What Are the Humanities and What Is Their Value?

Definition:

The academic disciplines and branches of knowledge (such as languages and literature) that are concerned with the creative expressions and experiences of humans. The humanities are traditionally distinguished from the natural sciences and social sciences. Specialists in the humanities are called humanists or humanities scholars.

In his New History of the Humanities (2013), Rens Bod notes that "the humanities currently include linguistics, musicology, philology, literary studies, theatre studies, historical disciplines (including art history and archaeology), as well as more recent fields such as film studies and media studies." (See Examples and Observations, below.)

See also:

• Classical Rhetoric
• Liberal Arts
• "A Liberal Education," by Thomas Henry Huxley
• "On Classical Education," by William Hazlitt
• "A Successful Failure," by Glenn Frank
• What Is Rhetoric?

 

Examples and Observations:

• "The humanities, done right, are the crucible in which our evolving notions of what it means to be fully human are put to the test; they teach us not what to do, but how to be. Their method is confrontational, their domain unlimited, their 'product' not truth but the reasoned search for truth.
  
  "They are thus, inescapably, political. Why? Because they complicate our vision, pull our most cherished notions out by the roots, flay our pieties. Because they grow uncertainty. Because they expand the reach of our understanding (and therefore our compassion), even as they force us to draw and re-draw the borders of tolerance. Because out of this self-building might emerge an individual formed through questioning and therefore unlikely to cede that right; an individual resistant to coercion, to manipulation and demagoguery. The humanities, in short, are a superb delivery mechanism for what we might call democratic values."
  (Mark Slouka, "Dehumanized: When Math and Science Rule the School." Oklahoma Humanities, Summer 2011)

• Death of the Humanities
  "No one today knows what the humanities are. The National Endowment for the Humanities doesn't define them; it merely lists the disciplines Congress has empowered it to fund. . . .
  
  "The phrase 'the humanities' warms almost everyone's heart. But why can't we define them? Because the original humanities are dead, and we have found nothing to replace them. The Oxford English Dictionary still provides a definition of what the humanities used to be: 'Learning or literature concerned with human culture, especially the ancient Latin and Greek classics.' Does this definition of the humanities surprise you? If it does, then you have just experienced the profound change that has taken place in our educational system over the past hundred years."
  (Robert E. Proctor, Defining the Humanities: How Rediscovering a Tradition Can Improve Our Schools, 2nd ed. Indiana University Press, 1998)
• The Humanities in the University
  "When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the 18th century, the so-called humane disciplines had a crucial social role. It was to foster and protect the kind of values for which a philistine social order had precious little time. The modern humanities and industrial capitalism were more or less twinned at birth. To preserve a set of values and ideas under siege, you needed among other things institutions known as universities set somewhat apart from everyday social life. This remoteness meant that humane study could be lamentably ineffectual. But it also allowed the humanities to launch a critique of conventional wisdom. . . .
  
  "What we have witnessed in our own time is the death of universities as centres of critique."
  (Terry Eagleton, "The Death of Universities." The Guardian [UK], December 17, 2010)
• The Value of the Humanities
  "The main claims for the value of the humanities are:
  1. that they study the meaning-making practices of the culture, focusing on interpretation and evaluation with an indispensable element of subjectivity. . . .
  
  2. the claim that the humanities are useful to society in ways that put pressure on how governments commonly understand use, especially the prioritization of economic usefulness and the means of measuring it. . . .
  
  3. the claim that the humanities have a contribution to make to our individual and collective happiness. . . .
  
  4. 'Democracy Needs Us.' This fourth claim . . . has a proximate source in the American liberal arts tradition . . ..
  
  5. The final claim . . . is that the humanities matter for their own sake."
  (Helen Small, The Value of the Humanities. Oxford University Press, 2013)
• Rhetoric and the Humanities
  "For 2,100 years the study and the production of persuasion formed the core of the humanities and linked the humanities to the practical life of the everyday citizen. Rhetoric, in other words, made the humanities relevant to the political and religious life of society. Because they no longer constitute this core and this vital link, the humanities have, not surprisingly, lost some of their allure."
  (James L. Kinneavy, "Restoring the Humanities: The Return of Rhetoric From Exile." The Rhetorical Tradition in Modern Writing, ed. by James J. Murphy. MLA, 1982)
  
  "How can we understand the unprecedented rise and the equally swift decline of humanistic rhetoric? The initial popularity of rhetoric has on occasion been explained by the cultured alternative that it offered to the uncivilized use of violence. That is to say that rhetoric was the art of convincing without compulsion. The humanists saw this art as the humane form of persuasion, which stood in strident contrast to the bloody oppression, persecution, and religious wars in early modern Europe. But this explanation, as laudable a goal as it is, is not completely satisfactory. The discovery and assimilation of classical culture had also become a goal in itself. Many wanted the grandeur of ancient Rome to be revived in all its facets, and language was one of the most important elements of this revival."
  (Rens Bod, A New History of the Humanities: The Search for Principles and Patterns From Antiquity to the Present. Oxford University Press, 2014)
  
  "Rhetoric, though the oldest and broadest of the humanities, is becoming ever more difficult to locate in a conceptual framework because it draws increasingly on disciplines like anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology."
  (Theresa Enos, Preface to Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication From Ancient Times to the Information Age. Routledge, 2010)
• The Role of the Humanities in a Digital Age
  "What use could the humanities be in a digital age? University students focusing on the humanities may end up, at least in their parents’ nightmares, as dog-walkers for those majoring in computer science. But, for me, the humanities are not only relevant but also give us a toolbox to think seriously about ourselves and the world.
  
  "I wouldn’t want everybody to be an art or literature major, but the world would be poorer--figuratively, anyway--if we were all coding software or running companies. We also want musicians to awaken our souls, writers to lead us into fictional lands, and philosophers to help us exercise our minds and engage the world. . . .
  
  "To adapt to a changing world, we need new software for our cellphones; we also need new ideas. The same goes for literature, for architecture, languages and theology.
  
  "Our world is enriched when coders and marketers dazzle us with smartphones and tablets, but, by themselves, they are just slabs. It is the music, essays, entertainment and provocations that they access, spawned by the humanities, that animate them--and us."
  (Nicholas Kristof, "Don’t Dismiss the Humanities." The New York Times, August 14, 2014)
• Employment Opportunities for Students in the Humanities
  "When you think 'jobs,' do you think 'arts and humanities'? No? Well, maybe you should. You see, as the world gets bigger and the world's problems become more complex, employers seek more critical, comprehensive, and creative leaders. And the arts and humanities provide just that.
  
  "Let me set the scene for you: A 2012 survey of employers conducted by the Association of American Universities indicated that, '73 percent rejected the trend towards narrow technical training and wanted colleges and universities to place more emphasis on critical thinking and analytic reasoning.' Another study found that, '78 percent of employers preferred job applicants knowledgeable about global issues and societies and cultures outside the U.S.; 80 percent found written and oral communication key; and 82 percent favored those with civic knowledge, skills, and judgment essential for contributing to the community and to our democratic society.'
  
  "These surveys are well-substantiated by leading professionals from all fields who underline that many of these skills are found in students with strong backgrounds in English, foreign languages and literatures, the visual and performing arts, music, philosophy, history, or classics, among others."
  (Christine Henseler, "A Surprising Success Story: Jobs and the Arts and Humanities." The Huffington Post, August 12, 2014)
   
• The Lighter Side of the Humanities
  "Since I graduated in 1993, it has become uncool to major in the humanities. In 2010, 7% of U.S. graduates majored in one of the liberal arts, compared with 14% in 1966, which percentage-wise, is some number I don't understand since I majored in English. A third fewer Harvard freshmen are interested in the humanities than the freshmen 10 year ago, and while nearly half the faculty at Stanford teach humanities, fewer than 20% of applicants are interested in taking their classes. Instead, students are choosing computer science or other STEM disciplines--science, technology, engineering and math. Oddly, the liberal arts, which place more stress on the clever use of words, have not come up with a snazzy acronym of their own, like WHAPPEAR (women's and gender studies, history, art, psychology, philosophy, East Asian studies, and religious studies). The liberal arts are a lot touchier than the sciences about needing to feel included."
  (Joel Stein, "Humanities: All Too Humanities!" Time, September 1, 2014)