What Are the Humanities For?

It offers readers bold ideas about how to think with greater humanistic coherence.

Willem B. Drees (Author)

9781108838412, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 April 2021

202 pages
22.3 x 14.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.38 kg

'… vibrant and essential for the academic and non-academic world … The book is broadly informed and deserves praise for its accessibility … the book is an easy-to-understand, self-standing defense of the humanities. It is plain and straight, without simplifying things beyond what is needed, given the length and scope of the book.' Maria Kronfeldner, Metascience

What are the humanities for? The question has perhaps never seemed more urgent. While student numbers have grown in higher education, universities and colleges increasingly have encouraged students to opt for courses in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) or take programs in applied subjects like business and management. When tertiary learning has taken such a notably utilitarian turn, the humanities are judged to have lost their centrality. Willem B. Drees has no wish nostalgically to prioritize the humanities so as to retrieve some lost high culture. But he does urge us to adopt a clearer conception of the humanities as more than just practical vehicles for profit or education. He argues that these disciplines, while serving society, are also intrinsic to our humanity. His bold ideas about how to think with greater humanistic coherence mark this topical book out as unmissable reading for all those involved in academe, especially those in higher educational policy or leadership positions.

I. What are the Humanities?: 1. Humanities: a tentative definition
2. Understanding others
3. Self-involving: philosophy and theology
4. Responsible scholarship
II. Who Needs the Humanities?: 5. Professionals: how to live with interpretations
6. Humans
7. The value of the humanities.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of science [PDA], Religious issues & debates [HRAM], Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Religion: general [HRA]