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What Good Are the Humanities?
Marco Rubio insulted me; see the video here. He said I was useless, and called me a fool for practicing my useless profession. It was the final proof that Republicans are anti-intellectual. Or so the stories say. Actually, I don’t believe a word of it. All I can say for sure is that he said that we shouldn’t denigrate vocational training, and that having more welders and fewer folks like me is a good way of increasing overall wages. And that was only after he went over a pretty solid laundry list of economic policies supporting freer markets and fiscal sanity.
While I could dwell happily enough in a world in which I’m proven wrong about this, I can still vote for a man who insults my profession, provided he’s the best man for the job. (Never mind that the best woman for the job also happens to be the only presidential candidate who studied philosophy . . . and has also made more money than most welders . . . and is a Republican.) Anyway, though it now seems like last year’s news, it’s still a good excuse to hear from the Ricocheti on the following question: What good are the humanities?
Please select the option that best describes your view:
- No good at all! Nothing but intellectual pretension! This country needs more welders and fewer philosophers!
- They might have been good once, but the Left owns them now. They’re more trouble than they’re worth. Ignore formal education in the humanities. Let the university bubble burst. Anyway, you can read Shakespeare on your smartphone.
- Long live the humanities! Even under Leftist influence, the humanities are great! They teach us how to think, and Shakespeare is better when you study with a specialist. We still need Socrates and Herodotus. Every welder should have to study a little bit of this stuff in college!
- Reform education! Bring back the Trivium. Stick to the basics: literature, history, art history, and philosophy. We need the humanities, done rightly.
- You, Mr. Augustine, are a perfect example of why this country needs more philosophers.
- You, Mr. Augustine, are a perfect example of why this country needs fewer philosophers.
- Actually, in my opinion, ______________________________________.
The humanities can illustrate in various ways how interrelated, dependent and united we are as a people. As I am introduced to a new outrage (courtesy ABC News) I can’t help but think we need a more commonalities and a shared view of Western Civilization.
Sigh… You’ve gone too far now. :)
This is what I would say as a completely “useless” Modern British Novel (yes- I mean Joyce and Lawrence) major with a minor in French literature:
It worked for me. I honed my analytical skills (Finnegan’s Wake, anybody?) and the ability to make a sound critical assessment in an organized manner. Helpful in a business environment.
On the other hand, I wrote a post recently about the benefits of vocational training. My electrician at age 25 makes thrice the income I did at that age.
The answer is to follow your skill sets and if they don’t effortlessly catapult you into a living wage, look outside the box and make them work for you in other fields of endeavor.
Vaisai humans toh aik sey aik nikammey, oh wait, you asked about the humanities…imo they’re fine, they can just be difficult to earn a living from. Apart from that nothing wrong with them. Probably need to focus in on basics a bit more.
I need a “I’m fed up with data” category.
We’ve become slaves to measurables. Humans cannot be well understood this way. Only through the humanities can we come to understand humanity.
Nothing’s wrong with humanities. But you don’t need to go to college and mired yourself in debt just to learn about Hinduism, the three Punic wars, or to read Homer and Shakespeare.
Somewhere between 2 and 4. I teach a social science, so some days I pretend to be a scientist, and some days I pretend to be a humanist. Regardless, what I offer is clearly a liberal art (political science).
We say that a liberal arts education trains the individual in the arts necessary to be free. Free from what? From want? Perhaps, but even in the ancient world the philosophers were not self-sufficient. Socrates did not take payment for his lessons, but he took considerable charity. No, not free from want. Free from vice? Cultivating virtue is an ancient lesson, but ultimately Socrates let his pride and anger get the better of him. Free from coercion, then? Getting closer. Ultimately, Socrates chose to die rather than to cease being an Athenian Philosopher (ie, cease being Socrates). But even then, he was making willful choices under threat.
No, the purpose is to render us free of delusions. The first is the delusion that we know anything, the second that we are in full command of our lives, and third that anyone is more informed or more in control than we are. Ironically, once we embrace our ignorance and weakness -recognize that we are chained in the cave seeing shadows -only then can we remove the chains and seek the exit of the cave.
The great sin of modern liberal arts is that it denies the chains and claims the shadows are reality. That is all post-modernism is.
What does a humanities track in college offer that a recommended series of books and intelligent conversations do not?
Useful, yes. Should degrees exist for such pursuits? No.
Not that we do a great job with the measurables either. Understanding of things like compound interest, the law of supply and demand, and the law of conservation of energy has also fallen on hard times.
Structure and an introduction to things to which many 18 yr olds have never been exposed. A unique 4 year opportunity to focus solely upon learning, reading, thinking, attending keg parties – oops! – and meeting new people.
The concern is that college costs $50-$60k a year so perhaps we should be focusing on the fact that the federal govt is funding and guaranteeing too many scholarships; universities are then free to charge whatever the hell they want.
This is called Econ 101, a class I took freshman year.
Four and seven. The Trivium is not enough. Throw in the Quadrivium and history with it. But that should be to prepare them for the university.
The study of the Humanities in the Classic sense are invaluable are meant as a lesson plan for insightfull thought, period. Appears this venue has been expanded into a cash cow for Higher Ed programs.
As for those that take exception to some manner of Measurement. For starters, that’s why flat bladed shovels replaced round bladed as more coal was moved. What we understand of any Measurement system originated with a husband and wife team. (Efficency Experts). Recall when that visit struck fear in the hearts of folks ?
Good Lord, we could use a bit of that in Government Agencies today –
Those are called RE’s (Reasonable Expectancies) in employment. Are the Newly Annoited of the Entitlement grads to understand this, or is it just the ” I just showed UP ” and pay me think – Strange times –
I dig. (I have some pretty strong instincts in favor of 3 and 4, and I take these remarks to go in a similar direction.)
4.
The humanities were for wisdom. They were the core of higher education and could be again. Now they are for foolishness.
I suggested # 6 too! I can think of a couple of folks around here who might endorse # 6.
I dig that! I don’t think I have that option above, though I probably should. (And I think it’s totally consistent with Rubio’s remarks.)
Acha!
(I had to consult a student to help with the translation. I know replying in Urdu to you leads to my getting schooled, but I think this is right: Yeh mazahia hai.)
Studies show that Plato readers agree with you!
(Ok, I made that up.)
I dig! (Though I tend to think you get more out of studying them if you have an expert to explain it in person–if you can afford it.)
Yeah, I’m somewhere in a triangle with 2, 3, and 4 as corners.
That’s the right question!
Excellent.
I tend to agree. (But I don’t want to generalize about postmodern thinkers who have often been subtle thinkers and a bit misunderstood.)
Rubio may have been a bit unclear here, but I think this was at least part of what motivated him. We spend huge quantities of federal money for any kind of college education. Any attempt to apply a cost-benefit analysis to this scheme is met with “SHUT UP! A COLLEGE DEGREE IN ANYTHING LEADS TO HIGHER WAGES!” Any attempt to suggest that some people might be better off just learning a trade is met with “YOU ANTI-INTELLECTUAL REPUBLICAN!”
(Man, I hope I wasn’t any less clear than Rubio there.)
Well, it looks like we have a disagreement there. I think there should be such degrees. They offer a chance to study with a real expert–from the selection of the book series to the explanation of the books to the testing of the student’s knowledge of the books. That is useful–when done well. (It’s not always done well, and hence my own inclinations towards #s 2 and 4 above.)
Woo hoo!
Dang, just as I was about to agree with Rubio about your useless profession, I read the rest of your post…
Mark me down as 7. Humanities are vitally important; as a supplement to a real education. Of course, history and philosophy and civics and political science have given way to multiculturalism and grievance studies. That stuff truly is worthless.
Then go with number 6!
You meant to say “supplement,” right? Or did you mean something like “part of”?
If only supplement, then what would a real education be? (Vocation, perhaps?)
Somebody has to think the Big Thoughts.
“What is “want”? Does “want” truly indicate an innate human desire or simply a pseudo-desire imprinted on us by the white, colonial, hetero-normative patriarchy?”
“Dude. STFU. and, yes, I WANT fries with that.”
There’s the problem right there: Big Thoughts obscured by Small Thoughts in Big Thoughts’ clothing.
Put me down for #2.
The humanities are fine. You want to study them? Knock yourself out. Just do it on your own dime.
Would you support government funding for vocational training?
Maybe it depends on the specifics. Let’s say we’re comparing a philosophy B. A. degree to a two-year training program in welding or bricklaying at a community college. Should either of them be subsidized by state or federal money?
8. They are a principal element of what separates us from the ignorance, stupidity, and barbarity that cannot be contained when we reject them, or when they do not exist in a culture. Just look around. (I specifically refute #2. The Left does not ‘own’ the humanities. The Left has, for its own political and ideological reasons, rejected, corrupted and distorted the humanities, because by doing so, it can own the ignorant, stupid, and sometimes barbaric, people so produced.)
As for ‘studying’ the humanities (finally) when we get to college, I’m not so on board with that either. I think the men and women of the West used to absorb the humanities as part of their cultural identity, from the earliest of ages, and throughout their lives. Now, apparently, we can’t know, or do, anything about them until we’ve reached voting age and we’re in the presence of some bozo with a PhD in some half-baked field that was invented to support his/her/zir grant and tenure application . That’s daft. And it explains a lot.
Most knowledge important to our civilization falls within humanities but one must approach them with a passion for truth and we don’t get this from within our own heads. Go weld some first.