Yet Trissotin, I must admit,
So irks me that there’s no controlling it.
I can’t to gain his advocacy stoop
To praise the works of such a nincompoop.
It was those works which introduced me to him;
Before I ever saw the man, I knew him;
From the vile way he wrote, I saw with ease
What, in the flesh, must be his qualities:
The absolute presumption, the complete
And dauntless nature of his self-conceit,
The calm assurance of his superior worth
Which renders him the smuggest man on earth,
So that he stands in awe and hugs himself
Before his volumes ranged upon the shelf,
And would not trade his baseless reputation
For that of any general in the nation.
That is Clitandre in Moliere’s The Learned Ladies. It (and all the quotations which follow) are from the absolutely brilliant Richard Wilbur translation. (Side note: Wilbur’s translations of Moliere’s verse plays are extraordinary; somehow there is never a forced rhyme.)
As the play opens, we get dueling portraits of Trissotin. As is obvious from the above, Clitandre is not impressed. Clitandre’s mother, Philaminte, is highly impressed, so much so that she is arranging to marry off her daughter to this scholar she esteems so highly. (Fear not, Dear Reader, in the end Clitandre will marry the true love of her life and all will be well.)
If you want an example of how things never really change, you can do no better than this play from 1672.
When we meet Trissotin later in the play, we predictably discover that Clitandre is right. Trissotin is an intellectual fraud. The question for us today is why does Philaminte believe that Trissotin is so brilliant? Why doesn’t she see that there is absolutely no depth of thought in her intellectual hero; why is she so willing to accept that what he is saying must be true?
Consider the following conversation:
Trissotin: For method, Aristotle suits me well.
Philaminte: But in abstractions, Plato does excel.
Armande: The thought of Epicurus is very keen.
Belise: I rather like his atoms, but as between
A vacuum and a field of subtle matter
I find it easier to accept the latter.
Trissotin: On magnetism, Descartes supports my notions.
Armande: I love his falling worlds…
Philaminte: And whirling motions!
Here is the question: What did you think when you read that conversation? Are Trissotin, Philaminte, Armande and Belise having an intellectual conversation, full of insight and wit? Did you see the name-dropping and assume these all must be super smart people having a super smart conversation? Or did you notice that none of them are actually saying anything beyond platitudes? They are simply name-dropping.
I have noticed this phenomena a lot, probably because I spend way too much time in gatherings with Ph.D.s. (My favorite example occurred at a pre-talk dinner where one of my colleagues and the guest speaker spent a considerable time showing off their ability to mention great museums. “The museum in Detroit is really excellent.” “Yes, but have you ever been to the one in Cincinnati?” And so on for a good 10 minutes. Somehow neither one of them ever manage to actually say anything substantive about any of the museums they mentioned. It was hard not to laugh out loud at them.) In the popular imagination, if you have a lot of years of education, you must be really smart and know a lot of stuff. In reality, most Ph.D.s I have met are the equivalent of an idiot savant. They know a whole lot about one small thing; that is how they earned their Ph.D.
But, does someone with a Ph.D. know anything about any subject outside of their narrow area of expertise? Maybe. (Frequently told joke which is funny because it is true: Ph.D.s are people who have learned more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.) Just like people in any walk of life, some people are widely knowledgeable and well-read and some are not. Some lawyers and doctors and pastors and electricians and barbers know things beyond their narrow expertise; some really don’t know much of anything else. Yet, there is a presumption that people with Ph.D.s know a lot of things.
Why does this matter? Think for a moment about the effect of this assumption that intellectuals have knowledge and wisdom on things beyond their narrow expertise. What would be the effect of this assumption if the academics start believing it themselves?
Moliere’s describes it perfectly in a discussion of the aims of this society of the “learned.”
Regarding language, we aim to renovate
Our tongue through laws which soon we’ll promulgate.
Each of us has conceived a hatred, based
On outraged reason or offended taste,
For certain nouns and verbs. We’ve gathered these
Into a list of shared antipathies,
And shall proceed to doom and banish them.
At each of our learned gatherings, we’ll condemn
In mordant terms those words which we propose
To purge from usage, whether in verse or prose.
Looking at the state of the modern Academy, it is really hard to believe those words were written over three centuries ago. Certain nouns and verbs shall henceforth be verboten! Forbidden words! Words that we all know should be hated! We’ll gather together and denounce these words!
What gives the characters in this play the confidence that they can decide which words needs to go? Do you even have to ask? These people are the learned! They are the ones who have that scintillating discussion above about Aristotle and Plato and Epicurus and Descartes and thus they know more than the plebeians who live outside their learned society. One of the goals of the learned society, perhaps the most important goal, is to purge society from the use of improper language. (Earlier in the play Philaminte fired a servant because the servant’s grammar was improper!)
Drawing the connection to contemporary society is not difficult. But, then a funny thing happened. The hoi polloi outside the Academy banded together to oppose the attempt of the learned to ban words from use. Sadly, the result is not an argument for freedom of speech. The result is an attempt to ban a different set of words and thoughts from educational institutions.
We are quickly heading for a world in which academic institutions have dueling speech codes. Both speech codes are being promulgated by “experts,” people who pose as all-knowing mandarins happy to use their status to advance the idea that those other people out there are talking in really really bad ways. There are a lot of Trissotins in the modern world.
There is no better example of this baleful problem than Penguin Random House, which has recently done both of these things:
1. Decided that the Roald Dahl books need to be edited to remove offensive language.
2. Filed a lawsuit in Florida to oppose attempts to remove books other people find offensive from school libraries.
If that seems like Penguin Random House is contradicting itself, you are under the mistake impression that anyone cares about free speech anymore. Free speech is for me, not for thee.
Sadly, Penguin Random House is all too typical. The result has been a whole bunch of people relying on their own Most Favored Intellectuals, who are happy to issues directives from on high about how all the rest of us should think.
Where does this lead? Moliere again:
By our high standards we shall criticize
Whatever’s written, and be severe with it.
We’ll show that only we and our friends have wit.
We’ll search out faults in everything, while citing
Ourselves alone for pure and flawless writing.
In 1672, that was satirical wit. Now? It is the motto of just about everyone involved with education on both sides of the duel.
What is the solution? Lose the idea that there is anyone out there whose ideas are so pure and flawless they can be accepted without critique. It is painfully easy to notice the pseudo-intellectuals amongst those with whom you disagree. Remember that there are many pseudo-intellectuals in your tribe too. A little intellectual humility would go a long way.
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