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PARTISAN REVIEW
Replying to a critical editorial in
The Wall StreetJoumal,
the assistant
dean of undergraduate studies at Stanford, an ardent advocate of the
new program writes:
For example, fifty years ago John Locke seemed indispensable in
answering a question like "What Is Social Justice?" In 1989, with
a more interdependent world order, a more heterogeneous do–
mestic population, and mass media and communications sys–
tems that complicate our definitions of "society" and "individual,"
it may be that someone like Franz Fanon, a black Algerian psy–
choanalyst, will get us closer to the answer we need ."
(Wall
Street
Journal,
January 6, 1989).
What a curious and irrelevant defense of the new program!
The two most notable works of John Locke are his
Essay Concerning
Human Understanding
and
Two Treatises on Government.
Neither is con–
cerned centrally with social justice . The first is about the theory of
knowledge, the second about the philosophical foundation of human
rights, which should be more relevant to the human rights revolu–
tion of our times than any of the new works in the course . On the
other hand, Fanon's
The Wretched ofthe Earth
has nothing to say about
"social justice" or even about psychoanalysis . It is an eloquent tract
inciting victims of colonialism to revolutionary violence. It does not
treat seriously any of the complex social phenomena listed as bearing
on the modern quest for social justice.
If
one were concerned with
theories of social justice in 1989, one would normally require the
study of excerpts from John Rawls's
Theory of Justice
and Robert
Nozick's
Anarchy, State and Utopia
and from the writings of critics of
the natural rights tradition Rawls and Nozick have brilliantly re–
vived, rather than the study of Fanon's
The Wretched ofthe Earth.
And
if, as the assistant dean writes, we are looking for works that "will get
us closer to the answer we need," how does he know that the answer
we need is a true or adequate answer? A purported answer to a ques–
tion may meet our needs or hopes, but it may not be a true or ade–
quate answer to the problem or question. A university is an institu–
tion that should study with critical care and understanding
all
pro–
posed answers to the central questions and problems of our time. It
cannot become a partisan advocate or agency of any proposed solu–
tion. That is the function of legislative bodies in our democracy.
A good case can be made for the view that the syllabus of one of
the tracks in the old course in Western Culture could have served
adequately for all the students enrolled in the course. For example,
