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OPINION: Why Prof Mehta's resignation from Ashoka varsity is fulfilment of Nietzsche’s ideal

Nietzsche was hostile to the prospect of institutional forms of learning

pratap-bhanu-mehta-fb Professor Pratap Bhanu Mehta | via Facebook

It may strike as odd and surprising to some readers but the circumstances of the resignation of Professor Pratap Bhanu Mehta from Ashoka University is a fulfillment of one of Nietzsche’s ideals and expectations for the flourishing of scholarly freedom. Mehta, for reasons best known to him (mistakenly) lined up Nietzsche in the service of making a case for academic ‘truth-telling’ in our time. In his resignation letter to the University’s Vice Chancellor, Mehta quotes Nietzsche as saying, “… no living for truth possible in a university (sic)”. The relevance of this quote is not in question even if it is not literally accurate.

Mehta’s optimism implied in the line that follows—“I hope that prophecy does not come true”—is an unfortunate misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s critique of academic institutions, academic life, scholars, and scholarship. It is unfortunate because coming from as eminent a scholar as Mehta, it creates the illusion that the problem he personally faced is something specific, contemporary, and can be secured by the willful actions of university authorities and by angry protests of disaffected intellectuals. It misdirects our attention to what is most recent, individual and political instead of forcing us to ask more difficult questions about the underlying cultural, historical, social and economic drives that have been at work in misdirecting the nature and purpose of institutions of higher learning since Nietzsche’s time.

Nietzsche was not prophesying but indicting the German academic culture and educational institutions of his time. In his 1872 Basel lectures 'On the Future of Educational Institutions', in the series of books he published in the 1870s later titled 'Untimely Meditations', and in his contemporaneous notebooks, he showed himself to be a dangerous and unqualified enemy of educational institutions. He did not believe ‘truth-telling’, ‘(personal) scholarly freedom’ and the institutionalised scholarly life could be harmonised—they tend to produce contradiction and fragmentation. Nietzsche understood that institutions have their interests even if its member does not know what they are. He also saw that institutional forms of life produce a slave, not the master mentality necessary for acts of ‘truth-telling’; they service baser human instincts and needs, they satisfy human weaknesses not the striving for strength, they are safe spaces for cowardice, they privilege agreement at the cost of truth, and promote careerism.

Nietzsche was hostile to the prospect of institutional forms of learning and scholarly vocation. Here are some adjectives and adjectival phrases he used in describing scholars and scholarship in his time: ‘rabble-republic of scholars’; ‘ochlocracy of scholars’; ‘workday scholars’; ‘dwarfs’ ‘proud idlers’; ‘factory workers’; ‘exhausted labourers’; ‘slaves in service of state’; money and greed’; ‘producers of useless claptrap’; ‘philistines’; ‘company of feeble nymphs’; ‘windbags’; ‘characterless and apathetic’; ‘shabby’; ‘wretched’; ‘naïve’; ‘unphilosophical masses’; ‘rattling skeletons’; ‘clowns’; ‘superficial’; ‘delusional’; ‘slaves of success’; ‘rabblers’; ‘coquettish dotards’; ‘flighty school masters’; ‘producers of trash’; ‘terribly stupid’; ‘philistines wanting to look like geniuses’; ‘panderers’ (to public sentiment and mood); ‘sly foxes’; ‘mediocre’; ‘rogues’ … this list can go on.

Mehta’s misunderstanding of Nietzsche’s cultural critique, to my mind, is trivial in comparison with the more substantial misdirection implied in the letter and the larger debates in the media around this issue. What is more troubling is the substantial misunderstanding that shows up in both the contents of his resignation letter and the surrounding noise in the media—on the meaning, reality, and the purposes of contemporary educational institutions. Particularly, the belief that constraints on scholarly freedom are a disease that is characteristic of our fragmented times; that they are the expressions of the

malevolent drives of ruling ideology and are specific to the configuration of the contemporary university not its very essence; that capitalist philanthropy heralds a freer and brighter future; and that the malaise can easily be cured without radical reconfiguration of cultural norms and social expectations.

Nietzsche would have called into question all these unchallenged assumptions and would have characterised the present-day media outrages as naive, self-serving, delusional, lacking in perspective, insincere, myopic, and mistaken (if he were to write in polite and compromised contemporary idiom). In his 1872 lectures on educational institutions, Nietzsche said that the gymnasiums and universities of his time were best suited to train the bureaucrats of a greedily expanding state, workers of the growing industrial estate, journalists, and self-perpetuating scholarly tribes, not much else. The courageous ‘truthteller’

should look elsewhere for inspiration and should brave all the suffering that comes with such a lifestyle with grace and dignity, resisting the siren calls of state-regulated institutions.

In the Nietzschean light, Mehta’s withdrawal from Ashoka University should be a relief for those who strive for freer scholarly expression, even if it was forced by the circumstances. It is a fulfillment of one of Nietzsche’s ideals for the genuine scholar—a life led free from institutional constraints. It is also in harmony with Nietzsche’s desire that the state cleanse the philosophers (truthtellers) from the universities, a necessary condition for rescuing philosophy from state-sponsored philosophers. Nietzsche’s larger point was that state-sponsored educational institutions have as their aim mass production of educated citizens and the massification of education itself; genuine education that produces truthtellers is not one of their objectives. This responsibility rests on a few committed individuals alone as was the case with Nietzsche’s exemplars—Schopenhauer, Grillparzer, Wagner, and Goethe.

In Schopenhauer as Educator, Nietzsche said that if some genuine ‘truth-teller’ were to appear in the institutions of higher education that are regulated and patronised by the state he “…acted as though he wanted to measure everything, including the state, by the standards of truth, then the state—because above all else it affirms its own existence—would be justified in banishing such a person and treating him as an enemy, just as the state banishes and treats as an enemy any religion that sets itself above the state and wants to act as its judge.” Nietzsche thought this is a long-standing and unresolvable paradox. The

ideals of the truthteller and the interests of the state cannot coincide, and any expectation to the contrary should be seen as a triumph of hope against the difficulty of reality.

Debating the question of scholarly ‘truth-telling’ with Nietzsche as an ally and interlocutor will be an invitation to real trouble if hypocrisy is not marshalled as the strongest ally in the masking of the contradictions and paradoxes of institutional scholarly life in India (and around the world).

The author in an independent scholar in philosophy and organisational studies.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.

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