Nemsie Gonzalez
Editor-in-Chief
On Wednesday, Oct. 15, the College welcomed Robert B. Talisse,W. Alton Jones professor of philosophy and political science at Vanderbilt University, to Gault Recital Hall to end Wooster’s lecture series titled “Academic Freedom and Academic Responsibility” and as part of the annual Lindner Lecture in Ethics. Talisse’s talk, titled “Civil Solutitude: Why Democracy Needs Distance,” focused on the responsibilities that correspond with the guarantee of academic freedom and the liberty of professors to pursue and teach their areas of expertise.
The event opened with an introduction from Evan Riley, associate professor of philosophy, on the history of the Lindner Lecture, which allows for ethical reflection and learning. “This is regrettably a very timely topic, for academic responsibility… is at present being aggressively eroded, infringed and effaced here in the U.S and indeed around the world,” Riley said.
Talisse began by outlining his agenda through four ideas: the democratic ideal, the ethics of citizenship, the problem of polarization and academic responsibility. “We might say the reason why institutions and practices like elections and principles regarding an independent judiciary and certain kinds of individual freedoms … loom so large are [because they’re] manifestations of a particular kind of social ideal,” Talisse said. “I want to suggest to you that democracy is fundamentally an aspiration — this aspiration being to achieve a self-governing society of citizens who regard one another as political equal.”
This idea drives what Talisse recognizes as the ethics of citizenship. “We have to see one another as individuals who are entitled to an equal say, even when perhaps especially we see one another as mistaken,” Talisse said.
This citizenship, Talisse argued, is made up of two parts — a responsibility to be an active citizen and maintain a non-passive role in democracy, and a responsibility to fellow citizens which requires political reflection. “Citizenship is also a task within us,” Talisse said.
Talisse acknowledged that there is a difficulty that accompanies fulfilling these duties, caused by two kinds of polarization: political polarization, a metric of political divide, and belief polarization, which he described as “a cognitive dynamic within members of a like-minded group … which interactions among like-minded peoples turn us into more extreme versions of ourselves.” Belief polarization makes us more insular, Talisse argued, “[our more extreme selves are] more invested in homogeneity among our allies … our more extreme selves are also less democratic — hierarchical groups are not internally democratic groups.”
Talisse suggested that the real problem of polarization is that the two aspects of the ethics of citizenship are undermined. These behaviors “erode the cognitive and affective capacities needed to navigate political disagreement” while rewarding negative partisanship.
Talisse closed out the lecture by discussing academic responsibility. He argued that a professor’s work has to be political to cultivate democratic citizenship.
“It is the responsibility of the academic in educating for democratic citizenship to attempt to cultivate the capacities to not only understand and appreciate the democratic aspiration, but to make advances on it, to innovate, to do things new with it,” Talisse stated.
The lecture closed with a short Q&A section and a closing reception outside the recital hall.