New Beginnings

A Short Argument for the Importance of the Humanities

There is a lot of talk these days about the death of the Humanities, both as academic disciplines and as areas of inquiry within broader culture. As someone who recently left an English PhD program, I am reminded every day of how special such programs are, despite their flaws. It is tough to find people to talk deeply and seriously with about things like philosophy, literature, and history. A (semi) living wage is sometimes enough to convince passionate young people to spend years of their time in graduate school, even with very bad academic job prospects, just for the chance to be a part of such a community. As I have started to reacquaint myself with the world of tech startups, and my reading and writing have shifted back to being evening and weekend endeavors, rather than the central focuses of my life, I have found myself thinking more about the role of the Humanities in culture at large. I have also been reminded of the many ways that, upon closer inspection, the ideology behind the decline of the Humanities is the exact reason why they are more important than ever. 

A good way to uncover ideology is to ask yourself what around you is simply assumed to be obviously true. This can be a difficult task these days because, on the surface, our culture is extremely polarized. In fact, the idea that we live in alternate universes has, itself, become a common-sense trope. However, I believe there is at least one shared belief at the core of dominant culture that directly impacts the esteem (or lack thereof) with which people view the Humanities. This is the ideology of positivism, or the view that the only valuable assertions are those that can be scientifically verified or logically proven. Such a view is directly opposed to the type of knowledge and truth found in the Humanities.

One of the best writers on this topic is Marilynne Robinson, who is better known for her novels, Housekeeping and Gilead, than she is for her highly underrated nonfiction essays. In her Terry Lecture, Absence of Mind, Robinson writes, “positivism was intended to banish the language of metaphysics as meaningless, and it supplied in its place a systematically reductionist conceptual vocabulary” (xiii). She elaborates elsewhere, 

rationalist arguments are not harmonious with one another, except in their conclusion, which clearly exists in anticipation of its various justifications. This conclusion is, very briefly, that positivism is correct in excluding from the model of reality whatever science is (or was) not competent to verify or falsify. (xii)

Part of what makes Robinson so insightful is the fact that she doesn’t equate such a worldview solely with the more obvious effects of Social Darwinism and biological determinism, but also explores how it hollows out contemporary Religion and spirituality–something due to positivism’s negation of metaphysics, that special fault line of philosophy and religion. For Robinson, the rise of religious fundamentalism is rooted in the logic of positivism, rather than being a reaction against it. When religion stops believing in the truth of metaphor and symbolism, and starts arguing in logical proofs and looking to physical evidence to support literalist claims, it has ceded the turf to positivism. Life turns into a live-action version of Reddit discourse. 

When considering the dynamic above, it is easy to see that such a culture does not care for the type of knowledge offered by the Humanities. In such a discourse, there is no space for a belief like the idea that fiction offers access to higher truths than nonfiction. There is no room for interpretation, only direct access to knowledge. Rather than subjectivity, we are left with a binary of either objectivity or relativism, certainty or nihilism.

This stems from the fact that, within a positivist worldview, there is really no subject (or self), at all. As Robinson writes in another one of her books, The Death of Adam, 

Now that the mystery of motive is solved–there are only self-seeking and aggression, and the illusions that conceal them from us–there is no place left for the soul, or even the self. Moral behavior has little real meaning, and inwardness, in the traditional sense, is not necessary or possible. … There is little use for the mind, the orderer and reconciler, the artist of the interior world. … The old mystery of subjectivity is dispelled; individuality is a pointless complication of a very straightforward organic life. (Robinson, Death of Adam 75)

The reason the Humanities are anathema to large segments of people these days is largely due to the fact that they are disciplines rooted, at their core, in a worldview that is completely at odds with positivism. This fact, to me, is why the Humanities are more important than ever. You can’t overcome a dominant ideology by operating on its own terms. 

Central to the Humanities is the belief in subjectivity, in the idea that, while humans are material beings, we are not strictly material; we are excessive. Such a belief embraces uncertainty, and acknowledges the fact that truth is found in the gaps, that it must involve the act of interpretation. Without such gaps between subject and object, the world would be unintelligible, as would we. It is only through embracing these gaps that we become free. Rather than a conclusive endpoint, this embrace is where the journey for knowledge truly begins.