The Humanities: Their Value, Defence, Crisis, and Future

Abstract The humanities, particularly literature and the arts, seem always to have to justify their value and legitimacy vis-à-vis some other, more practical, more useful, or more authoritative aspects of human life and activities. In ancient Greece, Plato dismissed poetry as being untrue and irrational, but beginning with Aristotle, there has been a long tradition of defense of poetry in the West. Traditionally the most effective defense was to emphasize the moral values the humanities can teach and the exemplary significance of the classics. In the late nineteenth century, science began to challenge the value of the humanities, and in the twentieth century, that resulted in the “two cultures” debate in the 1960s. In more recent time, however, a real crisis of the humanities arises not from challenges from the outside but from within, as scholars in the humanities—particularly in literary and cultural studies—question the basic values of the humanities and “decanonize” the classics. The utilitarian tendency of modern society makes it difficult for the humanities to prove their practical use and worth. To argue for the value of the humanities, therefore, it is very important to refuse the utilitarian terms of debate, to reclaim the values of the humanities, and to re-emphasize the exemplary significance of the classic in order to work toward a better future not only of the humanities, but of our world at large.