Sarah, it is curious that the modern secular academic community has become so morally dogmatic. Opinions expressed that run afoul of the politically acceptable view are punished—not for being mistaken but for being heretical. A student at the University of Cincinnati was failed recently by a professor for using the term “biological women…
Sarah, it is curious that the modern secular academic community has become so morally dogmatic. Opinions expressed that run afoul of the politically acceptable view are punished—not for being mistaken but for being heretical. A student at the University of Cincinnati was failed recently by a professor for using the term “biological women.” After the student complained about this and revealed the details of the incident on social media, the university reprimanded the teacher. Since then, that reprimand has been rescinded. The matter has been in the news. At the same time, the secular academic community, what I like to refer to as the New Puritan Oligarchy, has no authoritative basis for making moral judgments at all. This is a most curious biformity.
So, you are quite right in your analysis. The amoral intellectual seems to be an ideal. I would cite A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic, for example. In chapter six of that book (“Critique of Ethics and Theology”), Ayer tells us that an ethical claim is simply devoid of cognitive meaning. That is, an ethical statement cannot even be a proposition, for propositions are, in principle, either true or false. Consequently, morality cannot be a matter of knowledge at all. Nonetheless, the academic community, which would nod approvingly at Ayer’s position, establishes cancel-culture tribunals to weed out heretical opinions, such as “men cannot be women, and women cannot be men.”
But let me give you a more recent example that confirms your claim that the amoral is an academic ideal. Dr. Joel Marks is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University New Haven. He is also a Bioethics Center Scholar at Yale University. He is an established scholar with many academics works under his name. For most of his career, he was an adherent of Kantian ethical theory. In 2010, that changed. He published the first part of his “An Amoral Manifesto” in Philosophy Now. I give the link to parts one and two of that Manifesto below.
Sarah, you will find this contemporary scholar’s views quite interesting. I urge you to read both parts of his “Manifesto.” He confirms your claims, but you will notice that he keeps talking about ethics. Here is the first paragraph from part one of Dr. Mark’s Manifesto.
“I. Hard Atheism or What Shall I Name This Column?
Hold onto your hats, folks. Although it is perhaps fitting that the actual day on which I sit here at my computer writing this column is April 1st, let me assure you that I do not intend this as a joke. For the last couple of years I have been reflecting on and experimenting with a new ethics, and as a result I have thrown over my previous commitment to Kantianism. In fact, I have given up morality altogether! This has certainly come as a shock to me (and also a disappointment, to put it mildly). I think the time has come, therefore, to reveal it to the world, and in particular to you, Dear Reader, who have patiently considered my defenses of a particular sort of moral theory for the last ten years. In a word, this philosopher has long been laboring under an unexamined assumption, namely, that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I now believe there isn’t.”
Sarah, it is curious that the modern secular academic community has become so morally dogmatic. Opinions expressed that run afoul of the politically acceptable view are punished—not for being mistaken but for being heretical. A student at the University of Cincinnati was failed recently by a professor for using the term “biological women.” After the student complained about this and revealed the details of the incident on social media, the university reprimanded the teacher. Since then, that reprimand has been rescinded. The matter has been in the news. At the same time, the secular academic community, what I like to refer to as the New Puritan Oligarchy, has no authoritative basis for making moral judgments at all. This is a most curious biformity.
So, you are quite right in your analysis. The amoral intellectual seems to be an ideal. I would cite A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic, for example. In chapter six of that book (“Critique of Ethics and Theology”), Ayer tells us that an ethical claim is simply devoid of cognitive meaning. That is, an ethical statement cannot even be a proposition, for propositions are, in principle, either true or false. Consequently, morality cannot be a matter of knowledge at all. Nonetheless, the academic community, which would nod approvingly at Ayer’s position, establishes cancel-culture tribunals to weed out heretical opinions, such as “men cannot be women, and women cannot be men.”
But let me give you a more recent example that confirms your claim that the amoral is an academic ideal. Dr. Joel Marks is professor emeritus of philosophy at the University New Haven. He is also a Bioethics Center Scholar at Yale University. He is an established scholar with many academics works under his name. For most of his career, he was an adherent of Kantian ethical theory. In 2010, that changed. He published the first part of his “An Amoral Manifesto” in Philosophy Now. I give the link to parts one and two of that Manifesto below.
Sarah, you will find this contemporary scholar’s views quite interesting. I urge you to read both parts of his “Manifesto.” He confirms your claims, but you will notice that he keeps talking about ethics. Here is the first paragraph from part one of Dr. Mark’s Manifesto.
“I. Hard Atheism or What Shall I Name This Column?
Hold onto your hats, folks. Although it is perhaps fitting that the actual day on which I sit here at my computer writing this column is April 1st, let me assure you that I do not intend this as a joke. For the last couple of years I have been reflecting on and experimenting with a new ethics, and as a result I have thrown over my previous commitment to Kantianism. In fact, I have given up morality altogether! This has certainly come as a shock to me (and also a disappointment, to put it mildly). I think the time has come, therefore, to reveal it to the world, and in particular to you, Dear Reader, who have patiently considered my defenses of a particular sort of moral theory for the last ten years. In a word, this philosopher has long been laboring under an unexamined assumption, namely, that there is such a thing as right and wrong. I now believe there isn’t.”
An Amoral Manifesto (Part I): https://philosophynow.org/issues/80/An_Amoral_Manifesto_Part_I
An Amoral Manifesto (Part II): https://philosophynow.org/issues/81/An_Amoral_Manifesto_Part_II