Introduction: Judgement and Justification as the Heart of the Academic Mind

This introductory chapter explains the book’s title by explicating the sense in which ‘judgement’ and ‘justification’ are central to the academic mentality. It is anchored in the sense of detachment from the business of everyday life that Plato argued was necessary to cultivate a sense of judgement. The chapter proceeds to identify Francis Bacon’s experimental method as an early modern vehicle for promoting the same sensibility, which Wilhelm von Humboldt, inspired by Kant, made the cornerstone of the modern university in the early nineteenth century. Both Marx and Bismarck were beneficiaries of Humboldtian education, which suggests the need for the broad sense of ‘academic’ judgement even in matters of politics, economics and world affairs, more generally. In the recent past, this sensibility has been most interestingly explored in terms of the nature of justice by two Harvard philosophers, John Rawls and Robert Nozick. It is a reminder that the quest for a position from which to judge and justify implies—if not explicitly aims for—a divine point of view, or what theologians call ‘theodicy’. However, as God has receded from the academic horizon in the modern period, significance of judgement has arguably diminished, and justification replaced by ‘explanation’. This has raised unresolved questions about the meaningfulness of the world on which we seem to have an increasing scientific grasp. The chapter ends with a review of the subsequent chapters of the book, which explore these issues further.