R.J. Snell: Universities and loss of civility

R.J. Snell writing at Public Discourse: “[T]he utilitarian education of the new university views the cosmos (and its citizens) as brute, factical, as merely given—what Charles Taylor calls the ‘great disembedding.’ The cosmos is mere stuff—indifferent and valueless until it is found useful and assigned a task. Lacking a sense of the gratuity of being, such education lacks also commitment to the worth of being; lacking a sense of the worth of being, such education lacks also commitment to acting only in conformity with the dignity of things; lacking a sense of the dignity of things, such education lacks also commitment to civility and the teaching thereof.”