For clearly, to deny the existence of objective values is to deprive the university of its spiritual means of operation. Values are the pre-requisite of any inquiry into art, letters and the humanities. For example, how can you study literature without passing literary judgement and making reference to literary *quality*? Without having recourse to aesthetic appreciation, what enables you to assess that Jane Austen truly pertains to your discipline – but not Barbara Cartland? If, in the name of a spurious scientific objectivity, every bit of printed matter has an equal right to call upon the literary scholar’s attention, on what basis should he exclude from his scrutiny lawnmower handbooks and Superman comics? The actual fact is that, nowadays, *he does not*. In these areas, the most grotesque imagination is always overtaken by stark reality, and I should not be surprised if I were to learn that, right now, in the English Literature Departments of our vanguard universities...there are earnest candidates for the doctoral degree, hard at work “deconstructing” the telephone directory. A true university is (and has always been) anchored in values. Deprived of this holding ground, it can only drift at the caprice of all the winds and currents of fashion, and, in the end, is doomed to founder in the shallows of farce and incoherence”. -- Pierre Ryckmans In memoriam Pierre Ryckmans (whose pen name was Simon Leys). He was a well known Australian literary critic and sinologist who died 11th August, 2014. This extract is from his 1996 Boyer Lectures which was subsequently published as a short book -- A View from the Bridge: Aspects of Culture.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 07:29:29 +0000
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