Faust 1
In 1973, Alasdair MacIntyre wrote “the theorist of ideology as we have known him from
Marx to the Frankfurt School, has always been someone who identified ideological
contamination in others rather than in himself. … But, on the view which I am advancing, we
have to discover the distortions of ideology first of all in ourselves and learn to live with them, at
the same time that we learn, through self-conscious awareness, to avoid being their victims.”
Late-capitalist society overemphasizes the results-based practice over the inquiry-based
theory; a symptom of this fetishization of practical over the theoretical is being felt in humanities
departments across the United States and the United Kingdom. As such, the relationship between
theory and practice entails an appreciation of both prongs; undercutting one, at best, derails
appreciation of the other; at worst, serves an ideological agenda. In this paper, I will argue that
the neoliberal assault on the idea of university entails the latter proposition. I will begin by laying
the groundwork for the MacIntyrean definitions of and interrelation between practice and theory.
Then, I will analyse the rhetoric of cost-cutting measures being imposed upon the academy, with
a special emphasis on drawing out correlations with capitalist ideology. I will then argue that this
subtle attack upon the idea of university serves to disable, dismantle, and destroy effective
critique of the prevailing hegemony. I will then conclude with a possible prognosis for the
situation along MacIntyrean framework of practice based upon sacramental logic.
A definition of MacIntyrean practice is given by MacIntyre himself: “Any coherent and
complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to
that form of activity are realised in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence
which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of that form of activity, with the result that
human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions to the ends and goods involved, are
systematically extended.” MacIntyrean practice is not simply going forth and acting in a rote or
Faust 2
instrumental manner. Rather, such practice is principled activity that can be evaluated according
to a particular set of rules and standards. Accordingly, there are two kinds of goods that may
result from human activity: the external, individual goods of property and possession, and the
internal, social goods that enrich the entire community. Virtues, to MacIntyre, are those qualities
that allow us to obtain these internal goods, and as such, they become part of the narrative of the
self that sustains us on the quest for our ultimate end – the good life. Practice, in short, is the
living articulation of values within a community.
The notion of theory is somewhat harder to pin down, though the notion of tradition provides
a good deal of help. Given the definition of a practice within the MacIntyrean framework, a
theory can best be understood as articulating some systematic way of understanding a particular
practice or particular sets of practices. Theory articulates and sets the boundaries of practice; the
conversation between the two is necessarily dialectic. Taking a slight Humean aside, then, one
might almost argue that a theory is a set of reasons that attempts to channel the passions toward
practices. How, then, do theories come about? Recall that, for MacIntyre, the narrative aspect of
the person is essential, as it provides the individual with a coherent notion the self during the
pursuit of the good life. Because of the necessity and ubiquity of personal narratives in living the
individual life, the narrative function of personality also serves as the prototypical model for
theories of the non-personal, i.e., the internal goods within a practice. Since narratives and the
achievement of internal goods are not the work of isolated individuals, the social and historical
figures prominently in their formulation and articulation. Within the MacIntyrean framework,
traditions supply and sustain the historical context to the virtues, as well as the theories that
interrelate and influence the practices that are informed by them. According to MacIntyre, a
“living tradition […] is an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument
Faust 3
precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition.” Tradition can thus be seen as
providing a mooring for the theories as well as the related practices that cultivate them. Theory
can, in turn, be seen as the analytic of the value of practices within the parameters of a tradition.
At this point, it seems that theory and practice are mediated through the lens of a tradition.
However, this account seems somewhat impoverished. Is not theory a more powerful concept
than simply the articulation or dialectical companion of practice? Is there not room for metatheory, the theory that articulates and analyses the historical moors of the analytics of value
within a tradition? For MacIntyre, a tradition, when vital, is not just a series of arguments, but
also a continuity of conflict – differing theories within the tradition will compete with each and
keep that tradition alive within that tradition’s parameters. As such, there is a sense of dynamism
at work within every tradition, at least until the tradition dies down due to the failure of its
interlocutors to exercise its relevant virtues. I take a “dying tradition” to mean one that can no
longer supply or sustain the relevant theories that empower and invigorate its own dialogues,
practices, and their associated virtues. Further, then, implicit within a dying tradition is the idea
that practices themselves can no longer supply the necessary points of genesis for new theories,
that the relations are insufficient to generate dialogue on their inherent virtues. Therefore, a
tradition dies when its practices can no longer resuscitate theory within a tradition.
However, the notion of a theory is not articulated exclusively through practices; the nonMacIntyrean-practice activities of the everyday also play a role in forming notions of theory.
One of the most common aims of theory is formulating a narrative function for the community or
society, rather like what MacIntyrean traditions seeks to do. However, the major difference
between the overarching social theory and the MacIntyrean tradition is the completeness of the
account they give of the good life and the path toward attaining it. At the risk of sounding too
Faust 4
Lyotardian, within the notion of theory resides the possibility of metanarrative. For my purposes,
this term will be used as shorthand for a set of theories that provide a narrative applied to the
social whole that may be contained within, but are not identical with, a particular tradition. While
the MacIntyrean tradition holds that exercise of the relevant virtues continues an as-of-yet
unfinished narrative, the metanarrative supplies a constructive or pseudo-completeness of its
constitutive theories to drive itself. The power of the metanarrative derives from its seeming
cohesion of theories or a theory. Simply, there is a kernel of narrative and explanatory potential
possessed within the possibility of theory that resides within the gap between practice and
tradition – something that the MacIntyrean framework cannot adequately account for. As such, I
argue that the interaction between theory and practice, as well as narrative and tradition, is
woven through with ideology.
Because of the role that ideology plays in uniting these aspects of MacIntyrean thought, the
central issue in any split between theory and practice is one primarily of ideology. Here,
ideology will be used within the sense of Louis Althusser’s “Ideological State Apparatuses”: that
is, ideology is the productive intellectual driving force behind particular social institutions, as
well as the content provider for those institutions to reproduce its notions of reality. Under this
working definition of ideology, such social institutions are differentiated only as to the degree of
explicit or implicit obedience to the ideological party line. The ideological state apparatuses
provide the boundaries and standards for evaluation by shaping our tastes and preferences and by
setting the ends and goods toward which we act by performing the practices. Further, they
provide the notions of analysis by which theories might be formulated and evaluated. In short,
they form and mold a tradition through their own prisms of analysis, by which subjects can
formulate their own narratives. Indeed, an additional feature of Althusser’s conception of
Faust 5
ideology – a subject’s formation through interpellation – corresponds to the lived experiences of
subjects, especially if one sees ideology as working within the historical and cultural parameters
that have thus been argued for. In effect, the most pernicious aspect of the ideological is how it
hides in plain sight; how it constructs and defines the mental blocks and perceptions of the
everyday; how it erects the intuitions that become the fixtures experience; and most distressingly,
how it seamlessly integrates itself into the social fabric. Indeed, it can even appear to become its
own antithesis: think of the “post-ideological” age of the post-World-War-II era, or more
recently, of the much vaunted and the thoroughly discredited “End of History”. Because of this
effect, our working definition of ideology can be further defined as the “common sense of the
contemporary.”
The account presented in this paper is not meant to impugn or indict the MacIntyrean
framework. Rather, the claim is that MacIntyre’s concepts of practice, narrative, and tradition
only capture a few aspects of the larger ideological whole. The quest for the good life in
MacIntyre is predicated upon one’s ability to reach the values that enrich the entire community,
that is, the virtues. The effect of ideology, however, is to block or alter that quest through the
replacement of non-ideologically-approved ends with its own sanctioned ends. The space that the
MacIntyrean tradition preserves for the continuation of its conversation is given a synthetic
ending such that inquiry stops dead in its tracks, and becomes stale and stagnant. Ideology cuts
off the possibility of personal and social development within not just a single tradition, but
within every tradition.
What, then are the dangers of theory to ideology, if any? If ideology is so pervasive, then
how can theory provide a threat? For all its power, ideology is nonetheless historical – its success
depends not only on the relation of theory, but also tradition, practice, and especially narrative.
Faust 6
Theory qua theory contains a notion of demarcation. While a demarcation is not necessarily
sharply defined, its simple existence hypothesizes, or at least concedes, alternatives. That is, if a
theory is intrinsically tied to and supportive of practices, and that practices are historically
situated within a tradition, then there necessarily must be some other theory that contains within
it the possibility of alternatives, with its own constitutive, associative practices. Theory, by its
very nature, though also supported by the notions of narrative, practice, and traditions, can easily
be deconstructed, recombined, shared, flipped, chopped, and applied across various traditions.
Theory, then, is the currency of possibilities, of meaningful proliferation of difference; contra
ideology, which works to mask or gloss over the fractitious abundance of theories and traditions
that will exist within any community or society. Because of this plethora of possibility, theory is
the only refuge for revolutionary potential against ideology.
The question then becomes, how does one see the affects of ideology in its most nakedly
perceptive form, such that one cannot but help to see it’s the logic of its distortions? Rhetoric is
indicative of the practical logic of an ideology, as it is the pure enactment of the ideological
theories presented in an ingratiating sort of sophistry. In an almost ironic sense, rhetoric becomes
its own practice in that it reveals the working ideological virtues at play in a society. More
specifically, it is heavily reliant upon the heuristics, social norms, and everyday notions of those
to whom it is addressed, rendering it a tool for recruitment, reinforcement, and restriction. The
concept of reification, of making the abstract into concrete, becomes relevant, such that
repetition and invocation of these rhetorical concepts solidify them into the building blocks of
social reality. These basic constituents pieces can be arranged in innumerable forms and shapes,
like a sort of cultural bricolage. Because the particular arrangements elucidate their own
meanings, coupled with the earlier observation that the narrative conception of personality
Faust 7
provides the basis for theory, metanarrative, and ideology, cultural bricolage enables its own
form of hermeneutic self-interpretation. Therefore, cultural hermeneutics are required in order to
reveal the ideological undercurrent prevalent within the culture at large.
At this point, we are now prepared to examine the statements calling for the end of support
for the humanities in postsecondary education as symptomatic of a late-capitalist ideology. Peter
Cohan suggested in Forbes last year that: “Departments that are profitable and likely to remain
so would stick around. Those that are not and would not, get cut.” Implicit within this statement
is the notion of university as an all-too-literal market of ideas; that departments must be
structured around a model of valuation through revenue production. Only then, so the argument
goes, will the value of the enterprise be affirmed and considered worthwhile. No mention is
given, of course, to the fact that the departments that are already best equipped to fit these
evaluative criteria – science, technology, applied mathematics, engineering, finance – will be
perennially most worthy of overall university support. Profitability, then, is the end to which an
educational provider is to be valued. Within this notion of postsecondary education are several
sub-notions that are never elucidated but still-present, that are not adequately argued for. Within
the prevailing ideological culture, however, the purpose of higher education is higher
marketability, which carries the expectation and correlation of more earning power. As such,
Cohan is advocating that postsecondary institutions both reify and interpellate its students as
profit-seeking subjects within a profit-maximizing culture.
Not all critiques of liberal arts-based postsecondary education are so blatantly capitalistic.
Walter Russell Mead writes in The American Interest that “rather than making vocational
education more like higher ed, traditional colleges should be taking their cues from these
successful certificate programs.” At first glance, this statement seems perfectly rational –
Faust 8
shouldn’t people receive the skills that they are supposed to be paying for? However, this begs
the question: are universities like vocational programs? Should they be? Would university be
better if one received vocational skills? Within this statement, then, the notion of instrumentality
is also present, though it is less dependent on making abstract concepts concrete through
interpellation. Instead, its focus is on reaffirming and reproducing the concrete by limiting the
purview of post-secondary education into as narrowly tailored and specialised an endeavor as
possible. Despite this seeming difference, the underlying concept is still the same: that the cost
associated with a post-secondary education is only justifiable such that the economic benefits
(and only those such benefits) to the student outweigh those costs. What is absent from this
concept of university is the notion of incompleteness, intellectual variety, and openness, let alone
the exchange and analysis of traditions and their respective conversations.
Even if a university seeks to work against this constant and omnipresent mindset, the
overarching ideological mechanisms create stresses that often cannot be resisted. In the United
Kingdom, the government imposed massive cuts to education funding for universities in 2010, a
reduction of 40% to be spread over four years. At the time, the Treasury issued a statement that
the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which oversees higher education, will
“continue to fund teaching for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)
subjects.” No mention was given of other subjects, however. As a result of this great reduction in
support across the board, except for the most lucrative disciplines, a student entrepreneur writes
in The Guardian: “with universities now having to commercialise their intellectual property out
of financial necessity rather than choice, there will now be much more focus on exploiting their
own innovations; greater emphasis on extracting as much value as they can from their academic
learning.” As a result, because of the prevailing ideological forces at work, the university is
Faust 9
being forced to abandon its traditional role as inculcator of knowledge, and to mold itself into an
institution suspiciously similar to a profit-seeking corporation. Further, the student becomes both
a customer/consumer, purchasing services in the form of skills that can be used for profitmaking, as well as subjects conditioned to view the world as composed of relationships between
sellers and purchasers. This state of affairs, then, is the modern university as Althusserian
ideological state apparatus within capitalist hegemony.
The proliferation and reproduction of ideology within such a university is structured along
the lines of what Herbert Marcuse called one-dimensional society. In such a society, ideological
state apparatuses are “the technological controls [which] appear to be the very embodiment of
Reason for the benefit of all social groups and interests – to such an extent that all contradiction
seems irrational and all counteraction impossible”. Universities cast in the image of the
ideological become the mass production and distribution systems that “blunt the individuals’
recognition that it contains no facts which do not communicate the repressive power of the
whole”. As such, these institutions become the engines in which the pure instrumentalisation of
(ideologically-approved) knowledge is paramount. MacIntyrean practice can still be present
within such a society; however, the virtues inherent within them are simply those that inculcate
the individual as a singular cog within the ideological mechanism. Theory exists only in the
sense of economisation and reinforcement of the practices that already exist. Tradition
effectively remains silent, as there is no longer either a conversation or interlocutors.
I earlier stated that theory contains within it the kernel of metanarrative, such that theory is
the possibility of proliferation of difference. The sources from which theory might arise are both
the MacIntyrean practice and the everyday practice. Traditionally, however, the university is the
only place such that traditions or ideologies cannot simply prevail unfettered, but rather, are
Faust 10
analysed and examined and compared and contrasted within itself as well as against other
traditions. Even within the modern research-oriented university, one is hard-pressed to find
students that have never considered or encountered what are colloquially referred to as “the big
questions”. The university, then, is an end-enabler: it is a space within a tradition wherein the
student may be allowed to find herself within her or another tradition; to construct her own
narrative; to engage in the associated practices; and to cultivate those virtues such that the good
life might be accomplished both for her and for others. Within university, practice and theory are
always in tension, that is, preparing a student for taking on a social role, and inculcate the
rational autonomy to think for themselves. To that end, the dialectical relation is laid bare so as
to reveal the inner workings of a tradition, and to allow for theoretical difference to emerge. This
tension is at the very heart of the quest for the good life, and what empowers the quest toward it.
Since the university provides space for both the self-analysis within one’s tradition and the
possibility of difference, the university provides a threat to ideological supremacy. As such,
while all institutions of education attempt to maintain a constant dialogue between theory and
practice, the increasingly looming threat is one of instrumentalisation brought on by capitalist
ideology. This emphasis on the practical and the diminishing of the theoretical cleaves the two
from each other. As such, the very idea of university is split in two, leaving it both a mausoleum
of silent tradition, and a factory of instrumentality toward a merely ideological end.
What, then, might be done to preserve the idea of university, such that the capitalist ideology
might not ossify all traditions? Within MacIntyrean thought, practices have a sacramental logic
within them, one that defies the merely instrumental or managerial. Here I take “sacramental
logic” to mean a systematics of understanding and practice based upon the preservation of the
noumenous value of virtue – that is, the act of preserving a virtue-in-itself. By “noumenous,” I
Faust 11
borrow the Kantian notion of the positive noumenal of an “intellectual intuition”; that is, the
virtue of university is in its intellectual predisposition toward the notion of virtue and its special
role in enabling the good life. What seems to be vital to understanding sacramental logic is the
notion of value as indeterminacy; a positive void upon which there can be nothing equivalent or
imposed, but from which everything can be derived. Already, there is within the concept of the
university this notion of value from space creation. The Authentica habita, or Privilegium
scholasticum, written in the twelfth century for the University of Bologna, offered these
protections for its students and scholars:
-
Similar immunities and freedoms as those held by the clergy, provided they conformed
to certain attributes, such as clerical dress
Freedom of movement and travel for the purposes of study
Immunity from the right of reprisal; and
The right to be tried by their masters, or the Bishops court, rather than local civil courts
These protections articulate a framework for providing the space to analyse traditions while
suspending the common-sensical – that is, the key precondition for any serious mode of inquiry.
As such, perhaps a closing-off of the university is the only way to save it from being ravaged
by capital: its space must be preserved for the analysis of one’s own traditions alongside others,
for enabling the construction of one’s own narrative, as well as the proliferation of the theories
for practice that enable the virtues to take hold within practice. More importantly, university as
such can provide its students with the intellectual tools needed to see through the illusions of the
age, as embodied in its ideologies, and provide alternatives through the generation of theory.
Therefore, if university is understood through a sacramental logic, it can become MacIntyre’s
view of the ideal university within Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: “a place of
constrained disagreement, of imposed participation in conflict, in which the central responsibility
of higher education would be to initiate students into conflict.”