Fish, a distinguished academic and academic administrator has been a university humanities professor for more than four decades.
Starting with a report on the state university system of New York, he moves to question of why literature, philosophy and history should be supported in universities. He notes that the state university system in New York does not have a campus in the constellation of global superstar univesities, using Berkeley and Michigan as examples of superstars in that constellation. He recognizes that providing annual revenues, investment, and keeping from excessive interference with the operation would, if sustained for decades, attract the people who could raise one of more of the campus to superstardom. Neither he nor I can guess accurately whether the people of New York nor their elected officials will choose to do what is necessary.
Fish suggests that arguments that the humanities have instrumental value and thus should be supported do not have real merit. He ends the second piece writing:
To the question “of what use are the humanities?”, the only honest answer is none whatsoever. And it is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There is nothing more to say, and anything that is said – even when it takes the form of Kronman’s inspiring cadences – diminishes the object of its supposed praise.In a stovepiped academic system, departments in the humanities are staffed by people who participate in their individual paradigms of scholarly study, gaining the professional gratifications that they have been culturally conditioned to value, and that for Fish is enough.
Of course, he realizes that they are supported by the students who consume their services, by the parents of such students for whatever reasons they need to provide that support, and from the public purse largely for the teaching that they do.
It raises the question in my mind as to why thsse studies have continued, while others have not. Once many theologians argued about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin, and as far as I know theologians no longer find that a worthy pastime. The professors at campuses that were centers of learning in the middle ages no longer study and teach that which their predecessors studied and taught.
I am not sure that lumping literature, history and philosophy together is a good idea for the purposes of this thinking. The scholarly study of history may have more instrumental value than does the scholarly study of literature. Philosophy still has key questions of concern to us as humans that need to be better addressed.
Our culture, through an evolutionary process, has selected certain fields of learning for inclusion in the university, which is after all intended to include more than professional studies. Within each of the stovepiped academic departments, the paradigm evolves to include certain topics and approaches and to delete others. There is an argument that it is worthwhile to continue the development of these academic field paradigms both to keep alive the learning that has gone into them, and to continue the selection process of the important knowledge and understanding from the mass of contemporary materials that is being generated.
There is of course no need for a single reason to keep the humanities going. Each of the reasons adds its bit to the total of support. Not least of the bits added to the total is the willingness of very smart people to invest very heavily in education and then accept relatively small levels of pay to staff the departments of humanities.
I would bet that literature, philosophy and history will continue to be taught in our universities in 100 years, bacause they are central to our culture and our cultural values. I mean culture not in the sense of "high culture" but in the more general sense of the set of institutions, values, and attitudes passed down from one generation to the next that are central to our society. I would also bet that the content of these subjects will be quite different in 100 years than they are now.
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