Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  One of the  perennial positions in the philosophy of education is perennialism. "Perennialism" is a valuable word for identifying the ideas behind, say, the Great Books curriculum conspicuously offered by St John's College at Annapolis.  The underlying idea is that the best idea are the ones that have lasted over centuries, because time is the  great editor.  Perennialists typically set students to work reading and analyzing the works by history's finest thinkers and writers.  AT its best, this is of course very different from rote learning.  One is not expected to learn medicine by memorizing the thoughts of Hippocrates and Galen. But one might well be expected to learn something valuable about science by analyzing what Hippocrates and Galen wrote, why they wrote it, what their concerns were, and so forth.   Perennialism is neither all right nor all wrong. I thought I should mention it today because I was writing about Hutchins here, yeste...

I offered some observations last week about the book  An Aristocracy of Critics, which is a study of the 1940s-era Hutchins Commission, and its report about a "free and responsible press."  What strikes me reading it is the extent of my sympathies for Robert McCormick, who wore the black hat in the imagination of the authors of the book that issued from the Commission's work. McCormick, often called Colonel McCormick in acknowledgement of his First World War service, when he was on the staff of General Pershing, ran the Chicago Tribune from the early 1920s until the mid 1950s. The Trib's infamous "Dewey Wins" fiasco occurred on his watch.  Well before that headline, though, McCormick was often regarded as an unscrupulous and arrogant presence.  In the 1930s, everyone associated with the New Deal despised him. Everyone interested in assisting the western allies against the Axis powers ... likewise. He used his position as the owner of the Tribune to campaign...