`Liberal Learning′ and Political Pluralism

Author: Christian Ganske

Table of Contents

The Ideal of Objective Science and the Idea of a University

Michael Oakeshott: A Voice of Liberal Learning

Douglas Ezzy: knowledge creation and political purpose

The Idea of a University and a Pluralist Society

2

The Ideal of Objective Science and the Idea of a University

Scholars and students of humanities joining the community of a university have never been

isolated from their social environments that they try to make sense of. Like any other human

being they possess personal attitudes and adhere to certain moral values, which have

implicitly an impact on the way they perceive the world. Though they have the ambition to

create new knowledge and seek to extend their original understandings of social reality, they

cannot escape from being to a certain extent predetermined by their outlook on life

(

Weltanschauung).

In consequence, any knowledge may be regarded as inherently political

biased.

There are at least two possible ways how scholars deal with this inherent problem of

knowledge creation and scientific rigor. First, in line with Max Weber1, some claim that,

indeed, since values cannot be scientifically validated, it should be avoided to ascribe absolute

objectivity to knowledge. In this way, "good" scholarship has constantly to reflect its values,

in order to sharpen intellectual clarity and strengthen its ability to assess. Thus at least, the

blurring impact of values on the creation of knowledge can be diminished reaching a stage

closer to the ideal of scientific objectivity. In turn, advocates of feminism, postmodernism or

hermeneutics have explicitly rejected "this ideal of identifying `one true, unbiased′

interpretation" claiming that "all research is biased in the sense that all research is integrally

political."2

These two distinct self-definitions of scholarship are also represented by different

understandings of the purpose and the idea of a university. Whereas the first may be

interpreted as an attempt to separate the university as a place of knowledge production from

1 Max Weber, 1904, Die "Objektivität" sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis.

2 Douglas Ezzy, 2002, `Politics, Rigour and Ethics,′

Qualitative Analysis: Practice and Innovation

, London:

Routledge, pp. 33-59, p. 57.

3