The Future of the Humanities

by Walter Kaufmann

Here is a light, pithy book on the familiar theme: "The humanities are in deep trouble." Walter Kaufmann, Professor of Philosophy at Princeton and advocate of humanism in his writings on philosophy, literature, religion, as well as through his own poetry and translations, is vexed that so many of his fellow academicians are indifferent to the nature, purpose, and fate of the humanities. He calls these professors "scholastics" because they pursue arcane knowledge and treat learning as "a kind of 'sport,' if not a game, or a racket." He accuses them, along with the "journalists," who purvey superficial and erroneous information, of undermining the stature of the humanities, but he believes that stature can be restored by making the goals and methods of the humanities explicit and demanding. The principal goal is "to teach vision," which is a sense of values and the meaning of experience, and this can be achieved only by scrutinizing language and ideas, developing critical thought, and constructing intellectual syntheses. Kaufmann does not offer these convictions as mere generalizations but embodies them in concrete pedagogical and scholarly proposals (with examples from his own teaching). He has also "leaned over backwards not to be gentle" to his enemies, so he is more specific, direct, and argumentative than educational writers usually are. Readers will not sleep through Kaufmann's pages, and even if they reject his ideas, they will lay the book aside wondering, as Kaufmann wants them to do: "What kind of future would we like to build?" (Kirkus Reviews)

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

266 pages, paper

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Walter Arnold Kaufmann was a German-American philosopher, translator, and poet. A prolific author, he wrote extensively on a broad range of subjects, such as authenticity and death, moral philosophy and existentialism, theism and atheism, Christianity and Judaism, as well as philosophy and literature. He served for over 30 years as a Professor at Princeton University.

He is renowned as a scholar and translator of Nietzsche. He also wrote a 1965 book on Hegel, and a translation of most of Goethe's Faust.

Reviews

[Denise Spicer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting chapters on the politics of reviewing and ethics of translating and editing. Also well thought out chapter on the place (importance) of religion in higher education. Ends with (from 1977) looking toward era of "interdisciplinary" education. Includes Index.

[Joshua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly kind of crazy that I'm the only one on Goodreads to have reviewed this very important book.

For a book that was written in the 1970s about university humanities departments, this book rang surprisingly clear for my experience in Scientific Academia in the 2020s. Kaufmann's primary thrust with this book was to ask the question: what is the purpose of humanities? He also attempts to give his own answer to that question, as well as critique the answer of the system.

Kaufmann's reasons for the teaching of the humanities is fourfold: preservation reflection on major philosophical issues (death, justice, spirituality), cultivation of vision & culture shock: exposing students to ways of thinking that are not their own, or of their culture at all.

I found all of this surprisingly relevant to my modern experience in biology. In biology, there is also the question of goals, which I feel like has not been adequately answered by the departments in which I have worked. Why are we studying things like phase separation of RNA bodies, or the synaptonemnal complex in C. elegans? What purpose does knowing about these things serve, other than to very vaguely advance our knowledge? Yet I cannot voice these issues in lab meetings or department seminars. As in philosophy, the question of goals has kind of become a dirty phrase in biology, probably because much of the research that is done here is merely research for research's sake.

Another salient argument I got from Kaufmann in this book is the importune of really trying to understand what an author is saying. So often I see in science, and even more often in daily life people using an authors words out of context to either support their own argument or to serve as a straw man of the other side to tear down. What Kaufmann (and I) would prefer is honest reflection on what the author is saying, which requires some degree of culture shock to pull you out of your idea-space into that of the author's

Culture shock was the final part of the book I really liked. In the summer of 2019 I lived in Israel for 10 weeks. This time fundamentally impacted my worldview, it directly caused me to become vegan, and indirectly caused me to convert to Christianity. I attribute a large part of this change to the culture shock at being immersed in a foreign (albeit still partially Western) culture. I really badly wanted to go home by August & I think that's part of the reason that I was so profoundly changed by the experience.

Kaufmann's argument is that we can get to a similar place by reading literature, which is something that I've experienced in philosophy book club. Plato & Kierkegaard both provided ample levels of culture shock: I was actively uncomfortable reading both, which suggests I was on the right track.

How I'm going to change my life as a result of this book: Keep reading!