Humanities: building faith in the enterprise

The New York Times' David Brooks was kind enough to give the humanities prominent placement in his column last week. Unfortunately, the New York Times' David Brooks was kind enough to give the humanities some prominent placement in his column last week:

Back when the humanities were thriving, the leading figures had a clear definition of their mission and a fervent passion for it. The job of the humanities was to cultivate the human core, the part of a person we might call the spirit, the soul, or, in D.H. Lawrence’s phrase, “the dark vast forest.”

This was the most inward and elemental part of a person. When you go to a funeral and hear a eulogy, this is usually the part they are talking about. Eulogies aren’t résumés. They describe the person’s care, wisdom, truthfulness and courage. They describe the million little moral judgments that emanate from that inner region.

The humanist’s job was to cultivate this ground — imposing intellectual order upon it, educating the emotions with art in order to refine it, offering inspiring exemplars to get it properly oriented.

Somewhere along the way, many people in the humanities lost faith in this uplifting mission. The humanities turned from an inward to an outward focus. They were less about the old notions of truth, beauty and goodness and more about political and social categories like race, class and gender. Liberal arts professors grew more moralistic when talking about politics but more tentative about private morality because they didn’t want to offend anybody.

Emphasis mine. No, 'people in the humanities' in his phrasing - though I would challenge Brooks to tell me who this does not include - have not lost faith in their uplifting mission. I suggest he pick up the phone or talk to some of his Yale colleagues on the quad. This facile description of some supposed doldrums that have caged the humanities is actually more accurately attibuted to learning environments that have eliminated the disciplines as superfluous, not readily monetizable, and therefore a kind of an extra that we can do without. The humanities are no such thing and we eliminate them or believe them expendable at our peril.

It's arguable that one of our great challenges in the present epoch is to continue learning and exploring beyond points of mere financial viability. Society is not just a collection of problems with nowhere to go, though without the right tools it can certainly seem that way. But it is in this cauldron, swirling with competing self-interests, that young people find themselves. Study in the humanities offers the greatest sense of self-knowledge, of our selves but also our societies - and has never been more important. Brooks' lament of a lost notion of truth is telling; in fact, there has been no better time to be delving into the darkest ramparts of human culture than over the last fifty years. Around the globe, more people (and peoples) have been released from the strictures of rigid, pre-determined lives than in any previous time period. Not even close. It follows that there would never be a more fruitful period to study history, language, anthropology, linguistics, communication and a host of other disciplines. These pursuits are actually crucial and an ability to engage a multicultural world is just one key to greater fulfillment. Knowledge and the attendant questioning it admits allow us to keep each other honest and our systems transparent. That the only detractor is the lure of a supposed ability to get a job is self-refuting. It would be like saying you can either join the human race or you can be qualified for a job - absurd.

When we advocate for the arts on campus, we're not just trying to get students to attend concerts or act in plays - though we want both of these things. But what we are actually doing is helping them inform their future selves. How will your life have meaning, beyond your material pursuits and successes? This is a big question, and the liberal arts educational model is the first and last bastion of providing the space, knowledge and context whereby we learn who we are - and what we can do.