The importance of the humanities

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvY-DD4ZZI8

1.5.2023, Prague, Peter Kopa

In Swiss sources, in an article appearing in the best Swiss press, the future of the humanities is questioned, considering them only in terms of their demand in the current job market. The subject deserves some reflection, because, indeed, it is thought that humanities do not deserve so much academic and budgetary space lately.

Introduction

The purely speculative sciences, such as philosophy and its subordinate disciplines, were the first to be taught at the School of Athens. This took place centuries before Christ, laying the scientific and cultural foundations of the Western world. This purely rational approach, for the first time in history, was purified of irrational ingredients, such as superstitions and legends. With the advent of Christianity, these sciences were amalgamated with Christian revelation and Judeo-Christian teachings, without abandoning their scientific rigor, quite the contrary. The revealed faith has always defended the necessity and legitimacy of its own rational reflection and that of the universe.

The basilar themes of pre-Christian Greek thought have been the cause of the world, the understanding of change, the substance and being of things, logic and the rules of correct reasoning, mathematics and man. From this have emerged various academies in the major cities of Asia Minor and a whole pleiad of thinkers, whose greatest exponents are Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Parmenides.

Taking a leap of many centuries, European universities were founded at the end of the Middle Ages in the shadow of the great cathedrals, inspired by the rich source of Greek philosophy and Roman law. Their main purpose was philosophical and theological study and research. At the same time, in their classrooms people were educated, whose formation later served to serve the state or to opt for services of cultivation and diffusion of Christianity through its great thinkers like St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas and many others.

The abandonment of the humanities and the fall into materialism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QObAkF1_6CE

In the first half of the 17th century, Descartes introduced into philosophical thought the relevance of the subject in the process of knowledge. He said that all human knowledge is mediated by the senses, so that the extramental object becomes for the first time an object of insecure evidence. Thus arises the Cartesian methodical doubt, which in later centuries profoundly marks philosophical thought. Henceforth truth is no longer that which is directly apprehended through observation, but only that which is clearly and distinctly demonstrated according to the various methods excogitated by rationalists such as Locke, Hume and Berkeley in England and Fichte, Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher and Feuerbach. Identidad, verdad y sentido

The latter are the direct precursors of Karl Marx. Unfortunately, this philosophical attitude, which is defined as rationalism, has become endemically widespread. Unlike the particular sciences, rationalism offers the false attraction of not having to submit to the laws of immediate objective evidence. And so, correlatively, the humanities or purely speculative disciplines, especially pure philosophy, gradually lost importance. Simplifying, for the purposes of our reflection, they can be framed under the concept of humanities (Philosophy, Ethics, Aesthetics, Anthropology, Pedagogy, Mathematics and Physics).

Technological progress

At the same time, experimental sciences and mathematics have developed, which at no time have doubted the validity of immediate objective evidence, on pain of being reduced, like rationalism, to a vaporous dream of illusions of grandeur. In other words, only by obeying the laws imposed by extramental objects of knowledge is it possible to build an airplane or anything else that has marked the technological progress of the last two centuries. However, many of today’s intellectuals are still trapped in Cartesian rationalism, which has actually lowered reason, dismissing abstract thinking to the highest degree. But the truth is that without the abstract speculations of the aforementioned Greeks, technological progress, deeply dependent on mathematics and logic, would not have been possible.

Are the humanities important today?

Yes, as never before, because without them our world is presented to us as a technologically perfect ship, but without direction or captain, with the danger of repeating the drama of the Titanic. Man cannot renounce or deny his spiritual nature and, therefore, open to the immaterial, to transcendence. It is at this level that we study the cause of the world and our own, we examine good and evil, we reflect on human freedom as moral nature, and we study what values and principles should inspire human behavior. All this is an important part of the humanities.

Therefore, if it is said that the humanities are not relevant, it means that it is taken for granted that man has no inclination to evil and to lead an immoral life, that he does not need education and the good example and love of parents. Jordan Peterson tells us that our world is full of frustration and bitterness especially in the richer countries. So many people without a minimum of humanistic formation have their freedom very restricted and cannot avoid bad decisions in their lives. And the social projection of this misfortune can be seen in the cultural and moral huddle that manifests itself in so many births of the world. If those who cultivate the humanities do not have the professional outlets as an engineer, it is because society and the state suffer from a state of lamentable materialistic hypnosis and ignorance.
In reality, a void of deep meanings and senses is manifesting itself in today’s society, which are still proposed by religion and traditional classical philosophy, and not a few personal authorities that have emerged in the digital media, who pretend to give meaning to life. Many are charlatans who trade on people’s discomfort, but there is no lack of authentic and even heroic personalities, who have a following of millions, as is the case of Jordan Peterson, Bishop Robert Barren and many others. Nowadays, the educational and media sectors offer great options to spread a human message open to transcendence.

Dedicating oneself to humanism can be heroic

In the German language, the concepts of profession (Beruf) and vocation (Berufung) are distinguished. The latter has the connotation of having been called by a higher instance or by God to exercise a service in favor of mankind. In history there is a whole pleiad of people who have felt moved to dedicate their lives to helping people, above all practical considerations about obtaining resources to live well. We can admire this precariousness in the life of any holy minister, in the life of the German Walter Bemjamin. Hannah Arendt and Guenther Anders. As Jews they were persecuted by Nazism, leading a life of deprivation. Benjamin escaped, but in a moment of great anguish he took his own life. The other two managed to go into exile in the USA, living in conditions of extreme poverty, before becoming university professors. Hannah Arendt finally settled in Vienna, where she lived in poverty. It is worth reading her books as she is an intellectual of great prestige.
Another similar case, much earlier, has been that of Nietzsche and Karl Marx, although the latter have left nothing positive for posterity. Nietzsche, so mistaken in his philosophical pretensions, has been at least a passionate and ardent flame who has always sought God. This facet of his life is little known. It emerges pathetically in his poems in German of the highest literary quality. His accusation that we have killed God is nothing but a cry of his existential anguish that drove him to madness, which is very similar to certain manifestations of madness such as the LTGB, Genderism and Woke ideologies, which deny God even in satanic ways. Perhaps Nietzsche meant that we killed God on the cross with our sins. La conciencia como libertad ante la verdad