Universities have changed dramatically over the course of my lifetime—a lifetime which has included 9 years as a student and 32 years as an academic, across 6 universities in Australia and the USA. Australian universities are receiving increasing media attention due to failures in management and governance, including a recent ABC Four Corners documentary. Numerous books by academics lament the state of Australian universities. They appear to be all about four M's: money, marketing, management, and metrics. Learning, understanding, and discovery for its own sake seems alien and marginalised. Questions that need more attention include What is a university for? and What values should a university embody? In the New College Lectures for 2025 Peter Harrison went much deeper than the public debates and considered the role of secularisation, values, and virtues.
I used to think of Jane Austen as a writer of soppy romance novels, which have since been adapted into popular movies and TV series. I had watched some but had never read the novels. I thought of it as "chick lit" that has stood the test of time. Well, my pride and prejudice deceived me! In our extended family book club, we have been reading Pride and Prejudice. I now see that Austen uses romance as a backdrop for biting social satire, insights into human folly, and the development of virtue.
This is illustrated in the following quotation, considered to be key to the novel. The heroine Elizabeth Bennett becomes aware of her own lack of virtue.
"She grew absolutely ashamed of herself. Of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she think without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd. How despicably have I acted!" she cried; "I, who have prided myself on my discernment! I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity in useless or blameable mistrust! How humiliating is this discovery! Yet, how just a humiliation! Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind! But vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself."
Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 36.
Austen's narrative beautifully illustrates two important truths: we are social beings, and money significantly influences many aspects of our lives. On one level, we may think these are fairly obvious truths. However, we need Austen to show their profundity, depth and subtlety. In Austen's time and context, these truths played out in specific ways that may seem alien to us. Nevertheless, they are still true today.
We are social beings
Being children of the Enlightenment and living in a culture of individualism, we love to believe that we are rugged independent individuals who can do as we please. An important and controversial question in sociology is the relationship between personal agency and social structure. How does the latter constrain the former?
“We enter upon a stage which we did not design and we find ourselves part of an action that was not of our making. Each of us being a main character in his own drama plays subordinate parts in the dramas of others, and each drama constrains the others.”
[This important book is discussed more below.]
We desire social relations and sometimes enjoy them. We may crave social affirmation in the form of status and acclaim. We fear social censure.
Pride and Prejudice is a story about social relations. All the characters, regardless of their wealth, seem to do is socialise. It is an endless stream of balls, dinners, visits, and parlour games.
People are judged based on their wealth, family heritage, property, dress, physical appearance, social etiquette, conversational skills, moral character, musical performance, ... What a burden! Furthermore, these judgements may be made hastily and with prejudice, particularly towards those of a different social class.
The moral failure of one family member may forever condemn others to social censure.
The picture is the British ten-pound note, featuring Jane Austen, issued in 2017, and the subject of some controversy. I find it ironic that Austen's image is now on currency, given that money features so significantly in her novels.
The power of money
In Pride and Prejudice, money defines social status and the suitability of potential marriage partners. The famous opening sentences of the novel capture this.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters."
However, the power of money goes beyond this. It shapes attitudes, anxieties, and action. The value of a person is equated with their monetary wealth. The potential future lack of money creates anxiety. Potential financial windfalls motivate action, including manipulation. Money is used to solve problems, such as Wickham eloping with the young Lydia Bennett.
Again, our context today is different from Pride and Prejudice. In marriage, money plays less of a role, but not an insignificant one. On the other hand, money shapes politics, religion, and education profoundly. Perhaps more than Austen's era.
The episode includes a discussion of Alasdair MacIntyre and After Virtue. For perspective, according to Wikipedia, this work
"is one of the most important works of Anglophone moral and political philosophy in the 20th century.[3] "
In it, MacIntyre pays homage to Jane Austen as providing the narrative form needed to resolve the modern problems that he identifies, such as morality being rooted in emotivism and subjectivity.
“C.S. Lewis saw in her an essentially Christian writer. It is her uniting of Christian and Aristotelian themes in a determinate social context that makes Jane Austen the last great effective imaginative voice of the tradition of thought about, and practice of, the virtues which I have tried to identify.”
"Cornel West views "Sistah Jane" as a radical revisionary whose promotion of courageous truth-speaking amid a tragicomic theater of humanity challenges us to change society by changing ourselves, by cultivating simple but now revolutionary virtues."
I thank my daughter for bringing to my attention that Cornel West is an Austen fan.
In the past two decades universities have been swept off their feet by global rankings and metrics for measuring the performance of individual staff and of departments. Commonly used metrics include the h-index to measure an individuals academic impact based on citations to journal articles and total research income. Journal impact factors are used to rank not just journals but also the value of individual academic papers. One Australian university has an “index”, a single number, which is meant to measure of the performance and contributions of an individual faculty member.
The widespread use of these metrics has been criticised because of the flawed methodology involved, the negative impact they have on staff morale, and the diminished quality of research as people “game the system” to boost their metrics. Yet, there are broader and more profound issues at stake. Single numbers cannot capture qualitative features and human virtues such as curiosity, creativity, integrity, perseverance, awe, humility, and wonder. Yet it is such virtues, and their deep theological roots, that drove not just the beginning of science and of universities but has also sustained and motivated many researchers even up until today.
There is a need for discussions about a grander vision of the purpose of education and research, the role of virtues in scholarship, and the meaning of personhood and community. Christian theology provides a distinct perspective on these issues. I am looking forward to reading work by Mike Higton on this issue, including an article Wisdom and Delight in the University, and a book, A Theology of Higher Education.
The aim of this personal blog is to illustrate the intellectual engagement of Christian theology with science and with culture. The name Soli Deo Gloria is inspired by J.S. Bach's writing SDG on all his compositions. Handel also did this on some compositions (see above).
I am now happily retired. I used to be paid to have fun at work trying to use quantum many-body theory to understand electronic properties of complex materials.I am married to the lovely Robin and have two adult children and a dog, Priya (in the photo). I also write an even more personal blog Soli Deo Gloria [thoughts on theology, science, and culture]
