137
Metafísica y Persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis
of education in the neoliberal era
¿Idiotas en lugar de personas? La crisis
de la educación en la era neoliberal
UPAEP, Universidad, Puebla, México
juanpablo.aranda@upaep.mx
To Martín López Calva and Jorge Medina, for the
countless times we have talked about these issues.
-
whelming weight of neoliberalism. While democracy is giving way to post-democratic
and populist regimes wherein democratic forms are preserved while its substance is aban-
doned, the university is progressively adopting formalistic approaches for the mass-pro-
duction of useful workers, self-centered individuals incapable of critical and independent
thought. These narcissistic individuals (“idiots
assume their role as tolerant, participative, and emphatic citizens. This work traces the
parallels between the political and the academic, asserting that, in the end, both rest on
the same rejection of a robust notion of the human person and her dignity, which is at the
basis of any democratic experiment.
Keywords: Individual, person, education, neoliberalism, democracy.
La universidad, otrora lugar de formación de ciudadanos, cede cada vez más ante el
peso abrumador del neoliberalismo. Mientras la democracia pierde terreno frente a re-
gímenes posdemocráticos y populistas que conservan las formas democráticas mientras
abandonan su esencia, la universidad adopta progresivamente enfoques formalistas para
la producción en masa de trabajadores útiles, individuos egocéntricos incapaces de pen-
1
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
138
ambos se apoyan en el mismo rechazo a una noción robusta de la persona humana y su
dignidad, que está en la base de cualquier experimento democrático.
Palabras clave: Individuo, persona, educación, neoliberalismo, democracia.
Introduction
The third millennium of the Christian era has seen a steady erosion of
democracy.
2
John Milbank pinpoints the beginning of this crisis twelve
years after the fall of communism,
3
deeming the terrorist attacks on New
York as the inflection point between democratic hegemony and its degen-
eration. Many scholars have discussed this shift, considering it either a
middle-age crisis,
4
a consequence of the erosion of the norms that used
to govern access to power,
5
the becoming hubristic of the two pillars of
liberal democracy, namely, its liberal and popular elements,
6
or a muta-
tion caused by the encroachment of the economic sphere upon the other
spheres of human experience.
7
In a similar way, universities are increasingly yielding to the overwhelm-
ing weight of economic mentality. It is not just that research, funded by big
corporations, has been privatized,
8
thus leaving aside the university’s social
responsibility. The university has adopted the economic logic as its guiding
principle, transforming itself into a business the goal of which is described in
terms of gain.
9
The economic principle has transformed the university, turn-
ing students into customers, teachers into providers of a service, and academ-
ic programs into career paths that promise economic success to those holding
2
, Freedom in the Word 2022
3
, J., and , S. (Eds.), The Radical Orthodoxy Reader, New York: Routledge, 2009,
p. 353. Cf. , ., Democracy Incorporated. Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted
Totalitarianism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, pp. 5-12.
4
, D., How Democracy Ends
5
, S., and , D., How Democracies Die, New York: Crown, 2018.
6
, Y., The vs. Democracy: Why our freedom is in danger and how to save it, Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 2018.
7
, W., In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West, New
York: Columbia University Press, 2019; , C., Post-Democracy, Cambridge: Polity, 2004;
Post-Democracy After the Crisis, Cambridge: Polity, 2020.
8
Cultural Studies
↔ Critical Methodologies, vol. 9, núm. 5, 2009, pp. 1-27.
9
, M., , Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2010, p. 9.
139
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
of indicators that hinder, rather than advance, the goals of education.
10
From its inception, the university was imagined as a privileged place for
critical thinking, and it is today a key ingredient in the democratic mix. The
ability to think right is, to be sure, synonymous with neither democracy nor
even civility, but it is nonetheless a precondition for the existence of both.
11
According
to her, only the model of liberal arts education can provide students with the
skills that are proper to active, tolerant, and accountable citizens in a healthy
democracy.
There is, thus, an intimate relationship between democracy and the hu-
manities. The liberal arts model is indebted to a robust conception of the
human person, a notion that goes beyond the liberal individual, postulating
that the self is ontologically incomplete and thus necessitated of others, of a
life in community.
In this work I assert that the notion of the person is the only idea fully compatible
with the democratic ideal, and thus our best alternative to counter the current anti-
democratic wave. Consequently, education must be understood as education of
persons rather than as the mass-production of workers or even the education
of individual monads incapable of engaging with others in a robust way.
Bringing this notion back to the arena of public discussion, however, nec-
essary raises the question of its Christian origins, of whether bringing the
person back in would violate the democratic principle of secularity. In in-
corporating the notion of the person, I am borrowing from Christianity, al-
though as a tradition of thought rather than as a revealed religion. As Alasdair
MacIntyre asserts, thinking and speaking are impossible outside a tradition
of thought.
12
Since every thought is framed by one of such traditions, neutral-
of thought, Christianity is a central companion of Western political thought,
and thus its importance should not be underestimated when discussing the
crisis of Western liberal democracies. Far from closing the door to any reason-
from which we engage others
10
, M., and
Studies in Higher Education, vol. 44, núm. 12, 2019, pp. 2293-2303.
11
, M., , p. 81.
12
, A., Whose Justice, Which Rationality?, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press,
1988, p. 7.
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
140
is the condition of possibility of any respectful exchange between reason-
able individuals. This is precisely what I understand by a secular public arena,
namely, a place wherein individuals, belonging to a diversity of traditions
of thought, engage with others in an open, tolerant, free, and respectful dia-
1. The hyperplasia of the economic
I
The becoming hegemonic of the economic principle has been one of the
most widely discussed topics in the last decades. In 1944, Karl Polanyi iden-
embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic
13
-
ative weight of the economic sphere on human existence grew up to a point
that it encroached upon other spheres, progressively transforming society
into a means for its own goal. Just as a tumor needs to expand throughout
the body it feeds upon, the economic mentality went beyond its own orbit,
dominating human existence.
Neoliberalism is but the name we give today to this hyperplasia, to
the disordered growth of the economic principle inside the body politic,
-
14
-
tem but a fully developed Foucauldian dispositif, as Adam Kotsko asserts:
Neoliberalism is a social order, which means that it is an order of family
and sexuality and an order of racial hierarchy and subordination. It is a
political order, which means that it is an order of law and punishment
and an order of war and international relations. And it is above all a re-
markably cohesive moral order, deploying the same logic of constrained
agency (demonization), competition (in which there must be both win-
13
, K., The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, Boston:
Beacon Press, 1957, p. 60.
14
, C., The Concept of the Political. Translated by George Schwab, Chicago: The Universi-
ty of Chicago Press, 2007, p. 26.
141
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
the individual to the household to the racial grouping to the region to the
country to the world.
15
Neoliberalism promotes a narcissistic individualism, to the point of claim-
ing that society is but the sum of individuals and therefore there are no social
or common goals.
16
Narcissism, in turn, does not imply the disappearance of
all kinds of collectivity, but it means that groups will become atomized and
17
Neoliberalism is also characterized for its contempt for democratic
politics.
18
-
ket
19
that asserted that markets work better and yield their best results
when state action is limited to the role of silent referee,
20
gave a bad name
to politics, blaming any disfunction of the economy to the clumsy inter-
ventions of the government on the economy. The neoliberal order aban-
doned the principle of non-intervention, turning the equation on its head:
from the mid-1970s on, many legal restrictions that had been established
21
were relaxed by governments the allegiance of
which rested on the big capitals rather than on their constituencies. This
irresponsible behavior reached a climax in the financial crisis of 2007-
2008, which would end with the government rescuing the banking sys-
22
The economic
our days, is a world where inequality is rising virtually everywhere.
23
In-
equality is, however, not just
15
., Neoliberalism’s Demons. On the Political Theology of Late Capital, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2018, pp. 94-95.
16
, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, pp. 23-53.
17
, G., La Era del Vacío, translated by J.V. Sastre and M. Pendanx, Barcelona: Ana-
grama, 2000, p. 14. Translation is mine; Cf. , E., The Filter Bubble: How the New Person-
alized Web Is Changing What We Read and How We Think, New York: Penguin, 2011.
18
, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, p. 57.
19
, K., The Great Transformation, p. 3.
20
, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
2002, p. 25.
21
, Post-Democracy after the crisis, p. 42; , J., The Great Divide. Unequal Societies and
What We Can Do About Them, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, pp. 42-44.
22
, J., No Freedom Without Regulation. The Hidden Lessons of the Subprime Crisis, New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2015, pp. 26-57.
23
, ., Capital in the Twenty-First Century, translated by A. Goldhammer, London: Har-
vard University Press, 2014, pp. 237-270.
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
142
creating internal divisions in the city
24
and establishing structures of servi-
tude which erode the foundations of a democratic society.
25
II
Hans-Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes depicts a king fall-
him new clothes made with a special material only smart people can see. The
king eagerly agrees. The burglars return empty-handed but pretending that
on their extended arms lie the magical clothes. Unable to see the clothes, the
king realizes his own stupidity, but decides to play along. Everybody else in
the kingdom plays the part, admiring what is not there, fearful to betray their
own stupidity. At the end, the simplicity of a child puts an end to the regret-
table spectacle of a king parading naked among his people.
What Colin Crouch calls post-democracy and Sheldon Wolin labels inverted
totalitarianism bears a striking similarity with Andersen’s tale. It is a regime
wherein everything seems to be working as usual, where institutions (the
robbers retain their power: dressed as merchants, they co-opt the government
for their own interests. The tacit agreement between political power and the
citizenry regarding the fundamental lie that mediates their relationship is,
their corrupted nature, but we participate in them, we display our belief in
26
étatisme that
27
Contrary to the twentieth-century totalitarian exper-
iments, characterized by its ability to energize and mobilize their popula-
28
—inverted totalitarianism works with lethargic, apathetic publics:
24
, Republic
25
The Basic Political Writings
bk. II, ch. 11, p. 189.
26
, S., First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, New York: Verso, 2009, p. 51.
27
, Democracy Incorporated, p. 45.
28
, Democracy Incorporated, p. 65.
143
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
-
tive ballot, immediately returning to their private life oblivious of public life.
While democracy places an almost overwhelming weight on the citizenry,
demanding each one to act both as a critical, engaged person as well as an in-
tegral part of the sovereign body, in our post-democratic regimes individuals
abandon the public sphere in order to devote themselves fully to their private
existence. This is what Alexis de Tocqueville called individualism
and peaceable sentiment that disposes each citizen to isolate himself from
the mass of those like him and to withdraw to one side with his family and
29
When the citizen succumbs to
the government. Tocqueville therefore insists, in the last note of his book, that
democracy’s most lethal enemy is general apathy, which is at the origin of both
30
-
31
This tradition was furthered by Cicero and Seneca in
the Roman Republic, as well as for Machiavelli and, some centuries later, by
Rousseau. Following this tradition, we should say that post-democracy, or
inverted totalitarianism, transform their populations into a kingdom of idi-
ots, that is, into a mass of privatized individuals who, having abandoned the
public arena, are seduced by the numbing song of the economic mermaids,
only to be eventually lured to shipwreck.
III
The rekindling of the populist spark can hardly be considered a return to
democratic practice. In fact, new populist experiments are but the obverse of
the kingdom of idiots. Claude Lefort characterizes democracy as the political
regime at the antipodes of totalitarianism: while a totalitarian regime pur-
29
, A., Democracy in America,-
go: The University of Chicago Press, 2002, II.II.2, p. 482.
30
, A., Democracy in America, p. 704.
31
, The Peloponnesian War-
sity Press, 2009, p. 92.
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
144
society transparent to itself, democracy is characterized by the dissolution of
the markers of certainty, and thus as the political regime wherein the locus
of power remains empty, symbolically construed as a place of permanent
contestation.
32
by a faction to capture the political once and for all. Seen in this light, de-
mocracy can only be understood as an essentially pluralistic political regime.
resolve the ‘paradox’ of the ‘empty space’ of politics by reifying the will of
the people, and by condensing state power into some homogeneous actor
-
tutes the people’. The formula pars pro toto is thus replaced by the facticity
of the pars pro parte
33
Populism emerges out of a weariness regarding de-
interests and appetites of vulgar ambition and when, in a word, it appears
in
then the totalitarian ghost appears.
34
midst of the past century—insofar as it leans on an energetic society ready
to mobilize, is a much less plausible substitute to a disintegrating democracy
than Wolin’s inverted totalitarianism, which preserves the democratic rega-
lia while emptying it of any real content, leaving it ready for exploitation by
factional interests.
Populism shares with post-democracy the weariness with the democratic
processes, but, keeping with democratic appearances, it renounces the symbolic
an idea
resisting ever to be materialized as an actual political body, insofar as it can nev-
er become immanent and active, creating a permanent gulf between the exercise
of power and its appropriation
35
private group or faction
power. This private group, furthermore, will remain private, delegating all au-
presenting herself as nothing but the voice of the faction that acclaims her.
32
, C., Democracy and Political Theory, translated by David Macey, Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1988, pp. 9-20.
33
, N., Me the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy, Cambridge: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 2019, p. 107.
34
, C., Democracy and Political Theory, p. 20.
35
, A.; , J. and , J., Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2007, Federalist No. 63, pp. 305-312.
145
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
IV
Modern democracy is the child of a twofold tradition, often referred as the
distinction between the liberty of the ancients and the liberty of the moderns.
We can, I think, reformulate this distinction as that between the individu-
al and the person. The notion of the individual emphasizes authenticity as
a moral value, endowing her with liberties and rights so as to protect her
against tyranny. Democracy, however, is incomplete unless understood as a
social project. The individual imagined by the liberal tradition is, I contend,
unable to articulate the life of the community, reducing the social to the sum
of its parts. The notion of the person, while acknowledging individual liber-
-
Post-democracy, understood as a kingdom of idiots, leaves no room for
common projects, or for any authentic interrelation between human beings,
insofar as every interaction is governed by economic mentality and human
beings are thus reduced to useful tools. Populism, on its part, takes a pseu-
do-communitarian approach, disguising the reduction of the whole to one of
mentality; the other, creating a false community by replacing the symbolic
whole with a private faction.
In order to bring democracy back, we need to avoid these two dangers,
promoting an education able to defend the dignity of the human person
against the tyranny of the majority, while avoiding the individualist trap that
empties democracy of its social component. Education, as it should be evi-
dent, is a core element in this project of democratic recovery.
2. Universities amid the crisis
I
-
turies of the second millennium. Three great traditions developed in Europe
during those years: the philosophical-theological tradition of Paris, the legal
tradition of Bologna, and the cosmopolitan tradition of Salerno, Montpellier,
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
146
the Western world, and from which the medieval culture of the thirteenth
36
The importance of this cultural encounter can hardly be exaggerated. It
37
The move-
38
which was nonetheless understood as an obvious companion to
Christian faith. In his bull, Quasi lignum vitae (1255), Alexander IV stated:
ignorance, recovers its power of vision and its beauty, by the knowledge of
39
clearer statement of the Christian view of the university, as a harmonious
blend of faith and reason.
The university shares with Christianity its paradoxical character. From its
inception, Christianity understood itself at the same time as a scandal (1 Cor
1:23) and as the religion of the logos
individual einzelne
40
The university, in turn, held the
by a spiritual principle
41
betrays the tension between the particular and the universal,
42
the univer-
sity sought to achieve universal knowledge by means of a spiritual princi-
ple which, notwithstanding its been considered universal, insofar as true (Jn
14:6), in practice it implied the construction of a particular culture, namely,
the Western tradition.
Throughout the Middle Ages, the university’s search for the truth was ci-
phered in Christian language. The crisis of the Middle Ages would push sec-
ularity—in many ways a Christian product
43
—at the doors of the modern era.
This, however, did not mean the end of the university: the Enlightenment
reformulated western thought, itself a particular tradition of thought, as the
36
, ., Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, New York: Doubleday, 1991, p. 191.
37
, ., Religion and the Rise…, p. 192.
38
, ., Religion and the Rise…, p. 198.
39
, ., Religion and the Rise…, p. 197.
40
, J., Introduction to Christianity, translated by J. R. Foster, San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2004, p. 249.
41
, ., Religion and the Rise…, p. 197.
42
, K., and , J., Episcopate and The Primacy, New York: Herder and Herder,
1962, p. 62.
43
, M., The Disenchantment of the World. A Political History of Religion-
car Burge, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999.
147
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
peak of human civilization, a project that would also collapse when confront-
-
dence on reason and rationality has been fragile at best, and the university’s
universalism has receded.
However, truth as a goal has not completely evaporated: If truth is re-
moved, the university would be transformed either into a Babel tower where
a multiplicity of incommensurable languages coexist in isolation; or into a
The university starts dying when it gives up on truth as its horizon. Rob-
44
The
university is not, prima facie, a utilitarian project; its goal is neither the pro-
duction of commodities nor the development of technology. The universi-
ty thinks not with the aim of accumulating data for its own sake but rather
to educate persons instead of useful machines. Hutchins provides us with a
45
He
understands truth philosophically, in the same line of Leo Strauss—who was
professor at The University of Chicago when Hutchins served as its president
possession of
the truth, but quest
46
The university is thus a place of perma-
nent contestability, disruption, and creativity; its main activity is to approach
truth asymptotically, through dialogue and rational critique. Insofar as
a place governed by freedom of thought, the university is the place where a
47
the mutual enrichment and growth
caused by an intellectual exchange.
society. Democratic citizens are not born in the wilderness, they are rather
nurtured. As Rousseau recommends, in order to institute a people—and
we may stress, a free people—one must be ready to change human nature,
replacing individual powers with social ones.
48
Contrary to authoritarian
regimes, which fear both education and public gatherings,
49
democracy
places the highest responsibility on its citizens, demanding of them many
44
, R. The University of Utopia, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953, p. 41.
45
, R. The University of Utopia, p. 56.
46
, L., What is Political Philosophy? And other Studies, Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1988, p. 11, emphasis is mine.
47
, ., The Language Animal, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016, p. 328.
48
49
, The Politics and the Constitution of Athens, edited by Stephen Everson, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996, bk. 5, ch. 11, pp. 145-147.
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
148
abilities for actively and critically participating in the public arena: pub-
lic spiritedness, critical thought, tolerance, sympathy, ability to recognize
the other as an equal, imagination and creativity, political judgment, and
cosmopolitan thought,
50
all of which are necessary if democracy is to work
properly as a social ordering where equal and free persons cooperate to
achieve common goals.
II
In a similar way than contemporary democracies, the university is threat-
ened today by the hyperplasia of the economic. In the United States, for ex-
ample, the liberal arts model—the heir of the Medieval university—is being
progressively replaced by the corporate university, characterized by the pri-
macy of the economic, a factory-like mentality, and the primacy of the for-
mal, which in the end leads to the normalization and levelling of students,
idiots, both in the sense of highly individualistic subjects focused only in their
in the sense of individuals lacking the appropriate skills
to play their role as citizens in a democratic regime.
Neoliberalism and the university. That the university is constrained by eco-
nomic factors is a truism. There is no university in the world, public or pri-
vate, capable of functioning while ignoring its economic needs. In this sense,
whenever there was a university formally established, there were economic
constraints. The same is true in the political sphere: a political regime which
ignores its material needs puts its own survival at risk.
-
lationship between an enterprise and its economic restraints. As we said in
the previous section, the economic principle has encroached on the other
spheres of human existence, to the point that the only standard for evaluat-
ing the success of a human enterprise is measured in terms of gain, utility,
mind, almost ineluctably, is that Mark has a well-paid job, a stable, com-
fortable economic position, and that he even enjoys public recognition. If I
now add that Mark has been without a job for almost a year but that he has
a happy marriage, three healthy kids, friends and is surrounded by happi-
ness and love; or that he is today an artist living in a beautiful city where
50
, M., , 25-26.
149
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
-
normalized -
posed its own principle as the hegemonic standard for all human activities.
Universities function today as big factories where professors provide
-
sumes as a commodity. Naomi Klein reports John V. Lombardi, president
51
The university’s
52
making sure that academic pro-
grams are responsive to the market’s needs, and developing the universi-
53
Just as neoliberalism has resulted in the widening of the gap between rich
and poor—with a tiny minority of billionaires whose wealth grew 1,130% in
the last thirty years, compared to an increase of 5.37% of the median house-
hold wealth in the same period
54
—the neoliberal university has created dif-
ferent classes of professors: a minority of tenured or tenure-track professors
comfortable life as academics, followed by a mass of part-time professors and
lecturers who are forced to live term by term, with no stability, lower wages,
and least, a swarm of teaching assistants who teach
courses and do all the grading that full professors are too busy to take care of,
in exchange of Ph.D.’s funding packages that are not nearly enough to cover
basic human needs.
55
In sum, the same game of winners and losers is played
in the university as it is in the neoliberal society at large.
The primacy of the formal. As the university resembles more and more a
factory, it tends to privilege the formal over the substantial. Universities are
increasingly governed by large bureaucracies that codify academic activity
into an ever-changing series of formats and indicators that are designed to
51
, N., No Logo, New York: Picador, 2009, p. 101.
52
, E., and -
Journal of Strategic Information
Systems, núm. 13, 2004, pp. 305-328.
53
, N., No logo, pp. 87-106.
54
, .; , S., Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Tax-
55
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
150
transform an initially unmeasurable activity, such as the education of a per-
son, into a number. For education to be measurable, so the argument goes,
-
reduced to checking boxes in a to-do list, after which a satisfaction survey is
-
ect that has been rendered measurable and replicable. This is the idea behind
a successful process in one epistemic community that is to be replicated in
shell of a complex learning experience, an empty structure that is transposed
into a foreign environment. The problem with this perspective lies in think-
ing that we can import a methodology without taking care of its metaphysi-
cal basis. In fact, any methodological approach contains a set of assumptions
-
tral: the way we approach an object necessarily implies a decision (more often
-
ied counts as worthy and what is not. From this perspective, for instance, it is
naïve to think we can approach a phenomenon using a rationalistic approach
(i.e., rational choice, social choice theory) without radically conditioning the
scope of results we can expect.
The same can be said of the primacy of the formal in the university, to
the growing inclusion of managerial tools to its government and the multi-
plication of measuring and evaluating tools that are foreign to the universi-
ty’s essence. Consider the case of the learning outcomes approach to learning,
which were designed to elucidate what is it that the student must learn in
a course. Erikson and Erikson discuss two main criticisms that have been
raised regarding the learning outcomes approach: it is a managerial tool that
focusing too much on what can be measured”.
56
Every measure sheds light to certain areas of a determinate process while
obscuring other aspects. To judge whether our measurement is the one we
need, we must make sure that the areas captured by it are, in fact, primary to
-
56
and
151
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
57
58
-
nition, discussed above. Is it possible to capture these goals by means of a
only if edu-
cation is reduced to training, specialization, and the production of workers
that learning outcomes and other indicators can properly capture what edu-
cation is for, and whether it is working or not. If, on the other hand, education
means cultivating persons, then these measurements at best distract us from,
or even worse, eclipse, what is really at stake when we educate.
Normalization and levelling.
must disregard every -
larities. Before closing this section, I want to criticize this idea, suggesting that
by focusing on observable, discrete characteristics that are potentially present
in a diversity of individuals, the whole object of education is betrayed, name-
ly, the education of persons.
Modern democracy’s tendency towards normalization and levelling has
been a recurrent critique for the last couple of centuries. We can distinguish
-
-
ical materialization of Christian resentment and its life-renouncing morality,
whereby the morality of the strong, self-assuring, creative, own-masters was
replaced by the morality of the weak, the meek, the crippled, who proclaimed
-
thing that elevates an individual above the herd and intimidates the neigh-
59
Kierkegaard took a similar stance: democracy is characterized by a
process of levelling, understood as the hateful destruction of individuality by
60
Levelling occurs when an egali-
tarian society progressively dumbs down the human element, consequently
becoming suspicious of everyone who tries to elevate herself above the me-
diocrity of the public.
The fear of the tyrannical mass is not, however, exclusive of aristocratic
thinkers. The concept of the tyranny of the majority has a long history in the
liberal tradition, which seeks to protect the individual against the oppressive
57
, J. H., The Idea of a University, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1986, p. 197.
58
, M., , p. 62.
59
, F., Beyond Good & Evil, translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Vintage, 1989,
p. 114.
60
, S., Two Ages. Kierkegaard’s Writings, XIV, translated by H.V. Hong and E.H.
Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 91.
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
152
power of a majoritarian faction. John Stuart Mill focuses on this problem in
On Liberty. Around the same time, Tocqueville worried
more like all the others, weaker and smaller, one gets used to no longer view-
ing citizens so as to consider only the people; one forgets individuals so as to
61
If we use, say, the learning outcomes approach as an indicator of the min-
imum skills and knowledge that a student should have at the end of a course,
then the approach may be helpful for the educational project, but only if it
is supplemented by an overarching goal that the acquisition of these
skills rather than others. But if, as it seems to be the case today, the tyranny
of the managerial mentality
62
succeeds in making its approach a goal in it-
self—making the approach a component of the accreditation process, which
in turn is linked to improving the university’s ranking, and so on—then we
Trial rather than in a democratic scenario, buried under a
63
While democracy is not distinguished by promoting greatness,
64
it is not
synonymous with levelling or mediocrity. Normalization is an ever-present
threat in a democratic society, whereby the radicalization of equality can
-
withstanding its popular element, democracy is also the political regime that
best protects the citizen against the tyrannical impulses of the majorities. As I
will defend in the last section of this work, this is only true when democracy
only with the idea of the person can we assert both a spirited defense of the
human being as an end in herself and the ontological necessity of that person
-
65
The education of
persons who, in turn, can become high-spirited democrats, is a project that
cannot be accomplished without the university.
61
, Democracy in America, II.I.7, p. 426.
62
, The University of Utopia, p. 45).
63
, The University of Utopia, p. 65.
64
, Democracy in America, II.IV.8, pp. 674-675.
65
, F., The Collected Works of Friedrich August Hayek. Volume I: The Fatal Conceit, edited by
Bruce Caldwell, London: Routledge, 1988, pp. 106-119.
153
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
3. Bringing the Person Back In
I
from tyranny, whether it be the arbitrary power of the sovereign or the op-
pressive power of the faceless mob. Epistemologically, the liberal individual
followed the Cartesian model, according to which ideas are developed inside
the mind, based on the one and only certainty of the thinking self. Individu-
alism conceives human beings as complete, autonomous units who freely en-
gage with others in the pursuit of their goals. This notion is at the basis of the
liberal market, which is understood as a community of agents who exchange
goods in conditions of freedom and complete information.
The western notion of the person was developed by Christianity. Rather
than an isolated, complete individual capable of thinking for herself, the no-
of radical incompleteness is already found in Plato’s Symposium (190a-192e),
where we are presented with an originally androgynous self that was divided
by a jealous Zeus into two parts that will forever look for each other.
-
Trinity—which meant pointing out the novelty of the triune God vis-à-vis the
as una substantia—tres personae.
66
-
67
He goes on describing
these relationships as being-for (Father), being-from (Son), and being-with
understood as imago Dei, as three basic anthropological structures: responsi-
bility (being-for), dependence (being-from), and solidarity (being-with). The
human person is thus understood by Christianity as the being essentially de-
pendent to other, responsible for others, and solidary with all, insofar as every
human being has a dignity which is not given nor recognized by any authority
66
, J., Joseph Ratzinger in Communio. Vol. 2: Anthropology and Culture, edited by D.
L. Schindler and N. J. Healy, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
2013, p. 104.
67
, J., , p. 108.
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
154
Personalism understands the subject as co-constituted by the dynamic
exchange between herself and her community. The person thus exists in a
permanent tension: on the one hand, the human being is an individual, which
guarantees the inviolability of her conscience, the impossibility of her being
instrumentalized—e.g., one can never be coerced to believe.
68
This is what
Christian development that has nonetheless been advanced by modernity.
69
The notion of the person, in this sense, contains the kernel of the liberal indi-
vidual while suggesting that individual dignity is only half the story.
available… and thereby more transparent both to himself and
70
-
-
ism’s deep communitarian commitment, which both restores the human being to
her social dimension—lost to the liberal individual—and opposes the Hayekian
and neoliberal understanding of society as a dangerous, oppressive abstraction.
Contrary to neoliberalism, personalism declares that there are some goods that
can only be achieved in community. These goods are essentially social, which sug-
gests that society is logically more than the sum of the individual projects.
Despite being a product of Christianity, the personalist tradition extends be-
yond this tradition. Martin Buber, for instance, beautifully describes the self’s
opening to the other. Rather than an instrumental relationship (I-It), the encoun-
-
tiation, personalization and, eventually, love:
When I confront a human being as my You and speak the basic word I-You to
him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no
longer He or She, limited by other Hes or Shes, a dot in the world grid of space
and time, nor a condition that can be experienced and described, a loose bundle
-
ment. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.
71
Personalism thus conceives the human being as: a creature endowed
with an innate and inalienable dignity that demands never to be treated as
68
, J., Values in a Time of Upheaval, translated by Brian McNeil, San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2006, p. 52.
69
, ., A Catholic Modernity? Charles Taylor’s Marianist Award lecture
University Press, 1999, p. 16.
70
, E., Personalism, translated by Philip Mairet, London: Routledge & Kagan Paul Ltd.
1952, p. 19.
71
, M., I and Thou, translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Touchstone, 1996, p. 59.
155
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
a means but as an end in herself, (2) a being ontologically incomplete, thus
be experienced in solitude, and is thus closer to the Aristotelian idea of eu-
daimonia
72
which is achieved with others in the active
search of the common good,
73
understood as the articulation of the three an-
thropological structures of dependence, responsibility, and solidarity.
II
The idea of the human person is a central piece of any strategy aiming at
resisting the hyperplasia of the economy, the priority of the form over mat-
ter, and normalization. An education based upon the human person is, at the
same time, civic education.
The goal of society is not, for personalism, an ever-growing production of
skilled professionals accompanied by unrestrained technological progress:
74
Close to the personalist ethos,
Hannah Arendt’s masterpiece, The Human Condition, proposes an incremen-
tal approach to human life, whereby the fugacity and immediacy of the an-
imal laborans’ activity is redeemed by the work of the homo faber, whom in
vita activa.
75
The
meaning in the social process, which is not economic but essentially political,
that is, centered in the provision of common goods by means of which every
-
about the danger of technology escaping our control by reminding us of the
stories of the Golem in Jewish Kabbalism, Goethe’s Faust, and Huxley’s Brave
New Worldratio technica must incorporate into itself a ratio
ethica, so that we would speak of something as truly functioning only when
76
Technological progress is thus
not an end in itself, and the university should therefore not pursue it for its
72
, R., Greek Political Thought, Malden: Blackwell, 2006, p. 236.
73
II, Apostolic Constitution Gaudium et spes, Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana,
1965, §26.
74
, E., Personalism, p. 14.
75
, H., The Human Condition, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 236-243.
76
, J., , p. 48.
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
156
own sake but only insofar as it contributes to the human goals. The university
must not, obviously, renounce to the highest standards of technical sophistica-
tion; it must make sure its students can use complex tools for measuring and
analyzing data. But it must make sure as well that the student understands not
only the how, but also the what and the why of things, that she can critically use
these tools in the pursuit of human goals. It is by infusing meaning into tech-
nology that the university humanizes it, making it a powerful companion in
the quest for improving human reality. From this perspective, the liberal arts
curriculum must be a transversal project touching all the departments and pro-
grams, shedding light precisely regarding those human goals that order and
structure the skills and techniques learned in each program.
person cannot be reduced to the faceless repetition of a mold since, in exercis-
-
alism and Christianity in agreement: the healthy development of personality
implies freedom, which in turn produces diversity. Liberalism makes a good
-
77
Christianity restores diversity to unity in the mystery of Christ as the head of
the body (1 Cor 12:4-6), identifying the former with truth (Jn 14:6).
Evidently, we cannot use this metaphysical criterion in a liberal democra-
cy, since that would violate its secular character. Two interrelated strategies
and free persons. First, we can make comparisons between higher and lower
forms of life to go beyond value pluralism.
78
If we cannot make a case to as-
sert that the life of a person who joins Médecins sans Frontières to bring med-
democratic regime is in peril. The dangers of abandoning the ability to make
moral judgments should be obvious in our current crisis. For, is it not that
any
the sorrowful success of the fake-news era enough as a sign of the corruption
79
Have we not learned yet the danger of a complete re-
77
, H., Truth is Symphonic. Aspects of Christian Pluralism, San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1987, p. 13.
78
, ., The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003, p. 78.
79
See , M., The Death of Truth. Notes on Falsehood in the age of Trump, London: William
Collins, 2018; , L., Post-Truth, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018.
157
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
empathy, critical ability, and, perhaps more importantly, temperance but, to
be sure, the ability to judge in a rational and sensitive way is a fundamental
trait of democratic citizenship. Education—from the crib to the university—
should be a school of these virtues, aimed at raising high-spirited citizens
able to engage with others in a critical and respectful way.
Second, democracy is the political regime wherein dialogue replaces na-
ked coercion;
80
it is precisely through dialogue that, as persons, we open our-
selves to others, welcoming being impregnated by others’ ideas, which in the
end will result in the fusion of our horizons, that is, in mutual growth. Liberal
arts education privileges the study and discussion of great books, by means
of which the student puts herself in another person’s shoes: she may under-
stand the maddening remorse of a killer in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Pun-
ishment; or the anarchical and even murderous instincts that may arise in a
society made by unrestrained kids in Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, and so on.
81
we learn through
others’ experiences, problems, and successes. The retreat of literature, philos-
ophy, theater, painting, dance, poetry, and music from the university should
be seen as a crucial indicator of the victory of the economic mentality over
-
82
We should keep in mind,
against today’s savagery, that a young John Stuart Mill overcame a mental
breakdown by reading poetry, and that, after participating in the construc-
tion of the nuclear bomb, Richard Feynman found relief for his episodes of
depression and anxiety in playing the bongo. We can also wonder whether
the current state of social hysteria, violence, and intolerance is a consequence
of the retreat of beauty from human life and space.
The university, we said with Hutchins, is a community that thinks and
searches for the truth. Truth is, however, not a possession. It is rather a hori-
zon, a goal. While it is arrogant to think we can ever be in possession of
Truth, searching for it is a powerful way for discarding absurdities, fallacies,
and arbitrariness. It is through dialogue and critique that human beings have
unrooted pernicious ideas, such as slavery, child marriage, or the inferiority
of women. The university is the privileged place where this dialogue should
take place. This dialogue—that, as we have suggested, is threatened today by
80
, M., The Monarchy of Fear. A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis-
ford University Press, 2018, pp. 9-10.
81
, R., , New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2014, p. 171.
82
See , N., The Usefulness of the Useless, translated by Alastair McEwen, Philadelphia:
Paul Dry Books, 2017.
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
158
the hyperplasia of the economic, the primacy of the formal, and levelling—is
at the very basis of the education of democratic citizens.
Dialogue cannot take place unless we abandon the formalist approach to
education that transforms teachers into providers of pre-packaged services
to join the job market as mindless gears of a numbing, stultifying machine.
Measuring implies, at best, verifying the minimum abilities evinced by a stu-
dent so as to approve a course. As universities are being seized by increasingly
powerful bureaucracies, however, it seems prudent to reject these approaches
-
ing process. Rejecting these measurements would also help counter levelling
and the normalization of the students. Since the person is unique, education
can only be understood as a radically creative experiment, which ultimately
-
Individual creativity and the authentic self are, nonetheless, only half the
story. The democratic citizen is a fundamental goal of the educational proj-
ect. Rather than a self-serving individual, the person is a citizen. As Alasdair
adequate exercise to be accompanied by what I shall call the virtues of ac-
83
Socrates demands from the one who has been
released and forced out of the cave to return to the cave—even at the risk of
her life—and engage with those whose eyes see only shadows. Replying to
Glaucon’s protest, Socrates reminds him that what they seek is not the good
of a single class, but that of the whole city.
84
The democratic citizen under-
stands herself as a person endowed with dignity, implying a set of rights as
well as responsibilities vis-à-vis other persons. Just as no one can be a son, or
a mother, in isolation, because these are all social relationships, the citizen
cannot exist in isolation, for she is such only in the company of others with
whom the production of social goods is possible.
The democratic citizen, educated as a person, should learn how to resist
the primitive impulse to counter fear and injustice with aggression and re-
-
85
83
, A., Dependent Rational Animals
84
, Republic, 519d-e, p. 191.
85
, M., The Monarchy of Fear, p. 60.
159
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
Democracy is in a deep crisis. Its enemies spread like a cancer, turning the
cells of the body against itself, maddening the whole system. Education, just
like the family and associational life, is a fabric of citizens. It is there where
individuals are transformed into persons who acknowledge their need for
others and are trained to engage with others in the pursuit of common goods.
If the university gives up this fundamental mission, the democratic sky will
free and equal persons capable of self-government.
Bibliography
, H. The Human Condition, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.
, The Politics and the Constitution of Athens, edited by Stephen Everson,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
, R., Greek Political Thought, Malden: Blackwell, 2006.
, R., , New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2014.
, W., In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the
West, New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
, M., I and Thou, translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York: Touchstone, 1996.
, .; , S., Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Wind-
.
, C., Post-Democracy, Cambridge: Polity, 2004.
, C., Post-Democracy After the Crisis, Cambridge: Polity, 2020.
, ., Religion and the Rise of Western Culture, New York: Doubleday, 1991.
, M. and -
Studies in Higher Education, vol. 44, num. 12, 2019, pp. 2293-2303.
, Freedom in the World 2020. A Leaderless Struggle for Democracy,
, M., Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.
, M., The Disenchantment of the World. A Political History of Religion, trans-
Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, vol. 9, num. 5, 2009, pp. 1-27.
, F., The Collected Works of Friedrich August Hayek. Volume I: The Fatal Conceit,
edited by Bruce Caldwell, London: Routledge, 1988.
, A.; , J. and , J., Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Metafísica y persona. Filosofía, conocimiento y vida
Año 14, Núm. 28, Julio-Diciembre, 2022, ISSN: 2007-9699
160
, R. M., The University of Utopia, Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1953.
, M., The Death of Truth, London: William Collins, 2018.
, A., Marx and the Failure of Liberation Theology, Philadelphia: Trinity Press
International, 1990.
, S., Two Ages. Kierkegaard’s Writings, XIV, translated by Howard V.
Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
, N., No Logo, New York: Picador, 2009.
., Neoliberalism’s Demons. On the Political Theology of Late Capital, Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press, 2018.
, C.. Democracy and Political Theory. translated by David Macey, Cam-
bridge: Polity Press, 1988.
, S. and ., How Democracies Die, New York: Crown, 2018.
, G., La era del vacío, translated by Joan Vinyoli Sastre and Michéle
Pendanx, Barcelona: Anagrama, 2000.
, L., Post-Truth, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018.
, A., Dependent Rational Animals
, A., Whose Justice, Which Rationality?, Indiana: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1988.
The Radical Orthodoxy Reader, New York: Rout-
ledge, 2009.
, E., Personalism, translated by Philip Mairet, London: Routledge & Ka-
gan Paul Ltd., 1952.
, Y.. The People vs. Democracy: Why our freedom is in danger and how to save it,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018.
, J. H., The Idea of a University, Notre Dame: Notre Dame University
Press, 1986.
, F., Beyond Good & Evil, translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York:
Vintage, 1989.
, M., The Monarchy of Fear. A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis,
, M., Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2010.
, ., Capital in the Twenty-First Century, translated by Arthur Goldham-
mer, London: Harvard University Press, 2014.
, Republic,
, K., The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our
Time, Boston: Beacon Press, 1957.
, E., The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is Changing What We
Read and How We Think, New York: Penguin, 2011.
161
Idiots rather than persons? The crisis of education in the neoliberal era
, K. and , J., Episcopate and The Primacy, New York: Herder and
Herder, 1962.
, J., ed-
ited by D. L. Schindler and N. J. Healy, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2013.
, J., Values in a Time of Upheaval, translated by Brian McNeil, San Fran-
cisco: Ignatius Press, 2006.
, J., Introduction to Christianity, translated by J. R. Foster, San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2004.
, J.J., The Basic Political Writings, translated by Victor Gourevitch, India-
, D., How Democracy Ends,
, C., The Concept of the Political, translated by George Schwab, Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
, J. W., No Freedom Without Regulation. The Hidden Lessons of the Subprime
Crisis, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.
, J., The Great Divide. Unequal Societies and What We Can Do About Them,
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2015.
, L., What is Political Philosophy? And other Studies, Chicago: The Universi-
ty of Chicago Press, 1988.
, ., The Language Animal, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016.
, ., The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.
., A Catholic Modernity? Charles Taylor’s Marianist Award lecture, New
, The Peloponnesian War, -
ford University Press, 2009.
A., Democracy in America, -
ba Winthrop, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.
N., We the People: How Populism Transforms Democracy, Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2019.
, Apostolic Constitution Gaudium et spes, Vatican City: Libreria Editrice
Vaticana, 1965.
E. and -
Journal of Strategic Information Systems, num.13, 2004, pp. 305-328.
., Democracy Incorporated. Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted
Totalitarianism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008.
., First as Tragedy, Then as Farce, New York: Verso, 2009.
