This was good, except for the god stuff. “Possible truth of religious claims?” What does that mean?
57
And enrollment in lyre school is way down lately.
26
I Sam saddened by this. As an English major and teacher, and amateur poet, I regret the devaluing of “the man of thought”.
39
A return to the truth of religious claims. Let’s hope not. But if it does, which religious truth would you prioritize over another religious truth?
99
Once again, Mr. Douthat finds a way to blame all our ills — this time, the decline of the humanities — on the increasing number of folks who no longer subscribe to the literal truth of Bronze Age religious myths. He’s wrong. Just because many people don’t buy into a talking snake or a 6,000 year old planet or the infallibility of the Vatican does not mean they are not fully capable of appreciating Rembrandt or Shakespeare or Mozart.
Douthat does, however, deserve a Pulitzer Prize for that great headline.
80
i expect that neurobiology and allied fields will bridge the gap between science and humanities and also to a great extent between science and religion.
24
Ross is searching still for some fingerhold that will put religion in control of our lives. While an excellent case can be made that “scientific method” gains efficacy only by circumscribing the phenomena it deals with, leaving out much of the humanities’ main concerns, Ross will not be happy with increased awareness of what is and what isn’t in the scientific domain.
A renewed awareness of the humanities and the limitations of the sciences will have no place for the narrow minded top-down Theocracy that Ross craves. An increased awareness of the full extent of human experience will have little patience for dogmatic brainwashing.
62
And what of the Dionysian, my dear preacher?
The humanities are about a lot more than a tale of two vines.
52
Or perhaps Auden did. Peculiar use of mythology.
I chose wisdom over wealth; I preferred holding a man's attention rather than his wallet. Wisdom and attention have eluded me, while I have escaped wealth and wallets. Every night I dine with enemies.
61
This is a good article, but with some sneaky agendas. When you mention childbearing and it’s essentially humanistic nature, and bemoan its decline, you ignore the very real dangers of overpopulation, I’d say that stemming overpopulation is quintessentially humanistic (and scientifically supported) because it maintains the planet for us and other species.
As for the return of religion, you might say “spirituality” instead. It’s more welcoming and less dogmatic.
91
Alongside the decline in the number of humanities majors, I wonder about the decline of the general education curriculum. When I was at Ohio State, I argued against Engineering’s desire to collapse arts and humanities into a single GEC category to make way in their curriculum for more engineering courses.
43
This is why conservative columnists are necessary. Douthat beautifully argues for the return of the humanities to centrality in our college campuses and our public spaces. I value the perspective of someone from the right who can see the stridency of the left as a despairing effort to gain a foothold in the culture that no longer values poetry, art, and philosophy. And I appreciate his optimism that the humanities can yet return to public importance, value, and influence. In the Age of Trump, perhaps only the humanities will, in the end, save us.
83
As a white straight male, science is the only field I can enter that doesn’t scream privilege. Yes, there is still bias in scientific journals, school admissions, academic appointments, etc. but at least there is a clear attempt to move towards a system of meritocracy as much as possible.
The humanities? Not so much. People are rewarded for their “voice” which is code for demographic. It’s not a coincidence that most journals, news papers, politicians, writers, actors, etc are incredibly polarizing. They operate by having an angle, which again, is code for culture and demographic. Doesn’t matter if it’s lady Gaga or Alex jones: their success largely depends on depicting the most cartoon version of the attributes they were born with.
102
Classical music is not esoteric, nor elitist. It speaks to anyone and everyone open to its beauty and value. Non-Western cultures such as China have embraced classical music, and excelled in it. It is unfortunate with what ease and abandon the words esoteric and elitist are associated with classical music. Fortunately its intrinsic value is unaffected, and stands ready to be enjoyed and appreciated by all.
116
Occam’s Razor says that when there are more than one possible explanations for a phenomenon being offered, choose the simplest. Here, the simplest explanation is economics. The 50s and the 60s were a golden economic era when there were too few people for too many jobs. You could get a good college level job regardless of what you studied, and we simply didn’t have overnight billionaires being minted by business schools or computer science departments. The cost of a middle class life style was way lower and the college students of that era could well expect to do better in life than their parents.
No more.
Even college grads can’t be assured a middle class life style or to do better than their parents. We’ve created a labor market in which employers can be extraordinarily picky about who they hire. Given the cost of higher education is it really any wonder that students are choosing majors that lead to jobs when they can? And can you really blame colleges for responding to the demands of their customers?
173
It is true that science is succeeding in the enlightened age and the humanities and religion are not. The humanities are fun. The sciences and technology are work and limit ones imagining to the limits of reality.
But the decreased percentage of students choosing the misnamed humanities (they are all metaphysics) may be overstated. Colleges were mostly finishing schools for the rich until the 1960s. Less than 10 percent of highschoolers (most people didnt graduate from high school at the time either) went on to college prior to the baby boomers coming of age. To maintain the bloat that resulted, colleges have had to become far less rigorous in search of paying customers and more worldly in offerings to attract them.
Thus the swell of job qualifying mayors has diminished the percentage of humanities majors in the modern college and made such crass interests respectable even on the the selective ivies. Once respectable campuses were ashamed to have an associated "business school", now they are given pride of place in their sales brochures, along of course with WIFI dorms and all night cafeterias.
This is what has changed the most while the number is students who actually love the humanities likely remain unchanged.
50
As a history major I empathize but understand. It used to be that a college degree, any major, would guarantee a high paying job and a secure future. Those days are long gone with employers hiring graduates with specific sets of skills to compete in the marketplace. That, along with the outrageous costs and crushing debt of a four year degree, make majors such as mine a hard sell to young people.
82
The humanities are always in crisis. It’s when they stop being in crisis that we need to start worrying.
19
thank you for this interesting and provocative article.
I wonder, though I don't offhand see that this technocratic analysis can be done, if this evolution correlates to income gap both in the US and elsewhere.
8
As a middle and high school English teacher I know my students are interested and intrigued to understand the world through class discussion and inquiry. They are born humanists. Twelve year olds in particular are excited by connections. They read and write poetry and want to know how reading literature helps them cope with their own fears and desires. The humanities matter and always have.
In my view two things need to change in our
American culture: firstly, emphasis needs to be placed on being present, being in the moment. Classrooms should be about engagement and face to face discussion. Throw out the smartphones and start igniting minds with original thoughts. Secondly, for the sake of a healthy society, we need to radically reduce the price tags at colleges and universities.
136
Suggested reading:
Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (1954; English Translation, 1964) and The Presence of the Kingdom (1948)
“People think that they have no right to judge a 'fact' - all they have to do is to accept it.”
― Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom
“Our civilization is first and foremost a civilization of means; in the reality of modern life, the means, it would seem, are more important than the ends. Any other assessment of the situation is mere idealism.”
― Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometers an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.”
― Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
34