Paul Gooch is professor of philosophy and president emeritus, Victoria University in the University of Toronto.
When, if ever, is it appropriate to use the title "master"? Recent discussions about masters of colleges have pointedly raised the question. Some voices argue that the term is so offensive that it must be abandoned, to be countered by other voices – including some on this paper's editorial pages. We need less rhetoric and a little more reasoning to sort this out.
Start with the obvious. The meaning of words is situated in their context and their actual use. Alice might want to make words mean whatever she wants, but in that wonderland nobody would understand anybody else. The word "master" has a deep and long history, coming from the Latin magister. That's a teacher, but it's used to mean anyone with authority over another. In the personal and social context, masters are masters in relation to others.
Whether this relationship is pernicious, even morally reprehensible, depends of course on the context. The ship's master has a certain authority that's necessary in the circumstances. In other contexts, not so. In family relationships, the husband for long centuries was master of the house, requiring obedience, but the last 50 years have seen social and moral advances in equality, even though there are still distances to be travelled. That the title "mister" doesn't signify mastery, though it is a variant on "master," demonstrates that use changes meaning over time.
The most common pairing of words for master relationships is master/servant and master/slave. The first has its own history and problems. But surely slavery is not just offensive; it's morally repugnant and wicked. Given that context and meaning, to suggest that anyone is that kind of master over another is morally repugnant, too.
There's a very different use of the idea of mastery, however. In the scores of meanings and citations in the second edition of The Oxford English Dictionary, it's clear that the uses and contexts of the term are most often in connection with mastery not over someone, but over something – something that needs ordering so as to be done rightly or understood properly. The master carpenter or chess player exercises control over material or strategy. To be master of oneself is a thing-relation, not a person-relation: It isn't to make oneself a servant, but instead to bring order to one's fears and passions.
Back to the academy, where "masters" and "mastery" have to do with teaching and learning, like their old ancestor magister. What's mastered in this context is a body of knowledge, where the buzz and confusion of ideas is brought into order that can be grasped and passed on. The magister artium once upon a time had control of the subject matter sufficient to instruct others, an ability now associated with the philosophiae doctor or PhD. These days there are scores upon scores of new professional master's degrees, which don't make their holders masters of anybody else.
What, though, about the "master" of a college? When I knelt, 35 years ago, before the master of an Oxbridge college to be inducted into the fellowship, I acknowledged his authority. In those days one might have thought that this office was an instantiation of the authority of sound scholarship pursued in a community of fellowship rather than a feudal act of obeisance; the loyalty was to the well-being of the college, not a promise never to disobey orders. But times and places change – context again. I've been a visiting fellow at another Oxbridge college with a president rather than a master, and am a senior fellow of two colleges in Toronto, one of which has a principal. "Master" not only now carries the idea of authority over others rather than ideas, but it also has those repugnant overtones for many. What it's proper to call the person who attends to the life of a college all depends. "Head" works in some contexts and not others. "Head" implies a body, but one that is controlled. To be principal among the many members of an institution, or to preside over its life, reflects the notion of community. And since a college is a body of persons committed to the practice of learning together, that notion of community is important.
In the end, an academic community must decide, in its own time and place, whether a title is appropriate to its life. The decision must not result from arbitrary or forced measures. A college should be a place of collegial deliberation upon the meanings and uses of language, including titles.