"Philosophers can explain"

It was a rare acknowledgement, in the opening of the 60 Minutes segment last night on re-opening higher education in the Fall, of the existence and relevance of philosophers in America.

This fall, college will start with a test. Can America's universities reopen during the greatest pandemic in a hundred years? Some universities are remaining online, others are still unsure, but a growing number are preparing for perhaps the largest coordinated return institutions have made since the virus hit. In many ways, colleges and universities are the perfect places for an American reawakening. Scientists can track and trace, behavioral experts can make the pitch and philosophers can explain the balance between collective good and the individual. But, we go to college to be social, with no distance. College students are going to have to step up by staying apart. If they do, they may lead the way not just for the next semester, but for the entire country and its future.

Well, we can try. I know I've been trying, lo these many years, to open a serious conversation about the proper tension between personal rights and public responsibilities, about what it means to be an individual living harmoniously in a community of mutually-interested citizens. I started teaching during the Reagan years. It was a hard conversation before then, but Reagan made it harder. And here we are.

In this region in particular it's a hard sell, the notion of the common good or the public interest -- a notion most directly engaged in my classroom in discussions about Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, and the social contract. A lot of students have been raised, if only implicitly, to insist that nothing constrains their absolute right to do as they please and not be instructed, obstructed, impeded, or otherwise guided in any way by any agency or authority. Individualism rules.

But I was heartened to see local radio personality Jason Moon Wilkins's observation about the striking contrast in social attitudes in an adjacent region that also calls itself southern, "Southernmost Illinois" (where Older Daughter attended SIU):

One striking thing - the level of compliance with mask wearing and the way it was handled by businesses. If you went inside - you wore a mask. Period.

But there was one exception - a Winery that will remain nameless. The 3 percenter bumper stickers in the parking lot gave it away. The loud talking manager had her mask hanging under her chin. We left.

Will that be an option this Fall, if students reject the mask requirement? Just leaving? We need to be clear: if they won't comply, they don't need to show up in the first place. Many of my colleagues have already indicated a preference for avoiding that encounter in the first place. As a society, though, it's past time to have that hard conversation. Your right to do entirely as you please ends at the tip of my mask, and mine at yours. "Philosophers can explain..."

I kinda know how that's gonna go, in many instances. I'll explain, and the most vocal young libertarians will resist. But at least we'll be talking, either through masks or through zoom. It's a start.