Justifying the Humanities

The Academy of Arts and Sciences published a  report  and accompanying video offering two justifications for the humanities, says Micah Mattix in today’s column .

The humanities are important, first, because they teach students to be “creative” and “adaptable” and to espouse a “critical perspective.” Second, the humanities “help us to understand what it means to be human,”  . . . but what’s interesting here is how the humanities, particularly at the university today, have tended to work against both of these two supposed values.

In previous ages, it’s unlikely that it would have been suggested that the humanities are, however ambiguously, in some way dependent on or co-dependent with the sciences . . . Rather, both the humanities and the sciences are together dependent on some higher being or truth, on the idea that there are certain unchanging natural and moral laws established by a being outside of the material world that makes such enterprises meaningful.

Read the full column here .