This past Friday, Joseph Epstein contributed what proved to be an explosive opinion to the Wall Street Journal. His cardinal sin was the having the audacity to tell Jill Biden to drop the “Dr.” The ensuing responses were hilarious as usual. Hillary Clinton tweeted, “Her name is Dr. Jill Biden. Get used to it.” How brave. And then, of course, there were the waves of insightful analysis concluding that the opinion was actually hateful and misogynistic. Northwestern University, where Epstein taught for 30 years, announced they were distancing themselves from their former lecturer.
Perhaps hilarious is the wrong word. If it is funny, it is sad in equal measure to see the childish game that dominates American politics. Mr. Epstein’s opinion was not partisan in the least. When applied to anyone else, it would certainly be the mainstream belief. But alas, everything is a silly game which quite ironically makes the silly things the most serious of all.
Although the initial backlash was amusing, it was the second wave that most interested me. Because this is how things go, conservatives had to jump on Twitter to offer their two cents. They largely echoed what Epstein had written in his article, but there was something more there. The specific merits of Jill Biden are rather irrelevant. There is a fundamental opposition to honorifics that is more telling of American society. Ben Shapiro sent out a tweet that says it best.
As much as I like Ben, this is, frankly, terrible, and it troubles me that this sentiment seems to be indicative of the broader culture. If a professor dares to be addressed by his proper title, the disapproval in the room is palpable. As we will see, there are some good reasons for this, but none of them waylay my fundamental concern.
Let’s begin with the why. Perhaps nowhere did the United States rebel more strongly against Britain than in its disdain of natural hierarchies. If this was true at our founding, it was only strengthened over time. Our most aristocratic body, the Senate, has been radically transformed (senators were not selected by direct election until 1913). The trend over time has been towards a more radical democracy.
Americans, typically, have not gone so far as to demand absolute equality. We allow those who are hardworking and inventive to reap the rewards of their labor. We may even idolize them. Nevertheless, the wealthy are still expected to follow the customs of the middle class (see their clothing and dialect). The commonality may be an illusion, but it says something about our values. It is fair to say; the insistence of anyone to go by their distinguishing title tends to rub us the wrong way.
The next reason is not, strictly speaking, American. It is a thought that has gripped the whole of the West. We first became skeptical about eternal values, then we disbelieved them. Finally, we decided they didn’t really matter at all. This is much the worse. In such a world, thinking becomes superfluous. That sort of thing can be left to the experts, and this is what we have come to. Back in 1982, R.C. Sproul wrote an article in Christianity Today that still rings true today. In it, he said:
We live in what may be the most anti-intellectual period in the history of Western civilization. We are not necessarily antiacademic, antitechnological, or antiscientific. The accent is against the intellect itself.
R.C. Sproul — “Burning Hearts Are Not Nourished by Empty Heads”
On the whole, I think America has shown itself more resistant to the reign of experts than other nations. Sadly, we have not shown the same vigor against the denigration of the intellect. I think we have seen in this pandemic that the latter will inevitably usher in the former. The progressives are at least consistent. When the experts determine policy according to their narrow scope of understanding, they are all too happy to comply.
Conservatives, on the other hand, have dissented every step of the way. They have recognized that there are other considerations that have may escaped the exalted Dr. Fauci and his like. We oppose because we have still maintained a modicum of practical reason. It strikes me as a very inconsistent position. We only grant the title to be used by those experts in the hard sciences. At the same time, we know there are more important things to life than can be addressed by those very people.
If find this quite puzzling. We don’t want to be ruled by the experts, yet they are the only class permitted to use the doctoral honorific. I must conclude that rather than elevating the medical doctors and hard scientists per se, we have simply devalued everything else. This is strange to me because conservatives are apparently the ones who still believe in things like eternal truth. We just don’t entrust it to the teacher’s I suppose.
Something overlooked in the Jill Biden story is the fact that doctor literally means teacher in Latin. That is not to say her degree necessarily earns the title, but it is interesting all the same. It was once an axiom that theology was the queen of the sciences and philosophy her handmaiden. To be a doctor of either was considered more honorable than practicing medicine. Now, we are questioning whether they ought to bear the title at all.
I mentioned earlier the American disdain for natural hierarchies. It is a combination of these two that leads us into trouble. We have devalued the liberal arts in their traditional sense in favor of a new understanding of science. Now, those pretentious few who hold to their titles are like those royalists we threw off so many years ago. They are a class of pompous fools who will not have our respect. I wish I could say they haven’t earned it.
Unfortunately, the decay of our higher education has left us with a bad taste in our mouths. The experts at least provide utility. Modern medicine and technological innovation are greatly appreciated. The rest of our doctors have become an insufferable class that we would like to bring down a few notches. The difference we see is that a medical doctor who has failed in his field has lost his reason for being. This is no less true of the philosopher, but we are less trained to see it (or care when he does). Accordingly, philosophy can descend to worthlessness with greater facility, and so has become the less respectable position.
As degraded as the liberal arts may be, we should not forget their value to our society. By itself, the matter of titles may not be terribly significant. One does not need to be called doctor to be one. All the same, it is worth noting that as Ph.Ds have shirked the title, they have become a good deal less doctorly as well. A bit of that unsavory hierarchy is a necessary component of education. If you lose the honorific, you will lose the doctor. If you lose the doctor, sooner or later you will find you have lost the very disciplines themselves.
The Free Narnian 