Liberalism in America, the Problem With “My Truth”, and Higher Education: An Interview with Professor Philip Gorski
Liberalism in America, the Problem With “My Truth”, and Higher Education: An Interview with Philip Gorski, Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies
By: Tocqueville Center
Philip Gorski visited Furman in March, 2024, to give a talk on Liberalism in America, as part of the Tocqueville Center’s Scholars-in-Residence Lecture Series. The Tocqueville Center had a chance to ask Philip some additional questions about liberalism in American politics, the dynamics between truth and power, the role of sentiments and the sacred in politics, and tensions between contemporary liberalism and liberal arts higher education.
Philip S. Gorski is Frederick and Laura Goff Professor of Sociology and Religious Studies and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Yale University. He earned his BA from Harvard and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a comparative-historical sociologist with strong interests in theory and methods and in modern and early modern Europe.
Prof. Gorski’s empirical work focuses on topics such as state-formation, nationalism, revolution, economic development, and secularization with particular attention to the interaction of religion and politics. Other current interests include the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences and the nature and role of rationality in social life. Among his recent publications are The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Growth of State Power in Early Modern Europe; Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A Critical Companion; American Covent: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present; American Babylon: Christianity and Democracy Before and After Trump; and, most recently, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, co-authored with Samuel Perry. Philip Gorski co-runs the Religion and Politics Colloquium at the Yale MacMillan Center.
1. Liberalism in America and the expression “my truth”…
Tocqueville Center:
From the perspective of liberalism in America, what is the dynamic that you see playing out between truth and power in American liberalism?
Philip Gorski:
It obviously depends on what you mean by liberalism, whether you understand liberalism in America philosophically or whether you understand it as a partisan or political term [e.g. “social liberalism”], because there is a great deal of divergence, speaking broadly. But even within the left, it breaks into people who fall into a Rooseveltian liberal camp, who have more of a focus on economics, and then there are people who define themselves as progressive, who add issues about inclusion and recognition and go beyond just socio-economic equality. I do think that it’s particularly on the progressive side that, because of the influence of various kinds of critical social theory on progressive thought, there has been a tendency to be more concerned with unmasking the ruses of power than with discovering the truth and talking about the relativity and positionality and sectionality of truth.
“I do think that it’s particularly on the progressive side…that there has been a tendency to be more concerned with unmasking the ruses of power than with discovering the truth and talking about the relativity and positionality and sectionality of truth.”
One locution I think that really brings this out very clearly that I hear increasingly is people talking about “my truth”, where truth is something which is completely perspectival and individual, and that is certainly a real departure from a liberal Enlightenment understanding of truth. And obviously there is a connection between that earlier liberal empiricist skeptical tradition and this kind of modern hermeneutic. But I don’t think there was ever the view that there’d be something that was just “my truth” as opposed to various bits and pieces of the truth or evidence that would eventually converge around one truth. And that certainly has had an effect on politics.
I think one of the things that I certainly noticed is the way in which the political right has increasingly appropriated this kind of hermeneutic suspicion of power approach as well. And this to some degree is what’s behind the return of conspiracy theorizing. But also, just in general, there’s a kind of suspicion of various American institutions, and American elites, that you see manifesting across a variety of different realms, whether it’s critiques of the deep state or skepticism of science and technocratic or expert knowledge of any kind.
I guess the story I’m suggesting is that there has been a move away from these classically liberal understandings of the truth, first on the academic left and now on the cultural right as well, which is certainly complicating our politics a lot. I think there is a danger of over emphasizing the impact of academic theorizing here and blaming it all on Foucault or Butler or something. I think a lot of this really does also have to do just with the Balkanization of the information ecosystem.
2. Hearts and minds in liberalism in America
Tocqueville Center:
In Alexis de Tocqueville’s introduction to Democracy in America, he says that one of the most troubling things he has seen in France is the divide between what people think and what they feel, i.e., their reason and their sentiments, which contrasts with what he observes in Americans of the early 19th century. Do you observe a disconnect between thought and feeling in contemporary liberalism in America that would be similar to the disconnect Tocqueville observed in France in the 1820s? Or have liberal Americans retained a unity of heart and mind?
Philip Gorski:
I was rereading Tocqueville on the plane down yesterday, and one of the things that really did catch my attention this time through was this distinction that he draws between the intellect, sentiments, and mores, almost as if they were three archaeological layers in human human consciousness, with mores being perhaps that the deepest layer. In this sense, he actually anticipates a lot of recent work in the social and behavioral sciences, which does make reason to some degree the slave of the passions, or, to put it in more scientistic terms, the slow mind being the slave of the fast mind, the “dual processing” models. And you see sociological versions of this as well, sometimes influenced by cognitive science and sometimes not.
So I’m teaching, for example, a seminar on the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu right now. And his idea of habitus is precisely this idea that there are underlying schema that are structured somewhat like a language. And he talks about interest not in the sort of classical sense of how do I maximize my utility, but interest literally in the sense of what you perceive and don’t perceive, and the way that you perceive it, which reflects more of the sense in which a philosopher would talk about intentionality. So I see Tocqueville as in a way anticipating that, and certainly I think in our current moment we have returned to that. I think it’s very difficult to understand our contemporary politics in purely rationalistic terms.
“There’s a lot of talk about tribal identity these days, but these theories are helping us to understand the role of ritual and play and representation in the formation of these competing forms of the sacred.”
Increasingly in recent months I found myself going back not to Durkheim, but to Durkheim’s interwar followers who were, as I call them, Dark Durkheimians. It’s sort of the post-war version, who talked about transgression, excess, violence, and the role that ritual forms of transgression and violence and excess play in creating values or senses of the sacred. There’s a lot of talk about tribal identity these days, but these theories are helping us to understand the role of ritual and play and representation in the formation of these competing forms of the sacred. So I don’t really understand our contemporary politics in terms of the rational versus the irrational.
In some ways it can be better understood as battles over competing forms of the sacred. If you think about secular progressives, there are certain things which are very sacred. I mean, these often get captured with this overarching term of “identity”. But I think that’s in some ways too clumsy and big a term. Certain things about our cultural habits, sexuality, etc., are things that are really sacred to many secular progressives. You sense that you’re approaching something sacred when it provokes really strong emotions, and these things provoke really strong emotions. Obviously there are equivalents on the right, but on on the left, I think those are things that are really quite central.
3. Is a liberal arts education valuable in American liberalism today?
Tocqueville Center:
What are your observations regarding liberalism in America and the university, particularly when it comes to a liberal arts higher education? What do you think ought to be the value of a liberal arts higher education?
Philip Gorski:
Educational institutions are complicated beasts. They’re supposed to do a lot of different things at once. They’re supposed to form citizens. They’re supposed to train workers. They are supposed to nurture adults. They’re supposed to kind of provide a kind of training wheels on the road to adulthood. And so, they’re being asked to do a lot of different things all at once. And sometimes those tasks are at odds with each other, obviously. For example, there is a very clear tension between vocationalism and liberal arts higher education. The world needs accountants, but if you study accounting, how much will you really know? Will you be properly educated as a citizen when you leave the university? And so I think some of the conflicts are reflective of these conflicting intentions in the institutions.
“…within the student culture, at least, a lot of the undergraduates I talk to are somewhat hesitant to say what they think about certain things…. [T]hey’re just so afraid of a misstep.”
But of course some of them are more to do with the current moment. I think one thing I would say is that it’s not that liberals in America control culture, as it is sometimes said. It is true that they have a larger influence in higher education than conservatives do. But there’s of course an entire conservative cultural world which is outside of the university, whether that’s think tanks or journalism or media, or for that matter, religion. So I don’t really quite buy the argument about liberals controlling culture, but the fact that they exert such a strong influence within higher education, I think that’s correct. That is part of where the conservative critique of higher education is coming from.
But to be honest with you, I don’t think the problem is really so much at the level of the faculty. I mean, I think most faculty are actually or fairly even-handed and neutral in the way that they teach and manage courses, and make room for different positions. But I do think that within the student culture, at least, a lot of the undergraduates I talk to are somewhat hesitant to say what they think about certain things. Particularly when it comes to controversial issues. Not even necessarily because they think they’re really out of the mainstream, but they’re just so afraid of a misstep. This has a lot to do with social media.
Liberal arts schools, including Furman of course, originally had a mission of character formation. And one of the reasons for the entire residential college system was exactly to allow the faculty and the people running the university to shape the students in certain ways. And even if the faculty don’t play as much of a role in that as they used to, and don’t see it as their mission anymore, the entire way the liberal arts college is organized is to form character. It has a quasi church-like aspect to it or a quasi monastic aspect to it, being put together with this group of people for this incredibly intense experience, during this formative period of your life. Of course that’s going to have an effect on you and how you see the world.
“…in some ways, of course, it’s a good thing that there’s more of a focus on student well-being. But I do think that that is part of where the concern about safety and higher education comes from. And I think that can sometimes be an obstacle to open intellectual interchange.”
I’ll remark on one other really big shift that I’ve seen in higher education over the course of my career. And that is — if I can really just put this very bluntly — when I was college, nobody cared if I was happy. I didn’t actually think being happy was one of my goals, it just wasn’t what it was about. You know, I don’t want to sort of beat my chest here and say, “oh, you know, back in the good old days, we were so tough and we had to stiff upper lip. You know, we just put our heads down and went through.”
What I mean, in some ways, of course, is it’s a good thing that there’s more of a focus on student well-being. But I do think that that is part of where the concern about safety and higher education comes from. And I think that can sometimes be an obstacle to open intellectual interchange.
And I think there needs to be more of these things like the On Discourse initiative that you guys are starting here. Some other universities are working on similar things, where you create this space that is explicitly identified as a place where we are going to engage in civil dialogue with people whom we might have very deep disagreements with but we’re not going to shout, we’re not going to hiss. We’re not going to march out. We are going to argue this out and let the force of ideas insofar as possible be what moves us.