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The workers were never ignorant Eighty years on, Beveridge's 'Giant Evils' remain

What would Freud say? (Photo Library Wales/Construction Photography/Avalon/Getty Images)

What would Freud say? (Photo Library Wales/Construction Photography/Avalon/Getty Images)


November 23, 2022   6 mins

Sixteen years before the Beveridge Report was published, the working people of Britain showed that, whatever problems might afflict them, ignorance wasnā€™t one of them. The General Strike of 1926 broke out when the mine owners tried to impose lower wages and longer working hours on their already impoverished coal miners. Soon three million workers in other industries (transport, iron, steel, building, printing and so on) had pitched in.

These people may not have known much about algebraic topology or the history of post-Impressionism, but they knew how to organise. They were not the objects of Beveridgeā€™s benevolent paternalism but self-determining actors. They also knew about want and hardship, justice and solidarity. The truly ignorant were those highly-educated undergraduates from Oxford and Cambridge who acted as strike-breakers, and who knew nothing of the conditions in which most of their fellow country people had to live. Ten years later, a new generation of the erudite and educated would boo the hunger marchers.

You donā€™t need a doctorate in maths to know that your wage packet is shrinking. People who are politically apathetic because they believe with some justice that Westminster politics will never do much for them can become knowledgeable overnight when you threaten their jobs or try to run a motorway through their back gardens. Few traditions are as admirable as that of self-taught working people, including the women mill workers in Victorian Lancashire who would rise an hour before work in order to read Shakespeare together. It was for these patronisingly named ā€œautodidactsā€ ā€” a category which sometimes included anyone who hadnā€™t been to Oxbridge ā€” that Ruskin College, the Workersā€™ Educational Association and the so-called ā€œExtra-Muralā€ departments of universities were to provide.

What, in any case, if knowledge isnā€™t all itā€™s cracked up to be? The literary education that the Shakespeare-reading mill workers would have received, had they by some miracle broken into academia, would have been pretty worthless. Literary studies at the time were a combination of bone-dry scholarship and extravagant waffle. Thomas Hardyā€™s Jude Fawley, a stone mason who tries to get into Oxford, is rebuffed by the dons, advised to stick to his lowly station in life, and, in a typical Hardyesque irony, goes back to repairing the very college walls which shut him out.

Yet Hardy makes it clear that Judeā€™s ambitions are wrong-headed as well as unrealistic. He is better off outside this citadel of antiquated learning, exercising the practical skills which his author so admired. Hardy himself was no country bumpkin but was trained as an architect, and had a deep respect for manual labour. When, as a grand literary celebrity, he unveiled a plaque to open a new building, he was seen to run his hand across the stone and smell it. He, too, was described as an autodidact, even though he received a better education than the vast majority of his compatriots. It was that Oxbridge thing again.

There is another sense in which knowledge is overrated. Socrates taught that we only do wrong out of ignorance; if only we had the right understanding we would be virtuous. Hardly anyone has ever fallen for this vastly improbable doctrine, least of all St. Paul, who in his Epistle to the Romans claims that we donā€™t understand our own actions: ā€œFor I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…ā€ What Paul sees but Socrates doesnā€™t is that we are torn, self-divided creatures, whose knowledge is out of sync with our desires. There is nothing wrong with reason ā€” in fact, without it we will perish ā€” but it doesnā€™t go all the way down. If it is to prevail, it must sink its roots into our senses and affections and shape them from the inside, so that what we ought to do is also what we want to do. Duty and obligation alone simply wonā€™t hack it. The alternative is for reason to repress the senses and affections; and if this happens too violently, we tend to fall ill. The sickness in question is what Freud calls neurosis.

Freud had a profound respect for reason, which he thought would win through in the end. That he did so comes as something of a surprise, given that he is generally seen as both a pessimist and an irrationalist. But reason will only flourish if it is aware of its limits. Beyond those frontiers lies what Donald Rumsfeld, in his sole contribution to the sum of human wisdom, would call a known unknown, and Freud called the unconscious. Because they are unaware of what goes on in this dark region, human beings are opaque to themselves.

This isnā€™t only Freudā€™s view, but one of the most typical beliefs of the modern age. There was a time when we thought that other people might be hard to decipher, but at least we were transparent to ourselves. From Nietzsche to Freud, however, there was a dawning recognition that this is the last thing we are. Not only donā€™t we know ourselves, but this ignorance is vital if we are to operate as individuals. Ignorance is good for you. Just as we couldnā€™t speak coherently if we were thinking about the rules of grammar which govern what we say, so we canā€™t act, feel and think without repressing a good deal that goes into our making.

So repression is good for you as well, though not too much of it. What makes us what we are must necessarily fall outside the scope of our knowledge. Trying to examine it would be like trying to jump on your shadow, or pick yourself up by your own bootstraps. There is a fissure in our being which runs right down the middle. Or as the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan enigmatically puts it: ā€œI think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think.ā€

Throughout the ages, human beings have been labelled the rational animal, the laughing animal, the labouring animal and so on. Now it appears that we are the sick, ignorant, neurotic, self-oblivious one, which is not the most inspiring news. We can have knowledge, of course, but this knowledge is a kind of fiction. For Nietzsche and his post-modern progeny, it consists in carving up the world in ways which facilitate our interests and desires. Knowledge is an instrument of power ā€” a tool for mastering and organising our environment. For this purpose, Nietzsche argues, a falsehood may be more effective than the truth. In any case, truths are simply fictions that have forgotten the fact.

It would be possible to draw a line all the way from this assault on truth to the US election-deniers of today. The difference is that whereas Nietzsche and Freud argue a sophisticated case for ignorance, the election-deniers are just ignorant. Truth for them is whatever it is most convenient to believe. This is a sterile, unproductive kind of ignorance, but there are superior forms of it as well. Nobody, for example, can know the future, in the sense of what is inevitably going to happen. Not even God can do this, because thereā€™s no such thing as what is inevitably going to happen, and therefore nothing to know. Ignorance of the future is a cause of regret to the markets. In ancient times, rulers hired soothsayers and fortune-tellers to peer into the future and assure them that their power would endure down the generations. Wall Street has its equivalents, but they are just as fallible.

In the end, however, we are not forced to choose between absolute knowledge and abysmal ignorance. There are important ways of knowing which fall somewhere in between: so-called tacit knowledge, for example, which involves knowing more than we can tell. You may know how to hum one tune while whistling another simultaneously, but just try telling someone else how to do it. Or think of bodily knowledge ā€” the fact that I know where my left foot is without the need to visit a library or conduct an experiment. Most of our knowledge is of this kind. Thereā€™s also knowledge of other people, which doesnā€™t conform to scientific models. You can know others only if they disclose themselves to you ā€” if they are present to you in a way that the furniture isnā€™t. Volcanologists may be present at volcanic eruptions, but volcanic eruptions are not present to them.

Practical knowledge, of the kind Thomas Hardy admires in Jude Fawley, is a question neither of ignorance nor of the disembodied intellect. Instead, it represents the point at which knowing and doing are bound indissolubly together. In fact, the word ā€œknowā€ is related to the word ā€œcanā€ (from the Old English cunnan). It is this unity of thought and action which the activists of the General Strike demonstrated. In doing so, they created such a bogeyman that TV journalists interviewing trade unionists today tend to ask, heart in mouth, whether this dreadful event is to be repeated, no doubt ignorant of the fact that it only lasted for nine days.

Yet one shouldnā€™t conclude from this that knowledge is purely instrumental. There are times when people need to know in order to be free, and other times when knowledge is an end in itself. There used to be places known as universities where this kind of study could flourish, but they have mostly been wiped out, even if the buildings have been left standing. Even so, thereā€™s no reason to learn about Balzac or Beethoven or black holes other than the delight and fascination of it. The playwright Bertolt Brecht looked forward to a future civilisation in which, he remarked, ā€œthinking could be a real sensuous pleasureā€. We have a fair way to go.


Terry EagletonĀ is a critic, literary theorist, and UnHerd columnist.


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J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago

This essay feels, in a way, incomplete to me. It’s part of a series called “Did the Welfare State Work?” The strapline refers to Beveridge’s “five evils” which are (according to Google): Want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. The title asserts that the workers were never ignorant. So the current essay seems to be about ignorance, and its near antonym, knowledge, and, by implication, whether the Beveridge reforms solved the problem of the ignorance of working people, or whether the problem existed at all.
The author argues that the workers were never ignorant and possessed various types of knowledge, although not the academic type of knowledge which the author disdains. Workers, for example, understood at the time of the general strike, just as they understand today, that their pay packet was too small and they’re being lied to by employers and government alike. In that sense, workers aren’t, and never were, ignorant.
But how does the author’s abstract analysis of different types of knowledge bear on the practical question of whether the welfare state improved the lot of working people? Maybe pre-Beveridge workers possessed practical knowledge, but how did that help them when access to abstract knowledge, delivered by universities, was an invaluable step up in society and in the economic food chain?
Notwithstanding the author’s clever dissection of the concept of knowledge, if a working man at the time of Beveridge learned Latin (a largely useless, academic subject) and obtained a teaching certificate, he left the hard grind of manual labor behind and entered a materially improved station in life. Does the essay address the beneficial connection between improved access to academic attainment (even if such knowledge is impractical) and standard of living, or is the essay ultimately a meditation on the various aspects of knowledge, and therefore the type of dry scholarship the author frowns upon?

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

As is often the case the comments illuminate the subject of the article better than the article itself. I often turn first to the comment section to determine whether an article is worth my while reading. It often saves wading through a lot of overblown journalism.

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

I think you are a little hard on many of the people who write for UnHerd but I would agree that some essays go on a bit longer than necessary. I sometimes think, after the first 300 words, ‘OK, I’ve got the point.’

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

I entirely agree there are some outstanding contributors that I am happy to dive in and read without a glance at the comments knowing that I can expect an excellent article. It would perhaps be unfair to name them as I might inadvertently overlook some who should be on the list. Unfortunately there are plenty where a glance at the comments have or would have saved me from wading through dross.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

“…there are some outstanding contributors…”
This not one of them.
The author seems to have an Oxbridge chip on each shoulder.
If Donald Rumsfeld only made one contribution to the sum of human knowledge it was one more than the author.
As to the election-deniers being just ignorant, only the truly ignorant or dishonest employ the term “denier”. There is nothing wrong about questioning the result of an election. It is those that try to quash any attempt to do so who are the ones that have something to hide. There was something obviously dodgy about the 2020 election, and the vehemence of those who used every available invective an slur to shut down any debate shows the denier were not far wrong.
As the saying goes, the flak is always heaviest over the target

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago

That dig at Rumsfeld was the first tell. The second was the fashionable pejorative, ā€œelection denierā€. The third, because I started to read it without noting the author, was ā€œTerry Eagletonā€, who always turns out humbug like this. ā€œLiterary theoristā€. Good grief.

Roger le Clercq
Roger le Clercq
1 year ago

Yes Alison, the first tell. I then thought that the salient point should have been the unknown unknown rather than the known unknown; reinforced by the reference to the unconscious.Good grief indeed.

Roger le Clercq
Roger le Clercq
1 year ago

Yes Alison, the first tell. I then thought that the salient point should have been the unknown unknown rather than the known unknown; reinforced by the reference to the unconscious.Good grief indeed.

phil4eva
phil4eva
1 year ago

What ā€˜obviously dodgyā€™ stuff might you be referring to? Counting every vote? Letting the impoverished participate in an election?

Eamonn Von Holt
Eamonn Von Holt
1 year ago
Reply to  phil4eva

more like letting dead people vote

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago

Vote harvesting, stopping the count to go get more votes, making sure no one can watch the count……..

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago

Vote harvesting, stopping the count to go get more votes, making sure no one can watch the count……..

Eamonn Von Holt
Eamonn Von Holt
1 year ago
Reply to  phil4eva

more like letting dead people vote

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
1 year ago

That dig at Rumsfeld was the first tell. The second was the fashionable pejorative, ā€œelection denierā€. The third, because I started to read it without noting the author, was ā€œTerry Eagletonā€, who always turns out humbug like this. ā€œLiterary theoristā€. Good grief.

phil4eva
phil4eva
1 year ago

What ā€˜obviously dodgyā€™ stuff might you be referring to? Counting every vote? Letting the impoverished participate in an election?

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

“…there are some outstanding contributors…”
This not one of them.
The author seems to have an Oxbridge chip on each shoulder.
If Donald Rumsfeld only made one contribution to the sum of human knowledge it was one more than the author.
As to the election-deniers being just ignorant, only the truly ignorant or dishonest employ the term “denier”. There is nothing wrong about questioning the result of an election. It is those that try to quash any attempt to do so who are the ones that have something to hide. There was something obviously dodgy about the 2020 election, and the vehemence of those who used every available invective an slur to shut down any debate shows the denier were not far wrong.
As the saying goes, the flak is always heaviest over the target

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

I entirely agree there are some outstanding contributors that I am happy to dive in and read without a glance at the comments knowing that I can expect an excellent article. It would perhaps be unfair to name them as I might inadvertently overlook some who should be on the list. Unfortunately there are plenty where a glance at the comments have or would have saved me from wading through dross.

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

I think you are a little hard on many of the people who write for UnHerd but I would agree that some essays go on a bit longer than necessary. I sometimes think, after the first 300 words, ‘OK, I’ve got the point.’

John Roseveare
John Roseveare
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

You don’t have to know much about algebra, or indeed what a slide rules’ for, to know how to organise. That knowledge, the can-do (cannan?) of organising people, is fundamental to our species. And one reason ‘the workers’ haven’t always been taken in by the extravagant waffle of critical theory, especially where it rests heavily on an outdated 19th century idea of there being a singular form of economic organisation called capitalism that sweeps all before it.
Critical theory may be a clever tool for analysing Thomas Hardy, and for coming up with tidy notions like markets being capable of showing emotions like regret. Perhaps. But for all its claims not to be, it’s hard not to see the theory used by Terry Eagleton as a form of knowledge rooted in a utopian idea, an idea that has enfeebled the work of developing a more nuanced, more useful set of tools.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

As is often the case the comments illuminate the subject of the article better than the article itself. I often turn first to the comment section to determine whether an article is worth my while reading. It often saves wading through a lot of overblown journalism.

John Roseveare
John Roseveare
1 year ago
Reply to  J Bryant

You don’t have to know much about algebra, or indeed what a slide rules’ for, to know how to organise. That knowledge, the can-do (cannan?) of organising people, is fundamental to our species. And one reason ‘the workers’ haven’t always been taken in by the extravagant waffle of critical theory, especially where it rests heavily on an outdated 19th century idea of there being a singular form of economic organisation called capitalism that sweeps all before it.
Critical theory may be a clever tool for analysing Thomas Hardy, and for coming up with tidy notions like markets being capable of showing emotions like regret. Perhaps. But for all its claims not to be, it’s hard not to see the theory used by Terry Eagleton as a form of knowledge rooted in a utopian idea, an idea that has enfeebled the work of developing a more nuanced, more useful set of tools.

J Bryant
J Bryant
1 year ago

This essay feels, in a way, incomplete to me. It’s part of a series called “Did the Welfare State Work?” The strapline refers to Beveridge’s “five evils” which are (according to Google): Want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness. The title asserts that the workers were never ignorant. So the current essay seems to be about ignorance, and its near antonym, knowledge, and, by implication, whether the Beveridge reforms solved the problem of the ignorance of working people, or whether the problem existed at all.
The author argues that the workers were never ignorant and possessed various types of knowledge, although not the academic type of knowledge which the author disdains. Workers, for example, understood at the time of the general strike, just as they understand today, that their pay packet was too small and they’re being lied to by employers and government alike. In that sense, workers aren’t, and never were, ignorant.
But how does the author’s abstract analysis of different types of knowledge bear on the practical question of whether the welfare state improved the lot of working people? Maybe pre-Beveridge workers possessed practical knowledge, but how did that help them when access to abstract knowledge, delivered by universities, was an invaluable step up in society and in the economic food chain?
Notwithstanding the author’s clever dissection of the concept of knowledge, if a working man at the time of Beveridge learned Latin (a largely useless, academic subject) and obtained a teaching certificate, he left the hard grind of manual labor behind and entered a materially improved station in life. Does the essay address the beneficial connection between improved access to academic attainment (even if such knowledge is impractical) and standard of living, or is the essay ultimately a meditation on the various aspects of knowledge, and therefore the type of dry scholarship the author frowns upon?

Sophie Duggan
Sophie Duggan
1 year ago

…says the man who spent 32 years teaching literature at Oxford. You could run a pit-wheel on the hypocrisy.

Tom Watson
Tom Watson
1 year ago
Reply to  Sophie Duggan

“Literary studies at the time were a combination of bone-dry scholarship and extravagant waffle.”

Yeah, at the time.

Graeme Creffield
Graeme Creffield
1 year ago
Reply to  Tom Watson

Oddly enough, although Terry is an entertaining and witty lecturer, “extravagant waffle” seems a good way to sum up his writings and interests. Post-structuralism, anyone?

Graeme Creffield
Graeme Creffield
1 year ago
Reply to  Tom Watson

Oddly enough, although Terry is an entertaining and witty lecturer, “extravagant waffle” seems a good way to sum up his writings and interests. Post-structuralism, anyone?

Tom Watson
Tom Watson
1 year ago
Reply to  Sophie Duggan

“Literary studies at the time were a combination of bone-dry scholarship and extravagant waffle.”

Yeah, at the time.

Sophie Duggan
Sophie Duggan
1 year ago

…says the man who spent 32 years teaching literature at Oxford. You could run a pit-wheel on the hypocrisy.

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
1 year ago

Well I suppose ‘My knowledge’ is a slight improvement on ‘My truth’. The fact remains that there are, and always have been, a large number of people in this country whose knowledge of history and politics is abysmal. That does not mean they are stupid, unreflective or lack wisdom but it does mean they are ill-informed which can be equally dangerous.
I am constantly reminded of the depths of my own ignorance even in my own subjects of special interest.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

Yes, the opinions of intelligent people on subjects that they have in fact not properly evaluated are particularly dangerous as their intelligence can provide their opinion with a veneer of plausibility.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

I think the phrase you’re seeking is:
“A little learning is a dangerous thing” (Pope)

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Jeremy Bray

I think the phrase you’re seeking is:
“A little learning is a dangerous thing” (Pope)

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
1 year ago
Reply to  Malcolm Knott

Yes, the opinions of intelligent people on subjects that they have in fact not properly evaluated are particularly dangerous as their intelligence can provide their opinion with a veneer of plausibility.

Malcolm Knott
Malcolm Knott
1 year ago

Well I suppose ‘My knowledge’ is a slight improvement on ‘My truth’. The fact remains that there are, and always have been, a large number of people in this country whose knowledge of history and politics is abysmal. That does not mean they are stupid, unreflective or lack wisdom but it does mean they are ill-informed which can be equally dangerous.
I am constantly reminded of the depths of my own ignorance even in my own subjects of special interest.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
1 year ago

This author, like many I’ve read, gets rather close to the crux of the matter but doesn’t quite say it. He extolls the virtues of self-education and the common sense wisdom of the everyman, but he isn’t quite ready to just flatly say that the Oxford professor possesses no particular virtue or worth greater than that of the average coal miner. After all, it would practically upend all human civilization if people admitted that the entire enterprise of organized human education is basically an exercise in social signaling, or, in other words, a way of distinguishing social classes and neatly grouping people and assigning them levels of power, status, influence, and wealth in a society. Even in the age of universal public education, there is a hierarchy of ‘educatedness’, a scale of value with Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Stanford PhDs on one end and high school dropouts on the other, a scale that, when reduced to its basest purpose, isn’t much different than the one the Nazis used to decide how much Jewish ancestry was required to send an individual to the ghetto or the gas chamber. Education and universities were created by the nobility for the nobility. Knowledge wasn’t the point. Education wasn’t the point. Yet another form of social hierarchy which they could and did control and use to elevate themselves above others was the point. The fact that education is so accessible to so many has not changed the basic algebra of more education/better education = higher social class. The Dukes who sent their second and third sons to Oxford and Cambridge did so for the same basic reason as celebrities who tried to buy their children’s admission to top universities. The same logic drives every politician or technocrat who insists that the ignorant voters defer to ‘experts’ on everything from COVID masks to economic policy to climate change. Unfortunately, western thought coming out of the Enlightenment era romanticized and lionized knowledge, reason, and education to such an extreme level that naming it for the caste system it is would be a bridge too far for most people, especially the ‘educated’ sort.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Jolly
Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

“He extolls the virtues of self-education and the common sense wisdom of the everyman, but he isnā€™t quite ready to just flatly say that the Oxford professor possesses no particular virtue or worth greater than that of the average coal miner.”

I know of no-one who ever thought that the possession of knowledge makes one socially superior. However it is necessary for the pursuit of truth that all education should be confined to an intellectual elite (either financially independent or in receipt of largesse (gifts, bursaries, scholarships etc.) from patrons). This is to prevent the confusion of acquiring and transmitting knowledge and engaging in commercial enterprises dependent on the supply of such knowledge, where financial considerations might lead people to alter or obfuscate the truth for financial gain (this becomes more likely the more the field is one considered to involve a certain urgency e.g. ‘medicine’). In short, the purpose of education is not ‘to get a job’. Knowledge acquired for that is called ‘training’ and has nothing to do with pure intellectual enquiry.

Last edited 1 year ago by Arnold Grutt
Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
1 year ago
Reply to  Arnold Grutt

Really? Don’t think possession of knowledge makes one socially superior? You’ve never heard a derogatory comment or joke about high-school dropouts where the word high school dropout could be easily replaced by the N-word and still have the same denigrating purpose? You say the purpose of education is not ‘to get a job’. You don’t think employers value the word “Harvard” on a resume more than say, “Jackson State” without having ever met the person in question? I contend that much of the inequality of outcomes that is criticized as ‘racism’ is in fact the much more common and socially acceptable practice of discrimination based on educational background. It becomes an easy stand-in for older, less acceptable forms of discrimination.

Sue Whorton
Sue Whorton
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

We had a fibre box fitted recently. Guy working quickly, cleanly and competently in driving rain. He told me that a little boy had just asked , probably grandma, what he was doing. Her reply had been , thatā€™s what you do if you donā€™t listen in school. We need to start valuing physical competence more. We need thinkers as well as doers but we need thinkers who learn from doers or can do themselves. Tangentially, just watched a 1964 Horizon on Buckminster Fuller from 1964. I recommend it. His theory began with practical observation leading to the maths not vice versa. Those who construct models please note.

Sue Whorton
Sue Whorton
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

We had a fibre box fitted recently. Guy working quickly, cleanly and competently in driving rain. He told me that a little boy had just asked , probably grandma, what he was doing. Her reply had been , thatā€™s what you do if you donā€™t listen in school. We need to start valuing physical competence more. We need thinkers as well as doers but we need thinkers who learn from doers or can do themselves. Tangentially, just watched a 1964 Horizon on Buckminster Fuller from 1964. I recommend it. His theory began with practical observation leading to the maths not vice versa. Those who construct models please note.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
1 year ago
Reply to  Arnold Grutt

Really? Don’t think possession of knowledge makes one socially superior? You’ve never heard a derogatory comment or joke about high-school dropouts where the word high school dropout could be easily replaced by the N-word and still have the same denigrating purpose? You say the purpose of education is not ‘to get a job’. You don’t think employers value the word “Harvard” on a resume more than say, “Jackson State” without having ever met the person in question? I contend that much of the inequality of outcomes that is criticized as ‘racism’ is in fact the much more common and socially acceptable practice of discrimination based on educational background. It becomes an easy stand-in for older, less acceptable forms of discrimination.

Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

“Knowledge wasnā€™t the point. Education wasnā€™t the point. Yet another form of social hierarchy which they could and did control and use to elevate themselves above others was the point.”

I treat this point separately as it appears to be complete balderdash. How could even a nobility prevent anyone from acquiring ‘knowledge’? And what advantage does the possession of ‘knowledge’ entail in any case? After all the vast majority of posters on Twitter are absolutely ignorant and incapable of logical conceptual thought. And yet they indirectly exercise lots of power in the everyday, political, world.
And we find that, historically, throughout the intellectual sphere, nobility acted as patrons to people of ‘humble’ birth, where some leanings towards intelligent thought existed.

Last edited 1 year ago by Arnold Grutt
Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
1 year ago
Reply to  Arnold Grutt

First, I’ll concede I went too far in the statement you quoted. There are few topics I am truly passionate about, but this is one, and I tend to get carried away. You are correct to point out the excessive hyperbole. Whatever the formal or theoretical intent of higher education, its practical purpose is something else entirely. To answer your question about controlling knowledge though, they controlled it the same way they do today, by deciding what was taught and what qualified as knowledge. By awarding degrees and giving credentials which ‘qualified’ one to speak authoritatively on a particular topic. I see quite a bit of anti-elite sentiment on Unherd. That’s one reason why I like it. I don’t see as much explanation as to how elites become elites and hold themselves above the masses. A large part is by creating scales of social value based on some distinguishing characteristic which they possess and can pass directly or indirectly to children or other chosen successors. In the past, land, wealth, line of descent, race, and other largely heritable traits served this purpose. Those were eventually rejected, partly through moral arguments but partly by newer elites usurping older ones. As wealth once replaced land as a measure of power in society and a sign of nobility, now the wheel turns again and ‘knowledge’ or ‘information’ replaces wealth. I concede this makes me sound like a Marxist, but the man didn’t get everything wrong. Like so many others, I regard Marx as a man who made excellent observations and erred in the far more difficult task of drawing conclusions. I personally try not to draw many conclusions. I have no earthly idea what one could or should do to correct intellectual/educational elitism. I’d be satisfied if people simply recognize it exists.

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
1 year ago
Reply to  Arnold Grutt

First, I’ll concede I went too far in the statement you quoted. There are few topics I am truly passionate about, but this is one, and I tend to get carried away. You are correct to point out the excessive hyperbole. Whatever the formal or theoretical intent of higher education, its practical purpose is something else entirely. To answer your question about controlling knowledge though, they controlled it the same way they do today, by deciding what was taught and what qualified as knowledge. By awarding degrees and giving credentials which ‘qualified’ one to speak authoritatively on a particular topic. I see quite a bit of anti-elite sentiment on Unherd. That’s one reason why I like it. I don’t see as much explanation as to how elites become elites and hold themselves above the masses. A large part is by creating scales of social value based on some distinguishing characteristic which they possess and can pass directly or indirectly to children or other chosen successors. In the past, land, wealth, line of descent, race, and other largely heritable traits served this purpose. Those were eventually rejected, partly through moral arguments but partly by newer elites usurping older ones. As wealth once replaced land as a measure of power in society and a sign of nobility, now the wheel turns again and ‘knowledge’ or ‘information’ replaces wealth. I concede this makes me sound like a Marxist, but the man didn’t get everything wrong. Like so many others, I regard Marx as a man who made excellent observations and erred in the far more difficult task of drawing conclusions. I personally try not to draw many conclusions. I have no earthly idea what one could or should do to correct intellectual/educational elitism. I’d be satisfied if people simply recognize it exists.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

A tad cynical perhaps? Surely wisdom at least and perhaps philosophy in particular have a value to all as an aid to forming one’s own beliefs? …and without beliefs we are no more that brute animals?

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Much more than a tad cynical I’m afraid. My cynicism goes well beyond the scale of normal human beings. The only way I can explain it is to say I was just born this way. At age five, I found a quiet corner to read or think while the other kids ran around playing. By the time I was twelve, my mind was disciplined enough to discuss politics and science with my teachers, who I knew better than any of my classmates. By fifteen, I was laughing at silly notions like ‘moral consistency’, ‘romantic love’, or ‘human progress’. A ‘tad’ cynical doesn’t begin to cover it.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
1 year ago
Reply to  Liam O'Mahony

Much more than a tad cynical I’m afraid. My cynicism goes well beyond the scale of normal human beings. The only way I can explain it is to say I was just born this way. At age five, I found a quiet corner to read or think while the other kids ran around playing. By the time I was twelve, my mind was disciplined enough to discuss politics and science with my teachers, who I knew better than any of my classmates. By fifteen, I was laughing at silly notions like ‘moral consistency’, ‘romantic love’, or ‘human progress’. A ‘tad’ cynical doesn’t begin to cover it.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Jolly
Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

“He extolls the virtues of self-education and the common sense wisdom of the everyman, but he isnā€™t quite ready to just flatly say that the Oxford professor possesses no particular virtue or worth greater than that of the average coal miner.”

I know of no-one who ever thought that the possession of knowledge makes one socially superior. However it is necessary for the pursuit of truth that all education should be confined to an intellectual elite (either financially independent or in receipt of largesse (gifts, bursaries, scholarships etc.) from patrons). This is to prevent the confusion of acquiring and transmitting knowledge and engaging in commercial enterprises dependent on the supply of such knowledge, where financial considerations might lead people to alter or obfuscate the truth for financial gain (this becomes more likely the more the field is one considered to involve a certain urgency e.g. ‘medicine’). In short, the purpose of education is not ‘to get a job’. Knowledge acquired for that is called ‘training’ and has nothing to do with pure intellectual enquiry.

Last edited 1 year ago by Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

“Knowledge wasnā€™t the point. Education wasnā€™t the point. Yet another form of social hierarchy which they could and did control and use to elevate themselves above others was the point.”

I treat this point separately as it appears to be complete balderdash. How could even a nobility prevent anyone from acquiring ‘knowledge’? And what advantage does the possession of ‘knowledge’ entail in any case? After all the vast majority of posters on Twitter are absolutely ignorant and incapable of logical conceptual thought. And yet they indirectly exercise lots of power in the everyday, political, world.
And we find that, historically, throughout the intellectual sphere, nobility acted as patrons to people of ‘humble’ birth, where some leanings towards intelligent thought existed.

Last edited 1 year ago by Arnold Grutt
Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago
Reply to  Steve Jolly

A tad cynical perhaps? Surely wisdom at least and perhaps philosophy in particular have a value to all as an aid to forming one’s own beliefs? …and without beliefs we are no more that brute animals?

Steve Jolly
Steve Jolly
1 year ago

This author, like many I’ve read, gets rather close to the crux of the matter but doesn’t quite say it. He extolls the virtues of self-education and the common sense wisdom of the everyman, but he isn’t quite ready to just flatly say that the Oxford professor possesses no particular virtue or worth greater than that of the average coal miner. After all, it would practically upend all human civilization if people admitted that the entire enterprise of organized human education is basically an exercise in social signaling, or, in other words, a way of distinguishing social classes and neatly grouping people and assigning them levels of power, status, influence, and wealth in a society. Even in the age of universal public education, there is a hierarchy of ‘educatedness’, a scale of value with Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Stanford PhDs on one end and high school dropouts on the other, a scale that, when reduced to its basest purpose, isn’t much different than the one the Nazis used to decide how much Jewish ancestry was required to send an individual to the ghetto or the gas chamber. Education and universities were created by the nobility for the nobility. Knowledge wasn’t the point. Education wasn’t the point. Yet another form of social hierarchy which they could and did control and use to elevate themselves above others was the point. The fact that education is so accessible to so many has not changed the basic algebra of more education/better education = higher social class. The Dukes who sent their second and third sons to Oxford and Cambridge did so for the same basic reason as celebrities who tried to buy their children’s admission to top universities. The same logic drives every politician or technocrat who insists that the ignorant voters defer to ‘experts’ on everything from COVID masks to economic policy to climate change. Unfortunately, western thought coming out of the Enlightenment era romanticized and lionized knowledge, reason, and education to such an extreme level that naming it for the caste system it is would be a bridge too far for most people, especially the ‘educated’ sort.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Jolly
Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

Was there a “history of post-Impressionism” to be educated in, at the time of the General Strike? I ask this question since the author cites it as something the striking workers didn’t need in order to understand that their conditions were under threat, but it’s the proverbial Straw Man (perhaps Eagleton has a secret hankering for English folklore?) and i also found his citing of female mill-workers studying Shakespeare before attending their looms just a little too twee. My mother started work in a Lancashire cotton mill aged 14, and whilst i don’t doubt Eagleton could provide circumstantial evidence for his claim, it would’ve made my mother Shake in a rather different way.

There’s a saying that used to do the rounds in my youth about “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Eagleton’s essays remind me of nothing more than that. He very much appears to have a superficial knowledge of many of the streams of modernism, also citing Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan etc but without the essay comprising a river. He’d have been better off taking up stonemasonry.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago

Was there a “history of post-Impressionism” to be educated in, at the time of the General Strike? I ask this question since the author cites it as something the striking workers didn’t need in order to understand that their conditions were under threat, but it’s the proverbial Straw Man (perhaps Eagleton has a secret hankering for English folklore?) and i also found his citing of female mill-workers studying Shakespeare before attending their looms just a little too twee. My mother started work in a Lancashire cotton mill aged 14, and whilst i don’t doubt Eagleton could provide circumstantial evidence for his claim, it would’ve made my mother Shake in a rather different way.

There’s a saying that used to do the rounds in my youth about “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Eagleton’s essays remind me of nothing more than that. He very much appears to have a superficial knowledge of many of the streams of modernism, also citing Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan etc but without the essay comprising a river. He’d have been better off taking up stonemasonry.

Last edited 1 year ago by Steve Murray
Dustin Needle
Dustin Needle
1 year ago

“The election-deniers are just ignorant”.
Or perhaps representative of a worker class that has been educated to interpret, challenge data, spot trends? Which is similar to points made elsewhere in the essay.
If Process A delivers a certain trend – then enters a black box where none can enter – and comes out of the other side as Process B with the trend reversing, would you not want to see what variable occurred when the process entered the black box, then onto Process B to produce such a marked different in trends?
That’s not ignorance, that’s education. Or at least curiosity. Our media and it seems academia lack even curiosity. Unless they can blame Russia. Just who are the ignorant ones here?
Perhaps (I surmise) because the ends justify the means. But if the variables were open to outside influence, and that changed a democratic outcome, then beware. That same variable could be used to produce ends none of us will like.

Last edited 1 year ago by Dustin Needle
Dustin Needle
Dustin Needle
1 year ago

“The election-deniers are just ignorant”.
Or perhaps representative of a worker class that has been educated to interpret, challenge data, spot trends? Which is similar to points made elsewhere in the essay.
If Process A delivers a certain trend – then enters a black box where none can enter – and comes out of the other side as Process B with the trend reversing, would you not want to see what variable occurred when the process entered the black box, then onto Process B to produce such a marked different in trends?
That’s not ignorance, that’s education. Or at least curiosity. Our media and it seems academia lack even curiosity. Unless they can blame Russia. Just who are the ignorant ones here?
Perhaps (I surmise) because the ends justify the means. But if the variables were open to outside influence, and that changed a democratic outcome, then beware. That same variable could be used to produce ends none of us will like.

Last edited 1 year ago by Dustin Needle
Gandydancer x
Gandydancer x
1 year ago

I stopped reading this when I reached the bit about “election deniers”. I don’t assert or know if Trump lost the 2020 election due to the “fortification” that went on, but I saw video of a van load (at least one) of alleged absentee ballots trucked into Cobo Hall after midnight (conveniently pre-verified in the Democrat County Clerks office, but somehow not discovered until polls downstate had closed) and, observers having been sent home, they were counted as many times as necessary to eliminate Trump’s lead in Michigan. Then any attempt to examine the alleged ballots was juridically suppressed. Anyone who calls me abusive names while declaring out of his rectum “Nothing to see here” forfeits my attention to anything he has to say if he’s taking too long, which this Eagleton insect was doing.

Gandydancer x
Gandydancer x
1 year ago

I stopped reading this when I reached the bit about “election deniers”. I don’t assert or know if Trump lost the 2020 election due to the “fortification” that went on, but I saw video of a van load (at least one) of alleged absentee ballots trucked into Cobo Hall after midnight (conveniently pre-verified in the Democrat County Clerks office, but somehow not discovered until polls downstate had closed) and, observers having been sent home, they were counted as many times as necessary to eliminate Trump’s lead in Michigan. Then any attempt to examine the alleged ballots was juridically suppressed. Anyone who calls me abusive names while declaring out of his rectum “Nothing to see here” forfeits my attention to anything he has to say if he’s taking too long, which this Eagleton insect was doing.

AC Harper
AC Harper
1 year ago

Perhaps some literary critics employ extravagant waffle to make a fuzzy point or two.  “You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment”.

AC Harper
AC Harper
1 year ago

Perhaps some literary critics employ extravagant waffle to make a fuzzy point or two.  “You might very well think that; I couldn’t possibly comment”.

Barbara Stevens
Barbara Stevens
1 year ago

In my opinion only one political party who helped the poor of Britain after the second world war was Clement Attlee’s, they got things done, the Tory political party like now was all talk of getting things done but didn’t want to be parted from their wealth.

Barbara Stevens
Barbara Stevens
1 year ago

In my opinion only one political party who helped the poor of Britain after the second world war was Clement Attlee’s, they got things done, the Tory political party like now was all talk of getting things done but didn’t want to be parted from their wealth.

Richard 0
Richard 0
1 year ago

Any article that quotes Brecht as some kind of sage has lost me.

Richard 0
Richard 0
1 year ago

Any article that quotes Brecht as some kind of sage has lost me.

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
1 year ago

It’s not a question of ‘a fair way to go’, it’s a reality that anti-intellectualism has thrived since 1980. I’m not promoting intellectualism as inherently superior, I’m just saying that virulent emotional hatred of those with intellectual skills has flourished in the ‘practical’ classes, those with poor analytical thinking skills. Hatred and schadenfreude are common amongst the less skilled, since nothing pleases them more than seeing those who apply themselves better in the main being brought down to their level. It’s an indelible feature of humanity, I’m afraid. And if you are on the receiving end of it, it’s not really very pleasant.
‘Intellectual thinking’ is supposed to be about the ability to gather large amounts of relevant and sometimes irrelevant information and subject it to rigorous scrutiny based on attempting to falsify certain specific testable hypotheses. It is therefore really only suited to those with significant empirical experience in the relevant field, as the ability to judge conflicting information is usually lacking in those who have not been at the cold field for quite a while. It is the logical progression from early experiences, dedicated practical activities, learning by doing and watching and being handed down the skills of the previous generations.
It really only has value if it leads to insights not obtained already by the artesans, the practical gurus etc.
In more arts-based fields, the purported relevance is ‘learning from history so as to avoid making the same mistakes’. If that is its raison d’etre, it’s continued existence should be questioned. Three years of pre-corrupt working lives never seems to prevent the same mistakes occurring, over and over again. The mistakes of the First World War are being made again in the 21st century, the imperialism of Europe was repeated by the USA, the Soviet Union and Israel/Judaism. Stock markets continually crash, mainly because certain people want them to crash and make money from them crashing.
The ignorance of ‘chemical farming’ is now being repeated in the form of ‘ignorant climate crisis mongers’. They have learned nothing about nature, about the real world, the solar system and the Universe. Nothing.
My view is that if you are an aggressive practical thug, then a bit of intellectual polishing may make you a less objectionable human being. If you are already intellectual and need to learn how to kick a working class yob in the genitals without ending up in hospital, schools in general are a form of societal child abuse.
All discussions on education must stop thinking that there is one solution for all. Hugely different solutions are needed for different humans, growing up in different communities, families and political prisons.

Rhys Jaggar
Rhys Jaggar
1 year ago

It’s not a question of ‘a fair way to go’, it’s a reality that anti-intellectualism has thrived since 1980. I’m not promoting intellectualism as inherently superior, I’m just saying that virulent emotional hatred of those with intellectual skills has flourished in the ‘practical’ classes, those with poor analytical thinking skills. Hatred and schadenfreude are common amongst the less skilled, since nothing pleases them more than seeing those who apply themselves better in the main being brought down to their level. It’s an indelible feature of humanity, I’m afraid. And if you are on the receiving end of it, it’s not really very pleasant.
‘Intellectual thinking’ is supposed to be about the ability to gather large amounts of relevant and sometimes irrelevant information and subject it to rigorous scrutiny based on attempting to falsify certain specific testable hypotheses. It is therefore really only suited to those with significant empirical experience in the relevant field, as the ability to judge conflicting information is usually lacking in those who have not been at the cold field for quite a while. It is the logical progression from early experiences, dedicated practical activities, learning by doing and watching and being handed down the skills of the previous generations.
It really only has value if it leads to insights not obtained already by the artesans, the practical gurus etc.
In more arts-based fields, the purported relevance is ‘learning from history so as to avoid making the same mistakes’. If that is its raison d’etre, it’s continued existence should be questioned. Three years of pre-corrupt working lives never seems to prevent the same mistakes occurring, over and over again. The mistakes of the First World War are being made again in the 21st century, the imperialism of Europe was repeated by the USA, the Soviet Union and Israel/Judaism. Stock markets continually crash, mainly because certain people want them to crash and make money from them crashing.
The ignorance of ‘chemical farming’ is now being repeated in the form of ‘ignorant climate crisis mongers’. They have learned nothing about nature, about the real world, the solar system and the Universe. Nothing.
My view is that if you are an aggressive practical thug, then a bit of intellectual polishing may make you a less objectionable human being. If you are already intellectual and need to learn how to kick a working class yob in the genitals without ending up in hospital, schools in general are a form of societal child abuse.
All discussions on education must stop thinking that there is one solution for all. Hugely different solutions are needed for different humans, growing up in different communities, families and political prisons.

Liam O'Mahony
Liam O'Mahony
1 year ago

Three things struck me immediately:
1. The idea that humans are sick animals is a new concept: it isn’t. JP Sartre used that exact term: ‘animal malade’ ..this, for some can be traced back to ‘the fall from grace’: knowledge of good and evil: abandoning the bliss of ignorance.
2. The failure to define terms: in this type off discussion clarity is crucial.. the difference between, knowledge (of facts): understanding (of theories and philosophy) and believing (due to intuition / faith): all honed by conditioning. And the notion of (sbsolute) truth.
3. The omission of the word (and concept) of WISDOM which is 2 above + lived experience + inate intelligenge.
Actions from 1 are liable to be contradictory and/or fruitless at best leading to mental illness of various kinds, notably neuroses and bipolar disorders. And perhaps tyranical at worst as attempts are made to ‘improve’ society to the tyrant’s worldview of what is ‘best’ despite the cost!
Clearly the best option is no.3 Wisdom. Successful cultures respected and relied on wisdom until recently. Even in our own we only voted for older, hopefully wiser politicians and successful PMs in particular tended to be old and wise.
In recent times wisdom counts for little or nothing. Old people are hidden away and any advice they might offer is regarded as out of date.
Knowledge / information grew and changed faster than any human could keep up: and cold, hard algorithms took over everything. Human judgement is no longer to be trusted.
The final nail in the coffin was the discarding of religion with nothing comparable in its place.
The gulf between the algorithm driven world and the few spiritual humans left is now so great that any reasonable discourse is impossible let alone any kind of compromise or coexistence.

Mark Kennedy
Mark Kennedy
1 year ago

It’s a peculiar article, which commits the logical equivocation of using the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘reason’ interchangeably, seems hostile to both, yet relies on them to make its case. I’m on board with its antipathy to Oxbridge snobbery, though. Why would anyone disparage the autodidactic impulse, which would seem to be the ideal mindset for any university student? What are university students if not autodidacts roaming free in artificially supercharged, resource-rich learning environments? A manual labourer who’s an autodidact is a student without portfolio, so to speak.