Humanities

==Philosophical history==

===Citizenship and self-reflection===

Since the late 19th century, a central justification for the humanities has been that it aids and encourages self-reflection—a self-reflection that, in turn, helps develop personal consciousness or an active sense of civic duty.

[[Wilhelm Dilthey]] and [[Gadamer|Hans-Georg Gadamer]] centered the humanities' attempt to distinguish itself from the natural sciences in [[humankind]]'s urge to understand its own experiences. This understanding, they claimed, ties like-minded people from similar cultural backgrounds together and provides a sense of cultural continuity with the philosophical past.<ref>[[Dilthey|Dilthey, Wilhelm]]. ''The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences'', 103.</ref>

Scholars in the late 20th and early 21st centuries extended that "narrative imagination"<ref>von Wright, Moira. "Narrative imagination and taking the perspective of others", ''Studies in Philosophy and Education'' 21, 4–5 (July, 2002), 407–416.</ref> to the ability to understand the records of lived experiences outside of one's own individual social and cultural context. Through that narrative [[imagination]], it is claimed, humanities scholars and students develop a [[conscience]] more suited to the multicultural world we live in.<ref name=autogenerated1>[[Martha Nussbaum|Nussbaum, Martha]]. ''[[Martha Nussbaum#Cultivating Humanity|Cultivating Humanity]]''.</ref> That conscience might take the form of a passive one that allows more effective [[self-reflection]]<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Harpham | first1 = Geoffrey | year = 2005 | title = Beneath and Beyond the Crisis of the Humanities | journal = [[New Literary History]] | volume = 36 | pages = 21–36 | doi=10.1353/nlh.2005.0022| s2cid = 144177169 }}</ref> or extend into active empathy that facilitates the dispensation of civic duties a responsible world citizen must engage in.<ref name=autogenerated1 /> There is disagreement, however, on the level of influence humanities study can have on an individual and whether or not the understanding produced in humanistic enterprise can guarantee an "identifiable positive effect on people".<ref>Harpham, 31.</ref>

===Humanities and the transhumanities===
There are three major branches in the [[human sciences]] (humanities). These are the [[natural sciences]], the [[social sciences]], and the [[Cultural studies|cultural sciences]].{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}} [[Technology]] is the practical extension of the natural sciences, as [[politics]] is the extension of the social sciences. Similarly, the cultural sciences have their own practical extension, sometimes called "culturonics" ([[Mikhail Epstein]]'s term). The three extensions can be combined to form the transhumanities.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}
* Nature – natural sciences – technology –&nbsp;&nbsp;transformation of nature
* 
* Society – social sciences –&nbsp;&nbsp;politics&nbsp;–&nbsp;transformation of society
* 
* Culture – cultural sciences{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}} –&nbsp;culturonics&nbsp;– transformation of culture<ref>Mikhail Epstein. ''The Transformative Humanities: A Manifesto''. New York and London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012, p.12</ref>
Technology, politics and culturonics are designed to transform what their respective disciplines study{{Dubious|date=May 2020}}: nature, society, and culture. The field of transformative humanities includes various practicies and technologies, for example, [[language planning]], the construction of new languages, like [[Esperanto]], and invention of new artistic and literary genres and movements in the genre of [[manifesto]], like [[Romanticism]], [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolism]], or [[Surrealism]]. Humanistic [[invention]] in the sphere of culture, as a practice complementary to scholarship, is an important aspect of the humanities.{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}}

===Truth and meaning===

The divide between humanistic study and natural sciences informs arguments of meaning in humanities as well. What distinguishes the humanities from the [[natural science]]s is not a certain subject matter, but rather the mode of approach to any question. Humanities focuses on understanding meaning, purpose, and goals and furthers the appreciation of singular historical and social phenomena—an interpretive method of finding "truth"—rather than explaining the causality of events or uncovering the truth of the natural world.<ref>[[Wilhelm Dilthey|Dilthey, Wilhelm]]. ''The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences'', 103.</ref> Apart from its societal application, narrative imagination is an important tool in the (re)production of understood meaning in history, culture and literature.

Imagination, as part of the tool kit of artists or scholars, helps create meaning that invokes a response from an audience. Since a humanities scholar is always within the [[wikt:nexus|nexus]] of lived experiences, no "absolute" knowledge is theoretically possible; knowledge is instead a ceaseless procedure of inventing and reinventing the context a text is read in. [[Poststructuralism]] has problematized an approach to the humanistic study based on questions of meaning, intentionality, and authorship.{{Dubious|date=February 2010}} In the wake of [[Death of the author|the death of the author]] proclaimed by [[Barthes|Roland Barthes]], various theoretical currents such as [[deconstruction]] and [[discourse]] analysis seek to expose the ideologies and rhetoric operative in producing both the purportedly meaningful objects and the [[hermeneutic]] subjects of humanistic study. This exposure has opened up the interpretive structures of the humanities to criticism that humanities scholarship is "unscientific" and therefore unfit for inclusion in modern university curricula because of the very nature of its changing contextual meaning.{{Dubious|date=February 2010}}

===Pleasure, the pursuit of knowledge and scholarship===

Some, like [[Stanley Fish]], have claimed that the humanities can defend themselves best by refusing to make any claims of utility.<ref>{{cite web |author-link1=Stanley Fish |last1=Fish |first1=Stanley |url=http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/will-the-humanities-save-us/#more-81 |publisher=The New York Times |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090507015746/http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/will-the-humanities-save-us/#more-81 |archive-date=2009-05-07 |url-status=dead |title=Will the Humanities Save Us? |date=January 6, 2008 }}</ref> (Fish may well be thinking primarily of literary study, rather than history and philosophy.) Any attempt to justify the humanities in terms of outside benefits such as social usefulness (say increased productivity) or in terms of ennobling effects on the individual (such as greater wisdom or diminished prejudice) is ungrounded, according to Fish, and simply places impossible demands on the relevant academic departments. Furthermore, [[critical thinking]], while arguably a result of humanistic training, can be acquired in other contexts.<ref>[http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/the-laws-of-cool-knowledge-work-and-the-culture-of-information-catalogue-copy-and-table-of-contents/ Alan Liu, "''The Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information'' (Catalogue Copy & Table of Contents)", 2004]. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130828143856/http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/the-laws-of-cool-knowledge-work-and-the-culture-of-information-catalogue-copy-and-table-of-contents/ |date=2013-08-28 }}.</ref> And the humanities do not even provide any more the kind of social cachet (what sociologists sometimes call "[[cultural capital]]") that was helpful to succeed in Western society before the age of mass education following World War II.

Instead, scholars like Fish suggest that the humanities offer a unique kind of pleasure, a pleasure based on the common pursuit of knowledge (even if it is only disciplinary knowledge). Such pleasure contrasts with the increasing privatization of leisure and instant gratification characteristic of Western culture; it thus meets [[Jürgen Habermas]]' requirements for the disregard of social status and rational problematization of previously unquestioned areas necessary for an endeavor which takes place in the bourgeois [[public sphere]]. In this argument, then, only the academic pursuit of pleasure can provide a link between the private and the public realm in modern Western consumer society and strengthen that public sphere that, according to many theorists,{{who|date=May 2012}} is the foundation for modern democracy.{{citation needed|date=May 2012}}

Others, like [[Mark Bauerlein]], argue that professors in the humanities have increasingly abandoned proven methods of [[epistemology]] (''I care only about the quality of your arguments, not your conclusions.'') in favor of [[indoctrination]] (''I care only about your conclusions, not the quality of your arguments.''). The result is that professors and their students adhere rigidly to a limited set of viewpoints, and have little interest in, or understanding of, opposing viewpoints. Once they obtain this intellectual self-satisfaction, persistent lapses in learning, research, and evaluation are common.<ref>{{cite web
 | url =https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/11/13/essay-critiques-role-theory-humanities
|url-access=limited
 | title =Theory and the Humanities, Once More
 | last =Bauerlein
 | first =Mark
 | date =13 November 2014
 | website =[[Inside Higher Ed]]
 | access-date =27 February 2016
 | quote = Jay treats it [theory] as transformative progress, but it impressed us as hack philosophizing, amateur social science, superficial learning, or just plain gamesmanship. }}</ref>

===Romanticization and rejection===

Implicit in many of these arguments supporting the humanities are the makings of arguments against public support of the humanities. [[Joseph Carroll (scholar)|Joseph Carroll]] asserts that we live in a changing world, a world where "cultural capital" is replaced with ''[[scientific literacy]]'', and in which the romantic notion of a Renaissance humanities scholar is obsolete. Such arguments appeal to judgments and anxieties about the essential uselessness of the humanities, especially in an age when it is seemingly vitally important for scholars of literature, history and the arts to engage in "collaborative work with experimental scientists or even simply to make "intelligent use of the findings from empirical science."<ref>""Theory," Anti-Theory, and Empirical Criticism", ''Biopoetics: Evolutionary Explorations in the Arts'', Brett Cooke and Frederick Turner, eds., Lexington, Kentucky: ICUS Books, 1999, pp. 144–145. 152.</ref>

Despite many humanities based arguments against the humanities some within the exact sciences have called for their return. In 2017, Science popularizer [[Bill Nye]] retracted previous claims about the supposed 'uselessness' of philosophy. As Bill Nye states, "People allude to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle all the time, and I think many of us who make those references don't have a solid grounding," he said. "It's good to know the history of philosophy."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Goldhill |first=Olivia |date=2017-04-15 |title=Bill Nye says I convinced him that philosophy is not just a load of self-indulgent crap |url=https://qz.com/960303/bill-nye-on-philosophy-the-science-guy-says-he-has-changed-his-mind |website=Quartz |language=en |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191210213752/https://qz.com/960303/bill-nye-on-philosophy-the-science-guy-says-he-has-changed-his-mind/ |archive-date=2019-12-10 |access-date=2019-10-12}}</ref> Scholars, such as biologist [[Scott F. Gilbert]], make the claim that it is in fact the increasing predominance, leading to exclusivity, of scientific ways of thinking that need to be tempered by historical and social context. Gilbert worries that the commercialization that may be inherent in some ways of conceiving science (pursuit of funding, academic prestige etc.) need to be examined externally. Gilbert argues:
{{blockquote|First of all, there is a very successful alternative to science as a commercialized march to 'progress.' This is the approach taken by the liberal arts college, a model that takes pride in seeing science in context and in integrating science with the humanities and social sciences.<ref>Gilbert, S. F. (n.d.). 'Health Fetishism among the Nacirema: A fugue on Jenny Reardon's The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Justice, and Knowledge after the Genome (Chicago University Press, 2017) and Isabelle Stengers' Another Science is Possible: A Manifesto for Slow Science (Polity Press, 2018). Retrieved from https://ojs.uniroma1.it/index.php/Organisms/article/view/14346/14050.' {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191210213724/https://ojs.uniroma1.it/index.php/Organisms/article/view/14346/14050.%27 |date=2019-12-10 }}</ref>}}