Why we need the Humanities

The Humanities teach us to look at the world aesthetically and appreciate even “the meanest flower that blows”.  
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There has been some bad news for the Humanities. A year ago, the University of Kent, the U.K., confirmed that it would phase out Art History, Anthropology, Health and Social Care, Journalism, Music and Audio Technology, and Philosophy and Religious Studies. Citing financial reasons, Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent announced in November 2024 that it would stop offering English Literature programmes from September 2025. Cardiff University does not want to continue with the Ancient Language modules due to a huge financial deficit. Goldsmiths, University of London, has also decided to scrap a few Arts and Humanities modules. In India too, certain Arts departments are not secure about their future and some Humanities programmes have already been staggered.

During the Renaissance, the focus in educational institutions was on studia humanitatis or “studies of humanity,” especially Greek and Latin classics, Grammar and Rhetoric and Languages, Literature, Philosophy and History. The Humanities refer to those academic disciplines that focus on human beings and rely on hermeneutics or theories of interpretation as their predominant methodology. They differ from Pure Sciences because of their content and pedagogy. Subjects like Physics and Chemistry focus on matter and depend on laboratory experiments for their data. Sociology, Anthropology and Psychology deal with human beings but their insistence on positivistic and empirical methodology differentiates them from the Humanities and categorises them as Social Sciences.

Why are the Humanities being side-lined? We need to realise that the neglect of the Humanities is not a recent phenomenon, for as early as the 19th century, German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey classified all academic disciplines into two groups: the Human Sciences and the Natural Sciences. What is appalling is that even the Humanities were forcibly brought under the sciences. Dilthey went a step further and proclaimed that, to survive, the Humanities should adopt the empirical methodology.

Challenges

What are the problems that plague the Humanities departments? First, it is a fact that there are not many takers for certain Arts programmes. In India, very few applications are received for programmes like History and Philosophy, making them financially unviable. In the West too, not many students are enthusiastic about the Humanities. Second, in the job market all over the world, STEM students pocket most of the placements. Humanities students are increasingly ignored by recruiting companies.

Third, Sciences depend on laboratory experiments and deal with facts, and believe that truth is singular. But the Humanities, especially from a postmodern perspective that has called for an “incredulity towards metanarratives”, speak of truths in the plural. This has unnerved not only the hard sciences but also the Social Sciences that rely predominantly on quantitative data.

Fourth, there is sometimes a feeling that Humanities students are not quite as diligent and hard-working as their Science counterparts who spend long hours in their labs. Put differently, poetry, novels and films are considered subjects that do not rigorous classroom teaching. Last and most important, today’s digital world is heavily data-based and everything is worked out in terms of numbers, percentages and ratios. Such a world has deepened the divide between the Sciences and the Humanities.

Pressing need

The world certainly needs the Humanities, which talk about transcendence while the Sciences are confined to immanence. This is one of its strengths. Second, a study of the Humanities ingrains a sense of empathy, which is vital to the survival of the humankind. Aristotle talked about pity and terror and the resultant catharsis. Only because the learners are empathetic to the tragic protagonists do they experience pity and fear. Third, the Humanities help enhance the learners’ emotional intelligence. Fourth, the Humanities promote hermeneutics, the theory of interpretation. The Social Sciences — and Pure Sciences too to some extent — need hermeneutics to interpret data, both quantitative and qualitative. Finally, the Humanities teach us to look at the world aesthetically and appreciate even “the meanest flower that blows”.

C.P. Snow in his Rede Lecture (1959) remarked that “the intellectual life of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups … literary intellectuals at one pole — and at the other scientists” (“Two Cultures”). Ultimately, there should be a rapprochement between the two and we should strive to bridge the gap, making the Humanities incrementally scientific/systematic as in the case of Digital Humanities, and the Sciences more humanistic, especially in terms of methodology. Without ethics, aesthetics and hermeneutics that constitute the soul of the Humanities, the world will not be an ideal place for human beings.

The writer is Emeritus Professor, Gandhigram Rural Institute-Deemed to be University.