Teachers in the old order saw themselves as participants in an unchanging venture. They stood with their ancestors in what Max Weber called the ‘‘eternal yesterday’’ of tradition. In doing so, they achieved a position immune to the corrupting powers of time. They experienced a kind of immortality, directly in their own lives and within the limits of their own experience. One might say that they enacted the idea of eternity in their lives. For the research scholar, this experience is no longer available. A scholar of course thinks of himself as a participant in a timeless venture too—in his discipline’s unending pursuit of perfect knowledge—and identifies with the transience of his work, that deprives him of the experience of eternity in the deathless company of his ancestors, and leaves him facing death alone and unconsoled. If specialization is a price that must be paid for originality, then loneliness is too -- Anthony Kronman on the research ideal
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 19:55:51 +0000
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