Thoughts on the humanities
Inspired by this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html
A recent New York Times article (“In Tough Economic Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth,” 2/24/09) argued that in tough economic times, the humanities have to defend themselves as economically feasible pursuits. Encouragingly, the article didn’t challenge the idea of humanities as a worthy pursuit, but it did argue that they were traditionally a leisure activity for the wealthy and might once more become that. That’s certainly the classical view of the liberal arts, but what the example ignores is that those were the arts that allowed the wealthy to rule.
We can look to the example of the British empire, with highly capable (if perhaps overly ideological) administrators who came out of the classics programs of Oxbridge, which provides us one example in which the humanities were the foundation of political and imperial success. Greece and Rome provide even more shining examples, with the liberal arts and particularly public speaking (oratory) as the only path to political and legal success. Despite common wisdom, money does not make the world turn; ideas do. Money is just shiny enough to distract us from that fact. The path to power is, as it has always been, through hearts and minds.
As President Obama’s startling success demonstrates, the need for skilled public speakers is as high as it has always been. Thus, the dangerous result of leaving the liberal arts only to the wealthy while the less-fortunate scrabble through vocational schools would be the (re)production of a society with strict class divisions. Ironically, it would be the middle class producing those divisions, since in the struggle for wealth and social mobility, it would be limiting itself to the trades rather than the council chambers.
Marxists would see that reproduction as the effect of an oppressive false consciousness. In their terms, that’s the belief pattern (“ideology”) instilled in the worker in order to recreate the system that keeps the worker from rebelling. A more nuanced conception of that same idea comes from the social and literary theory called New Historicism, which would call this act “entrapment.” Entrapment is where the lower class reproduces the thought patterns that oppress it while attempting to overcome them. Joseph Heller gives us a more popular term - a Catch-22.
There are other justifications for the liberal arts than as a path to power, of course --happiness, self-discovery, all the things which the students of the Sixties sought from literature -- but it may well be the reason that resonates the most strongly. The result of the pattern of entrapment, however, is that to the average member of the middle class, the liberal arts greatest strength is seen as its greatest weakness.
The most common indictment of the humanities is that it does not train its students to do any one thing, and how, one might ask, does that provide any sort of power? The answer is that the liberal arts teach one how to think and, in doing so, they train their students in how to do everything. They train minds to be flexible and analytical; they teach one how to argue and how to judge. Those qualities underlie and guide all other pursuits. What use is a new gene therapy if one does not know if it is ethical to use it, or how to convince others of that fact? What use a bomb if one does not know if it should be used?
One of the reasons why the idea of the humanities as ineffectual is as strong as it is, however, is that it is difficult to learn to use them properly and even harder to use them to their full capacity. Often, one only sees those who have gone halfway or who have not quite figured out how to achieve their ends. Princeton, the main character in Avenue Q who sings “What Can You Do With a BA in English?” is a prime example. Majoring in English in college will not immediately bestow on one a wealth of ideas, a critical mind, and oratorical power. It takes heart-felt investment, continuous study, and the vigor to wring every drop from the sponge of the world.
Furthermore, the humanities always need a specific goal, a focus through which to affect the world. The most common one today is teaching, but as we have just been discussing, that is hardly the only possible goal. Many people are capable of finding their own goals and going after them, but even the most perspicacious sometimes lose their focus in the midst of the demands of life. As a way of helping people maintain that focus and as a way of revising the educational system to make better and more obvious use of its foundation on the liberal arts, it would make the most sense for colleges to start emphasizing double majors in the humanities and a more “practical” area.
In such double majors, the humanities can provide the critical foundation and the guiding principles, while the more specific or vocational area provides the focus. The same basic idea lies behind the “core curriculum” of many colleges, but it takes only a few minutes of chatting with an average college student to realize that these courses are, in most cases, not engrossing enough or at a high-enough level to effect what they intend. A double major, on the other hand, might just be both compelling and advanced enough to achieve that end.
It is more than time enough to lay aside the idea of the humanities as impractical and to reclaim them as a path to democratic equality and political influence. The lessons of 2500 years of history teach us nothing more important..
A recent New York Times article (“In Tough Economic Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth,” 2/24/09) argued that in tough economic times, the humanities have to defend themselves as economically feasible pursuits. Encouragingly, the article didn’t challenge the idea of humanities as a worthy pursuit, but it did argue that they were traditionally a leisure activity for the wealthy and might once more become that. That’s certainly the classical view of the liberal arts, but what the example ignores is that those were the arts that allowed the wealthy to rule.
We can look to the example of the British empire, with highly capable (if perhaps overly ideological) administrators who came out of the classics programs of Oxbridge, which provides us one example in which the humanities were the foundation of political and imperial success. Greece and Rome provide even more shining examples, with the liberal arts and particularly public speaking (oratory) as the only path to political and legal success. Despite common wisdom, money does not make the world turn; ideas do. Money is just shiny enough to distract us from that fact. The path to power is, as it has always been, through hearts and minds.
As President Obama’s startling success demonstrates, the need for skilled public speakers is as high as it has always been. Thus, the dangerous result of leaving the liberal arts only to the wealthy while the less-fortunate scrabble through vocational schools would be the (re)production of a society with strict class divisions. Ironically, it would be the middle class producing those divisions, since in the struggle for wealth and social mobility, it would be limiting itself to the trades rather than the council chambers.
Marxists would see that reproduction as the effect of an oppressive false consciousness. In their terms, that’s the belief pattern (“ideology”) instilled in the worker in order to recreate the system that keeps the worker from rebelling. A more nuanced conception of that same idea comes from the social and literary theory called New Historicism, which would call this act “entrapment.” Entrapment is where the lower class reproduces the thought patterns that oppress it while attempting to overcome them. Joseph Heller gives us a more popular term - a Catch-22.
There are other justifications for the liberal arts than as a path to power, of course --happiness, self-discovery, all the things which the students of the Sixties sought from literature -- but it may well be the reason that resonates the most strongly. The result of the pattern of entrapment, however, is that to the average member of the middle class, the liberal arts greatest strength is seen as its greatest weakness.
The most common indictment of the humanities is that it does not train its students to do any one thing, and how, one might ask, does that provide any sort of power? The answer is that the liberal arts teach one how to think and, in doing so, they train their students in how to do everything. They train minds to be flexible and analytical; they teach one how to argue and how to judge. Those qualities underlie and guide all other pursuits. What use is a new gene therapy if one does not know if it is ethical to use it, or how to convince others of that fact? What use a bomb if one does not know if it should be used?
One of the reasons why the idea of the humanities as ineffectual is as strong as it is, however, is that it is difficult to learn to use them properly and even harder to use them to their full capacity. Often, one only sees those who have gone halfway or who have not quite figured out how to achieve their ends. Princeton, the main character in Avenue Q who sings “What Can You Do With a BA in English?” is a prime example. Majoring in English in college will not immediately bestow on one a wealth of ideas, a critical mind, and oratorical power. It takes heart-felt investment, continuous study, and the vigor to wring every drop from the sponge of the world.
Furthermore, the humanities always need a specific goal, a focus through which to affect the world. The most common one today is teaching, but as we have just been discussing, that is hardly the only possible goal. Many people are capable of finding their own goals and going after them, but even the most perspicacious sometimes lose their focus in the midst of the demands of life. As a way of helping people maintain that focus and as a way of revising the educational system to make better and more obvious use of its foundation on the liberal arts, it would make the most sense for colleges to start emphasizing double majors in the humanities and a more “practical” area.
In such double majors, the humanities can provide the critical foundation and the guiding principles, while the more specific or vocational area provides the focus. The same basic idea lies behind the “core curriculum” of many colleges, but it takes only a few minutes of chatting with an average college student to realize that these courses are, in most cases, not engrossing enough or at a high-enough level to effect what they intend. A double major, on the other hand, might just be both compelling and advanced enough to achieve that end.
It is more than time enough to lay aside the idea of the humanities as impractical and to reclaim them as a path to democratic equality and political influence. The lessons of 2500 years of history teach us nothing more important..