humanities. huh. what is it good for? absolutely nothing?

Not that I mean to imply that the humanities is like war with this title.

The real question seems to be what is the humanities good for? War has utility: it gets rich folks richer and increases (and occasionally overturns) disparities in power. Which is to say it’s good for “absolutely nothing.”

But does the humanities have utility? That’s the question that Stanley Fish seeks to answer in his recent blog post Will the Humanities Save Us? He concludes:

To the question “of what use are the humanities?”, the only honest answer is none whatsoever. And it is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said – even when it takes the form of Kronman’s inspiring cadences – diminishes the object of its supposed praise.

Comments are a’plenty on this post — I’ve read about half of them, and most of them seem to disagree. A few point out Fish’s contradiction in his penultimate paragraph, when he writes: “[The Humanities] don’t do anything, if by ‘do’ is meant bring about effects in the world. And if they don’t bring about effects in the world they cannot be justified except in relation to the pleasure they give to those who enjoy them.” The point made being that to “give pleasure” is to have an effect.

I have to agree with those who point to Fish’s contradictory sentence and dismiss his argument.

The humanities, I think, had to arise for a reason, to have a purpose. And I doubt that it was solely because people thought books were pretty to read and thinking for the sake of thinking was pleasurable. And certainly, reading good books and thinking is pleasurable. But there had to be, I believe, deeper, more social and political exigencies for the rise of philosophies, literature, history, etc. Call me traditionalist, but it seems that the humanities’ role is to answer the old question “Who are we? What does it mean to be human?” Or the series of questions that Susan Stewart, in her New Literary History response to Geoffrey Galt Harpham’s essay “Beneath and Beyond the ‘Crisis in the Humanities,'” calls “too much” work for the humanities:

“What is human life?” “What is the purpose of human life; toward what ends do we strive, and what actions should be valued?” “How and why do we perpetuate tradition when we have come to organize it as an infinite array of information?” “To what degree will we pursue physical pleasure and the postponement of death?” (97-98)

Sara, after reading Fish’s post, quotes Patrick Moe’s comment on Fish’s post, worth quoting again:

To say that there is no social (or, god forbid, business) utility in courses that teach students to write, speak, and analyze better is patently false. These courses expose students to different perspectives on the world, different lenses though which to analyze and critique that world, and to question the hegemonic and normalizing forces that are taken for granted within other disciplines. At their heart the Humanities teach reason in all its different forms.

Ultimately, to say that the Humanities are justified solely by their very existence is to turn them from the academic to the religious. To me this is a violent and unreasonable argument.

I think that Moe’s comment gets at what the Humanities is “good for” — understanding human existence as social, relational, and linguistic/symbolic. Sara ends her blog post on Fish:

Certainly it is reason and argument that I am about to teach tomorrow in my writing class, clear thinking for a civil society, for civic discourse. So I hope – and believe – that Mr. Moe is right.

And it would seem to me that the humanities has one central utility: ethics. How do (should) we treat each other? Of course, I’m not going to make any claim that by studying the humanities that one is a better person (Fish refutes this claim, and I agree with his refutation). I am probably no better of a person ethically after having taken Classical Moral Theories than before (though I hope I am improving, even slightly). But I would say that humanistic study does provide frameworks for making value judgments that can be used (or even rejected) as guides.

Tell me, Mr. Fish, if the humanities has no utility, then why (just one among many many questions) does Derrida ask that “impossible but necessary” question: “How then to open the avenue of great debates, accessible to the majority, while yet enriching the multiplicity and the quality of public discourses, of evaluating agencies, of ‘scenes’ or places of visibility?” (qtd. in Robbins xii)? I choose this one question because it has inspired me, but I could have chosen many. I doubt Derrida asked this because it was a question he thought it would be fascinating to just ponder (though perhaps he did; we don’t need to get into intentionality here); I hope he asked it because he wanted the world to be a better place. No, it doesn’t seem to be intrinsic worth that sets the humanities apart from other studies or pursuits. It seems to be our desire to understand ourselves and to treat each other humanely.

Robbins, Bruce. “Introduction: The Public As Phantom.” Ed. Bruce Robbins. The Phantom Public Sphere. Social Text Collective, vol. 5. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993. vii-xxvi.

Stewart, Susan. “Thoughts on the Role of the Humanities in Contemporary Life.” New Literary History 36.1: 97-103.

EDIT: Joseph Kugelmass at the Valve has also written about this:

Fish writes that the humanities are their own good, and believes in studying them for their sake. I believe in studying them for our sake. But I do not mean for the sake of the salvation of mankind, understood in some grandiose manner. There truly is a difference between the evangelist and the reader. Humanism is not, as Fish seems to think, a substitute for Sunday school. It is the emergence of a reflective capacity within human culture, and so represents the possibility of a truly self-determined culture for individuals and collectives alike. The humanities are an archive of reflective modes of encounter and expression: close reading, historical reconstruction, artistic making, anthropological study, and so on. The arts and human sciences do not make us better people, according to some a priori moral standard that Fish, despite himself, cannot help bringing to bear upon them. Instead, they make witnesses and authors of us. They make us responsible, and free.