ASET book club - March 2010

At the ASET conference on Sunday I learned that the ASET book for our March, 2010 will be Intellectuals and Society. I was delighted as I had mistakenly "heard" that the book would be Knowledge and Decisions. Like all Sowell's work, this latter book is excellent and I will finish it, but I have eagerly been looking forward to the latest book by Thomas Sowell.

This blog has explored the related concerns of civil discourse, the responsibility of educators and the instrumental and ultimate value of liberty and freedom in our society. Sowell's latest book provides an outstanding foundation for furthering that discussion and, as I reflect upon it, Knowledge and Decisions is a prerequisite for understanding the landscape that shapes institutional and individual responses to these three concerns.

Interestingly, the topic of civil discourse came to my attention this week (see this blog post) as deLong again exemplifies that antithesis of civil discourse as well as the arrogance of the elite, while Russ Roberts models responsibility in, what I hope is not a futile effort to engage in constructive education. While this approach may be wasted on elites of deLong's ilk, it may find some ground with colleagues in the profession.

During the Q and A at our ASET conference on Feb. 20, 2010, one of the participants prefaced a question to John Morton's presentation of Keynes revisited with a comment obviously endorsing intervention in the markets. While I did not have the opportunity to speak with this teacher later in the day, it is my hope that an open minded, reasonable individual might find much to consider from the conference activities to reconsider a position that uncritically supports government intervention.

A critical review of the Intellectuals and Society published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, before attacking the author and his thesis in a manner that seems to me to confirm Sowell's inditement of elites, contextualizes the book as one of a trilogy. Sowell makes this point in the preface to the book by saying that his work follows Paul Johnson in Intellectuals (1988) and Richard Posner in Public Intellectuals (2003).

While the criticism Jacoby directs to Professor Posner is richly deserved, I do think a review of those two works, as well as the reviewer's book might also provide a firmer foundation for consideration of this key topic. Jacoby, an interventionist of the Marxist stripe laments the passing of far left public intellectuals. I would agree that the public proponents of today's totalitarianism, while as misguided and intellectually dishonest as those of previous generations, are intellectual midgets (here I channel Brad deLong and Paul Krugman) by comparison. However, a comment in a review of the reviewer's book may guide our book discussion:

Jacoby's thesis is that nonacademic intellectuals capable of a dialogue with a general, educated audience are an endangered species, nearly extinct.

I would concur with this observation, as well as:

. . . today's intellectuals cluster in universities, producing monographs and articles read by a select few. . . .where they have produced a body of . . . work "largely technical, unreadable, and unread."

I am thinking of Paul Krugman as I shake my head in affirmation of the above comment. Unfortuately only the first two of these consequences are true of Krugman as his work is read, if not widely, then intently by the elite, the uninformed and the arrogant.