Humanities As A Way of Knowing

     For years, I would begin my Introduction to Humanities course by trying to clear up some muddled ideas about the term Humanities. Of course, most of my students did not get the weightiness of the lecture. For them, Introduction to Humanities was merely a course in the core that was an academic requirement. In a most impassioned manner, the goal was to get the students to apprehend that the humanities was not really a discipline or set of disciplines, but a way of knowing. When fully embraced, the humanities could be a way of living and being. To provide a reference point of historical import, they would hear me implore, that "the humanities" more so than anything else they would experience at the university, would assist them in the plight to "know thyself," and if embraced as a way of knowing and understanding, would assist in the great good of seeking and obtaining wisdom.

    Mortimer Adler, in A Guidebook to Learning powerfully stated, "The word 'humanities' should not be used, as it is now generally used in our universities and colleges, and even our high schools, to stand for particular set of subject matters. Rather it should be used as José Ortega y Gasset used it in his Revolt of the Masses, published in 1930.  This is the book which so eloquently denigrates the barbarism of specialization in the twentieth century, the cultural malady that only the humanities, properly understood can alleviate." (87)

    The modern academy, seems to have few, if any once esteemed professors of humane letters serving as the amiable generalist guide toward the good, the true, and the beautiful. So, the privileged medieval college faculty, in contract to the impoverished modern college faculty, "might, therefore, have been more appropriately called the philosophical faculty or even, perhaps the faculty of the humanities or of humane letters. But once again we must guard against the current use of these terms by remembering that the Latin word "humanitas," translating the Greek word "paideia," signifies general as opposed to specialized learning. Thus understood, it includes all branches of learning, not just those that remain after we have named the various sciences, natural and social." (20, Adler)

    Of course the university catalog, campus chatter, academic advisers and common misuse identifies the humanities as a cluster of disciplines. It has always been difficult when answering the question, "so what is a PhD in Humanities" or the most troubling, "what does one do with a Humanities degree?" Of recent years, I simply answer, "be more human" when asked about the utilitarian role of a humanities degree and "the most misunderstood and least lived education" to the question of what a PhD in Humanities actually is. Adler, assists again on these matters, but the question of being able to hear what is said seems more pressing today. "The word "humanities" or the phrase "humanistic learning" should stand for a generalist approach to all departments of knowledge as against a specialist competence in this or that particular branch of knowledge. It is accordingly incorrect and misleading to identify the humanities with the branches or departments of knowledge that remain after the various natural and social sciences have been enumerated." (86)

   Much has happened since Adler published these ideas twenty-seven years ago. My own students, having specialists in other departments who neither understand, nor care about such learning, and some who openly berate the impracticalities of the humanities, sway these students toward the mundane, imminently useful, and servile. Adler and other historians of education have observed, "The faculty of arts represented general as opposed to specialized learning, and learning for its own sake rather than for its useful application to some field of practice or action. This faculty consisted of teachers who bore the title Master of Arts. The students they succeeded in initiating into the world of learning or certified as Bachelors of Arts." (20)

  The modern university characterized by the narcissistic consumerist smorgasbord approach to life and our general contemporary ethos fully shaped by the triumph of the therapeutic, offers less and less in terms of the permanent things and more and more in terms of the momentarily relevant. It really is difficult to imagine that, "when universities came into being in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in Padua and Paris, in Oxford and Cambridge, the main divisions of learning were manifest in the four faculties that constituted them. One of these was the faculty of arts. The other three were the professional faculties of medicine, law, and theology." (19) Adler elaborates in a manner that shows another stark difference between the original university and its very different decedent.  Even with the value attached to the older faculties of medicine, law, and theology, "the latter, in the order named, corresponded to practical concerns of less and greater importance: the care of the body, the conduct of life and society, and the salvation of the soul. In referring to these three areas of concern as practical, I am calling attention to the fact that men who became doctors of medicine, of law, and theology were not only men of learning, but also the practitioners of learned professions." (19, Adler) This loss has no doubt contributed to diminished loss of the presence of the fully educated and truly humane in medicine, law, and even theology.

    In that opening lecture I aspired to provide a touch of history of select terms and give the philosophical roots to the liberal arts that could free, even today's students from a life of slavery spent spelunking in the cave of ignorance, trivialities, and the merely menial. Employing the best of ancient rhetoric  the students would hear that the humanities, when truly encountered, "signifies the general learning that should be in the possession of every human being – learning that embraces or includes all the ways of knowing...." (86)

   As the semester moved along, some came to understand that their poor humanities professor was a wayfarer without a sense of place, including even in the very academy that used to foster such persons. More than once I confessed, and sometimes apologized (due to the moment) for being a generalist. In modern parlance, being a "jack of all trades, and ace of none" is an academic professional hazard. For these young people who had as their "reason for being" to become an expert or specialist in some trade that would get them a paycheck, the gap grew greater with every passing lecture. Even when informed of the value of the humanities and that, "in the meaning of the word "humanities" or "humanistic" ...that preserves its original significance as it comes down to us from antiquity and the Middle Ages, any subject that is approached in the manner of the generalist belongs to the humanities or is humanistically approached. The subject that is studied in the manner of the specialist does not belong there," (87) they seemed unimpressed.

    Adler, toward the end of his guidebook, observes, "At the beginning of the century William James anticipated Ortega's insight. He pointed out that any subject can be seen in a humanistic light by being approached historically or philosophically." (87) Neil Postman says nearly the exact same thing in his book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology and offers a prescription to remedy some of the ills facing modern education by suggesting that all disciplines should be approached historically and philosophically.  It is most certainly true that this approach of history and philosophy of all disciplines would go toward correcting many of the perversions and distortions found whether it be in the field of astronomy, biology, through physics and zoology.
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All quotations taken from Mortimer Adler's, A Guidebook to Learning.

A Case for the Quaint: Mortimer Adler and The Great Ideas Program

     Studying and leading conversations on the Great Books for more than twenty years still produces that sense of awe and wonder, especially when I discover a new tool to aide in the exploration of wisdom.  Unfortunately, this excitement is often curtailed when I engage many of those within the academy. Once, an educationist from our Education Department, with arms folded humphed at me the term "perennialist" which he meant pejoratively, but which I heard as praise. More than once, I have seen the term "quaint" applied to what we do in our Great Books based programs. Of course, the secularists and dehumanized masses deem these writings down right dangerous. It is the notion of being quaint that I seek to ponder for a bit.

     The term quaint, like perennialist, traditional, and related terms are often uttered with contempt today, but these terms have meaning that call for reconsideration. While quaint can be used in a dismissive manner, quaint can also mean attractively unusual or charmingly odd. Spending a bit more time with quaint, we discover that this word's history has good company and was associated with cunning, well-informed, knowledgeable, clever, elaborate, skillful and even old-fashioned but charming. With this in mind, I share with you, some parts of a quaint tool that accompanied The Great Ideas Program first published in 1959. Keep in mind that the booklet, The Great Ideas Program Family Participation Plan for Reading the Great Books of the Western World, was published in that same 1959. As I read this I kept thinking how far we have "progressed" regarding education and the family in the past fifty some years.   

     Entitled "A confidential memorandum" from Robert Hutchins to parents "regarding being educated by your children," the words in this "memorandum" are most assuredly quaint. "Yours is a literate home because you are a literate people. And you are literate people not only because you read great books, but also because you are interested in great ideas. Literacy  of course, involves far more than merely the ability to read and write. Many people are not literate, in the full sense of the word, who can read and write very well. The kind of literacy that means something, however, is the kind that produces intelligent thought and action. 
     It is this kind of literacy that you want your children to have. Unfortunately, their chances of acquiring it in the school today are small and may become smaller if schools become more narrowly technical and vocational. 
     This is one of the prime reasons for your ownership of Great Books and your enrollment in the Great Ideas Program. Certainly other sets of books are decorative, and you might have purchased them. But you didn't buy just books. Instead you bought a family home education program that will effectively help you to have a literate home environment for the care and formation of literate children. 
     This first memorandum was followed by "a very confidential memorandum" to the children in this family, also from Robert Maynard Hutchins. "This is a conspiracy to get you to do some reading and thinking. It is based on the assumption that you believe you don't like books, and this assumption is false. You may not like the books that you have been given to read. They are mostly textbooks, and often textbooks are not good books. As yet you probably haven't had a chance to learn how interesting good books can be.
     Your parents are now enrolled in the Great Ideas Program and are proud owners of the Great Books – the best books ever written. They have every intention of reading them. (They read some of them when they were your age, and one of the sure signs of a great book is that one who has read it wants to reread it.) The trouble is that your parents may insist that they have no time. You can help them by making them take time to read these books. Of course you must play a trick on them, for the way to help is to make them read and discuss the books with you. This is the kind of program that you will enjoy participating in, and these are the kind of books you will enjoy reading. Also, this Plan and its accompanying Personal Consultation Service will answer practically any questions your parents may ask that you can't answer. Don't be afraid to use the services. 
     One thing is sure. These are readings that you will benefit from all the rest of your lives – just as young people have done for hundreds of years before you. These are not the easiest books you have ever read; but I can assure you that they are the most interesting.
     I know you're busy. But you will be even busier later on. Take my advice – don't wait. 
     The teachers cannot make you wise – much as they would like to – because these books are seldom read in school. You will have to help yourself, and here is one chance to do so. The world is going to belong to you, but it is a hard world. You will need to know everything you can to get along and to understand at least some of it. Through this Plan and the Great Ideas Program, the wisdom of the world lies open to you – just waiting for you to tap it. I envy you.

     More than fifty years since these words circulated, we have advanced to the place of wide-spread ignorance--a level of mass educational trendiness that is stupefying.  Of course the American family today is not sitting around reading the Great Books and discussing the Great ideas. Whatever family means today, if sitting around, it is likely absorbed in this season's sitcom. The need for what is quaint is strong in our common and ordinary day. The old-fashioned may indeed rescue us from our abyss of the drab, dull, cutting-edge, and up-to-date.