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Chargement... The Value of the Humanitiespar Helen Small
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'The Value of the Humanities' provides a critical account of the principal arguments used to defend the value of the humanities.
The Value of the Humanities provides a critical account of the principal arguments used to defend the value of the Humanities. The claims considered are: that the Humanities study the meaning-making practices of culture, and bring to their work a distinctive understanding of what constitutes knowledge and understanding; that, though useful to society in many ways, they remain laudably at odds with, or at a remove from, instrumental use value; that they contribute to human happiness; that they are a force for democracy; and that they are a good in themselves, to be valued 'for their own sake'. Engaging closely with contemporary literary and philosophical work in the field from the UK and US, Helen Small distinguishes between arguments that retain strong Victorian roots (Mill on happiness; Arnold on use value) and those that have developed or been substantially altered since. Unlike many works in this field, The Value of the Humanities is not a polemic or a manifesto. Its purpose is to explore the grounds for each argument, and to test its validity for the present day. Tough-minded, alert to changing historical conditions for argument and changing styles of rhetoric, it promises to sharpen the terms of the public debate. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)001.30711Information Computer Science; Knowledge and Systems Knowledge HumanitiesClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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Fortunately most of the other sections have been written in a general tone. The author does possess broad learning and a good touch for clear argumentation, but she exhibits it much too reluctantly and always prioritizes earlier literature over her personal arguments. Her analysis actually becomes unintentionally ironic towards the end. After all, what could possibly be a better way of demonstrating the disutility of the humanities than a humanities book which defends the humanities with bizarre sentences such as this one from p.139: "We do not have to endorse Hardt and Negri's 'inebriate' vision of 'power through [political] faith' (I quote Tom Nairn), to claim, contra Baier, that the humanities might be, as it were, a large collective gadfly, for example by reminding present-day society of inconvenient but pertinent facts about its past and its cultural heritage."
So if you're looking for a defense of the humanities I would not recommend this book. Even so, its main points are valid and they are summarized in clear language on pages 174-175: (1) humanities do a distinctive kind of work which produces qualitative understanding of knowledge inextricable from human subjectivity, (2) the humanities assist in preservation and curation of cultures and the skills for interpreting them, (3) they contribute to individual happiness, (4) humanist faculties are centres for higher study and practice of the skills of critical reasoning, debate and evaluation of ideas, and (5) humanism has value for its own sake.