"The university’s purpose is to leave the student, after three or four years of anxious dissipation, with the view that anything goes and nothing matters."

Scientism in the Arts and Humanities


Roger Scruton



"Moreover, once the defense of the humanities is made to rest on the “culture” they transmit, they become vulnerable to deconstruction. One can summon any number of theories — the Marxist theory of “ideology,” or some feminist, post-structuralist, or Foucauldian descendant of it — in proof of the view that the precious achievements of our culture owe their status merely to the power that speaks through them, and hence that they are of no intrinsic worth. In this way the whole idea of culture as an autonomous sphere of moral knowledge, one that requires learning, scholarship, and immersion to enhance and retain, is cast to the winds. On this view, instead of transmitting culture, the university exists to deconstruct it, to remove its aura. The university’s purpose is to leave the student, after three or four years of anxious dissipation, with the view that anything goes and nothing matters."