A case for humanities
Those of you who have elected to spend four years finishing a B.A. in the Humanities must have given it some thought: you must have thought that it was valuable. Perhaps you had to adamantly resist the nagging of parents or your own anxious soul, telling you that you should go into something more lucrative and employable. My friend, I want to offer you comfort.
Photo credit: Michael Biornstad
Although it is true that Humanities departments in modern universities constantly have to justify their existence to administrators, prior to the founding of the first research university in 1810, universities were centered on theology and the liberal arts. Ironically, “useful” applied sciences used to seek their justification from the humanities.
The case for the humanities begins with an understanding that metaphysics are important for understanding the self and everything else. Human beings need a framework from which all truth is organized; applied science can only speak of “what” and not “why.” That is, humanities study the human, and are equipped to make qualitative value judgments. Science and applied science can only measure and test mechanisms that are quantitative. If science steps out of that boundary it immediately begins to exhibit an implicit metaphysical prejudice that it has necessarily inherited from the humanities. Michael Polanyi explained that science is in need of metaphors in order to arrange itself and express itself. A “from-to” trajectory exists in scientific understanding. There is always an anticipation of ultimate meaning and a necessary presence of purpose. All of this is not to say that science is less useful than the humanities. The two must be in dialogue, for the scientist may “shrivel up” without any humanity, and the artist may develop an unrealistic imagination apart from scientific considerations.
Many students attend university so that they can be more “useful” to society — so that they can contribute materially to the betterment of society. Yet, the ultimate purpose of material betterment is usually pleasure, and the hedonism that usually follows is a rather naive philosophy to live by (although it still is a philosophy). Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that “[p]leasure or good in a general sense, is that which the consciousness of a sensitive and intelligent being seeks, and in which when found it acquiesces. There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, universal, and permanent; the other transitory and particular. Utility may either express the means of producing the former or the latter.” Shelley thinks that universal pleasure is achieved by interacting with truth and beauty, which are eternal and most truly of benefit for humanity to strive for. Truth and beauty are discovered and expressed in poetry and art. Therefore the production and study thereof is what is truly the most useful, and the most authentically and efficaciously pleasurable.
Finally, the humanities give students a clarity and freedom of mind so that they are not made a slave to the machinery of politics. Again, Shelley wrote that the “cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave.” The humanities enlarge the linguistic capacity of man, enabling greater interiority and reflection. Furthermore, Aristotle thought that a remarkable function of poets is that they are able to give a vision how things could be, or ought to be. This means that poets are the most subversive resistance to tyrants and oppressive governments. Authors of revolutions are all poets, because “they unveil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in the life of truth.” Finally, people who study the humanities are trained to be observant and sensitive to the spiritual, emotional, and psychological condition of the community, and therefore are able to offer diagnoses and suggestions for the betterment of the same.
Richard Bergen
I hold a bachelors degree (from TWU) with an emphasis on the humanities. I am also unemployed with no end in sight. The two are directly related.
While I affirm (nearly) everything above, I cannot escape the reality of my present situation. You discount the desire to be more “useful” as a form of hedonism. Perhaps, assuming the desire to be able to pay for groceries and rent is self-pleasure.
There is value in the humanities, to be certain. I only wish that value manifested itself more practically.