Nemo and Richard Thomas on the Humanities
Posted on January 22nd, 2009 in Uncategorized | 9 Comments »
An interesting debate is shaping up on the future of the humanities, framed by two commenters whose thoughts I want to highlight.
Here’s Nemo:
The academic study of the humanities may die, but it remains to be seen whether or not that will be a great loss to society. I rather doubt it, because the academic study of the humanities is almost entirely divorced from the way that people actually experience art. One of the many problems is that academics in the humanities do not take emotion enough into account. Applying the tools of academic study to works of art requires people to emotionally disengage from the art, and people will not continue to “consume” art if they can’t also engage with it emotionally. Many people are first introduced to art and literature–especially great art and literature–in the classroom, but because they are taught intellectually, they completely miss out on most of the impact of the work they study. That leaves little hope that they will ever return to it. The best teachers don’t do this; they’re capable of teaching both intellectually and emotionally. That type of teaching needs to be universal.
And here’s classicist Richard Thomas:
I think that’s right about the emotions and the humanities, though I would rather think in terms of aesthetics and the detrimental abandonment of aesthetics, subjectivity, formalism and the like. And some of us are getting back to some of that.
I’m here in Wabash College, the Athens of Indiana as its called, having just given their annual Classics lecture. (T.S. Eliot’s “‘What is a Classic?’ Revisited?”) and the Humanities seem quite strong, because they are committed to a true, and rationally constructed liberal arts curriculum. Yesterday at 9 a.m,. the whole sophomore year (i.e. 250 students) in 18 different faculty-led classes, had discussion/lecture for an hour on readings from Hume. Apparently they do all talk about their readings outside class. Sure it’s a private college, though not wealthy I think. The enemy is systemic pre-professionalism, and curricular ignorance bred of overspecialization and misunderstanding of what general education, and particularly what the Humanities, should be doing.
One question: What is a “true” liberal arts curriculum?
9 Responses
1/22/2009 11:39 am
Not much of a debate - they seem to agree more than they disagree. Good teachers always find a way to emotionally engage their students in the material. Some do it more aggressively than others, but pedantry has always been pedantry and always will be.
1/22/2009 12:55 pm
I agree, no debate on this point.
On the larger one (“true” liberal arts), I’m not sure. It’s partly attitudinal, partly nature and differences among faculty and students (and I DON’T mean differences in intelligence here), partly virtue, if it is a virtue, made of necessity: biologists also teach the sophomore course which yesterday did Hume; for each additional course taken in the major students have to take an additional one outside it, so major/minor was much more common, as was double majoring (I met one chemistry and classics double major, e.g.); limited depth of offerings within the major necessarily take students out of the major for a good chunk of each term.
I’m not saying one system is better than another, and that depends on the student’s interests in many ways. Rather they’re quite different, and there are clearly trade-offs with each extreme (Harvard and Wabash, the latter with 900 students and 90 faculty, are clearly extremes in terms of what they can or must sustain).
Humanistic faculty will perhaps be more anxious in settings which are more nakedly pre-professional or vocational, and where ignorant high administrators/state trustees, etc. who focus only on utility see the humanities simply as a service division, aimed at adding a little gentility to the nation’s economists and scientists. This is where one needs to be careful not to let Nemo’s call for the emotional or mine for the aesthetic and subjective simply be a process of unexamined ‘appreciation’ e.g., and it is also where substituting the “arts” for the humanities (and humanistic social sciences) needs to be watched.
PS Has discussion of the the great books option (whatever that would look like) for larger research universities aspiring at the same time to have strong liberal arts identity REALLY been exhausted? Or do we not have the stomach or the will for the discussion itself?
Over and out from a very new Indianapolis airport, which has nice free wifi, but apparently no electrical outlets, not good when delays occur.
1/22/2009 2:15 pm
At Hampden-Sydney College, my freshman year, first semester Rhetoric class read and wrote about Lewis Thomas’ “The Medusa and the Snail”. Everything about that class blew my mind wide open to the possibilities education, emotion and spirituality. It affected me greatly. At HSC I was a physics major whose favorite classes were in english literature, creative writing and politcial science. Is that the definition of a liberal arts degree or just mere confusion?
1/22/2009 2:54 pm
Ah wuz edoocated wif a belt.
1/22/2009 3:08 pm
stop bragging, 2:54.
1/22/2009 10:14 pm
Unsurprisingly, I’m with Richard T.: “The enemy is systemic pre-professionalism, and curricular ignorance bred of overspecialization and misunderstanding of []general education.”
Just last week I was able to defend this principle at considerable length with a student, who said she was applying to an Ivy League school I knew rather well and was going to major in Business. I was in a good position to explain not only why she couldn’t but also shouldn’t do so.
Toward the end of the Preface to my book (still available on Amazon! while supplies last!), I attempt to situate my work squarely in Nemo’s wheelhouse. And yes, in fact chapter one is about nautiluses, though not Capt. Nemo’s Nautilus. (And no, RT, I don’t need reminding that in targeting Nemo I am, per Odysseus, targeting No One.)
“Lyric infinitude as conceived here, thoroughgoingly un-pragmatic, forces cultural criticism (not unwillingly) into an aesthetic mode. Philosophical, theological, and even ecological frameworks have a role as well, but the following study would be incomprehensible to a reader without a sense of the predominant importance of beauty. Happily, Emersonian philosophy is based on a sensory experience accessible equally to our own era as to earlier ones.”
You’ll notice I don’t say that the book would be incomprehensible SOLELY to readers without a sense of beauty. It’s incomprehensible to plenty of other readers, too.
And beautifully useless to all of them, I trust.
But awesome!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jim-vdH-At-the-Brink-of-Infinity/9572792099?ref=ts
SE
1/22/2009 11:02 pm
I almost made the Nemo//No One point, SE, but thought that might be seen as pedantic so held back. I read and enjoyed your book, though confess I got it out of Widener, so no royalties there sorry to say,
1/22/2009 11:42 pm
That’s very nice! Thanks for reading.
Didn’t I behave myself well in the part about George W. Bush?
1/23/2009 12:14 am
I thought contemporary politics was evident but well subordinated to aesthetics, which will keep you around longer too. I also confess I am only passionate about Frost of your quartet. That may have to do with my ignorance and separation in my NZ (i.e. literarily British) youth. I put Lowell above the other three, probably because he is, for me, via his connection to Ransom and Tate and their Virgilianism more familiar. And so you read your Emily Dickinson | And I my Robert Frost.
But Nemo got something going here, but what if no one notices?