Instrumentalizing the Humanities?

This post is a sequel to the one I wrote at the beginning of the month responding to a blog post by Alan Jacobs about why the humanities matter. Building off of what Jacobs had written, I suggested we need to study the humanities to help us more wisely determine what “is really conducive to our human flourishing in the longterm.”

But often when I think about what the humanities are for or try to justify to myself their usefulness in a world skeptical of their value, I hear in my head the suspicious naysayer that cautions against “instrumentalizing” them. Shouldn’t we enjoy art for art’s sake? Aren’t we cheapening literature by trying to promote it for what it “does” outside of being an aesthetic experience? Aren’t we running the risk of turning art and literature into propaganda?

Another recent-ish post on Jacobs’ blog, titled “Intrinsic Values,” objects to this objection. Jacobs writes that he has “never known what [calling something ‘valuable in and of itself’] means — or even could mean. Because: if you ask people to say more about valuing something for its own sake, they end up saying that it gives them pleasure or delights them or fascinates them. But to pursue something because it delights or fascinates you is not pursuing it for its own sake — it’s pursuing it for the sake of the delight or fascination.” In other words, to say that we read literature or promote the arts for their “intrinsic value” turns out to be nonsensical as soon as we ask ourselves to spell out why we think that is so important.

It has also occurred to me that the people who most warn against instrumentalizing the humanities—writers, artists, critics, and academics—also instrumentalize them: they make livelihoods out of making works of literature or art, or out of saying things about them!

It is certainly possible to use art and literature in ways they weren't intended to be used (authorial intent matters!), but there is no way not to use art and literature except to have nothing to do with them. The question is not whether we are using art or literature for something else, but whether that something else is closer or further away from the telos of the particular thing being used. It's not a question of using or not using, but of using or misusing.

Alan Jacobs on the Humanities

Two posts that Alan Jacobs put on his blog earlier this year keep rattling around in my brain and have helped me articulate for myself why studying the humanities (history, philosophy, literature, and the arts) matters, for all of us, whether we are inside or outside an academic environment.

Here’s his first post, “A Small Parable,” from January 28. The parable is more than half the post, but it I think it falls within “fair use” guidelines to quote in full.

Once there was a man named Jack who owned a nice house. One day, though, Jack noticed that one end of the house was a little lower than it had been. You could place a ball on the floor and it would slowly roll towards that end. Jack was a practical man, so he called Neil, another practical man he knew, who worked in construction. Neil said that he could jack up that end of the house and make everything level again. Jack agreed, and Neil got to work.

Jack had a neighbor named Hugh. Hugh was interested in many things, and watched closely as Neil jacked up the low end of the house. With Jack’s permission, he looked around the basement of the house. All this made him more curious, so he walked down to the town’s Records Office and got some information about Jack’s house: when it had been built, who had built it, and what the land had been used for before. Hugh also learned a few things about the soil composition in their neighborhood and its geological character.

Hugh paid Jack a visit so he could tell Jack about all he had learned. He stood at Jack’s door with his hands full of documents and photographs, and rang the bell. But when Jack answered he told Hugh that he didn’t have time to look at documents and photographs. He had a very immediate problem: that end of his house was sinking again. In such circumstances Jack certainly couldn’t attend to Hugh’s ragbag of information and discourses about ancient history. After all, Jack was a practical man.

When parents, employers, teachers, and school administrators emphasize degrees or courses in “practical” subjects like Business and Engineering at the expense of degrees or courses in subjects like English or Classics, they risk falling into the same shortsightedness as Jack. Practical classes can help us learn what is possible, but they aren’t as good at helping us discern what is beneficial. To quote Dr. Ian Malcolm from Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.” Studying the humanities, as the name implies, is about studying what it means to be human. Once we better understand what makes for true human flourishing, we’ll be in a better position to judge whether X business strategy (no matter how lucrative) or Y technology (no matter how efficient) is really conducive to our human flourishing in the longterm.

I love the Sara Groves song, “Scientists in Japan.” The chorus goes:

Who's gonna stay here and think about it?
Who's gonna stay?
Everybody's left the room,
There's no one here to talk it through,
Now stay, stay, stay.

Whether it’s in a high school or college classroom, or a book club, or a discussion with friends after watching a movie together, engaging with the humanities is a way for us to slow down and “stay here and think about it.” 

This post of mine is long enough already, so I’ll write about the other Alan Jacobs post another time.

New Article: Reading with the Jedi

I have a new article, titled “The Dead Speak!: Reading with the Jedi,” that was published today over at the Mere Orthodoxy blog. It combines several of my favorite things: Star Wars, reading and reading ethics, and quoting from C. S. Lewis and Alan Jacobs. I am grateful to Tim Lawrence for his feedback on the early drafts, and to Jake Meador for publishing the article.