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The Main Enterprise of the World
WA LT E R A . S T R AU S S L E C T U R E S I N
T H E H UM A N I T I E S
Series Editor: Peter E. Knox, Eric and Jane Nord Family Professor,
Case Western Reserve University
Sponsored by the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western
Reserve University, the Walter A. Strauss Lectures in the Humanities address a
broad range of topics across all fields of humanistic research, especially as they
intersect with issues that affect the general public.
PHILIP KITCHER
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190928971.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
For Jorge William and Federico
with love
The main enterprise of the world, for splendor,
for extent, is the upbuilding of a human being.
Adapted from Ralph Waldo Emerson
Contents
Preface ix
List of Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
PA RT I
1. Overload 23
2. Individuals 49
3. Fulfillment 79
4. Citizens 116
5. Moral Development 153
6. A Role for Religion? 191
PA RT I I
7. The Natural Sciences 227
8. The Arts 256
9. Understanding Ourselves 281
PA RT I I I
10. Social Change 323
11. Utopia? 350
Appendix 1 391
Appendix 2 395
Bibliography 397
Index 407
Preface
Nearly two decades ago, shortly after I had begun a serious study of John
Dewey’s works, I was struck by a characterization of philosophy he offers to-
ward the end of his seminal Democracy and Education. According to Dewey,
“If we are willing to conceive education as the process of forming funda-
mental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow
men, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education.”
From the perspective of my own training in philosophy, and that reigning
in Anglophone professional philosophy to this day, that is a bizarre claim.
Philosophy of education is viewed not only as a narrowly applied subfield,
but also as one in which work is humdrum and unsophisticated. For those
capable of probing the central issues of philosophy—the “core problems”—
turning to philosophy of education amounts to slumming it.
Intrigued by Dewey’s claim, I have spent several years exploring the
supposed slum. As I have done so, I have found the orthodox professional
judgments to be deeply unfair. Today there are a significant number of
scholars in the English-speaking world who are doing work in philosophy of
education that meets the highest professional standards. They write clearly,
draw on major parts of the philosophical tradition, offer new conclusions and
defend them with rigorous arguments—and, unlike some of their snootier
colleagues, they address urgent questions. I have learned much from the
writings of many people who have contributed to this part of philosophy: a
partial list would contain Harry Brighouse, Eamonn Callan, Randall Curren,
Catherine Elgin, Amy Gutmann, Meira Levinson, Martha Nussbaum, the
late Israel Scheffler, Harvey Siegel, and John White.
Moreover, as I have immersed myself in this part of philosophy, the in-
sight behind Dewey’s seemingly outrageous claim has become ever clearer.
Dewey was reacting, I believe, to a sentence from Emerson’s famous
“American Scholar”—the sentence from which I have drawn my title and
which I have adapted for my epigraph. Conceiving each human generation
as attempting both to foster the development of its successors, and to create
for them an improved world, Dewey (and, I think, Emerson) saw the ge-
neral understanding of education (of “upbuilding” the young) as the central
x Preface
The proximate cause of the pages that follow was an invitation from Peter
Knox to give a series of Strauss Lectures at Case Western Reserve University.
I already had in mind a volume on education and democracy as the second
part of a trilogy aimed at elaborating my Deweyan pragmatism. When I pro-
posed to Peter that this might be the topic of my lectures, he approved the
idea, and I composed some twenty-five thousand words of draft material.
Obviously, since then, some growth has occurred.
The discussions I had in Cleveland, and the many thoughtful and pene-
trating questions posed by members of the audience, led me to see how the
individual lectures needed to be expanded, and how topics toward which
I had only gestured (or not mentioned at all) had to be taken up. When the
original versions were refereed for Oxford University Press, the readers sym-
pathized with my plans for further development. (I hope that, if or when they
see the result, they won’t regret doing so.) OUP’s wonderful New York philos-
ophy editor, Peter Ohlin, also approved the proposal to extend the lectures,
and, as always, offered excellent advice.
Preface xi
I am extremely grateful to Peter Knox for that initial invitation, and to him
and his colleagues at the Case Western Center for the Humanities for their
warm hospitality and the stimulating conversations I enjoyed during my
week in Cleveland. (Indeed, Peter is solely responsible for the existence of
one of the chapters in Part II.) Particular thanks are also due to Chris Haufe,
with whom I was able to renew the lively discussions of his time at Columbia.
What I have written here has deep roots in exchanges I have had with
many people in many places during the past decade. My thinking has been
affected by the ideas and reactions of so large a number of generous scholars
in so wide a variety of fields that any attempt to name them all would inevi-
tably be incomplete—and for this I must apologize. During the year I spent
as a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin (2011–2012), I learned much
from some of my fellow fellows, Jeremy Adler, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder,
Alfred Brendel, Ayşe Buğra, Hollis Taylor, and Mark Viney, as well as from
Lorraine Daston, Gerd Gigerenzer, Susan Neiman, and Adrian Piper. When
I returned to Berlin in 2015, to spend a semester at the American Academy,
conversations with Moishe Postone helped me to rein in my tendencies to
methodological individualism. Audiences at my Munich Lectures in Ethics
raised questions that have helped me in revising this book. I am particularly
grateful to my three commentators on that occasion (Rahel Jaeggi, Susan
Neiman, and Amia Srinivasan), whose reactions to different material (that of
Moral Progress, the first part of my projected trilogy) have led me to modify
what I otherwise might have written here.
Similarly, in presentations on pragmatist themes in various places, I have
learned from the questions and objections of my interlocutors. Many thanks
to audiences at my Nordic Pragmatism Lectures in Helsinki, at my Chaire
Mercier Lectures at the Université de Louvain, at the Technical University
of Delft, at the University of Humanistic Studies Utrecht, at the Erasmus
University Rotterdam, and at my 2014 Pentekost Lectures at the University
of Bielefeld. A lecture delivered at Indiana University–Purdue University
Indianapolis enabled me to try out some of the ideas of Chapter 6; and parts
of the material of Chapters 7 and 8 have been presented at the University
of Minnesota, at Temple University, at the University of Rochester, as the
Jonathan Adler memorial lecture at CUNY, and as the Howison lecture at the
University of California at Berkeley. I am particularly grateful for the many
insightful comments I received on these occasions.
Participation in the meetings of the Society for Progress—the brainchild of
Subrahamian Rangan—has had great influence on the material that follows.
xii Preface
philosophical issues about education. From the fall of 2016 on, we have
met almost every week of Columbia’s term-time, frequently for two hours,
reading and discussing principal texts and themes in this area. What I have
learned from these conversations, and from her own brilliant dissertation
work, is immense. I am enormously grateful to her.
In our complementary projects, both Natalia and I have benefited from
the generosity of senior scholars who have devoted large parts of their careers
to the philosophy of education. Harvey Siegel spurred me to write in this
area by inviting me to contribute to the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of
Education. Since then, he has offered me a host of valuable suggestions, in-
cluding detailed comments on a draft of this entire book. Many changes
have resulted from his sensitive and informed reading. Meira Levinson’s
penetrating questions and suggestions about Chapters 1–4 have led me to
recognize the need to clarify many points and to offer more guidance to the
reader. Conversations with Ellen Winner, and her comments on Chapter 8,
have prompted refinements in my approach to education in the arts. Harry
Brighouse’s brilliant and incisive reading of Chapters 5 and 6 enabled me
to correct misleading formulations, and to make those chapters more pre-
cise. For several years now, Randy Curren has offered encouragement, sup-
port, and (probing but gentle) criticism. His extensive suggestions about
Chapters 1–5 have inspired a large number of improvements.
Two readers of the previous draft deserve special thanks. For two decades,
I have enjoyed teaching with two distinguished economists, first with Ronald
Findlay, more recently with Dan O’Flaherty. Dan read the penultimate ver-
sion in its entirety, alerting me to places where more caution was required,
and advising me to elaborate some points, and to frame others differently.
I can only hope that our interchanges have been half as valuable to him as
they have been to me.
Martha Nussbaum offered me a series of questions and suggestions on
every chapter of that draft, some general, some specific, all of them remark-
ably insightful. Her comments have led to the inclusion of new discussions,
to the expansion of others, and to a much clearer explanation of the twists
and turns of my argument. I am not sure if she will feel that all of her concerns
have been adequately addressed, but I hope she will agree that the final ver-
sion is better for the time she devoted to its predecessor. I am deeply grateful
to her.
Finally, I want to thank my family—now a three-generation affair. During
the time through which I have been working out these ideas, my life has not
xiv Preface
only been enriched by their love and support. I have also learned much from
them about the development of the young. Perhaps some progress toward
the kind of education for which this book campaigns will be made in time
for the little ones to benefit from it. Whether or not that is so, I am confident
that the loving parenting they have received provides them with the right
kind of start.
List of Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used for books to which frequent reference
is made:
Between two and three million years ago, our forebears started to make stone
tools. Around one and three-quarter million years before the present, their
technology had progressed, and they began to fashion the “prehistoric Swiss
Army Knife”—the hand-axe. Our hominin ancestors continued to make fur-
ther improvements, and even before our own species, Homo sapiens, arrived
on the scene, surviving artefacts display accumulated techniques.
Behind the examples in the museum cases lie millennia of education. As
we move from the deep past toward the present, it is hard to resist seeing
the later tools as more functional. Edges are sharper; points are finer. Older
achievements are not lost. Instead they serve later generations as bases on
which to build further. Something has been learned and retained—and that
means something has been taught.
So the practice of education is extremely old. It antedates the invention
of writing, antedates the domestication of animals, even antedates the or-
igin of our own species. Small hominin bands, often struggling to meet the
challenges of harsh environments, devised ways of ensuring the survival of
useful techniques. During the past tens of thousands of years, from at least
fifty thousand years before the present, the task has been more complex.
The young have had to learn the approved rules and patterns of group life,
absorbing the accomplishments that have made human sociality go more
smoothly. A band’s continued existence has often depended on its ability to
transmit its practical expertise and its social lore to the next generation. The
progress of practical skills and of social life has depended on another kind of
advance: the adaptation of the system of transmission to meet current needs.
Educational progress.
Yet what has been found to work well in overcoming past obstacles may not
only provide a basis for tackling those of the present; it may also jeopardize
future progress. As with other kinds of evolution, successful ways of solving
the problems at hand are retained—and they may subsequently come to con-
strain the possibilities for addressing today’s problems. Locked into a tradi-
tion, originally introduced to cope with old difficulties, latecomers struggle
2 The Main Enterprise of the World
with new ones. Perhaps they eventually succeed, tacking on some more-or-
less clumsy addition to the established arrangements. Over a long sequence
of generations, the result can be a ramshackle contraption, a Rube Goldberg
device whose functioning is far from perfect. At some point, people may
need to strike out in a new direction. They give up the hand-axe, abandon
stone tools, opt for a different style of technology. Sometimes, they even need
to rethink the ways in which lore is transmitted across the generations.
Much excellent work in the philosophy of education proceeds by leaving
the main contours of the status quo in place. A problem is taken up, and a so-
lution according with the existing framework is proposed. The value of this
kind of work—and there is a significant amount of it—should be evident. The
suggested improvement can be adopted quickly (assuming policymakers will
listen!) and the education of children can be immediately improved. One
very strong reason for objecting to the dismissal of philosophy of education
so commonly found in professional philosophy today lies in an important
fact: the best work in the field does considerable social good.
This book doesn’t attempt philosophy in that vein. Its proposals are
more wide-ranging and more radical. The following chapters collectively
argue (or campaign?) for an extensive revision of our educational policies
and institutions, and for a reconfiguring of society to adapt to the functions
education ought to serve today. To think of any rapid translation of my
suggestions into reform will—rightly—strike readers as absurd.
Why, then, should anyone read the many pages that follow? Because, from
time to time, stock-taking is necessary. Our ways of educating the young
have (as I have noted) a very long history. Out of that history may have come
a grotesque contraption, something so dysfunctional as to foil the advances
required to meet human needs in today’s world. Isn’t it worth taking a look?
Doesn’t that look require thinking hard about what contemporary educa-
tion must do? Can we avoid reflecting on large (and difficult) philosophical
questions about what makes human lives go well and what makes societies
healthy?
Taking that look might buttress confidence in the major features of educa-
tion as they have developed historically. We might see how there is no need
for large-scale revision, either of schools and universities or of the societies
in which they are embedded. One useful result of the inspection might be a
differential evaluation of facets of our institutions. We could recognize what
works well, distinguishing these aspects from others whose success is less
INTRODUCTION 3
to be insufficient. Something more is required to rule out “life plans” that are
harmless but trivial.
A better version of liberalism would add a constraint: your pursuit of
your plan ought to make a positive contribution to the lives of others. Yet
this addition shouldn’t be seen as a patch, something applied after difficulties
have been recognized in the original proposal. Better to see the individual’s
free choice—the heart of the liberal’s approach—as itself formed through
interactions with others in a specific social milieu. The fulfilled life must be
your own, but what counts as “your own” isn’t some conformity to and elab-
oration of a little kernel of a self, present in you at birth. We become who we
are through a dialogue in which the growing person learns from and gives
back to a broader social group. The autonomy liberals prize is inevitably a
matter of degree. The freedom of our choice is improved when the parties
in the dialogue are mutually sensitive, when the social interactions through
which a person is formed are attentive to the emerging individual, and when
the nascent self is similarly sensitive to those who nurture its development.
The dialogue goes awry when interlocutors impose, and, equally, when the
plan the person makes is insensitive to the needs and aspirations of others.
To view things in these terms deepens the case for the proposals of
Chapter 2. Education is the site at which individuals are formed, and thus
is rightly central. For the dialogue to go well, individual predilections have
to be recognized. The chances of that are increased as more people, who
bring varied perspectives, are involved. Moreover, understanding fulfillment
through contribution to something larger (and more enduring) than the
individual self helps connect the capacity for fulfillment to the capacity for
citizenship.
That connection is elaborated in Chapter 4. I begin from a considera-
tion of democracy—and from contemporary perceptions of its troubles.
Democracy, I suggest, comes at a number of levels, as well as at various scales.
A shallow conception of democracy focuses on elections and votes: democ-
racy is in place whenever there are regular elections, with choice of candidates
and opportunities for all adults to vote. A deeper level recognizes the impor-
tance of free and open debate, so that citizens have the chance to understand
how their votes might best promote their interests. Deeper still lies Dewey’s
concept of democracy as a “shared way of life” in which regular interactions
among citizens promote mutual learning and accommodation.
Although some commentators today worry about defects in the me-
chanics of voting (as, for example, when questions arise about the ways in
8 The Main Enterprise of the World
which the boundaries of electoral districts are drawn), these are not the most
fundamental concerns about the health of current democracies. Many would
point to the ways in which the conditions of public debate have diverged
from the open arena envisaged by Mill and other champions of free speech
and discussion. Critics identify the distortions apparently responsible for
a misinformed electorate, unable to recognize policies bearing on widely
shared concerns (as, for example, in votes for candidates who downplay
or scoff at the threat posed by climate change). Worries of this kind probe
more deeply than the anxieties about elections, but they do not penetrate far
enough. I argue that the problems at the relatively superficial levels cannot be
adequately addressed without restoring the conditions central to Dewey’s ap-
proach to democracy. Deweyan democracy demands educative interactions
among citizens, occasions for deliberation together by people with different
perspectives.
The core of democracy, I argue, consists in conversations aiming to ex-
emplify three virtues: inclusiveness, informedness, and mutual engagement.
Deliberations are more inclusive when more of the perspectives adopted by
people affected by the issue at hand are represented. They are better informed
to the extent that participants base their contributions on well-established
findings and there are barriers to appealing to recognized falsehoods and
misinformation. Mutual engagement is promoted the more the discussants
are committed to understanding the perspectives of others and to seeking an
outcome all those involved can tolerate.
To the extent that deliberations of this sort can be (re)introduced into
democracies, we can expect to avoid recurrent reversals of policy that harm
all through the instability they generate, and to diminish polarization and
fragmentation. Democracy sometimes reigns at small scales—in the family
or the local community. The challenge is to build on these models, finding
ways to advance democratic deliberations in the political life of large, mul-
ticultural states (and, ultimately, across national borders). Answering the
challenge is, in part, a matter of constructing social institutions, but it surely
requires cultivating a specific kind of citizenship. If young people were ac-
customed, from their earliest years, to plan together, in ever larger and more
diverse groups, they would be more likely to emerge as adults who could
transfer their skills and virtues into realizing Deweyan democracy.
Chapter 4 culminates in outlining an educational program for how
this might be achieved (and here my proposals are frankly experimental).
Deweyan citizens, if they can be reliably reared, would not only overcome
INTRODUCTION 9
1 The Ethical Project (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2011) and Moral Progress
(one that the chapter presents in much more detail). They complete my at-
tempt to offer a framework, capable of reconciling the potentially conflicting
major aims of Chapter 1, and of placing education at the center of human life.
The rest of the book is devoted to explaining in more detail what this might
mean for the work of the schools (Part II) and to defending against charges
that it is, inevitably, a fantasy (Part III).
Chapters 7–9 fill in the scaffolding erected in Part I by considering the con-
tent of a general, pre-university, education, one appropriately shared by all
students. Chapter 7 begins with the natural sciences. Public discussions of
the institution of science (“science” in the singular) or of the various sci-
ences are frequently distorted by faulty general views—and the early part of
the chapter attempts to correct these. I argue that the sciences are diverse,
and that individual sciences are inevitably selective. Human inquiry could
never attain more than a ludicrously inadequate approximation to “the com-
plete truth about nature,” and investigators rightly seek answers to questions
meeting human needs and satisfying human aspirations. In consequence,
scientific research should be viewed as a socially embedded activity, one that
ought to be in dialogue with the people whom the sciences serve.
Educational implications follow. The public must be prepared to play its
part in this dialogue, to offer the community of investigators a clear and
realistic picture of its own interests and to rely on the outcomes of well-
conducted inquiry. Schools and universities do not just have the task of
renewing the scientific community, generating new specialists to replace
those whose powers have waned. They must also produce citizens able to
help set directions for new lines of inquiry, and able to assess how discoveries
bear on public policies. All over the world, one of these needs—the need to
train the next generation of scientists—is widely appreciated. In reaction to
it, many nations, concerned to boost their economies through science-based
technologies, have set up programs to encourage (and accelerate) the flow of
new researchers.
Blanket attempts to ensure that no potential scientist is overlooked run
contrary to the second goal of science education—the cultivation of a sci-
entifically literate public. Force-feeding students as if all were destined for
careers in research or in applications of the sciences tends to alienate young
people who recognize, from an early age, that this is not a promising direction
for them. Dulled by classes in which they are asked to memorize technical
INTRODUCTION 13
vocabulary and to struggle (unsuccessfully) with toy problems, they lose the
curiosity of their early school-years, dismissing the sciences as arid, boring,
and incomprehensible. As adults—and voters—they are ill equipped to un-
derstand the technical issues on which policy questions turn. Even when, as
with climate change, such questions are crucial to their own lives, and those
of their children and grandchildren.
Chapter 7 proposes a remedy, distinguishing general science education
from the forms of rigorous training appropriate for those who come to see
a scientific career (perhaps in research, perhaps in some area where work
is informed by results of past research) as a real possibility for themselves.
Focusing on preserving a sense of wonder and on instilling a capacity for
continuing to follow scientific developments, I suggest some concrete ways
in which general education in the sciences might be reconfigured. The
amended curriculum aims to avoid producing dilettantes, while simultane-
ously recognizing the deadening effects of treating all students as if they were
researchers-in-the-making. Scientific literacy can—and should—be avail-
able to all.
If science education is often overemphasized at the secondary level—
with the distortions I have noted—training in the arts is typically viewed as
a luxury, something dispensable in the competitive contemporary world.
Chapter 8 responds to this situation by making the case for continued edu-
cation in some field (or fields) of the arts (broadly construed). Indeed, I con-
tend that the arts should be awarded a far larger place in the curriculum than
they have been given, at least in my lifetime, and quite possibly at any time in
the past few centuries.
My case begins with demolishing a myth. Many people believe firmly in
the progress of the natural sciences, while denying the progress of the arts.
Their judgment rests on a faulty comparison. They recognize, quite correctly,
how, in some periods, the works of art produced in a particular genre are su-
perior to those created at later times—perhaps landscape painting has never
again achieved the heights attained by the Dutch masters of the Golden Age
(the seventeenth century). It’s easy to ignore the parallel fact that scientific
creativity comes in uneven bursts—Newton’s annus mirabilis (1665) is aptly
named. Natural sciences progress by accumulating resources (statements,
equations, graphs, data sets, instruments, and so forth) that can be deployed
by subsequent generations. So, too, with respect to the arts. We don’t lose van
Ruisdael, Hobbema, and Vermeer when we acquire Constable, Turner, and
Van Gogh.
14 The Main Enterprise of the World
So perhaps the difference between the arts and the sciences consists in the
practical applications to which scientific research leads? Advances in biology
help (or might help?) us to conserve or improve the environment; landscape
paintings don’t do anything similar (although they could be sources of in-
spiration). Nonscientists routinely suppose the importance of investigating
the natural world to lie in the practical benefits it ultimately delivers—the
agricultural advances, the devices that ease our lives, and above all the med-
ical improvements, the drugs, the treatments, and the vaccines. On that
score there is a case for regarding scientific progress as more significant.
Yet scientists typically do not view technology as grounding the distinctive
importance of their work. Instead, they point to the intrinsic benefits of a
deeper and richer understanding of nature. If that is the sphere in which the
comparison should be made, then, I maintain, the everyday judgment ought
to be reversed. The arts win.
Once the histories of visual art, of music, of literature, drama, dance,
and film are seen as amassing resources for the improvement of human
lives, it is important to ask just what these alleged resources do for people.
I offer a threefold answer. First, encounters with the arts can have a spe-
cial vitality—they are episodes in which we are most vividly alive. Second,
the effects of our engagement with the artworks we love are not transitory;
they affect, sometimes profoundly, the course of our subsequent experience.
Third, the arts can teach us. Not through any direct inculcation of infor-
mation, but by showing us the need to revise the concepts and perspectives
we have previously brought to our decisions and to our reasoning. Art can
modify the framework in which we set our lives, our experiences, and our
interactions with others. In the fundamental revisions it generates, it usually
has a far more powerful effect on people than do their advances in scientific
understanding.
Chapter 8 tries to make a detailed case for the line of reasoning I have
sketched. On that basis, I explore ways in which young people’s education in
the arts should proceed. Here, three points are central. First, it is important to
combine receptivity to art with developing abilities to create in some mode.
We should take seriously the project of instilling skills sufficient to enable
people to enjoy working in the genres of art that appeal to them and to en-
able them to appreciate and engage with the achievements of others in those
genres. Second, we should recognize the diversity of tastes. I defend a mod-
erate egalitarianism. Almost everyone is capable of aesthetic experiences
with the three significant benefits I identify. Yet there is significant variation
in the genres and works capable of generating those benefits. An important
INTRODUCTION 15
Skeptics may offer more general doubts. They may deny, for example, that
productivity—today or in the foreseeable future—is enough to support a
satisfactory Deweyan society. Or they may question economic regulation,
singing familiar anthems to the virtues of the “free market.” I offer a response
to the first line of argument, by recognizing the enormous waste allowed in
our current practices. The second, I suggest, rests on a widespread myth, one
that either invokes an impossibility (the completely unregulated market) or
else favors a particular style of supposedly “minimal regulation.” The latter
choice is well suited to reducing the prices of consumer goods. Yet, as wise
economists periodically remind us, regulation of markets should be tailored
to the goals we intend to achieve. It is not entirely obvious that the lowest
possible prices are the summum bonum to which everything else we value
should be sacrificed.
The chapter concludes by recognizing the difficulty of offering a detailed
roadmap showing the route to the Deweyan society. Here, I recommend a
pragmatic answer. The conditions distilled at the end of Chapter 10 indicate
the directions in which we might advance. Let us head off in these directions,
adjust our plans as we go, and see how far we can get.
Chapter 1 begins with Mill, and it is fitting that he should return at the
close of Chapter 11. A distinctive feature of his approach to economic is-
sues is his willingness to tolerate the “stationary state”—to champion the
many-sidedness of human life against the relentless striving to accumulate
wealth. That attitude is shared by others, including people from very different
traditions—Rabindranath Tagore and John Dewey are notable examples.
Despite the dominance of supposed economic constraints in much contem-
porary thinking about social issues, the attitude still thrives today in the work
of socially attuned philosophers—sometimes in the work of thinkers specif-
ically concerned with education, sometimes en passant in studies of other
facets of our culture.2
Perhaps the clearest and most forceful expression of the wish to turn dom-
inance on its head comes in the passage from “The American Scholar” I have
adapted as the title and the epigraph for this book. My interpretation of
2 Thus, besides the principal writings of Harry Brighouse, Randall Curren, Meira Levinson, and
Harvey Siegel, it pervades Martha Nussbaum’s impressive corpus. It is also clearly discernible in
Kwame Anthony Appiah’s important book, The Lies That Bind, New York: W. W. Norton, 2018; see, in
particular, 177–79.
20 The Main Enterprise of the World
3 I conjecture, however, that his use of the odd word “upbuilding” was an attempt to echo the
In 1867, two years after the students of St. Andrews University had elected
him as their rector, John Stuart Mill took a break from his duties as a member
of Parliament, and traveled north to Scotland to deliver his Inaugural
Address. Mill began by alluding with approval to the custom of using the
occasion to offer “a few thoughts” on the subject of liberal education.1 He
continued, somewhat ominously, by remarking that “Education, in its larger
sense, is one of the most inexhaustible of all topics.”2 The speech lived up
to his advertisement, for, although he spoke quickly, Mill went on for more
than three hours.3 I don’t know how his audience reacted, but it seems a safe
bet to suppose that the undergraduates found him less entertaining than
their successors who listened, just over a century later, to their own choice as
rector—the British comedian, and famous silly-walker, John Cleese.
The text of Mill’s address might provoke suspicion that, like Topsy, it just
growed. Early on, he made it clear how some kinds of education were be-
yond his intended scope. Professional training has no place in his thoughts.
To be sure, there should be schools of law, medicine, and engineering, but
these do not belong to the project of general education, to which universities
ought to be dedicated.4 He began with the question, disputed then as now, of
the relative roles of the humanities and the sciences in a general education.
Mill proposed to settle the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,
the defenders of classical learning and the champions of natural science,
by awarding prizes to both sides.5 The writings of antiquity, in the original
Greek and Latin, retain their great importance.6 Study of them should be
1 SMC 321.
2 SMC 321.
3 See https://news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/the-liberal-university-and-its-enemies/.
4 SMC 322.
5 SMC 324. This had not always been his position. Some of his earlier writings (e.g., “On Genius”
[1832] and “Civilization—Signs of the Times” [1836]) claim distinctive virtues for classical studies.
By 1867, he had become more positive about the contributions of modern languages and literature.
6 SMC 328–33. The special character of the ancients as foils for the understanding of contempo-
rary life and contemporary society features prominently among Mill’s reasons. The ancient Greeks
and Romans are more unlike (British) students than other modern European peoples, but not totally
dissimilar (like the “Orientals”; SMC 329). Classical languages, literature, philosophy, and history
24 THE MAIN ENTERPRISE OF THE WORLD
thus serve as an intended “multicultural” requirement. The social class of Mill’s intended audience
is made plain by his thought that acquaintance with modern languages and modern cultures is best
served through travel and a period of residence in another country.
7 SMC 325. Here Mill sketches the methods he thinks appropriate in language instruction. Later
(SMC 333–34) he castigates the emphasis placed on exercises in writing Greek and Latin verse,
pointing out that the important goal is to achieve a reading knowledge of the languages.
8 SMC 338–40.
9 SMC 340.
10 SMC 340–41.
11 SMC 341, 342.
12 SMC 343.
13 SMC 343.
14 SMC 344.
15 SMC 344. Here, Mill is at pains to defend the “dismal science” against the charge that it induces
insensitivity to others. The significance of this apparent excursion becomes clearer in light of his later
interest in the arts as cultivating the emotions.
Overload 25
ther, James Mill, and gives a poignant account of his breakdown and recovery. Mill senior was
a close friend of Bentham’s, and intended that his eldest son should be the apostle of Benthamite
Utilitarianism for the next generation. The all-too-common interpretation of Mill as a utilitarian
who deviated little from Bentham would be corrected if philosophers were to read more widely in
Mill’s writings—studying the essays “Bentham” and “Coleridge,” as well as Principles of Political
Economy, Considerations on Representative Government, the posthumous chapters on socialism, the
Autobiography, the literary essays on poetry, and the Inaugural Address. In “Mill, Education, and
the Good Life,” in John Stuart Mill and the Art of Living, ed. Ben Eggleston, Dale Miller, and David
26 THE MAIN ENTERPRISE OF THE WORLD
Weinstein (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 192–211; and in “Mill’s Consequentialism,”
in The Routledge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Thought, ed. Dean Moyar (London: Routledge,
2010), 633–57, I have tried to set the record straight.
27 This conception emerges in Mill’s early characterization of the educated person as having a par-
ticular specialization set within a broad general knowledge that provides a “map” of the whole (SMC
323), and in the closing picture of human life as increased (“tenfold”) in value through contributions
to humanity (SMC 353–54).
28 The military forces Plato envisages are not restricted to defense. Sometimes, apparently, it proves
necessary to “seize some of our neighbors’ land” (373d; R 1012). As the later Laws makes clear, under
ideal conditions, no military class would be required. (Thanks to Randy Curren for alerting me to
this point.)
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ARTICLE VI
NATIONAL DEBTS: SUPREMACY OF NATIONAL
LAW:
OATH
1. All debts contracted and engagements entered into,
before the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid
against the United States under this Constitution as under
the Confederation.
2. This Constitution, and the laws of the United States
which shall be made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties
made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the
United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the
judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the
constitution or laws of any state to the contrary
notwithstanding.
3. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned,
and the members of the several state legislatures, and all
executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and
of the several states, shall be bound, by oath or affirmation,
to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be
required as a qualification to any office or public trust under
the United States.
ARTICLE VII
ESTABLISHMENT OF CONSTITUTION
1. The ratification of the conventions of nine states shall be
sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between
the states so ratifying the same.
AMENDMENTS[319]
ARTICLE I
FREEDOM OF RELIGION, OF SPEECH, AND OF
THE
PRESS: RIGHT OF PETITION
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
government for a redress of grievances.
ARTICLE II
RIGHT TO KEEP ARMS
A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a
free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall
not be infringed.
ARTICLE III
QUARTERING OF SOLDIERS IN PRIVATE
HOUSES
No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any
house, without the consent of the owner; nor, in time of war,
but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
ARTICLE IV
SEARCH WARRANTS
The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall
issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or
affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
ARTICLE V
CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or
otherwise infamous, crime, unless on a presentment or
indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land
or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service, in
time of war, or public danger; nor shall any person be
subject, for the same offence, to be twice put in jeopardy of
life or limb; nor shall be compelled, in any criminal case, to
be a witness against himself; nor be deprived of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law; nor shall private
property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
[320]
ARTICLE VI
CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS (continued)
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the
right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the
state and district wherein the crime shall have been
committed, which district shall have been previously
ascertained by law; and to be informed of the nature and
cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses
against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining
witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel
for his defence.
ARTICLE VII
JURY TRIAL IN CIVIL CASES
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy
shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be
preserved; and no fact, tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-
examined in any court of the United States than according to
the rules of the common law.
ARTICLE VIII
EXCESSIVE PUNISHMENTS
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines
imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
ARTICLE IX
UNENUMERATED RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall
not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the
people.
ARTICLE X
POWERS RESERVED TO STATES
The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to
the states respectively, or to the people.
ARTICLE XI[321]
SUITS AGAINST STATES
The judicial power of the United States shall not be
construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced
or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of
another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.
ARTICLE XII
ELECTION OF PRESIDENT AND VICE-
PRESIDENT
1. The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and
vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom,
at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with
themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted
for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for
as Vice-President; and they shall make distinct lists of all
persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for
as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each,
which lists they shall sign, and certify, and transmit, sealed,
to the seat of the Government of the United States, directed
to the President of the Senate; the President of the Senate
shall, in the presence of the Senate and the House of
Representatives, open all the certificates, and the votes shall
then be counted; the person having the greatest number of
votes for President shall be the President, if such number be
a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if
no person have such a majority, then, from the persons
having the highest numbers, not exceeding three, on the list
of those voted for as President, the House of
Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the
President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be
taken by states, the representation from each state having
one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a
member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a
majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And
if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President,
whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before
the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-
President shall act as President, as in case of the death, or
other constitutional disability, of the President.[322]
2. The person having the greatest number of votes as
Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number
be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and
if no person have a majority, then, from the two highest
numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-
President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-
thirds of the whole number of Senators; a majority of the
whole number shall be necessary to a choice.[322]
3. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of
President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the
United States,
ARTICLE XIII[323]
SLAVERY
Section 1. Abolition of Slavery