Why is it that it is always the humanities some tiny group of monks, scribes, or scholars has to try to save? Humanities. Do we hate ourselves that much?
Philosopher Joel Uili sums up the irony:
“They’ll tell you that the arts and humanities aren’t practical and then read poetry at funerals and weddings, cry over films and search for meaning in ancient philosophy. Surviving is one type of practicality, knowing why we bother is another.”
I found that quote in a post from a history prof. And in classes in literature, history, philosophy, and the arts, I have found answers for every question that mattered to me. I learned a softer, more intuitive way to understand time from Henri Bergson. The need to pay attention from Simone Weil. Unconditional love from Shakespeare’s sonnet 130. How to live freely from the Transcendentalists. Novels brought an understanding of the experiences of immigrants, Blacks, women, people who are gay or trans, people living in poverty, people with mental illness or disabilities—in other words, all those whose dignity, rights, and resources are currently under attack by people who have no clue what their lives are like. I realized history’s cycles—how terrifying it would be if everything seemed new, disconnected, and just flying at us context-free. I gained a deeper understanding of grief from C.S. Lewis, of cruelty from Hannah Arendt, of consciousness from William James, of cosmopolitanism from Kwame Anthony Appiah, of moderation from Aristotle, of virtue from Martha Nussbaum….
You doubtless have your own list. So much wisdom, available and free—you would think a nation hooked on self help would embrace it. Yet every week there is news of another faculty downsizing, another academic department closed, another humanities requirement dropped, and now, another lethal measure taken to decimate universities altogether. Ever notice how the humanities are always housed in the dingiest buildings on campus? Not at WashU, though, and it was refreshing to hear of a gorgeous new building planned—until construction halted, thanks to the Trump Administration’s war against higher ed.
Before this medieval throwback, the humanities could at least grab a little street cred by clinging to the sciences. People lauded med school electives on Shakespeare or contemporary novels, knowing instinctively that they would enlarge the compassion we want our doctors to possess in abundance. But justifying your existence on the coattails of entities that are more valued…does not really justify your existence. Peter Stanlis, a scholar of English literature, notes the woeful backfire: “The humanities have not humanized the physical sciences so much as the sciences have mechanized the humanities, and made them appear obsolete.”
Science is the future, and science is what we worship (well, until recently), because its discoveries bring profit. But “what profit it a man….” I trail off. Nobody cares about souls anymore. A liberal arts education stopped being a goal in itself, a means to self improvement, long ago. Instead it was forced to present itself as a career path, then branded a con. Politics entered the arena, too: look how much longer the White guy version of the Great Books endured. The minute those must-read lists were “diluted” by women and people of color, their sway was broken. (Also, in fairness, the lists were suddenly too big, too random, and it took a while for genius to surface, until which time the inclusions seemed spotty and often suspect.)
I also think the insights of the humanities sometimes make people nervous.
For insight, I turn to a journal, History of the Humanities. And in the latest table of contents, I begin to see the problem. “The Unnaming of Kroeber Hall.” The University of Berlin curriculum in 1820. Bulgarian socialism and Cyrillo-Methodian Studies. Matija Murko. Turanism in Japan. Aryanism and Sikh identity. What? Why not begin with the universals, the big questions all of humanity confronts—love, death, virtue, justice, meaning—and explore specifics along the way, as illustration?
The arcane nature of many academic articles is all too familiar, but it was once only an annoyance; now it hits me as a reason for decline. Maybe these articles are just clumsily titled and really do zoom out to the universals that affect us all. But I doubt it. Specialization “cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding,” Isaac Asimov wrote. All this fierce territoriality, this claiming of tiny, isolated plots of scholarship, has forced scholars into dusty corners. It is hard for anyone outside those rarified specialties to feel the slightest spark of interest.
Meanwhile, emphasis at universities shifted from brilliant classroom lectures to lists of academic publications, tenure’s pound of flesh. Look at any curriculum, then compare it to John Henry Newman’s ideal: “The university’s art is the art of all arts; the art of detaching the mind from the sordid cares of life and connecting it with the invisible world.” He argued for liberal education as a way “to open the mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to know”—and to use that knowledge for the sake of all.
Thomas Jefferson added a little social justice, now also out of fashion: “We hope to avail the state of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.”
W.E.B. Dubois thought the humanities crucial if Blacks were to achieve full citizenship: “The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning,” he reminded us, “or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.”
A word that comes up again and again. Cicero argued for studia humanitatis, studies of humanity, aka civilization. “Not to know what happened before you were born,” he warned, “is to remain forever a child.” History grows us up. And literature? It complicates the world for us, says Lionel Trilling: “Literature is the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty.”
But here we are, in a time when Blinkist is boiling down those accounts to a few executive-summary paragraphs, and fewer people have enough interest and concentration to read full books anyway, and students let AI think for them, and the money all goes to STEM. Do we really want to become so practical and profit-oriented that we lose the sort of education that makes civilization possible?
A “civilized” society is one that is educated, enlightened, cultured. And capable of civility.
Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.
