REPLIES TO CRITICISMS AND COMMENTS
REPLIES TO CRITICISMS AND COMMENTS

Summary/Abstract: I am very grateful for the many very generous remarks that the five commentators have made about my work, and grateful, too, for the searching criticisms to which they have subjected it. I will do my best to respond to these criticisms. Krzysztof Kościuszko declares that my program to transform universities so that the basic task becomes to seek and promote wisdom is “beautiful and noble” but also, unfortunately, unrealizable and utopian. I deceive myself in thinking the outcome would be that the wealthy would give to the poor, and the young would be able to stop the extinction of species, war, and pollution. However, Kościuszko has massively inflated and exaggerated what it is that I argue for. It is as if he interprets me as arguing that, in order to create a wiser world it is sufficient to transform universities so that they come to put wisdominquiry into practice (wisdom-inquiry being the conception of inquiry I argue for). Given that interpretation of my argument, Kościuszko’s criticisms make complete sense. How could transforming academia of itself suffice to solve the problems of the world—inequality, war, pollution, extinction of species and the rest? Utopian nonsense! But that is not my argument. At most I argue, far more modestly, that, in order to create a wiser world it may be necessary to transform universities. Without our institutions of learning being rationally designed and devoted to helping us make progress towards a wiser world, it may not be possible for us actually to make progress towards such a world. Wisdom-inquiry does not, in other words, remotely guarantee success in the real world. Academia might be utterly devoted to promoting wisdom, and it might be ignored by the rest of the world so that we continue to blunder from one disaster to another, as we do at present. On the other hand, if we are to create a better world, we need to learn how to do it, and that may require our institutions of learning are well-designed to help us learn how to do it.[…]

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