Birthright

“I'll try,” said Belore, “though I doubt that it will do much good. If you were to agree with me, then this

situation would never have arisen in the first place.” “Why not try us and see?” suggested Hillyar. “I intend to,” said Belore. “Let me begin by asking a couple of questions, if I may.” “Proceed,” said Brannot haughtily.

“Professor Brannot, what is the position of the Philosophy Department on the works of St. Thomas Aquinas?'’

“A brilliant primitive philosopher,” said Brannot. “Unmatched in his day, but definitely discredited.” “Discredited?” said Belore. “You mean his religious views and arguments?” “Yes.”

“Including the First Cause argument?”

“Certainly. It can be disproved with the set of all negative integers, the set of all proper fractions, the—” “I quite agree,” interrupted Belore. “What of Plato?” “We study him, of course. As Man's first great philosopher—” “He wasn't the first, but let it pass,” said Belore quietly. “Anyway, we do study him. But again, the man has been disproved, in practice as well as in theory, many times over. Why, the Bonite Colony of a couple of centuries ago was set up according to his Republic, and lasted only a handful of years.”

“Too many philosopher-kings and not enough streetcleaners, as I recall it,” said Belore. “How about the works of Braxtok of Canphor VII?'’

“He wasn't even a Man!” said Brannot.

“Does that make his view of the universe any less valid?” asked Belore. “Not at all,” said Hillyar hastily. “And, in fact, we do have a number of courses in alien philosophies.” “Oh?” asked Belore. “How many?”

“I haven't got the figures before me,” said Hillyar, “but there are quite a few.” “I had the figures before me a few hours ago,” said Belore. “I found seventeen. Seventeen out of more than six hundred.”

“I don't know what you're driving at,” said Brannot. “Simply this,” said Belore. “I've been going over the various doctoral theses that have been presented to

this board, and I find them very disquieting.”

“I thought you said you found the students to be singularly brilliant,” said Hillyar. “I do,” said Belore. “The same cannot be said for their theses.” “I found them exceptionally well-reasoned,” said Brannot. “So did I,” agreed Belore. “Those I bothered to read.” “Then I fail to see your objection.”

“I thought you might,” said Belore. “I looked at some fifteen doctoral dissertations. Seven of them concerned the ethics of our conduct toward alien races. Three more examined Man's relationship to his technology. The other five dealt, to some degree, with justifying some of the political, military, and economic excesses of the Monarchy.”

“You mean the Commonwealth,” said Hillyar gently. “I know what I mean,'’ said Belore. “And, similarly, I know what I don't like about those papers. Gentlemen, whether purposely or not, the subject of philosophy seems in grave danger of being turned into a branch of the political sciences.” “Nonsense,” scoffed Brannot. “How can an intellectual of your stature draw such a conclusion based on a handful of treatises?”

“If this particular handful differs appreciably in content from last year's, or the year before that, I'll change my opinion,” said Belore. “But I suspect that it doesn't. And that is what disturbs me. That, and your attitudes.

“For instance, I mentioned Aquinas, and you spouted off a mathematical rebuttal to an esoteric theory beside which the whole of mathematics dwindles into insignificance.Is there a relationship between cause and effect in the universe? If so, is there a first and original cause of all Creation? Don't bother me with negative integers, or some astronomical theory of contracting and expanding universes. I want to know: Is there or is there not some intellect or life force which, purposefully or otherwise, set the entire process in motion? Aquinas proposed this argument, rightly or wrongly, from a combination of intellect, faith, and empiricism, and you answer it with mathematics and astronomy. I say to you that your answers don't amount to a hill of beans.

“Plato proposed a Utopian Republic, with its own set of idealized ethical imperatives. And because one small group of disillusioned radicals failed to put it into practice, you consider Plato to be archaic and discredited. Rather I should say that a philosophy department that negates the works of Plato because of what happened to the Bonite Colony has discredited itself without doing the last bit of damage to Plato. “As for Braxtok, he—or, rather, it—came up with perhaps the most complex ethical argument ever devised for the assumption of divinity. Admittedly it wasn't a divinity that would appeal to any Man, but that hardly makes the argument any the less valid. “What I'm getting at is this: It seems to me that philosophy has forgotten not only its roots but also its purpose. No one is asking questions about the nature of Man, or his place in the universe, or the existence or need for a deity. Just because Descartes concluded that no one could doubt his own

existence doesn't make it true—or false, for that matter. Why is no one asking these vital questions,

examining these vital arguments, any longer? “Gentlemen, you are not turning out philosophers. Far from it. What you are doing is creating the most brilliant crop of pragmatists in our history. But pragmatism is not the only branch of philosophy, and political and social doctrines are not the only—or even the legitimate—purposes of philosophy. “Your young men and women—and you yourselves—want to know how something works, or why it works, or if it works, or what the effect of its working will be. All other considerations—such as is it right or wrong, good or evil, consistent or inconsistent with the nature of Man—are either ignored or restructured to fit into the basic pragmatic concept under consideration. “And that, gentlemen, is why I will not add my name or influence to your petition to get one more non-philosopher added to this staff of non-philosophers. I weep for the Critique of Pure Reason in this day of Pure Practicality.”

“My dear Professor Theriole,” said Brannot, “do you really feel that we on the staff, or our students for that matter, have no understanding of what you would doubtless term the pure philosophers? Perhaps my knowledge of them is not as great as yours, but I am not totally unversed in these aspects of philosophy. But the difference between understanding them and appreciating them, in a positive manner, is considerable, and it is here that you part company not only with us, but with the bulk of our students. After all, we don't hold a gun to their heads and tell them that their doctoral theses must have some applicability to the real world.”

“One would never know it to read them,” said Belore dryly. “Professor,” continued Brannot, “we stand at a crossroads in the field of philosophy. We can continue to rehash the old unanswered and unanswerable questions, and philosophy will then remain what it has always been: a parlor game of mental gymnastics, played by ivory-tower intellectuals. Or, on the other hand, we can try to apply both old and new philosophical concepts to our daily lives and make them work for us.”

“I was laboring under the obviously erroneous impression that we've already put philosophical concepts to work for us in the past,” said Belore. “The Ten Commandments come to mind, but I'll wager that there must have been one or two others during the past ten thousand years.” “I grant you that,” said Brannot, “but it only supports my argument: that philosophy can and should deal with reality. Take, for example, Bishop Berkeley's proof of God, which is the one human argument for deity not as yet disproven. I ask you, not as one professor to another, but as one human being to another: Who really gives a damn if there is some mystical Unseen Observer or not? Or take the hallowed Descartes, who thought and therefore was. I have no doubts as to my own existence: I've got ulcers, aches, pains, and worries to prove to my satisfaction that I'm here. But Descartes carried it one step further, inferring the existence of the entire universe from the singular fact thathe existed. More power to him. But I can infer the existence of a large block of granite sitting in front of this building from my own existence, or I can not infer it; and in either case, it has no effect whatsoever on the truth of the inference. “On the other hand,” he continued, “if I were to say, ‘I hunger, therefore I am,’ it would have a little more relevance, because my next step would be how to assuage my various hungers, and this would lead me not only into practical proposals but ethical considerations as well. What I am trying to say, Professor, is that philosophy mustdo something. It can't just lie there as a logical toy for academic dilettantes.'’

“Needless to say, I disagree,” said Belore. “What you are describing is simply not philosophy.