded of irreducibly different qualities and unbridgeable 'natural' kinds, was to be finally discarded. The Aristotelian category of final cause - the explanation of phenomena in terms of the 'natural' tendency of every object to fulfill its own inner and or purpose -- which was also to be the answer to the question of why it existed, and what function it was attempting to fulfill - notions for which no experimental or observational evidence can in principle be discovered --- was abandoned as unscientific, and indeed in the case of inanimate entities without wills or purposes as literally unintelli­gible. Laws formulating regular concomitances of pehnomena -- the observed order and conjunctions of things and events — were sufficient, without introducing impalpable entities and forces, to describe that is describable, and predict all that is predictable, in the universe. Space, time, mass, force, momentum, rest — the terms of mechanics — are to take the place of final causes, substantial forms, divine purpose, and other metaphysical notions."'

The philosophies that followed the Englightenment took the separation of knowledge from metaphysics and values further. The nineteenth century heralded the triumphs of reason in the unparalleled spread of materialism. Logical Positivism and meterialism of which Marxism is a port) and their twentieth century counter-part, logical empiricism, throw metaphysics and values overboard altogether. In their epistemological framework both metaphysics and values are not considered proper knowledge. Utilitarianism declared that the goal, the ideal, of all moral endeavour is the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. What came to be practiced, in fact, was the greatest number of material goods for the largest possible number of people. Industrialization, which also became the main agent of the environmental devastation, has produced this reality.

Heneryk Skolimowski has aptly characterized the present age by Sergei Bazaroy (from Targeney's novel Fathers and Children) who is a robust, exuberant believer in science, in materialism and in the world in which fact and positive know-ledge are supreme values.' He has no use for art, for poetry, for other `romantic rubbish'. The modern man is engulfed so completely by the analytical reason, scientific fact and bogus empiricism that it is often difficult to see through them and access their impact on society. Bazaroy is at once an embodiment of the prevailing nihilism, materialism, scientism and positivism, which in their respective ways, regarded intrinsic values as second, insignificant, or even non-existent in the world of cold facts, clinical objectivity and scientific reason. According to the present social culture and academic milieu, reality begins with the group, with publicly available data. Spiritual and inner life is denied altogether.

The Academic Imperative

By raising reason and fact to the level of 'gods' the modern man has brought himself into the era of supersonic age. The achievements and success of modern science and technology no doubt have brought some benefits to humanity, but they have also brought him alienation, urbanization, moral degeneration and ecological crisis. The worship of economic growth has brought him fragmented and meaningless work, cracked and superficial relations. The assembly line symbolizes the way things should he done, rapidly, efficiently and, of course, massively. The whole society operates as a machine.

The only way out of this colossal malaise lies through responding to, and acting on, what I would call for want of a better expression, the ACADEMIC IMPERATIVE which necessitates a radical change in the conception of knowledge itself. Indeed the remedy calls for a reversal to the classical view of knowledge and wisdom: the view in which there was no separation between knowledge, values and metaphysics — between social sciences (Geiteswissenschaften) and natural sciences. It is an undeniable fact that the great mass of human beings have a real need for an enlightened philosophy, that is, for a consistent world-view and a body of guiding principles and clearly defined aims. This mass has been effectively deprived by contemporary positivist and linguistic philosophers of any ideological material which might prove relevant to their existences.

What I have termed the `academic imperative' means in effect that an all-out effort must, be made to reject and refute the structure of present-day education which has enshrined a fact/value distinction in its very fundamentals. We should realize that we have had enough of analysis, positivism and skepticism. Indeed this trivialization of knowledge should no longer be tolerated. Contrary to the limited and restricted way in which epistemological questions are discussed in recent, analytical works, these questions should include knowledge about oneself, about the Ultimate Reality, about one's society and one's relationship with others. If this is done, one can easily see the truth of the contention that positivism (scientism included) is intrinsically a mystifying social formation in which people are systematically prevented from seeing the truth about their lives, destiny, ideals and their society. The question about knowledge has to be dealt with in the context of the question: what kind of metaphysics and social relations would enable a non-mystified view of reality, would replace illusion with knowledge. Thus it would involve issues about open and non-oppressive forms of education, an education which liberates people's capacities to discover and to do things for themselves and with others which enables them to understand their future and ultimate destiny. In short, the academic imperative enjoins the modern academies to liberate humanity from inhuman and enslaving philosophical presuppositions and reconstrue knowledge in the light of broad humanistic and metaphysical framework in order to establish human life in satisfying and meaningful relation to the universe in which man finds himself, and to get wisdom in the conduct of human affairs. In other words, it behaves them to abandon earstwhile cavalier attitude to metaphysical philosophy and attach utmost importance to intellectual understanding of the ultimate principle of reality.

It is only through such deep and profound intellectual understanding that man can reach self-integration and thus proceed toward genuine and infinite evolution. This type of committed intellectual will repudiate the currently fashionable trend which ridicules ideology and demands that writers, scholars and philosophers remain non-committed, un-ideological, and alien to the serious social and metaphysical problems of their time. A man who is `educated' in the real sense of word is one who has achieved a sense of cultural and historical self-awareness. He is certainly able to change his inert and backward state, its mental and spiritual decadence into a dynamic state of making and inventing and into a state of moral, spiritual and social creativity. Viewed from this angle, matter-of-fact on which positivists or anti-intellectual thinkers so much emphasize is an abstraction arrived at by confining thought to purely formal relations which then masquerade as the final reality. This is why science, in its perfection, relapses into the study of differential equations. The concrete world and human experience slip through the meshes of the scientific net. The exclusive concentration of attention upon matter-of-tact or science is the supremacy of the irrational. Any approach to such triumph makes learning and knowledge truncated and fugitive which shuns emphasis on essential connections such as disclose the universe in its impact upon individual experience. To quote a very relevant passage from A. N. Whitehead here: "Apart from detail, and apart from system, a philosophic outlook is the very foundation of thought and of life. The sort of ideas we attend to, and the background govern our hopes, our fears, our control of behaviour. As we think, we live. This is why the assemblage of philosophic ideas is more than a specialist study. It moulds our type of civilization" a  society in which thought is stagnant is a dying society: it cannot look, forward to a future. The task of a university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought, and civilized modes of appreciation, can affect the issue. Universities are created in the hope that they will not only help preserve the traditions of a community but also provide a group of scholars and an atmosphere of scholarship where ideas and values continually tested by the free play of thought. LIFE IS ENRICHED WHEN THERE IS TIME TO THINK AND A SUITABLE `PLACE TO DO IT. THIS IS THE FUNDAMENTAL JUSTIFICATION OF UNIVERSITIES.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1.       Isaiah Berlin, The Age of Enlightenment, Mentor Books, New York, 1956, p. 17.

2.       Ecology, p. 5, 18 January 1975.

3.       Whitehead, A. N., Modes of Thought, The Free Press, New York, p. 63.