With Friends Like These
So I read Erin O'Connor's remarks on Stanley Fish's attempt to "justify the humanities" by turning the entire discipline into a series of "intriguing intellectual puzzles."
Oh, dear God. Not directed toward Erin - I think her essay is on the mark.
I have had it with academics who no longer have the temerity to stand up and basically say, "You know what? We have thousands of years worth of human history and experience and artistic creation available to us--and some of the best examples are presented here, here and here. Now you're free to ignore/mock/reject any or all of it, but frankly we think you do so at your peril. Why? Because people don't exist in a vacuum, and pretending that they do, or that somehow we've moved beyond the need to reflect on our past, on our humanity or on morality is completely ignorant. It doesn't matter what your day job is, you're going to struggle with the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, and guess what--you can find guidance or cautionary tales in the humanities that may make your life easier, or maybe you'll just find a story that gives you pleasure, and that's valuable too. Bottom line - you're human, and the humanities are relevant to your life."
Yeah, I know. It's all sincere and insufficiently ironic and if we keep on in this vein someone might bring up something icky and scary like RELIGION or the SOUL or LIFE HAVING MEANING beyond your net worth or the Daily Show's daily snark, and we're way too cool to talk about that stuff anymore, right?
You know, if this debate didn't sadden me so, I might get a kick out of the irony that after spending decades tearing down their own discipline, academics in the humanities are left staring at the wreckage in befuddlement and asking themselves what the hell happened.
Amen, Sistah!
Many people are too stupid or shallow or wrapped up in ideology to see the truth of your statement Belle.
I think that your statement is the only convincing argument for studying the humanities. Some people are too caught up in easy angst to see the truth of your statement.
In their eagerness of the new/ progressive, many people continually re-invent the wheel. Worse, some don't re-invent it, but rather declare wheels impossible. This may be a truism, but by rejecting tradition, The baby has been thrown out with the bathwater.
History and the other humanities contain the wisdom and effort of many lifetimes of thought.
One must build upon the discoveries of others in the humanities, as one does in the sciences.
The humanities are a habit of thought and a way of understanding the world as well as discrete facts. As a lone person, unmoored in reality by the humanities, it all too easy to be overwhelmed by it all and succumb to nihilism, passivity or hedonism.
The study of "the best that been thought and done" along with the study of religion helps one escape the solipsism of self absorption. One's self is not the measure of all things.
The humanities give one a sense of perspective upon current events.
Another proof of the Gospel According to Pogo - "We have met the enemy and he is us."
Hmm... well, if your parents burden you with a name like "Stanley Fish," what can you do except grow up to write Dreadfully Serious articles? It's almost Wodehousian!
Fish first made his name tearing down Wayne Booth's book _A Rhetoric of Irony_, in the late 70s.
My contribution ridiculing the suggestion by one commenter that engineers are not educated seems to not have been acceptable for publication in Erin's comments. You know the drill.