In Defense of the Humanities

I teach in the humanities, which have been under attack for the last fifty years. Some of the attacks have been justified: The humanities tend to skew far to the left; the humanities don’t cure cancer; they don’t create solutions to global warming; they don’t help you to get a job.

In the last fifty years—and, actually, long before that time, if you include the Leavises and Matthew Arnold—there has arisen a cottage industry of people (mostly professors) writing polemics justifying the humanities. Most of these are vague defenses. The humanities are good for you in the way Cream of Wheat is. 

They make you a better person.

I’ve always had my doubts about the study of the humanities making you a better person. Having known piles of humanities professors, I’m not sure how many of them I would characterize as particularly good people. Most of the ones I know (my teachers, former classmates, and former colleagues) and have known are basically all right. They probably wouldn’t take your wallet if you left it on the table for a few minutes. Beyond that, I wouldn’t really characterize anybody in the humanities as a moral paragon. And that includes me as well.

I won’t take your wallet, but beyond that, I make no promises.

Thus, it was with interest that I read a defense of the humanities that is not vague at all. In Why We Need the Humanities: Life Science, Law, and the Common Good, Donald Drakeman makes the argument that the humanities—at least research in them—are useful because they can help us make decisions in two very important areas of human endeavor: biomedical research and civil liberties legal cases.

Drakeman argues that we live in an age in which government agencies and private companies have to make decisions about what kinds of biomedical projects to fund. Only the humanities—and probably especially philosophy and religious studies—ask the kinds of questions about values, choices, and moral reasoning that can enable people to make wise decisions about what kinds of biomedical projects to fund and invest research time into. In a world of competing interests, only the humanities can, Drakeman argues, give us mechanisms to use to decide how to spend finite resources.

In addition, Drakeman posits that many large-scale civil-liberties cases can be decided only on the basis of historical and moral positions given by the humanities. Drakeman acknowledges one of the potential problems with using humanities scholarship as the basis for legal decision making: humanities scholarship skews very far to the left (and we’re talking the hardcore Marxist left). Indeed, Drakeman acknowledges that the humanities are so far to the left that at times they are out of touch with what most people think about social and political issues.

While I think Drakeman might be on the money in terms of two areas in which humanities scholarship could be useful, I was disappointed that he didn’t really offer any good reasons why the humanities should be taught. It seemed to me that Drakeman acknowledged the usefulness of humanities scholarship, but he didn’t really talk about why these disciplines should be taught at the undergraduate level.

Let me try to offer some reasons why I think the humanities are useful.

1        Reading people. We have to read people. Often, these people are trying to sell us something. If you’ve spent a couple of years close reading texts, it becomes easier to close read people, their agendas, and the goals they really have, not the ones they say they have.  The better you are at reading people, the more quickly you can tell what somebody’s agenda is and whether you want to have that person in your work or personal life. 

2.     

          Creating narratives.  This is a world in which narrative really counts. Being able to tell compelling narratives about yourself and the world is a very useful skill to have.

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       Creating arguments. Most people can’t argue very well. They think they can, but they really can’t. They can’t up with a rational and coherent argument that supports their position. People can name call and be emotional, but they can’t really articulate concise positions. Reading philosophy and rhetoric can teach people how to analyze and create arguments.

      

       Understanding human motivations. If you want disciplines that teach you how to understand human motivations, try history and literature on for size. Psychology is a Johnny come lately to the party in terms of plumbing the depths of human nature. And, frankly, I’ve never thought that psychology offers very much in terms of parsing the human soul. History and literature teach that human beings are very complicated animals, possessing both beauty and real ugliness.

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          Understanding how the world works. Most people think that what is happening now is unique and novel. Reading history teaches you that there’s very little that is new. Do you want to understand Jeff Bezos? Go read about Andrew Carnegie.  Does Donald Trump seem like an aberration? Take a look at Andrew Jackson.  As Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.”  Understand the stanzas of current events by reading the couplets of history.

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          Developing the research habit. Students hate to write research papers. And, to be honest, reading somebody’s research paper about abortion is not a particularly interesting way to spend time. But developing a habit of mind that makes one look up things and try to know who says what on a particular subject is laudatory. Such a habit of mind can be applied to almost any human endeavor: from buying a house to selecting a financial advisor

      While Drakeman doesn’t deal with why the humanities should be taught at an undergraduate level, he does present a pretty compelling argument about why humanities research is important. It’s refreshing to see someone talk about the humanities in a way that isn’t precious or condescending.