ROGER SCRUTON
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screen.
Th ere are two furth er threa ts to th e traditi o nal cu rri culum in th e
humaniti es: th e in vasio n o f th e ir te rrito ry by soc ial sc ience (or soc ial
pseudosc ience) and the impulse to po liti cize.
It
is fa r from clea r how we
should respond to them . W e need to understand these two processes and
why they have bee n so close ly conn ec ted . So let us consider the Marxian
theory of history, still the most instru cti ve o f the many attempts to replace
moral by soc ial sc ie nce, and still the archetype o f all radi cal assa ults on the
status quo o f culture. Accordin g to Marx, hi story is dri ve n by economi c
forces, the fo rces of p rodu cti o n . Producti o n is a soc ial process, invo lving
joint acti vity, powe r ove r people and thin gs, and a di stributi o n o f the
produ ct. Society is based in th e rcl ati o ns betwee n people that gove rn and
facilitate produ cti o n , the rel ati o ns of lo rd to se rf, o f capitalist to wo rker,
and so on. All instituti o ns, laws, and reli gio ns are to be explained as pro–
ceeding from and fo rtifyin g th ese fund am ental relati o ns o f economi c
power. C lass ical M arxism draws a we ll-kn own contrast between science
and ideology. Scien ce deli ve rs o bjecti ve knowledge of the material wo rld
and permits maste ry ove r nature .
It
is th ere fo re no t me rely a fo rm of
knowl edge but also a produ ctive fo rce, o ne o f th e mo to rs of histo ry.
Ideology, by contrast, delivers no knowledge o f the materi al world. On
the contrary, its fun cti o n is no t to revea l th e world but to mystifY it, so
that the truth o f o ur co ndit io n (a nd in parti cul ar th e fac ts o f human
power) shall no t be clea rl y perce ived by th ose w ho would o therw ise
rebel. Ideology fo rtifi es the soc ial o rd er, by representing it as natural, in–
evitable , and ri ght. Its signifi can ce is exhausted by its legitimi zing fun c–
tion .
The humaniti es as I have desc ribed them certainly do no t provide sci–
entific knowledge. T hey neith er explain the natural wo rld no r concep–
tualize it in ways that lend t hemsel ves to explanati o n. There is a tempta–
tion , therefo re, to think o f th em as part of ideology : effects of the social
process that fo rm part o f a " narrati ve of legitimati o n ," to use the language
of the Frankfurt school. Thinking o f them in such a way is a furth er step
toward their repudi ati o n : towa rd beli eving th e humaniti es have no in–
trinsic claim over us, that th e sum of th eir signifi cance is delivered by the
social sc ience o f the ir producti o n , and that all we could conce ivably study
in them is their ideologica l fun cti o n in relati o n to the econOIni c processes
from which they d erive . That, in bri e f, has been the burden of M arx ist
and radi ca l criti cism in o ur ce ntu ry, from th e criti ca l th eory of the
Frankfurt sc hoo l, thro ugh the structuralism o f Barthes, the po wer analysis
of Fouca ult , and the deconstru cti o n o f D errida and de Man, down to the
radical feminism o f th e Ameri ca n academy. C riti cism has yielded to soc ial
science, while soc ial science has become an instrument of criti cism , an
