As part of a revolution in higher education, Lord Mandelson is requiring information about universities to be modelled on a food-labelling system that will treat students as paying customers — another step on the route to the day when the job of our university teachers will be to provide not education but gratification. What else do paying customers demand? The don becomes a pimp.
In his dialogue Gorgias, Socrates describes a pimp as a person who caters for the desires of others. Socrates is driving towards the view that the body and soul have genuine interests that must be served if one is to lead the good life. He rejects the view that the way to achieve this is merely to supply the needs of mind and body as they cry out for them, like a ‘merchant, baker, cook or weaver, who not surprisingly become obsessed with the idea that they are the real authors of the body’s welfare, and inspire the same belief in others’.
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