You’d think, Then it’s not a great knife.

“Telos is the Greek word that Aristotle and others use to define the end or purpose of something,” Jonathan Haidt, professor at New York University Stern School of Business and bestselling coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind, says in a recorded lecture at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. The telos of a knife is to cut. What, Haidt asks, is the telos of a university?

According to Haidt, the goal of higher education is to teach people the truth. The school aspires to be a place where people may seek, discover, and investigate the truth. Students learn to offer arguments and accept counter-arguments in the search of truth when the institution is at its best.

The issue then becomes: Are today's colleges accomplishing their goals?

In his speech, Haidt claims that over the last decade, changes in campus culture have shifted university resources away from the search of truth and toward establishing an emotionally and intellectually safe atmosphere for students.

“From out of nowhere, students in 2014 began asking for trigger warnings,” Haidt says. A growing contingent among student bodies and administrators seemed to believe students were fragile and needed to be aggressively protected from “bad” ideas, offensive imagery, and provocative arguments. Students began reporting faculty, protesting speakers, and publicly shaming peers whose words made them uncomfortable.

There are many places and institutions whose purpose, or telos, is comfort. But a university is not one of those places. To make that point, Haidt quotes CNN contributor Van Jones:

I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong—that’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym. That’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.

By prioritizing comfort over the pursuit of truth, universities are ignoring their purpose. Higher education should be an arena of open inquiry and free expression, where ideas are exchanged, tested, and scrutinized. A liberal education should be “an invitation to be concerned not with the employment of what is familiar but with understanding what is not yet understood,” according to philosopher Michael Oakeshott.

What are the ramifications for society if colleges fail to fulfill their goals? New generations may lose more than just academic capacity; they may also lose the ability and desire to seek out and value truth. They may become so reliant on emotional gratification that they refuse to consider "what is not yet known" in good faith, instead catastrophizing everything that doesn't fit into their preconceived notions.

This is already happening, Haidt points out in his lecture. “We isolate young people from the adult skills that they will one day have to master,” he says. This manifests in growing anxiety, depression, and other disorders among college students.

With college enrollment on the decline, and the global economy under tremendous strain, universities need to realize their telos—or they’ll risk losing their essential role in society.

Imagine someone had a knife and told you, "This is a great knife. The only problem is it can't cut anything."

You'd think, Then it's not a great knife.

"Telos is the Greek word that Aristotle and others use to define the end or purpose of something," Jonathan Haidt, professor at New York University Stern School of Business and bestselling coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind, says in a recorded lecture at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. The telos of a knife is to cut. What, Haidt asks, is the telos of a university?

​Truth—that's the purpose of higher education, Haidt says. The academy aims to be an arena where truth is sought, discovered, and explored. When the university is functioning at its best, students learn to present arguments and receive counter-arguments in pursuit of truth.

The question is then: Are today's universities achieving their purpose?

In his lecture, Haidt suggests that changes in campus culture over the past decade have rerouted university resources away from the pursuit of truth and towards creating an emotionally and intellectually comfortable environment for students.

"From out of nowhere, students in 2014 began asking for trigger warnings," Haidt says. A growing contingent among student bodies and administrators seemed to believe students were fragile and needed to be aggressively protected from "bad" ideas, offensive imagery, and provocative arguments. Students began reporting faculty, protesting speakers, and publicly shaming peers whose words made them uncomfortable.

There are many places and institutions whose purpose, or telos, is comfort. But a university is not one of those places. To make that point, Haidt quotes CNN contributor Van Jones:

I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong—that's different. I'm not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I'm not going to take all the weights out of the gym. That's the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.

By prioritizing comfort over the pursuit of truth, universities are ignoring their purpose. Higher education should be an arena of open inquiry and free expression, where ideas are exchanged, tested, and scrutinized. A liberal education should be "an invitation to be concerned not with the employment of what is familiar but with understanding what is not yet understood," according to philosopher Michael Oakeshott.

What are the social repercussions if universities fail to achieve their purpose? New generations could lose more than academic muscle; they could lose the ability and inclination to pursue and prioritize truth. They could become so dependent on emotional comfort that they refuse to contemplate "what is not yet understood" in good faith, instead catastrophizing everything that doesn't fit into comfortable frameworks.

This is already happening, Haidt points out in his lecture. "We isolate young people from the adult skills that they will one day have to master," he says. This manifests in growing anxiety, depression, and other disorders among college students.

With college enrollment on the decline, and the global economy under tremendous strain, universities need to realize their telos—or they'll risk losing their essential role in society.

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This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Nicole Yeatman

At the Safeway grocery store in Southwest Washington, D.C., the toilet paper and paper towels section has been empty for most of the last two months. When the store does restock, supplies don't last long on the shelves. "Do you know if they have paper towels?" a pedestrian outside the store asked a stranger exiting the Safeway in late April. The answer was no: "Still out."

Paper products, hand sanitizer, masks, and cleaning wipes—all are in high demand and short supply during the COVID-19 crisis. Shoppers across the country are facing empty shelves and out-of-stock signs.

But any seller who reacts to current crisis conditions by increasing prices on in-demand products may be committing a crime. Thirty-four states have laws against price gouging. In March, a bipartisan group of state attorneys general wrote a letter urging online marketplaces to crack down on price spikes.

"[W]hile we appreciate reports of the efforts made by platforms and online retailers to crack down on price gouging as the American community faces an unprecedented public health crisis, we are calling on you to do more at a time that requires national unity," the letter said.

A price gouger makes a good temporary boogeyman. One could look at high prices during an emergency and think: They're trying to profit off of my desperation.

What exactly is price gouging, and what distinguishes it from a normal price increase? New York Attorney General Letitia James told NPR that "there's no definitive answer" but "you know it when you see it—[it's] when individuals are taking advantage of the market, particularly when a neighboring store is selling the same product for much less." New York's price gouging complaint form, which consumers can use to report retailers, defines it as "unconscionably excessive pricing of necessary consumer goods and services during any abnormal disruption of the market." However different states might define it, price gouging is widely understood to be exploitative, sleazy, and heartless. Laws against it are popular.

But Michael Munger, professor of political science at Duke University, says that high prices are a crucial part of dealing with scarcity during an emergency.

"If you use the police to keep prices artificially low, it makes the problem of scarcity much worse," Munger says in a short Institute for Humane Studies video on price gouging. Price gouging during an emergency allows more people to get what they need as soon as possible. "And that's true even for those who can't afford the gouger's prices," Munger explains.

How? Increased prices prevent unnecessary hoarding. Buyers purchase only what they need when they need it. Also, producers are incentivized to make more. When the supply rises, prices will fall.

"Price gouging laws keep the shelves empty longer," Munger says.

Matt Zwolinski, professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego, argues in his paper "The Ethics of Price Gouging" that "most, though not all, cases of price gouging are at least morally permissible, if not morally praise-worthy."

"Relative to the baseline of no exchange at all, the gouger's proposal stands to improve the lot of the buyer, not to worsen it," Zwolinski writes. If a buyer purchases a product at an exceptionally high price during an emergency, the buyer has decided that their emergency need justifies the high price. As Zwolinski puts it: "[W]hile the price of generators might rise dramatically in the wake of a disaster which knocks out power to a certain population, so too does the need people have for generators." A seller who raises prices did not create the buyer's increased need; he or she is merely reacting to it.

This doesn't mean, of course, that the price gouger is motivated by altruism. "[T]he fact that there are good arguments to be made for the moral permissibility of price gouging in certain cases does not mean that those who actually engage in the practice are motivated by these considerations," Zwolinski writes. But that's also true of normal market activity: As Adam Smith says in The Wealth of Nations, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." A price gouger makes a good temporary boogeyman. One could look at high prices during an emergency and think: They're trying to profit off of my desperation.

But if we heed the work of scholars like Michael Munger and Matt Zwolinski, we might begin to see price gouging as a rational and necessary part of emergency response. During normal times, a pack of hand sanitizer might cost the same as a bottle of red wine. But right now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, does anyone place nearly the same value on a bottle of wine as on a pack of hand sanitizer? By using the law to forcefully keep prices below what people would pay in an emergency, states enable hoarding. For Americans who would like to buy hand sanitizer—or paper towels, toilet paper, cleaning wipes, or masks—and can't find any, price gouging laws are a cold comfort. Most would rather have the option of paying increased prices than no options at all.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Nicole Yeatman

In a New York Times essay published the day of his funeral on July 30, 2020, Congressman John Lewis wrote that his "last days and hours"—in which he watched widespread protests over George Floyd's murder and saw a square in downtown D.C. christened Black Lives Matter Plaza—filled him with hope. "Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity."

Human dignity is a powerful phrase invoked to peacefully protest against violence, discrimination, and authoritarianism. But when we talk about human dignity, what do we mean?

The inherent worth of all human beings

Human dignity is the inherent worth of each individual human being. Recognizing human dignity means respecting human beings' special value—value that sets us apart from other animals; value that is intrinsic and cannot be lost.

Liberalism—the broad political philosophy that organizes society around liberty, justice, and equality—is rooted in the idea of human dignity. Liberalism assumes each of our lives, plans, and preferences have some unimpeachable value, not because of any objective evaluation or contribution to a greater good, but simply because they belong to a human being. We are human, and therefore deserving of a baseline level of respect.

Because so many of us take human dignity for granted—just a fact of our humanness—it's usually only when someone's dignity is ignored or violated that we feel compelled to talk about it.

But human dignity means more than the absence of violence, discrimination, and authoritarianism. It means giving individuals the freedom to pursue their own happiness and purpose—a freedom that can be hampered by restrictive social institutions or the tyranny of the majority. The liberal ideal of the good society is not just peaceful but also pluralistic: It is a society in which we respect others' right to think and live differently than we do.

From the 19th century to today

With Google Books Ngram Viewer, we can chart mentions of human dignity from 1800-2019.

We can also map human dignity against mentions of liberalism to see that discussion of human dignity increased with discussion of liberalism.

Then we can search through individual mentions to find how human dignity was discussed and understood over the last 200 years.

For example, German rabbi Dr. Samuel Hirsch gave a lecture in 1853 on "The Religion of Humanity" in which he condemned slavery. "That which we love in ourselves, our true human dignity, compels us to recognize and love the same human dignity in all others," Hirsh said. He wrote:

If I can look upon my brother-man as a creature, as a thing void of any will of his own, instead of as a free personality, that furnishes ample proof that I have not yet recognized the true human dignity in myself. To own slaves is spiritual suicide and homicide. This sin is in no way excusable on account of the kind treatment accorded to the slaves by their owner, as he never can treat them humanely. When man becomes a piece of property he is robbed of his human dignity.

In 1917, Kansas State Normal School published a journal on teaching that called for instructors to help each pupil "make completer use of his one lifetime" because "an abundant life, a life of awareness, a life of dignity is an undertaking worthy of gods."

Thomas Bell's 1941 novel Out of the Furnace centered on an immigrant Slovak family in Pennsylvania. A character muses that it wasn't "where you were born or how you spelled your name or where your father had come from" that mattered; instead,

It was the way you thought and felt about certain things. About freedom of speech and the equality of men and the importance of having one law—the same law—for rich and poor, for the people you liked and the people you didn't like. About the right of every man to live his life as he thought best, his right to defend it if anyone tried to change it and his right to change it himself if he decided he liked some other way of living better…. About human dignity, which helped a man live proudly and distinguished his death from animals; and finally, about the value to be put on a human life, one's enemy's no less than one's own.

In a 1953 speech, then Secretary of State John Foster Dulles argued that communist countries might be able to achieve short-term material gain, but "results so produced are not a glory but a shame. They are achieved by desecrating the dignity of the human individual." Dulles believed human dignity meant being entitled to a life that included physical well-being and "freedom to think, to believe, and to communicate with one's fellows," "opportunities which permit some exercise of individual choices," and "the contemplation and enjoyment of what is beautiful."

American novelist, writer, playwright, poet, essayist and civil rights activist James Baldwin at his home in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, southern France, on November 6, 1979.

Credit: Ralph Gatti/AFP via Getty Images

One hundred years after U.S. law stopped allowing Black Americans to be treated as property, Black writer James Baldwin was still calling for Black Americans' dignity to be equally recognized. It was not enough, not nearly enough, that the 14th Amendment ensured equal protection of the laws; what mattered was how Black Americans were treated by their fellow human beings. In a 1960 Canadian television interview, Baldwin said, "I don't know what white people see, you know, when they look at a Negro anymore. But I do know very well—I realized when I was very young—that whatever he was looking at, it wasn't me… I was not a man."

In his seminal 1963 book The Fire Next Time, Baldwin seemed to echo Dr. Hirsh's argument from a century earlier:

I am very much concerned that American Negroes achieve their freedom here in the United States. But I am also concerned for their dignity, for the health of their souls, and must oppose any attempt that Negroes may make to do to others what has been done to them. I think I know—we see it around us every day—the spiritual wasteland to which that road leads. It is so simple a fact and one that is so hard, apparently, to grasp: Whoever debases others debases himself.

This, then, is a common thread in our historic understanding of human dignity: Anyone who treats another human being as less than human undermines their own human dignity in addition to undermining the dignity of their victim.

A 1964 New York University Law Review article argued that privacy was a key aspect of human dignity. "A man whose home may be entered at the will of another, whose conversation may be overheard at the will of another, whose marital and familial intimacies may be overseen at the will of another, is less of a man, has less human dignity, on that account," wrote author Edward J. Bloustein, who later became president of Rutgers University.

The future of dignity

Around the world, people are still working toward the full and equal recognition of human dignity. Every year, new speeches and writings help us understand what dignity is—not only what it looks like when dignity is violated but also what it looks like when dignity is honored. In his posthumous essay, Congressman Lewis wrote, "When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war."

The more we talk about human dignity, the better we understand it. And the sooner we can make progress toward a shared vision of peace, freedom, and mutual respect for all.

This story originally appeared on: Big Think - Author:Nicole Yeatman