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Jeff Culbreath
Guest
7/19/2002
02:13:57
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 Subject: Conservatives and Experts
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Something in Mr. Kalb's recent essay on conservatism (posted on VFR) provokes a question: Is "suspicion of experts" a conservative or traditionalist characteristic?
Clearly, in our time, it is good to be suspicious of experts because many (if not most) of them are liberal quacks and not to be trusted. Men with formed consciences should trust their instincts before trusting today's experts.
However, it seems to me that a conservative mindset is by nature deferential to genuine experts. Ireland is known as "the land of saints and scholars" and has a traditional reverence for scholars. The same can be said for Eastern (i.e. Confucian) societies.
Once I took a graduate course in European history. The young professor -- a liberal and a socialist -- continually pointed out that his job was that of a "faciliator" in a class of equals. What nonsense.
Shouldn't a history professor be an expert in his field? Shouldn't his students be deferential to what should be his superior knowledge and understanding? And isn't a knee-jerk suspicion of experts a characteristic of liberal egalitarianism?
Perhaps today the doctrine of equality has created too many "experts" in too many things and thereby cheapened the role of experts in general. But it seems to me that traditionalists, by nature, are deferential and respectful towards real experts.
Jeff Culbreath
http://www.lumen-christi.com
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Jim Kalb
Administrator
7/19/2002
04:45:31
| RE: Conservatives and Experts
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I agree that expert knowledge should be respected. I'm not at all sure that the respect should be extended to institutionalized expertise as it actually exists today.
Expertise isn't the same as scholarship. It's knowledge that is impersonal, objectively verifiable, and indifferent to the purposes of those using it. That kind of knowledge is obviously very valuable where relevant.
The conservative concern is not that particular experts happen to be liberal--if true, that ought to be irrelevant to their expertise--but that the notion of expertise is now applied where it has no legitimate place.
That happens because liberalism, since it claims to base morality and politics on individual consent, must claim to be non-coercive. Government actions must appear based on impersonal neutral principles that no reasonable man could contest. Claims of expertise therefore become one of the fundamental ways policy is justified.
The result is that institutionalized expertise becomes integrated with the liberal state. What the liberal state needs or wants the voice of experts will always support. As examples, consider the role of constitutional law--legal experts--in American liberalism, or the things experts on AIDS, sexuality and the like are always telling us. The story of American Catholicism post Vat II also seems to me to be largely the story of the rise of the experts.
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Jeff Culbreath
Guest
7/19/2002
13:21:10
| RE: Conservatives and Experts
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So what you're talking about is really an abuse of expertise, not genuine expertise.
A good example might be the proliferation of parenting "experts" today. Many parents, whose instincts may be sound and based upon a good upbringing, are lulled into doubting themselves by "experts" who tell them never to say no to a child, not to spank, etc. These "expert" voices are everywhere and impossible to avoid.
However, there are many parents who need good experts today. Recently I picked up a Catholic manual of moral theology. Absolutely everything seems to be covered, down to the minutest detail, in the old Jesuit fashion. That kind of "institutionalized expertise" -- the Church and her theologians -- can be extremely helpful.
My concern is that conservatives, while putting on a necessary skepticism in the modern world, not lose their customary humility and generosity towards such things.
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Jim Kalb
Administrator
7/19/2002
14:41:28
| RE: Conservatives and Experts
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Humility is the key. Expertise must be subordinate to other things, if only because the things we know must be understood and interpreted by reference to things we see through a glass darkly.
My basic point is that as an actual social institution today--as exemplified for example by the "experts" and "scholars" The New York Times is always citing, or for that matter by many contemporary Catholic "experts" here in America on things theological and moral--expertise denies the dependency.
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Matteo
Guest
7/20/2002
19:31:58
| RE: Conservatives and Experts
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But the 'contemporary Catholic "experts"' of the New York Times are many times heretics.
Never trust New York Times 'experts.'
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