Wow, that's the best explanation of "the humanities" I've ever read. Hats off to Rorty!
I bet it's because "humanistic intellectuals" cannot be open about their function (to stir society up and keep redefining generations) that more science-oriented people don't see the point or importance of art, music, history, literature and the like. With humanities' fake emphases like "the enduring questions posed by the human condition," science-oriented people may not see the point of spending a lot of time studying such subjects, whereas the benefits of medical breakthroughs and renewable energy technology are so obvious. They may view literature or art as mere entertainment, or a recreational activity that passes the time, instead of dynamic expressions that shape the way we understand everything.
Thanks. I rarely agree with everything Rorty has to say, but I always find his way of saying it to be generative and refreshing -- even the stuff he wrote twenty years ago, like this.
It is common for people outside of college humanities departments to have strange, wrong ideas about what those humanities people are up to. Some people fear that literature and philosophy professors are fomenting revolution by planting Marxist or feminist or Nietzschean ideals in their students' heads. Some fear that those professors are undermining reason itself by spreading a bunch of gobbledygook about cultural relativity. Others fear that those professors are propagating hegemonic, patriarchal, capitalistic ideals by glorifying the writings of dead white European-American males to the abject detriment of the oppressed classes. Still others think, as you mentioned, that those professors are just jerking off by reading books and going to museums while their counterparts in the sciences and the so-called "practical disciplines" -- social work, finance, political science, law, medicine -- do the real work of keeping society running.
For a literature or philosophy student himself, it can be tiring and unrewarding to spend a lot of energy refuting these shallow claims, in the same way that a molecular biologist gets tired of deflecting yet another allegation that her belief in evolution is politically-motivated. People (including, more and more, me) who pride themselves on their intellectual work rarely have much patience for dumbed-down politicized conversations about Darwin versus Genesis, the sciences versus the humanities, or relativism versus absolutism. They would rather have a conversation about, say, recent efforts to convert stem cells into brain cells, or about the interplay between David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" and Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," or about the character of Satan in the early Renaissance imagination. Maybe what's missing is a better cross-disciplinary understanding within the academy of the exciting, high-level thinking that's being done in the other departments. It’s always sad to me when smart people get sucked into dumb conversations.
2 comments:
Wow, that's the best explanation of "the humanities" I've ever read. Hats off to Rorty!
I bet it's because "humanistic intellectuals" cannot be open about their function (to stir society up and keep redefining generations) that more science-oriented people don't see the point or importance of art, music, history, literature and the like. With humanities' fake emphases like "the enduring questions posed by the human condition," science-oriented people may not see the point of spending a lot of time studying such subjects, whereas the benefits of medical breakthroughs and renewable energy technology are so obvious. They may view literature or art as mere entertainment, or a recreational activity that passes the time, instead of dynamic expressions that shape the way we understand everything.
Nice find, Adam.
Thanks. I rarely agree with everything Rorty has to say, but I always find his way of saying it to be generative and refreshing -- even the stuff he wrote twenty years ago, like this.
It is common for people outside of college humanities departments to have strange, wrong ideas about what those humanities people are up to. Some people fear that literature and philosophy professors are fomenting revolution by planting Marxist or feminist or Nietzschean ideals in their students' heads. Some fear that those professors are undermining reason itself by spreading a bunch of gobbledygook about cultural relativity. Others fear that those professors are propagating hegemonic, patriarchal, capitalistic ideals by glorifying the writings of dead white European-American males to the abject detriment of the oppressed classes. Still others think, as you mentioned, that those professors are just jerking off by reading books and going to museums while their counterparts in the sciences and the so-called "practical disciplines" -- social work, finance, political science, law, medicine -- do the real work of keeping society running.
For a literature or philosophy student himself, it can be tiring and unrewarding to spend a lot of energy refuting these shallow claims, in the same way that a molecular biologist gets tired of deflecting yet another allegation that her belief in evolution is politically-motivated. People (including, more and more, me) who pride themselves on their intellectual work rarely have much patience for dumbed-down politicized conversations about Darwin versus Genesis, the sciences versus the humanities, or relativism versus absolutism. They would rather have a conversation about, say, recent efforts to convert stem cells into brain cells, or about the interplay between David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" and Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," or about the character of Satan in the early Renaissance imagination. Maybe what's missing is a better cross-disciplinary understanding within the academy of the exciting, high-level thinking that's being done in the other departments. It’s always sad to me when smart people get sucked into dumb conversations.
Post a Comment