The Future of Humanities

Is the study of the humanities a valuable end in and of itself, or does it only have in value insofar as it serves as good training for some future career in the corporate world? The classics faculty at the University of Birmingham once argued that their department shouldn't be cut because... they produce efficient managers for industry!

Defending the study of topics like philosophy, history, and language because they create efficient workers who have mastered skills such as research and reasoning is no way to run a university - and it's no way to understand the purpose of education. Gary Sauer-Thompson writes about this issue from an Australian perspective over at Philosophy.Com blog:

The old idea of the citizen has given way to the consumer with the freedom to choose in the global marketplace. Many are unable to go beyond the horizons of the market to make contact with citizenship and liberal democracy. The market has become the touchstone for everything. There is nothing else but the free market. ...[A] flourishing human life is the goal of human conduct. If the aim of politics is to provide all citizens with what they need in order to be capable of living a flourishing human life, then we citizens should design our institutions and public laws with this aim in mind. It is a flourishing life not wealth creation per se that our eyes should be on.

We shouldn't treat our lives as if they were cogs in a great industrial machine - our lives should have value independently of the work we do and the jobs we have. An important step in the path towards understanding and developing that is education. I don't men technical or professional education; I mean an education that teaches us how to learn and to enjoy learning - and education that helps us begin to question and study life itself. For, once we begin examine life, when we can begin to appreciate and value it all the more.

 

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• Philosophy 101
• Critical Thinking