MORTIMER J. ADLER ON MULTICULTURALISM
Introduction
In academic circles and in the sphere of public school reform, "multiculturalism" and "cultural diversity" are the buzz words of the '90s. They came into vogue very recently. At the moment they are the slogans or shibboleths which many different groups have emblazoned on their marching banners.
Recently my mail contained a half-dozen articles in popular periodicals or reprints from learned journals in which the pros and cons of multiculturalism are debated. My files are overflowing with similar pieces that have appeared since 1988. There may be a few a little earlier than that, but absolutely nothing at all will be found in the '70s or any earlier decade of this century.
Associated with them are the words used for the foes that the multiculturalist would like to expunge or the demons they
seek to exorcise. "Eurocentric" is the name for the traditional
values of Western culture, a culture dominated by "dead white males"
from Greek antiquity to the first half of the twentieth century in
The world, certainly, is multicultural, and so we should be taught about its cultural diversity. But this, it seems to me, is the time to ask whether society as a whole or its educational institutions should be multicultural in all respects, or only in some. If only in some, I propose that the word transculturalism should be employed for those respects in which multiculturalism or cultural pluralism should not be safeguarded or promoted. Confronting the antithesis of the multicultural and the transcultural, we should seek to understand what determines the line that divides the one from the other.
What do "transcultural" and "multicultural" mean? Should we expect the domains they characterize to shift their boundaries in the years to come, the one expanding, the other contracting? Should matters that are now regarded as multicultural become transcultural in the future? I will try to answer these questions in the following pages.
Let us begin by considering the cosmopolitan cities of the world, both in
the
For example,
The mathematics and physics taught in the schools of
With these examples of the multicultural and the transcultural before us, what determines the line that divides the one from the other?
The dividing line is the same line that separates statements which contain such words as "I like" or "I prefer" from statements which contain the words "I know," or "my opinion is."
About likes or preferences there is no point in disputing. One set of likes or preferences does not exclude another.
But when individuals differ in their claims to know, or believe, they are obliged to submit to criteria for judging which of the conflicting claims is correct and which incorrect, or which is more correct than the other.
The line that divides the multicultural from the transcultural is the line that separates all matters of taste or preference from all matters concerned with the truth and falsity of the propositions being entertained or judged.
There are various forms and degrees of skepticism about truth. Complete or extreme skepticism consists in the denial that there is anything true or false. This is tantamount to denying that there is knowledge of anything, either with certainty (or beyond the shadow of a doubt) or with probability (or beyond a reasonable doubt or with some lower degree of doubt).
It follows that such extreme skepticism about truth and falsity entails the denial of anything transcultural. It removes the possibility of putting any restrictions on pluralism or upon the claims of the multiculturalist with regard to the content of education. There are, however, insuperable difficulties about being an extreme skeptic.
In the first place, the extreme skeptic refutes himself. The individual who asserts that there is nothing either true or false must confront the question whether that statement itself is either true or false. If it is true, then it is also false; and if it is false, then skepticism is itself denied. What does one do with a person who answers a question of a verifiable sort by saying both Yes and No? Walk away, for there is no profit in continuing the conversation.
In the second place, if the multiculturalist engages in argument with his opponents, does he not claim a degree of correctness for his views that deserves their predominance over opposing views? If so, then he cannot be a complete or extreme skeptic. If he does not claim that his views have any superiority with respect to truth or correctness, what is he arguing or why is he arguing? Should he not try to prevail simply by being in the majority and winning the dispute by the force of numbers? Might makes right, he might say.
In the third place, as Hume pointed out centuries ago in abandoning extreme skepticism, one can be an extreme skeptic in the privacy of one's own closet, but not in one's daily dealings with others--not in conversation with them, not in business transactions with them, not in litigation with them, and so on. In no aspect of one's practical and social life can one honestly espouse extreme skepticism.
However, when Hume abandoned extreme skepticism as impractical, he did not give up milder or more moderate forms of skepticism. If one or more of these are tenable, as complete skepticism is not, then they constitute challenges to the transcultural, for it is only with respect to that which is either certainly or probably true that anything can be transcultural.
The opponent of the skeptic holds that there are some objective and absolute truths. More moderate forms of skepticism maintain that there may be truths, but they are neither objective nor absolute but instead are subjective and relative.
What is the precise meaning of these words? The objective is that which is the same for you, for me, and for everyone else; the subjective is that which differs from individual to individual. The absolute is that which is the same at all times and places and regardless of changing circumstances; the relative is that which differs from one time to another, or with changing circumstances. Only if there is absolute truth is truth immutable.
One form of moderate skepticism consists in saying that what may be true for you is not true for me, and that's all there is to it. All truth is subjective, differing from individual to individual.
Another form of moderate skepticism consists in saying that what was once true is no longer true, or that what was once false is now true, and that's all there is to it. All truth is relative to changing times and circumstances; no truth is immutable.
The error in these two forms of moderate skepticism lies in the words "and that's all there is to it." What has been ignored is the distinction between propositions entertained and propositions judged, either affirmed or denied. The truth of the proposition as entertained is objective, absolute, and immutable. It is only the judgments we make about propositions that differ from individual to individual and change from time to time.
One example will suffice to make this point clear. Consider the proposition "The atom is divisible." Merely entertain it in your mind. Do not make any judgment or assertion that either affirms or denies it. This is easy to do. The statement "atoms are divisible" is clearly different from the statement "I think that atoms are divisible" or "I think that atoms are indivisible."
The history of atomism in physical theory can be summed up by saying that all physicists who were atomists, from Democritus in Greek antiquity down to the end of the nineteenth century, asserted that atoms were indivisible units of matter. The statement that atoms are divisible--or fissionable--would have been judged false by all of them. It is only in the twentieth century that atomic fission has been produced.
Was it true in all preceding centuries that atoms are divisible, or did it only become true in the twentieth century? The actual fission of atoms occurred only in the twentieth century, but in all preceding centuries atoms were fissionable, although no actual atomic fission had ever occurred before. What, then, should we say about judgments made by physicists before the twentieth century? That they were incorrect, because they affirmed as true that atoms are indivisible, which was then actually false. The truth about the divisibility of atoms has not changed; it is only scientific judgments that have changed.
In short, human judgments about what is factually true or false are both subjective, differing from individual to individual, and also relative, differing with the time of the judgment or with the relevant circumstances. Judgments about what is true or false are mutable, but not what is in fact true or false. If any proposition as entertained is ever true at any time and place, it is true always and everywhere. Only the judgments that human beings make about what is true or false differ from individual to individual and with different times and circumstances.
The error in the two forms of moderate skepticism just pointed out would be avoided if the words true and false were applied only to propositions as entertained, and the judgments human beings make about them were called "correct" and "incorrect."
What forms of skepticism remain that are tenable? They consist in specifically limited skepticisms. For example, those who deny that there is factual truth in any of the world's religions, or assert that all religions are mythologies misconstrued as being factually instead of poetically true, espouse specifically limited skepticism. Social scientists, and especially cultural anthropologists, who are skeptical about factual truth in religion are not skeptical about factual truth in science.
On the contrary, they are often dogmatic about the truth of scientific conclusions and are opposed by those who, while not being skeptical about truth in the natural sciences, are specifically skeptical about truth in the social sciences and in history.
The latter think, for example, that the knowledge achieved in physical science and in mathematics is transcultural (i.e., that all competent to judge in these fields of knowledge will concur in the same judgments regardless of their ethnic and cultural differences in other respects). They also think that, at the present time at least, there is no similarly transcultural knowledge in the social sciences, especially those with a historical perspective.
In the current controversy about multiculturalism in the courses offered in our educational institutions, it is these specifically limited skepticisms--about religion, philosophy, or one form of science or another--which must be considered. Only the specifically limited skepticisms that are correct indicate the extent to which the claims of the multiculturalist about desirable changes in the curriculum are tenable.
For example, if the specifically limited skepticism with respect to truth in religion is correct, then any instruction in the field of religion should be multicultural. If the specifically limited skepticism with respect to truth in the social sciences and in history is correct, then instruction in these fields should be multicultural.
Two forms of specifically limited skepticism have a crucial bearing on the current controversy.
One is specifically limited to the whole field of philosophy as opposed to the fields of experimental or empirical science; or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to define this skepticism as limited to any mode of philosophy that claims to be knowledge of reality, thus omitting modes of philosophy that restrict themselves to commenting on language as used in ordinary speech or in scientific discourse. To whatever extent logic and mathematics are inseparable, logic must be as transcultural as mathematics.
The other specifically limited skepticism applies to moral and political philosophy insofar as it makes claims to having prescriptive knowledge about what is good and bad, or right and wrong, in human conduct and in human societies. This skepticism is evident in those twentieth-century philosophers who regard ethics as noncognitive. They are philosophers who are themselves specifically skeptical about there being any objectively and universally valid truth in ethics.
Relevant here is the twentieth-century distinction between questions of fact and questions of value, or between factual assertions and value judgments. The skeptical position here consists in holding that there are no correct or incorrect value judgments because there are no entertainable prescriptive statements that are either true or false.
Relevant also is the fourth-century Aristotelian distinction between two kinds of truth--the truth of descriptive propositions (i.e., statements about what is or is not) and the truth of prescriptive propositions (i.e., statements about what ought or ought not to be sought or done).
In the case of descriptive statements, their truth, according to Plato and Aristotle, consists in affirming that that which is, is; and that that which is not, is not. Falsity is found in statements asserting that that which is not, is; or that that which is, is not.
This is the correspondence definition of truth (cor-respondence between thought and reality) that has prevailed in the Western tradition down to the pragmatic theory of truth, in which William James distinguished between the question of how truth should be defined and the question as to the criteria for telling whether a given statement is correctly judged to be true or false. An exception occurs in modern times with the rise of various forms of idealism and the denial of a reality that is independent of the human mind.
It should be obvious at once that the correspondence theory of truth applies only to descriptive statements about what is or is not the case. It cannot apply to prescriptive statements containing the words ought or ought not. Aristotle defined prescriptive truth as a different correspondence, not between thought and reality, but between thought and right desire.
It is not necessary here to explain or defend this definition of prescriptive truth. Suffice it to say that only if there is no prescriptive truth are the specifically limited skeptics about moral philosophy correct in thinking that all prescriptive statements are noncognitive--neither true nor false.
They are correct in thinking that they are neither true nor false in terms of descriptive truth. That, however, leaves open the possibility that Aristotle may be correct in thinking that there is another mode of truth in accordance with which questions of value--about what is right and wrong, good and bad--can be correctly answered by affirming prescriptive statements that, as entertained, are objectively and universally valid.
If statements about the conduct of a good human life can be objectively and universally valid, then there can be a transcultural ethics. If statements about how society should be organized and governed, in order to be good for human beings to live in, can be objectively and universally valid, then a normative or prescriptive political philosophy can be transcultural. It follows that instruction in these matters should not be multicultural. On the contrary, if there are no objectively and universally valid prescriptions in the field of ethics or politics, then descriptive instruction in these matters should be multicultural.
Instructional Aims of Multiculturalism
What are the instructional aims of proponents of multiculturalism in our institutions of learning, first, with respect to basic public schooling (K-12); and second, with respect to college curricula?
The multiculturalists may differ in their aims with respect to public
schooling, but they all respond to the same set of facts. In the ethnically
diverse and culturally heterogeneous large cities of this country, the school
populations include children that come from black (or African American) homes
and from white homes having families of European origin. They also include Hispanics,
Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, and children in families from
In the summer 1990 issue of The American Scholar, Professor Diane Ravitch of Teachers College, Columbia University, published an article entitled "Multiculturalism: E Pluribus Plures." In it she distinguished between two forms of multiculturalism, calling the one "pluralistic" multiculturalism and the other "particularistic" multiculturalism and approving of the first while sharply disapproving of the second.
It is with the teaching of history in the public schools that she is most concerned, but one might have similar concerns about the teaching of social geography. Children should be taught history and geography so that they are made aware of the mixture of ethnic and cultural diversities that have entered into the fabric of American life. They should be made conscious of the contributions of their own forebears to this mixture and take pride in the characteristic traits of the human subgroup that they themselves represent, while at the same time recognizing that those representing other human subgroups among their classmates share the common humanity that makes them all deserving of equal status and treatment.
This applies to subjects that are themselves intrinsically transcultural because they are bodies of objectively valid knowledge, such as mathematics, the natural sciences, and their derivative technologies. The application occurs not in the teaching of these sciences as bodies of knowledge but rather in teaching the history of these sciences.
Here the children should learn that many different cultural groups,
especially in antiquity, contributed to the development of mathematics,
physics, and astronomy. They should be impressed with the fact that these
sciences are not solely of Greek and Roman origin. Contributions to the
development of mathematics and astronomy come from ancient
What Professor Ravitch calls "particularistic" as opposed to "pluralistic" multiculturalism is, not multiculturalism at all. It lays stress on one particular human subgroup to the exclusion from consideration of others in the mixture that constitutes our pluralistic American culture.
In educational circles, for example, a group of militant African Americans are acting as a political lobby for giving the African-American children in our schools a diet of legends about African-American origins of much, if not all, of the treasures that have, in the past, been attributed exclusively to Western European civilization. This is intended to counteract the Eurocentrism of traditional teaching; but at the same time it ignores the fact that whatever truth can now be attributed to mathematics, the natural sciences, technology, moral philosophy, and even religion is now transcultural. It is not the private cultural property of any human subgroup.
Professor Ravitch tells us that such particularism "is unabashedly filiopietistic." It teaches black children that the American pluralistically multicultural society in which they live is not their own culture, even though they were born here. That American culture is "Eurocentric," and therefore hostile to anyone whose ancestors are not European. Perhaps the most invidious implication of particularism is that racial and ethnic minorities are not and should not try to be part of American culture; it implies that American culture belongs only to those who are white and European; it implies that those who are neither white nor European are alienated from American culture by virtue of their race or ethnicity; it implies that the only culture they do belong to or can ever belong to is the culture of their ancestors, even if their families have lived in this country for generations.
Professor Ravitch goes on to say that "the war on so-called Eurocentrism is intended to foster self-esteem among those who are not of European descent," but she questions whether in fact it actually works that way; for, in her view,
"the children of American society today will live their lives in a racially and culturally diverse nation, and their education should prepare them to do soS[The] particularists have no interest in extending or revising American culture; indeed, they deny that a common culture existsS[and] reject any accommodation among groups, any interactions that blur the distinct lines between them. The brand of history that they espouse is one in which everyone is either a descendant of victims or oppressors."
We turn now from the controversy at the level of public schools, between the pluralistic multiculturalists and the antipluralistic particularists, to the controversy about multiculturalism at the college level.
This controversy focuses on the books that should be a part of one's general education. It is a dispute about the traditionally recognized canon of the monuments of Western literature in all fields--works of mathematics and science as well as works of poetry, drama, and fiction, and also works of biography, history, philosophy, and theology. Here we are confronted with current attacks upon the canonical list of great books and the responses that those attacks have elicited.
I am involved in this controversy--as associate editor of the first edition of the Great Books of the Western World, published in 1952, and as editor in chief of the second, much expanded edition, published in 1990.
The second edition differed from the first in many respects: new translations, a revised Syntopicon, and six volumes of twentieth-century authors that did not appear in the first edition, as well as fifteen authors added in the period from Homer to Freud. As in the case of the first edition, so in the case of the second, our Editorial Board and the large group of advisers whom we consulted did not agree unanimously about the authors to be included; but in both cases there was ninety percent agreement. That, in my judgment, is all one can expect in a matter of this kind.
I would like to call attention to two things about the second edition. In writing an introductory essay, which appeared in a volume that accompanied the set, entitled The Great Conversation, I anticipated the controversy that the second edition of the Great Books of the Western World would arouse. This did not arise before. In the 1940s, when we were engaged in producing the first edition, "Euro-centric" was not current as a disapprobative term. There was no hue and cry about the absence of female authors; nor had blacks cried out for representation in the canon. In those earlier decades of this century, students and teachers in our colleges and educators in general were not concerned with multiculturalism in our educational offerings.
The second edition contains female authors, some in the nineteenth and some in the twentieth century, but no black authors; and it is still exclusively Western (i.e., European or American authors) with none from the four or five cultural traditions of the Far East.
The controversy over the desirability of multiculturalism having arisen in the late 1980s, I took account of it in my introductory essay, pointing out carefully the criteria in terms of which the authors were selected for inclusion, explaining the difference between the five hundred or so great works included in the set and the thousands of good books listed in the Recommended Readings at the end of each of the 102 chapters in The Syntopicon. These lists included many female and many black authors, but none still from the Far East.
These exclusions were not, and are not, invidious. The difference between great and good books is one of kind, not of degree. Good books are not "almost great" or "less than great" books. Great books are relevant to human problems in every century, not just germane to current 20th century problems. A great book requires to be read over and over, and has many meanings; a good book needs to have no more than one meaning, and it need not be read more than once.
I also explained but did not apologize for the so-called Eurocentrism of the Great Books of the Western World by pointing out why no authors or works from the four or five distinct cultural traditions in the Far East were included or should be included. The Western authors are engaged in a great conversation across the centuries about great ideas and issues. In the multicultural traditions of the Far East, there are, perhaps, as many as four or five great conversations about different sets of ideas, but the authors and books in these different cultural traditions do not combine these ideas in one Far Eastern tradition, nor do they participate in the great conversation that has occurred over the last twenty-five centuries in the West. There are undoubtedly great, as distinguished from good, books in all of these Far Eastern traditions.
I did not anticipate that those who responded to the publication of the second edition by challenging its Eurocentrism or complaining about the fact that its authors were still for the most part dead white males, with few females and no blacks, would do so entirely in terms of announcements in the press of the list of included authors, and without reading my introductory essay and without knowing that a large number of female and black authors were included in the 102 lists in The Syntopicon of good books cited as readings recommended in addition to the great books included in the set, along with many other books by white males, none of them regarded as great.
I should mention one other point that is highly germane to the controversy. Many of those who criticize the traditional canon of great books and call for its rejection incorrectly suppose that its defenders claim that it is a repository of transcultural truth and nothing else. That is not the case. The editors and advisory consultants of the Great Books of the Western World know that there is much more error or falsity in the intellectual and cultural tradition of the West than there is truth.
The relation of truth to error is a one-many relation; for every truth, there are many deviations from it that are false. What truth is to be found is, of course, transcultural. The multiple errors, some of them multicultural, that impinge on each truth are of great importance for the understanding of the truth. Without grappling with the errors, one's understanding of the truth that corrects them is shallow. It follows that if the truths to be found in the great books of the West are transcultural, so, too, must be the understanding of the errors, some of which will be discovered in the Far East.
I turn now from the controversy about the second edition of the Great Books of the Western World to the controversy that has very recently arisen concerning what books should be required reading in colleges that still have some interest in the general, as opposed to the specialized, education of their students. This controversy started at Stanford University in 1988 and has spread since then to other colleges across the country.
The public prints and the electronic media have given the controversy ample notice, and its pros and cons have been publicly debated. A desirable multiculturalism has been appealed to as the basis not only for including many recent books by female, black, and non-Western authors but also for eliminating from the required readings a large number of authors and books that have long been treasured as Western greats, especially authors and books in classical antiquity, in the Middle Ages, and in modern times up to the nineteenth century.
Unquestionably among the books that have been recommended for addition, some contain recently discovered or restated truths that correct errors to be found in books of earlier centuries. If so, who could reasonably object to such additions? No one. But the same cannot be said for the recommended deletions from the list of required readings-- Plato and Aristotle, for example, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Gibbon; Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy; Marcus Aurelius, Rabelais, Montaigne, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and John Stuart Mill. All of these dead white males made important contributions to the pursuit of truth, even if there was much error in their insights, their principles, or their conclusions. Why, then, should many of them, or any of them, be rejected, if their inclusion does not call for the rejection of twentieth century books written by female or black authors?
If general education is to include not just Western civilization but the other great cultures of the world in the Far East, a question still remains. If Western civilization is included as one of many in the multicultural melange, why exclude Western authors and books long recognized as truly great for their contribution to the pursuit and understanding of truth?
It may be said, of course, that there is not enough time to include these older authors if twentieth-century authors and Far Eastern authors are also to be added to the required readings. It may be said that general education should be given up and no readings at all should be required for that purpose.
But it should not be said, as some of the proponents of multiculturalism seem to think, that truth is merely what some people assert. And that they would like to be the ones to assert what is true, or elect those who are to assert it. Or, if objective truth is held to exist somewhere, it is in natural science, but not in speculative philosophy, theology, or religion, and especially not in moral philosophy, which is concerned with questions of value--good and evil, right and wrong, what ought to be sought and done.
For such multiculturalists, these are all held to be matters of subjective personal predilection. They are not matters of public knowledge, not even knowledge with residual doubt, but only private or individual opinion, unsupported by the weight of evidence or reasons. What is or is not desirable is, therefore, entirely a matter of taste (about which there should be no disputing), not a matter of truth which can be disputed in terms of empirical evidence and reasons.
That being the case, we are left with a question that should be embarrassing to the multiculturalists, though they are not likely to feel its pinch. When they proclaim the desirability of the multicultural, they dispute about matters that should not be disputed. What, then, can possibly be their grounds of preference? Since in their terms it cannot appeal to any relevant body of truth, what they demand in the name of multiculturalism must arise from a wish for power or a belief that their self-esteem will be somehow served.
When dispute on a basis of empirical evidence or by appeal to rational grounds is ruled out, conflicting claims can only be resolved by power politics, either by force or by dominance of a majority. In either case, it comes down to might makes right. That is exactly what is happening today in the efforts of the multiculturalists to change the curriculum in the public schools and in our colleges.
Multiculturalism is cultural pluralism. In the twentieth century, pluralism has become part of the democratic ideal, opposed to the monolithic totalitarianism that is now being challenged in the Russia, and also to the equally monolithic rigidity of Islamic, Jewish, or Christian fundamentalism.
While democracy and socialism, and with them pluralism, are ideal in the social and economic dimensions of society, cultural pluralism is not wholly desirable in other dimensions of our life. What is desirable is a restricted cultural pluralism; that is, the promotion and preservation of pluralism in all matters of taste, but not in any matters that are concerned with objectively valid truth, either descriptive factual truth or prescriptive normative truth.
In this century, mathematics, the hard-core natural sciences, and their attendant technologies have become transcultural. What truth they have so far attained is at present acknowledged everywhere on earth. Whether or not, in the next century or in a more distant future, transcultural truth will be attained in philosophy, in the social sciences, in institutional history, and even in religion is an open question that should not be dogmatically answered by the present breed of multiculturalists whose unrestricted pluralism substitutes power or might for truth and right in the effort to control what should be taught or thought.