Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Fool's avatar
  2. Santa Monica's avatar
  3. Charles Bakker's avatar
  4. Matty Silverstein's avatar
  5. Jason's avatar
  6. Nathan Meyvis's avatar
  7. Stefan Sciaraffa's avatar

    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

On study of the humanities

Brian Leiter

A nicely written essay by Zena Hitz (St. John's College, Annapolis).  It offers an interesting defense of a decidedly Christian understanding of the "interiority" and "dignity" of humanistic reflection (also a Platonic one, though as Nietzsche said, "Christianity is Platonism for the people") against the neoliberal ("the humanities produce people who are useful for capitalism") and liberal ("the humanities make people good democratic citizens") defenses of humanistic study.  As Nietzsche notes in the Genealogy, the "slave revolt" in morality made human beings interesting, giving them interior lives.   And the humanities (here understood capaciously to include the cognitive sciences generally) are, when done well and seriously (e.g., not Badiou studies!), are precisely those that help one become a human being who is "interesting."   That concern has no resonance for the neoliberal or liberal defenses of the humanities.  Since our age is still neoliberal to its core, that means humanistic study is doomed in the neoliberal countries.  But it will likely return elsewhere. 

What do readers think of Prof. Hitz's interesting essay?

Leave a Reply to Michael B Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

20 responses to “On study of the humanities”

  1. howard berman

    First, Zena's remarks echo Bill Deresiewicz of Excellent Sheep fame who stresses the cultivation of solitude as a mission of the humanities intrinsically and to foster leadership. So hers is not a lone voice.
    Further, I'd ask how much social support and mentoring does true interiority require?
    In the middle ages on the one hand were communities of monks and on the other stray mystics all who cultivated their 'souls'
    Finally, Reiff spoke in The Mind Of The Moralist of psychological man- a synonym for interiority and he feared a therapeutic culture, different but not at odds with neoliberalism.
    So there are techniques, like psychoanalysis, which tear out the individual,
    I'd wonder what he'd say about the matter

    Reply
  2. Tad Brennan

    Interesting essay! Thanks, Zena.

    Reply
  3. Ian

    I'd suggest reading Marilynne Robinson's Harper's essay as a companion piece: http://harpers.org/archive/2016/03/save-our-public-universities/?single=1. It's worth noting that the–admittedly stirring–argument that Hirtz makes is an aristocratic one. While remove, contemplation, and reflection are good for everyone its difficult not to argue that they have been historically available largely to privileged classes. While Robinson's essay has its own problems, including falling into what Brian calls the "liberal" trap that Hirtz rejects, it does a good job of stressing the import of the *public* university as a mechanism that can counter the ever increasing prominence of class privilege in the U.S.

    Reply
  4. Zena Hitz

    Thanks for your comment, and I'm flattered to be paired with Robinson's fine piece. However, my argument was certainly not intended to be aristocratic, but the contrary. The reason why I chose the working-class heroine of 'The Hedgehog' as my central image is that it seems to me essential to the defense of the humanities to defend them for everyone. One of the most alarming features of the decline of the humanities is its gruesome inequality–departments thrive in elite institutions and corrupt and die elsewhere. The Platonism in the background of the essay is indeed highly elitist, but to treat elitism as inevitable for the praise of contemplative life strikes me as short-sighted. For many decades working-class contemplative movements thrived, as depicted for example in Rose's The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes. I meant to convey in some way the original democratic spirit of the Great Books movement (related to the movements Rose describes), even if it ended up more subtle than I would have liked.

    Reply
  5. Eric Campbell

    I love it. I don't know if Zena meant to discount the 'liberal' and 'neo-liberal' defenses of the humanities entirely. I would not discount either of them entirely, especially the liberal ones, but I do think they ought to be put in their proper, and decidedly secondary, place. I am also happy to think of the piece as aristocratic, in the sense of the ripe, sweet fruit of 'noblesse of soul', as Nietzsche marvelously describes it in the Genealogy. And I could not agree more with Zena that, for this very reason above all others, the humanities ought to be vigorously defended for everyone. Not because I have a prior conviction that everyone is capable of or interested in developing this sort of noblesse (or dignity), but rather because it has always seemed tragic and shameful for those who seek to develop it (or would do so under favorable circumstances) not to have the opportunity to do so.

    Reply
  6. Frederick

    Never mind that this essay was published by a right-wing "catholic" outfit that was instrumental in creating and promoting the Manhattan Declaration. An outfit that has very close links with opus dei, the serious members of which practice bodily mortification on a daily basis using a celice or even in some cases whips. How much positive mind-expanding contemplation do they practice while engaging such a sado-masochistic ritual.
    Furthermore opus dei has a long list of banned books which its members are not supposed to read. Many of these books are a necessary/essential of a truly well informed modern education.

    BL COMMENT: I think this qualifies as an ad hominem (or ad magazinem!). I've no idea what connections "First Things" has to Opus Dei, though I find Opus Dei quite interesting, and more interesting than your dismissive characterization allows. For one thing, this organization correctly identifies Nietzsche as the most serious and mortal enemy of the Catholic Church in the history of thought. So they're good readers of Nietzsche, better, say, than Kaufmann and Heidegger!

    Reply
  7. Robert Gressis

    I read the Hitz essay just as I was reading Sherry Turkle's _Reclaiming Conversation_ and Pierre Hadot's "Philosophy as a Way of Life". Both those pieces dovetail with Hitz's in useful ways. Turkle discusses the value of conversation and solitude for developing a sense of self, and worries about how smartphones are undermining our ability to converse with each other and enjoy solitude (consequently, smartphones are undermining our ability to develop a sense of self). I think that the ability to delve into and enjoy great humanistic works also requires the ability to concentrate and go into a state of deep reading (which NIcholas Carr discusses in his book, _The Shallows_). Smartphones also hinder this ability, too. As for Hadot, he distinguishes between discourse about philosophy and philosophy itself, and claims that in the ancient world, discourse about philosophy (what we nowadays would simply call "philosophy") was designed to aid in the undertaking of philosophy, which was living in a certain way. Hadot, like (I think) Hitz, stresses the importance of taking in and internalizing discourse about philosophy in order to live as a philosopher.

    Reply
  8. Ian

    Fair enough. I suppose that in a certain way I was responding more to Brian's post than your essay per se, Zena. As you note it brought to mind Robinson's, which I think is the best defense of humanities I've seen recently, and that was very much meant to be a compliment.

    I support and cherish refuge from the modern/capitalist grind whether that be meditation, fly fishing, or scholarly pursuits. At the same time, I meant to suggest that while noble in intent something like the Great Books program is–in practice if not in theory–elitist in the sense that it requires time. And in the neoliberal era time is perhaps the most valuable commodity for the individual.

    These are not abstract issues. Time for study is more or less proportional to time not spend earning a wage. Be it through loans, scholarships, parental support or otherwise some people are afforded (and the word is crucial) a great deal more time than others to make themselves more "interesting." And let us be honest, those who–in the US–attend elite private institutions as undergraduates, and even more so as graduate students, are empirically afforded more time to study than those who attend public institutions. If it is the case that elite private institutions in the US are aligned along class striations rather than meritocratic concerns, as they very much seem to be, and if these institutions are the only ones able to consistently support graduate students and professors in the process of making themselves more "interesting," then it would seem that we have a less than democratic reality on hand.

    Indeed, these conditions can be argued to produce a kind of post hoc justification in which only those who are afforded the necessary time are capable of being "interesting." Those who are not afforded that time–time which money and class privilege can very literally buy–become not only less interesting as a result but also in some eyes less *capable* of being interesting.

    I'm assuredly not saying that this is what you have in mind, Zena. Nevertheless, it seems particularly difficult to extricate your argument from what I take to be the empirical reality of higher ed in the US.

    Reply
  9. Tom

    I worry that your "the non-elite don't have time for the humanities" is merely armchair social science. I agree that at some intuitive level, it would make sense that the poor or otherwise disadvantaged would have less time to read, study, etc. But I'm not sure this is really the case anymore, at least in the US. This isn't my field, so I could be missing some crucial information, but articles like this one lead me to believe that having enough time isn't a big issue here:

    http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-rich-now-have-less-leisure-time-than-the-poor-2014-4

    Of course, there may be other reasons to think that Zena's thesis favors the elite, but I'm not convinced that "having enough time" is one of them.

    Reply
  10. Mark Silcox

    Christine Korsgaard makes a useful point that some human goods are neither merely intrinsic nor merely instrumental, but rather, correctly valued "for their own sakes under the condition of their usefulness." It's difficult to argue with anything that Hitz that says here about how the liberal understanding of the humanities degrades them by treating their cultivation as a mere training in good citizenship. But I also think that in order to get the full benefit of a humanistic education, one does at least have to think of it as a training in service, in the same way that one can only appreciate the value of a painted bowl or a well-made piece of clothing one one understands how they're meant to be used. And as a secularist, I guess I don't think the Christian "stand and wait" conception of service so favored by pious ascetics quite cuts it.

    Reply
  11. Ian

    It's fair to characterize my point as in part armchair social science. At the same time, there's a decent amount of anecdotal evidence supporting it as well not the least of which is that I just finished a PhD in the humanities at a state institution without a single quarter off from teaching. I was lucky when I did receive summer teaching, otherwise I was forced to tutor to make ends meet (three quarters of teaching earned me approx. $17k a year in support in a very expensive area). My experience reflects the majority of graduate experiences at my large university. Under present job market circumstances, I was expected not only to finish my coursework, exams, and dissertation while teaching every quarter, but also to present at conferences and get published. Heaven forbid one wants to start a family or gets ill under these circumstances.

    I read recently somewhere a line that said something like "grad students are expected to publish before they have thought." Thought, meaning not only dissertation work but polish and coherence of argument in publishable articles, is in many cases a product of time. Had I had more financial support, I would have been able to devote myself to study in a way that would have likely resulted in more polished work. It is no coincidence that more articles seem to come from private elite institutions (Berkeley is clearly elite, but many humanities grad students struggle to find funding there) then, and that partly as a result more people from private universities get TT jobs. I'm not saying there's some meritocracy at work or that image doesn't have a big impact on these matters. But as this study shows http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400005, hiring disproportionately reflects certain institutions in which time is–shall we say–easier to come by.

    If it is the case that the precipitous drop in humanities majors has to do with economic factors affecting so-called Millennials–the same economic factors that account for Bernie Sanders' support with the demographic–it would seem that the popular perception is that time devoted to liberal arts is a luxury that many can't afford. For these many, being "interesting" comes in a distant second to getting a middle class job then. Given all of this, it doesn't seem too outre to claim that arguments like Zena's play into an aristocratic logic. My point is not that such a logic is bad, but that if we aren't careful public universities get left by the wayside as primarily vocational schools and only those who can afford to go to Dartmouth or Yale or Chicago or St. John's will be able to be "interesting" people.

    Reply
  12. Zena Hitz

    I think the question of how intellectual life relates to academic life and when it is in tension with it is a really interesting question. Still, I think you have mistaken me and my essay to a certain extent. The idea was to try to explain the value of a human activity. That activity might exist inside or outside of academic institutions. (I find the grassroots movements described in the Rose book particularly inspiring, but take your pick). The value of the activity is meant to justify the institution or the practice (whatever it is) and serve as a standard for it, not the other way around. The failures of the institutions don't bear on the intrinsic value of the activity. If our institutions aren't providing important human goods or aren't providing them to most people, they're doing a lousy job of promoting well-being. Nothing I said is in tension with that–in fact, what I wrote is a part of an argument for just that conclusion. If there were a food shortage for most people, no one would say that food was a bourgeois luxury. If supermarkets no longer provided food no one would reconcile themselves to mass starvation–they'd find other means of acquiring it. No one dies from lack of intellectual life, but lives without any opportunity for humanizing forms of leisure are diminished ones. (Thanks to Brian and all for a helpful discussion!)

    Reply
  13. RJL

    I find that there is often a regrettable conflation in these discussions between the maintainance or even extension of university instutitions, and widening access to education. Defenders of the humanities see its last refuge as the university, but perhaps a better strategy is not to focus solely on entrenching humanities departments within the university, but on extending education beyond the university–in prisons, churches, book groups, unions, etc. While researching some of Australia's earliest university philosophers, I discovered that many of them also taught night classes through the Workers Education Association. That, I think, is a noble ideal that has sadly almost entirely disappeared. To overstate the case a bit–when it comes to the humanities, we need "less university, more education".

    Reply
  14. Ian

    I'm not actually in disagreement with anything you say in your essay or in these comments, Zena. I agree too with RJL. Instead, I'm saying to the degree that a model of the good life–Platonic, Aristotelian, Nietzschean, Thoreauvian, Heideggerian, etc.–is predicated on contemplation and remove, it strikes me as inherently aristocratic. That's not to say that it's bad, or that all people shouldn't have such opportunities. But in the neoliberal state, and throughout the history of the West really, there has never been a case, that I'm aware of at least, in which any but the privileged few ("the best" of aristos) have had this chance.

    The closest thing we have had is the expansion of institutions of public higher education in the United States and the opening of the floodgates of those institutions to the non-aristocratic in the post-WWII era. I imagine that we all agree that the so-called Reagan Revolution was the beginning of the end for a strong version of the humanities in public higher education. As "the beast" of public education has been starved by hook and crook, public universities inch closer to vocational schools and the humanities are ever more relegated to SLACs and elite private institutions. The resulting, and I think natural, response is/will be the identification of remove and contemplation with an elite class. Such an identification subjects study of the humanities to all the usual class resentments, causing whatever value it has to our inner lives to be sneered at by many who are not in and of the elite classes.

    This why while I agree with your argument Zena, I agree with the rather dismal view that Brian has regarding the state of the humanities in the neoliberal era as well. The problem is not that study of the humanities is isn't good for us in any number of ways. The problem is that in times of a foundering middle class, ever widening income gaps, and what amounts to a two tiered university system (elite privates and every other university), there's a very real choice to made for many students: to "waste" time (in the positive sense of waste!) becoming happier or more interesting or more reflective people, or to focus on a career. Again anecdotally, I have taught at a large and fairly respected state school for seven years. Most of that time has been with freshmen, as I was a graduate TA. In my experience, the choice to focus on a career is becoming more and more pressing to my students. They don't necessarily want to it to be that way, but they often don't feel comfortable enough economically to engage in non-economically productive contemplation. Their version of the good life is to be able to pay their loans and live a middle class life, unless they are financially comfortable otherwise.

    The obverse in elite universities seems likely to be that study of the humanities becomes a class code for the elite. It nearly always has been, of course, but like the Skull and Bones handshake and the Ivy or Ivy-esque e degree that opens doors that will never be opened for others. It's difficult for me to see how to overcome these challenges in the foreseeable future given the present state of affairs

    Reply
  15. Ian

    It looks like a lost control of a sentence up there. Let me try again.

    "It nearly always has been, of course, but like the Skull and Bones handshake and the Ivy or Ivy-esque degree that opens doors that will never be opened for others, study of the humanities–and perhaps the illusive interesting-ness we've been talking about/around that can result from it–threaten to become the domain of only wealthy and connected."

    Reply
  16. Derek Bowman

    RJL: This is a really important point – separating the defense of the humanities from the defense of the academy. See here for an argument in favor of keeping philosophy in the academy: https://social-epistemology.com/2016/03/18/abandoning-the-academy-is-the-single-worst-thing-philosophers-could-do-a-reply-to-frodeman-and-briggle-luke-maring/

    And (self-promotion warning) see the references in footnote 23 here for examples of some people currently doing just what you suggest. https://social-epistemology.com/2016/03/28/philosophy-hitherto-a-reply-to-frodeman-and-briggle-w-derek-bowman/

    Reply
  17. Ian

    Neoliberalism and the university: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/11/at-purdue-student-aid-based-on-future-earnings-could-revolutionize-college-debt/?postshare=5731460410221318&tid=ss_fb

    Reply
  18. Michael B

    "Instead, I'm saying to the degree that a model of the good life–Platonic, Aristotelian, Nietzschean, Thoreauvian, Heideggerian, etc.–is predicated on contemplation and remove, it strikes me as inherently aristocratic. That's not to say that it's bad, or that all people shouldn't have such opportunities. But in the neoliberal state, and throughout the history of the West really, there has never been a case, that I'm aware of at least, in which any but the privileged few ("the best" of aristos) have had this chance."

    One wonders what the Greeks would (not) have achieved had they not had a slave industry to free up time for thinking, instead of surviving.

    There's a nice, brief video kicking around Youtube by Hans Rosling about how, as a child, his family's getting their first washing machine freed up enough time for his mother to take him to the library – and those parts of the world where people want but don't have washing machines (i.e. time for the library).

    Reply
  19. Tom

    "I'm saying to the degree that a model of the good life–Platonic, Aristotelian, Nietzschean, Thoreauvian, Heideggerian, etc.–is predicated on contemplation and remove, it strikes me as inherently aristocratic."

    Why exactly would that be? I know of no good reason to think that the non-elite (in the US) have substantially less time for contemplation than the elites, let alone merely sufficient time for helpful contemplation. Your anecdotal evidence that non-elites don't have enough time was your own case as a harried PhD student in the humanities. But how is that supposed to help your case? Are you a non-elite? Then how did you find your way into graduate study of the humanities? If you found value there, why should we think other non-elites won't? Are you elite? Then how is this anecdote supposed to support your claim that non-elites don't have enough time to pursue such goals?

    Now that personal anecdotes are on the table, let me say that in my experience plenty of non-elites both see the value in and engage in contemplation and remove. And sometimes they do so for the express purpose of reflecting on the sorts of questions the humanities (are supposed to) address. While in high school and college, I worked in a warehouse and then on the night shift at a factory. In both places, I knew people who had been working these jobs for decades, who had no more than some high school education, but who were deep, reflective people. They were interested in human nature, the meaning of life, what makes people tick, etc. At the factory, when my coworkers found out I was in college, some of them sought me out to talk about the deep life questions that interested them. They assumed that I was interested in the same things. Certainly, it was a minority of us that were interested in these things. But I'd wager that it's also only a minority of the elite that are interested in these things.

    This was 15 – 20 years ago, and how people see college education has no doubt changed in some ways. I agree with your assessment of the current social and cultural factors that mitigate against pursuit of the humanities in college. But my point is just that when people claim that contemplation of life's deep questions somehow isn't *for* non-elites, I immediately suspect that these folks haven't actually known many non-elites.

    Reply
  20. Ian

    You're misreading my point. Of course I'm "elite" in the sense that A) I had the ability to *choose* to pursue study of the humanities at the post-graduate level and B) I currently teach in the university. I have also worked in the blue collar sector and in service for around a decade prior. Being deep and reflective is not exclusive to elites, nor did I imply or say it was. What is becoming more and more exclusive for economic reasons, and if we are to believe Marx those economic reasons are in structural relation with ideological/social belief systems, is the ability to study the humanities. In the case of your example, Tom, you seem to be arguing that were these deep and reflective given the chance to do so, as you were, they might benefit from it by becoming even more "interesting" in the sense of being educated as well as being deep and reflective. I would agree, as I think would Zena.

    My point is that if even in the upper echelon (I'm from a top 25 program with top 3 speciality rankings) of the academic elite that for economic reasons time to contemplate and study, which is what the original post is about, are diminishing, it seems fair to chart that onto a lack of grassroots support of the humanities in terms of undergraduate majors and the conscious cutting of funding from the top down. The goal, we all agree, is to give people more time to becoming interesting and educated if they want to be. But that goal cannot be accomplished, or maybe even useful debated, unless we talk about economic and social factors as well.

    The reality of the situation is that for many the choice between middle class life and an intellectual good life in the present US economy is no choice at all. The result is in part that the humanities are more and more pitched as a tool to make good lawyers or programmers or whatever in "the real world." Zena makes a strong case against this by arguing that this "real world" thinking short sells the value of the humanities, a value which is far more intrinsic to the human experience than "real world" arguments admit. Neither her argument nor mine make any claims about non-elites being incapable or unworthy of education, in fact quite the opposite. But to argue, as Thoreau does to take only one example, that we ought to divorce our selves from gross economics to devote ourselves to an enriching mental or spiritual "Economy" is, no matter how appealing, always subject to the complaint that we have to be able to provide basic stability to people *before* we can accomplish such devotion (unless of course we want to sleep on the ground and eat unleavened bread etc.). Thus Marx with the "poet at night"–and never the day–business. Non-elite people in the US are unlikely to buy into Zena's argument, it seems to me, as a result of the fact that to do so would be prioritize an interior "good life" over a life of middle class stability, health, family, etc.

    As a defense of the humanities, Zena may be entirely correct. I worry that material conditions make that correctness, as Brian noted, more or less irrelevant to our present situation.

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

    Reply

Designed with WordPress