What does this movie tell us about the modern university?

Last night, my wife and I watched the movie, Wit.

You can watch the full movie here (free with ads). I should warn that some of the content is quite disturbing and confronting.

I asked Google Gemini the following question:

"the movie wit, starring emma thompson, features two professors, one of oncology and another of english literature. the latter has terminal cancer. in spite of their academic credentials, neither seems equipped to cope with the human side of the suffering of the patient. alisdair macintyre was a critic of the modern university. what might have he said about this movie?"

Here is the answer.

"Alasdair MacIntyre, a prominent critic of the modern university and contemporary moral culture, viewed modern institutions not as communities dedicated to a shared human good, but as bureaucratic structures driven by specialization, technical expertise, and managerial effectiveness.

Based on his philosophical framework—most notably developed in After Virtue—MacIntyre would likely view the dynamic in the movie Wit as a quintessential illustration of the moral and intellectual failures of the modern university. Here is what he might say about it:

1. The Triumph of Bureaucratic Expertise Over Human "Telos"

MacIntyre argued that modern academic disciplines have abandoned any coherent notion of a unified human telos (purpose or ultimate goal). Instead, they have fractured into compartmentalized technical specialties.

• The Oncologist: Represents the epitome of modern "technocratic" or "managerial" expertise. To the hospital and the university, medicine is treated as a problem-solving science rather than a moral practice aimed at human flourishing. The patient is reduced to a data point, a mechanical puzzle, or a vehicle for research.
  
  
• The English Literature Professor: Though her field deals with the humanities, the modern study of literature has similarly grown hyper-specialized, detached, and academicized (focused on obscure analysis, such as John Donne’s holy sonnets, rather than wisdom or existential truth).
  
  

2. The Failure of Emotivism and Detached Rationalism

MacIntyre famously claimed that modern moral discourse has devolved into emotivism—the idea that ethical judgments are merely expressions of personal preference or feeling rather than rational truths.

• Neither professor is equipped to handle human suffering because their education has stripped them of a shared moral language.
  
  
• The literature professor spent her life analyzing deep themes of mortality and grace on paper, but because modern academia treats texts as objects of clinical critique rather than guides for living, she remains entirely unprepared to face her own mortality with actual grace. Her knowledge was purely aesthetic and intellectual, leaving a void where real moral virtue should be.
  
  

3. The Loss of Genuine Community

For MacIntyre, universities were historically meant to be traditions-based communities focused on cultivating virtues.  He viewed the modern university as having traded this for bureaucratic careerism and bureaucratic compartmentalization.

• In Wit, the coldness of the hospital-university complex highlights a complete absence of genuine human community. Interactions are transactional and analytical.
  
  

In short, MacIntyre would likely argue that Wit demonstrates the tragic irony of the modern academy: it produces hyper-competent specialists who know an immense amount about narrow subjects, yet are entirely illiterate in the art of being human."

That is a beautiful reflection. My enjoyment of it is somewhat overshadowed by my awareness that AI produced it. It also raises all questions about how to use AI in ways that do not diminish my own humanity.