Why the Humanities?

1. Why the Humanities?

2. Question Everything Everyone Counts Don’t Believe Everything You Think The Moral High Ground is Built on Compassion Critical Thinking is the New Revolution

3. “The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive….We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.” “Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” -- Henry David Thoreau

4. "Now [the impulse to dream] surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different." -- Richard Wright “My master never permitted his slaves to be taught. Education in his view tended to enlarge and expand their ideas; made them less subservient to their superiors….” -- Hanna Crafts, former slave “It is not the law that takes freedom from us, but the laziness of our own minds, the unwillingness to think for ourselves and resign, even momentarily, from the herd.” – Lewis Lapham, editor Harper’s Magazine

5. “Do not believe in doctrines because they have been handed down to you through generations, do not believe in anything because it is followed blindly by many; do not believe in truths to which you have become attached by habit; do not believe merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Have deliberation and analyze and when the result agrees with reason and conduces to the good of one and all, accept it and live up to it.” – Buddha

6. What part of your college experience will stay with you ten or fifteen years after you graduate? You will perhaps remember some of the facts you learned, but much of the detail in your courses will fade with time. Any technical skills you learned may well have been rendered obsolete by technological advances. • On the other hand, the skills and capacities developed during humanities courses will last a lifetime, because you will find yourself practicing them every time you read a book or newspaper, or watch a film or a television program. The humanities student is not a passive consumer of the news media, or of commercial and political advertising. He or she asks the same questions about these messages as we asked about the many works of art we examined in this class: Who wrote this? For which audience? With what intended effect? This will make you less vulnerable to the modern mind-control techniques employed in commercial and political advertising.

7. To be sure, the chief benefit of studying humanities is the pleasure of discovering varieties of human culture and responses that you may never have known of before. You also get to enjoy the sensation of becoming more skilled and sophisticated in your interpretations. You learn flexible and incisive thinking. You learn techniques of argument and communication skills. The humanities cultivate attentiveness to written words, careful consideration, thoughtful balancing, the coaxing forth of disparate meanings, and responsiveness to the complexities of sense.

8. But the humanities is much more than these. The humanities allow you to discover yourself through the work of others and to see who you might become and what kind of world you can begin working to create. The humanities, ultimately, are not just about chance questions, but about the way one should live one’s life.

9. Insofar as the Humanities teach you how to think, they (to paraphrase Glenn Tinder): • enable you to realize your own being in its freedom and distinctiveness; to think is to stand apart and affirm one’s individuality in the face of attempts to stamp it out • help you to define yourself by calling into consciousness your strongest impressions and convictions, relating them to one another and testing them • put you in touch with others by breaking down the walls of dogmatic self-assurance and forcing you to enter into the minds of others • are a pathway to the consciousness of transcendence or of God

10. If you remember, at the beginning of the semester I asked for the highest level of learning from you. I said I wanted you to become “committed learners.” Committed learners are curious, independent, critical, and creative thinkers who value the ideas and ways of thinking to which they are exposed and who consciously and consistently try to use them. They are also people able to take their rightful place in the public discourse of this nation. You are all of an age where you have to think about what you really want your education to do for you. Do you want merely to be spoon fed everything only as entertainment – what the Romans called “Bread and Circuses” – or do you want to take charge of your own lives?

11. Other Recommended Courses/Instructors: History – Marianne McKnight Psychology – Katerina Calderone Political Science – David Hubert or Josh Gold Anthropology – Jude Higgins or Jim Dykman World Religions – Suzanne Jacobs English – Ron Christiansen; Stephanie Dowdle; Jason Pickavance; Sue Briggs Sociology – Spencer Blake Embrace this opportunity to learn!

13. “I do not prefer one religion or philosophy to another. I have no sympathy with the bigotry and ignorance which make transient and partial and puerile distinctions between one man’s faith or form of faith and another’s – as Christian and heathen. I pray to be delivered from narrowness, partiality, exaggeration, bigotry. To the philosopher all sects, all nations, are alike. I like Brahma, Hari, Buddha, the Great Spirit, as well as God.” – Henry David Thoreau, Journal 2:4

14. I love learning and thinking hard everyday about the world I live in, the world of the past, and the world of the future. I try to use critical thinking skills and seek out as much knowledge as possible. I try not to put myself into a box of believing “this” or “that.” The minute you use a label you put constraints on a person. The search for “truth” should be continual and open.

15. your careers will require you to solve problems for which there are no set methods or techniques (unlike the easy multiple choice tests) • Employers need staff who can meet novel challenges with flexible and incisive thinking. • For most of the questions we ask in the humanities, there is no single correct answer and no routine method. However, some answers and methods are better than others. Part of the point of humanities courses is to learn to distinguish good philosophical arguments from bad, good poetic structure from bad, good historical evidence from bad and so on. • It is also about understanding – and if necessary challenging – what such ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’ consists of. In other words, you must learn to use and defend your judgment on those occasions when routine techniques and methods cannot help. Humanities courses help you learn how to support your conclusions with arguments, reasons and evidence.

16. a humanities course will also improve your ability to communicate. • as you become a more critical and sensitive reader you will notice (and correct) flaws and lapses in your own writing and speaking. • your future employers will want to be sure that you will not embarrass them by writing ungrammatical or clumsy memos, reports or press-releases. • to prosper in any career you will have to persuade others to see things your way, either in writing or by speaking. A humanities degree will give you plenty of practice in both. • you will also have to judge others' efforts to persuade you to see things their way, and here your education in the craft of careful interpretation will be directly relevant. Who wrote this memo? For what purpose? What unspoken assumptions does it rely on?