Tuesday, April 05, 2005
(5:03 AM) | Anonymous:
Multiversities.
This was meant to be a comment box in response to Adam post on forgiveness, but it grew and I, like Brad below, was reminded of a different passage that only bears a brief resemblance to the subject of Adam's post.To my mind, the post on forgiveness is the best that Adam has written the entire time that I've been reading the blog. That he did so at the same time as criticising what he set out to do just makes it even better.
As an aside, I have just finished the book "Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim" by Ziauddin Sardar. He wrote of forming what I might call "conclaves" of like minded Muslim scholars when he became aware that so much Muslim dialogue had ceased to be innovative and draw from the widest parts of the tradition. Here is a largish excerpt from Sardar that reminded me (I think) of Milbank (p159):
"'Our real problem,' Kalim Sahib said in a deeply reflective mood one day, 'is that we have two types of knowledge. Let us call them operational knowledge and non-operational knowledge. Our operational knowledge is one of western sciences - social, physical and technological - acquired either in the West or in western-type educational establishments. This western knowledge makes sense to us because the social and economic orders in which we live are the product of western civilization. For example, the economic theory we read is part of our daily experience and we can see it at work.' He paused. Kalim Sahib liked to play with his glasses: respositioning them on his nose; removing and replacing them with diverse flourishes and sweeps; turning them in his hands; examining the angles formed by manipulating the side pieces and the flexibility of the hinges. He took off his spectacles, placing them carefully on the table. 'As Muslims,' he continued 'we also have knowledge of Islam. This is our non-operational knowledge. Either Islam is non-operational in our lives, or Islam's operational forms with which we are familiar are confined to prayer, fasting and the rituals at birth, marriage and death. No operational and functional social order of Islam either exists in its entirety today or has existed in recent history. The model social, economic and political orders of Islam in fact existed so long ago, during the time of the Prophet Muhammed and maybe during the Abbasid period, that, for minds immsersed in western disciples, it is difficult to comprehend how social, economic and political problems of today can be solved along Islamic lines.'
'Yet,' Ajmal Sahib intervened, 'as committed Muslims we feel the need to assert our identity and free our personality from the stranglehold the West has on us.'
'Precisely,' Kalim Sahib shot back. 'We do this by asserting the supremacy of Islam. We declare that Islam is superior, but do not know why. We declare that Islam can solve all our individual and collective problems, but do not know how. When we try to solve our problems we end up with something resembling either the capitalist and democratic model of the socialist, Marxist model, or a variant of both. We then proceed to "Islamize" the model of our choice by calling it "Islamic".'
'What we need to do is to discover how we can put our Islamic knowledge into practice,' I said, stating the obvious conclusion.
'And how do we do that?' Kalim Sahib asked.
'By drawing detailed conceptual maps and operational plans of a Muslim civilisation of the future,' I replied, not exactly sure I understood precisely what this confident pronoucement meant.
'Yes,' Kalim Sahib replied. 'We need a bagful of new conceptual tools to examine why the recent revivalist movements have failed and to prepare the blueprint of a post-nation-state era that would usher in a new dynamic, thriving future civilisation of Islam.'
'And where do we start?' Ajmal Sahib asked.
'We nessd to start by developing various academic disciplines such as economics and sociology, alternative operational models of political systems, and concrete policies for advancing science and technology,' I said.
'Every civilisation needs its own political science,' added Kalim Sahib, the political scientist. 'Yet we have managed to do without one for over a thousand years.' He paused for thought. 'I think this is because Muslims could not conceive of Islam or themselves outside the framework of a political system. But now that we have realised that hte idea of State in Islam is fundamentally different from the idea of the modern nation-state, it has become essential for us to develop our own political science.'
'But how can we do this all on our own?' Ajmal Sahib cried. 'We don't have to,' Kalim Sahib said. We all looked at each other; and allowed Kalim Sahib to articulate what we hoped might be done. 'Let us establish an Institute, with a core of young intellectuals, to understake the project'
.----
Now that conversation doesn't strike me as too disimilar from conversations that are sometimes heard here on the nation-state, and democracy. The idea of challenging the hegemony of certain disciplines is taken up with a vengeance by Milbank. Maybe you guys were trying to establish your own kind of Institute when you set up the University Without Condition. I've not read what you did there or were attempting to achieve, so I don't know.
Yet, it seems to me that Adam is right about "the professionalalistic approach". Some time ago, when I was assisting with a day for students where talks were given along the lines of: "why come to X university to study theology?", I started hearing people give all of the "other careers" that one could do after one had studied. This is partly common sense. Theologians aren't much needed in general society, and it doesn't pay well. On the other hand, I think it represents an entire undermining of the discipline. If theology doesn't screw your life up to the point where you can't do anything else, maybe it hasn't performed its task well enough. Maybe you could say the same for philosophy. After all, the reason that we undertake philosophy and theology degrees is not in order to become real estate brokers. If theologians and philosophers are employable by other people, maybe they're not well enough formed.
But there is a problem in that our universites are interested in churning out people who will be good for the economy. The problem is, this is not the interest of the theologian. It might almost be against the interest of the theologian. Much of the best theology used to be done in monasteries, and surely that's not accident. Theologians, I think, ought to be concerned about becoming too rich. I've a feeling that too many material goods probably obscure one's vision, making it harder to speak of God. Since the aim of the university is to make rich people, who can then contribute back to the university to leave it well-endowed, it may eventually transpire the university has no place for theologians. Indeed, it may no longer be where the best theology is spoken. Do philosophers have and share the same problem?
Questions of forgiveness have become secondary to those of churning out publications and scoring high on research exercises. We stop meditating on the texts as fully as we ought. We publish millions of little articles instead of what could be a few great works. Yet, as our vision of the good comes to look so different from the end of the university, we will find that there won't be room for us for much longer. What happens if the question of forgiveness turns out not to be economically viable? Do we have alternative structures in place for studying? Do we have underground networks of theologians (or philosophers) who will keep studying the texts in order to meditate on them, in order to become certain kinds of people? Do we have people who can speak their discipline faithfully who are not part of the university, who have time to dedicate themselves to forming new generations of scholars?
It is intriguing that some of the cathedrals in this country employ those whom they give the title "Canon theologian". It will be in small enclaves like that, when churches realise that they will lose theologians and theology if they leave it to the academy, that we will begin to see a de-professionalization of the discipline. It will be 'ok' for people not to have to publish, and to have a much lighter teaching load, and for that teaching load to consist of catechesis, and not training up people who will eventually become lawyers. That's not to say that lawyers don't need to be theologians, or to have training in theology, but only that that cannot be the main purpose of training theologians. Indeed, the main purpose of the theologian is to speak beyond him or herself to glorify God, and that certainly won't pay well, and, quite frankly, I don't see how we will be able to justify it to the university for much longer. Do philosophers share that difficulty? Is philosophy good for society, in the way that people currently use the word society? Does it still form people, and mess up lives the way it's taught in universities? Or, is it necessary to start talking of the formation of new institutes? Ought we to take the opinion of the passage quoted above, and meet in small groups that may eventually lead to a different kind of structure for learning?
