Existential crisis

Well, that title might be a little overdramatic. Here's what's happened.

Over the summer, in a quest for program funding, I wrote an essay for a competition run by The Independent Institute. The essay prompt used a quote from a 17th century Austrian economist and theorist named Frederic Bastiat, claiming that "everyone wants to live at the expense of the state; what they forget is that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone." The idea was to accept Bastiat's statement as fact, and propose ways to convince people to remember that the state was living at their expense.

I found out a few days ago that I received honorable mention for my work, which, while not carrying any monetary reward, carries a special importance. As I was reading Bastiat, and learning more about The Independent Institute, I came to realize just how biased this competition and the organization were towards conservative, thinly-veiled libertarian ideals. Considering that I wrote an essay using Bastiat to justify a socialist anarchist society based on a sense of mutual responsibility, I either pulled off a major ideological coupe, or I was misunderstood. I tend to believe it was the latter.

But my difficulty comes with the knowledge that I was the first to misunderstand. Out of ignorance to Bastiat's larger context in his own time, and to his growing influence among radical conservatives in the United States (apparently he's a frequent guest at tea parties), I read and used Bastiat to justify my own political thinking. This was acceptable in the context of the essay competition, which asked its writers what they thought needed to be done. But it is not acceptable in the wider academic world.

My classes have been discussing responsible scholarship, and the need for historians to understand and adequately account for the social/political/economic/universal context of the works and events that they aim to study. My peers have been very enthusiastic about this kind of hyper-awareness, but after my experience this summer, I have some doubts as to whether I am capable of that kind of juggling act--or if I even want to engage in it. Maybe I've finally gone and become too obsessed with dead white men for my own good, but I seem to long for the days of Whig history, when scholars spouted off what they believed, and the past could either justify it or go hang. Petulantly, I have a difficult time understanding how that could be such a bad thing, as long as we're all aware that it's happening (the main problem of "Whig history" seeming to be that no one knew they were writing it). I can handle that kind of scholarly introspection, admitting that I have a personal bias and that the bias has probably influenced my handling of the historical evidence more than might otherwise be appropriate. It's this other, hyper-moral kind of scholarship that seems so bloodless--and so impossible to carry out.

Like I said, I think it's either a little early or a little late to be having a crisis of faith in my (ostensibly) chosen professional. Bu maybe I also need to consider that what I value in thinking and scholarship does not hold a place in the current understanding of the field. Maybe I need to go into politics.