Stanley Fish, an academic humanist, makes a bold claim about the utility of the humanities. He argues that their main purpose is to provide individual pleasure. They don’t reform, they don’t humanize, and they don’t help us understand the meaning of life, Fish asserts, because if they did, your English, philosophy, music, and history professors would be among the best people on earth (and you already know that they aren’t!).
Is Fish right? Scholars of history make war, writers of novels commit crimes, and gifted creative artists lose their lives to drugs and alcohol. And yet, it was a pamphlet that helped launch the American Revolution, it was music that helped empower a generation to oppose the Vietnam War, and a painting like Picasso’s Guernica is considered a national treasure in Spain.
What do you think? Can training in the humanistic disciplines do anything more than give us individual pleasure?
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
The Uses of the Humanities
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4 comments:
I do not entirely agree with Stanley Fish. Humanities does provide individual pleasure, but also creates a different perspective or interpretation of various works of art. An educator does not need to be the best person in the world, although we would like them to be, but well versed in the subject matter.
Human beings are flawed and incredibly selfish. Interests are what drive them...oh and emotion too!
The elite determine what is noteworthy in the arts. If that matters to you, then many aspects of humanities are essential. If not, you can still function within our society just fine. In an increasingly competitive world, I think it is more important to be well rounded and to know what the decision makers deem valuable. Also, to find the time to enjoy the simplest of things. We live in a country that is fast paced and consumed with market saturation. Once in awhile, it does not hurt to stop and smell the roses.
Stanley Fish’s claim that humanities only provide pleasure could not be further off the mark. After all humanities are the studies of the human condition; as wikipedia states, it describes the joy, terror and other feelings or emotions associated with being and existence. By engaging in this area of study, we seek both to understand and improve human behavior. This is not to say that, we do not derive pleasure doing this; we do. But, there are other fundamental reasons why the study of humanities is crucial. By reflecting on historical events, art and the work of great philosophers, we enrich our understanding of our human existence. As a result, we link the past and the future, develop alternative possibilities as we envision and move into the future. If we cannot focus on improving communities by scrutinising values, beliefs and tradition, what use is life at all?
For instance, the study of philosophy has shaped international politics today. Writings by great thinkers like Hugo Grotius, Amartya Sen have shaped current day politics by promoting the ideology of liberalism and democracy, which is closely associated with free trade and increased international relations—resulting in a greater understanding of the global world in which we live.
Betty references philosophers whose ideas have influenced government and culture, which I think is a good rebuttal to Stanley Fish's argument.
But in his second blog on this topic (I did not assign the second installment), Fish tries to refine his stance and argue that the academic study of humanistic thought (literature, primarily, but also the study of philosophy) does not "save us."
His target, therefore, is academia rather than the public at large. He doesn't seem to mind if individuals want to read philosophy and be influenced by the ideas they encounter there, but he doesn't think funding such study in a university is worth the money.
A very interesting argument coming from a man who was formerly the chair of an English department.
I wondered what happened to sour him on a discipline to which he devoted most of his life's intellectual labors?
Stanley Fish has much to argue against the funding of humanities in academia. His position states that our society must only fund areas of study that will produce the necessary, money-making professions that will, in turn, assist in the function and growth of our society. His take on the function of humanities is that it isn’t a safe bet for society assistance.
In Will the Humanities Save Us?, he says, “Teachers and students of literature and philosophy don’t learn how to be good and wise; they learn how to analyze literary effects and to distinguish between different accounts of the foundations of knowledge.” Fish states that if the humanities were a substantial area of study, then teachers would be the most perfect citizens in the world.
This is an unfair claim. Rather than focusing on the study, he judges an entire body of people. Are all lawyers the most perfect citizens? Thomas Paine’s Common Sense , an argument for independence, is studied by law students as well as anyone who claims to be an American citizen. Then why do we have cases of corrupt cops? What about the CEO’s of Enron? Wilmut and Campbell felt they were good citizens when they cloned dolly, but were they?
It isn’t a question of good vs. evil, but rather supply vs. demand. If our society had a demand for humanities as strong as the sciences or mathematics, Fish wouldn’t have taken that cheap shot at our teachers. Fish’s idea of humanities isn’t based on the wellness of our society as good people, but rather the money that can be made by them.
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