What Critics of the Humanities Don't Understand
Humanities, Values, and the Big Picture of Human Existence
Common sense dictates that the humanities are an impractical area of human study, and that they distract us from more pressing matters. Those pressing, practical matters range from making (more) money, developing scientific knowledge, to improving technological capabilities. Ironically, the humanities’ importance in our lives becomes clear by interrogating precisely such claims.
Philosophy and its pioneers of critical thinking have long taught us to be wary of common sense, and seek out clear, cogent justification for even the most prominent and seemingly “obvious” of claims. Common sense, after all, is just a name for beliefs endorsed by popular opinion, dominant cultural tradition, and the beliefs of those in power. A critical analysis of the claim that the humanities are less important than the pursuit of economic, scientific, or technological success reveals that such an idea rests upon value-based assumptions.
Humanities’ Critics Miss the Bigger Picture
In the first place, the claim that something is practical or impractical logically implies efficacy in the service of a bigger picture goal. The question that must be answered, then, is, what is this bigger picture goal? The French Renaissance statesman and pioneer of the essay writing format, Michel de Montaigne, highlights the importance of this question in “Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions” (1572-1574).
“A Man who has not directed his life as a whole toward a definite goal cannot possibly set his particular actions in order. A man who does not have a picture of the whole in his head cannot possibly arrange the pieces. What good does it do to a man to lay in a supply of paints if he does not know what he is to paint?”
Without a clear sense of our fundamental goals or values we can’t even begin to figure out what should actually be done and why. This means we can only begin to really determine what is practical or impractical after clearly articulating our vision of what we are ultimately pursuing and why those bigger picture goals should take priority over other goals.
Scientific research is vital for helping human beings make sense of what is true about the physical-material world. The social sciences help us understand the causal factors that impact human behavior in society. The natural sciences teach us about the causal laws at play in the natural world and wider universe. These areas of human knowledge are vitally important in understanding what is causally possible—possible given the apparent laws of nature. They provide us with the information needed to inform our decision-making in pursuit of our objectives.
In contrast to the sciences, the humanities are a family of interrelated areas of cultural inquiry, expression, and creativity. The humanities encompass philosophy, religion, language arts, visual arts, performing arts, and history. These humanities, when brought in dialogue with one another, uniquely affirm reason, emotion, imagination, doubt, faith, skepticism, and wonder. In a word, the humanities facilitate the contemplation of the human condition in pursuit of activating human potential. As the pioneering social psychologist and philosopher, Erich Fromm, put it in The Sane Society (1955):
“The whole life of the individual is nothing but the process of giving birth to himself; indeed, we should be fully born when we die—although it is the tragic fate of most individuals to die before they are born.”
With this goal in mind, the humanities do more than seek to find out what is true. They also affirm human creativity and seek to make true or bring to life what is yet to blossom but deserves to exist.
What Do You Value? Philosophy and Our Values
The critical interrogation and creative contemplation of primary or ultimate human values—of what we ought to do, care about, and live for—is the unique domain of the humanities. And since the significance of our everyday actions is determined, by and large, in relation to our ultimate values, it’s clear that the humanities are indispensable.
Critically examining human values is the task of axiology, a branch of philosophy. Axiology takes up aesthetics, political philosophy, and moral philosophy. Aesthetics is the critical examination of beauty. Though it’s true we often disagree about what is beautiful, there are also significant points of agreement. Here we ask what constitutes true beauty and whether or not something’s beauty can be objectively determined. Is beauty the same as attractiveness? Are ugliness and beauty mutually exclusive? And to what extent is beauty a concept restricted to physical appearance compared to a congruency between external beauty and internal beauty?
Political philosophy entails the critical examination of society and its purpose. Through political philosophy, libertarians, anarchists, socialists, small government conservatives, “benevolent” totalitarians and social welfare democrats enter into dialogue about not only policy but also the basis of their visions of a good society and the role of government and business in achieving that end.
Political philosophy is distinct from political science, which largely concerns itself with examining how a given kind of state operates and how best to operate within an existing political system. Political science is primarily concerned with working within a given framework of accepted values to achieve previously identified goals rather than working to critically examine the framework itself.
In this 2-minute clip, Harvard Professor of Government, Harvey C. Mansfield, explains the difference between political philosophy and political science.
By contrast, political philosophy examines the underlying values such as justice and notions of equality in order to determine what a truly good society ought to be like. Without seriously considering such questions that go outside the boundaries of an existing system, social reform would be unimaginable and without justification. We would also have little basis for claiming an effort to enact significant change was morally justifiable.
The logical implication is that our conception of justice relies upon morality. Some view morality as an entirely subjective realm, yet the basic fact of our human experience in recognizing some actions are indeed objectively right and others objectively wrong continues to prove that morality is indispensable. Evaluating moral ideas and arguments is the specific domain of moral philosophy (ethics).
Moral philosophy helps us critically examine our moral beliefs in light of the fact that much of what we take to be our moral beliefs are the result of familial-cultural influence rather than fundamental moral intuition and cogent, reasoned thought. In The Gay Science, Nietzsche wrote:
“But that you take this or that judgment for the voice of conscience—in other words, that you feel something to be right—may be due to the fact that you have never thought much about yourself and simply have accepted blindly that what you have been told ever since your childhood was right; or it may be due to the fact that what you call your duty has up to this point brought you sustenance and honors—and you consider it ‘right’ because it appears to you as your own ‘condition of existence’ (and that you have a right to existence seems irrefutable to you).”
The result is that many of our moral beliefs are so taken for granted that we have trouble even consciously recognizing them. And even if we do consciously recognize them, we tend to believe that they require no interrogation or defense. So one of the first challenges, in thinking ethically, is to realize that our existing moral values are not self-evidently true.
Recommendations Rely on Values
Returning to the opening critique of the humanities, we see that the evaluation of a particular subject of study or any other activity rests upon value judgment. Even the mundane rating of something as better or worse, important or unimportant, preferable to non-preferable implies an often overlooked value-based belief.
We tend to think that such judgments are strictly based on factual claims. We believe, for example, that those graduating with a STEM degree will be more likely to land a lucrative job. We therefore conclude that the STEM field major “makes more sense.” Looking closely we will notice something is missing from this argument. As it now stands, the argument is:
People with STEM field degrees get better paying jobs than people with Liberal Arts degrees.
Therefore, getting a STEM field degree is the best choice.
The only way this argument looks solid is if we unconsciously supply the missing premise. That missing premise is something like, “We should pursue the course of study that will produce higher earning potential.”
People with STEM field degrees get better paying jobs than people with Liberal Arts degrees.
We should pursue the course of study that will produce higher earning potential.
Therefore, getting a STEM field degree is the best choice.
Some might even feel the articulation of this second premise is a pointless statement of the obvious. But that reaction would further evidence that our values are often taken for granted.
The belief that we should pursue the course of study that generates the greatest income is not a factual claim, though it might seem so at first glance. The moment we introduce statements like should, which communicate recommendations or preferences, we are exiting the realm of pure empirical fact and entering the underattended arena of human value. Many of our choices are shaped in this arena. As Fromm wrote, In Man For Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics (1947),
“The value judgments we make determine our actions, and upon their validity rests our mental health and happiness.”
We simply cannot “afford,” existentially, to permit such powerful ideas to go unnoticed, uninterrogated, and left to common sense. Doing so is tantamount to relinquishing our human agency. And this, I argue, is what the critics of the humanities simply do not understand.
I’m a critic of churning out large numbers of university graduates who are not better citizens, or enlightened. Humanities should be for the masses, beginning in elementary school. Restricting it to “higher” education as an elective is a measure of our culture - or lack thereof.
I majored in the Humanities. At the time, I worked part time as a security guard. One night I was working a shift with an "older" man. I was reading some school related assignment. He asked what I was majoring in and I said, "The Humanities." He thought about it a moment or two then said, "You will never make a lot of money but you will have an interesting life." This proved to be true. If I could do it over I would not change a thing.