Humanist Reason: A History. An Argument. A Plan

by Eric Hayot

Ask just about any humanist, and you will hear that the humanities are in a crisis. Facing utilitarian approaches to education, the corporatization of the university, plummeting enrollments, budget cuts, and political critiques from right, left, and center, humanists find themselves on the defensive. Eric Hayot argues that it is time to make a positive case for what the humanities are and what they can become.



Hayot challenges scholars and students in the humanities to rethink and reconsider the work they do. Examining the origins of the humanist ethos in nineteenth-century Germany and tracing its philosophical roots back to Immanuel Kant, Hayot returns to the history of justifications for the humanities in order to build the groundwork for their future development. He develops the concept of "humanist reason" to understand the nature of humanist intellectual work and lays out a series of principles that undergird this core idea. Together, they constitute a provocative intellectual and practical program for a new way of thinking about the humanities, humanist thought, and their role in the university and beyond. Rather than appealing to familiar ethical or moral rationales for the importance of the humanities, Humanist Reason lays out a new vision that moves beyond traditional disciplines to demonstrate what the humanities can tell us about our world.

Genres: Philosophy

234 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 16, 2021

About the author

Eric Hayot is professor of comparative literature and Asian studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of The Elements of Academic Style (Columbia, 2014), On Literary Worlds (2012), and The Hypothetical Mandarin (2009).

Reviews

[Indrek Ojam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kiiduväärt raamat, mis lahkab otse ja kartmatult humanitaarteaduste olemust ja erinevust täppisteadustest, võtmata alandlikku või häbelikku hoiakut, mis mõnikord selliseid kaitsekõnesid saadab. Hayoti (kes on kirjandusteadlane ja sinoloog) alguspunktiks Wilhelm von Windelbandi 1894. aastal peetud rektorikõne "Ajalugu ja loodusteadused", milles Windelband eristab loodus- ja ajalooteadust vastavalt nomoteetilise ja ideograafilise lähenemise kaudu oma objektile. Esimene tähendab seaduste formuleerimist, millele kõik nähtused alluksid, teine seisneb nähtuste ja sündmuste ainulisuse ja kordumatuse välja joonistamist.
Hayot seletab, kuidas Windelbandi neokantiaanlik (mille tuletatavus Kanti filosoofiast on tegelikult kaheldav ja täiesti omaette teema, mida siin ei jõua kuidagi arutada) eristus on eksitav ja toonud kaasa rohkem kahju, kui kasu. See jätab teadlase töö ilma igasugusest loovusest ja moonutab tema uurimisobjekti tegelikku paljusust ja kompleksust. Ajaloolasele-humanitaarile pakub ta teiselt pool universaalsete seaduspärade loovutamise eest harilikult kunsti-inimestele omistatavat kokku puutumist esteetiliselt kordumatute fenomenidega. Sellist teaduste sisest tööjaotust võib näha ka omaaegse industriaalkapitalismi inimsaatuste allegooriana: kes võõrandub tootmisprotsessi universalismi keskmes, kes vireleb perifeerse vaesena maailma kordumatu ilu sees.

Niisiis: eemale absoluutsest partikularismist ja tagasi tõe juurde. Ja humanitaarteaduste tõde on nüansseeritud, võimalikult paljusid relevantseid kontekste arvestav, kuid ometi universalismile pürgiv. Erinevaid teaduslikke distsipliine nimetab Hayot "ökoloogilisteks paratamatusteks", mis peaksid looma "epistemoloogilisi bioome, milles erinevat sorti mõtlemised saavad kasvada, kuhtuda, võistelda ja areneda" - päris nunnu määratlus. Aga täitsa irdu ei saa neid mõtte-taimestikke kunagi hoida, sest jätkusuutlikkust hoiab just distsipliinide vaheline kommunikatsioon:

"Kes kirjandusteadlastest usub, et ajaloolased valdavad ainuõiget ajaloolise uurimistöö ideed ja praktikat; või et sotsioloogidel on eripärane monopol mõistetele, mis seletavad meie ühiskondlikku olu? Ja kui mõni kirjandusteadlane seda tõepoolest usub, siis ta peab ka uskuma, et tal endal ei ole monopoli kirjanduse mõistmiseks ja seletamiseks, et ta haridus kirjanduse alal, kuigi valgustav nii mõneski aspektis, võib varjata ja hägustada teisi mõtlemisviise; ja seega võib ajaloolastel ja sotsioloogidel olla kirjandusinimestele nii mõndagi õpetlikku öelda"

Ühesõnaga eeskujuliku suhtumisega kirjutatud raamat, mis samas ei tee liigseid lihtsustusi. Kes tahab definitsioone ja "positiivset programmi", siis need on raamatu lõpus lausa alapunktidena välja toodud.
[ps. ing k 'humanist' ei tähenda selles raamatus humanismi või antropotsentrismi, vaid hulka metodoloogiaid]

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bit hesitant to make this an instant favorite, as the author is somewhat self-absorbed and comes over as a bit of a pedantic know-it-all; but after finishing I caved and promoted this excellent treatise to the hallowed favorite-section of my Goodreads account. The long lasting discussion on the 'why' or ' usefulness' of the humanities can be summed up in the phrase; "What's the use of use?". Science is about 'what'; general principles, decontextualized, sub-specie aeternitatis truths with predictive power of its models as its ultimate ruling stick. The humanities are about 'what it's for'; the particular; its epistemological principles are distinct; geared towards the description of, and prescriptions for the human condition; about the living human experience; what it entails, what it could be.

"The difference between the idiographic and the nomothetic, Windelband says, is not a matter of the objects of one’s attention, but of the way one thinks about or treats them: “The same subjects can be the object of both a nomothetic and an idiographic investigation,” so long as one moves from one perspective to another by shifting the frame or timescale of analysis (175)."

"The difference between nomethetism and idiography lies neither in the ontological status of the examples chosen (laws of phenomena versus unique ontological facticity) nor in the absolute relation to a fixed temporality (eternal and invariable versus particular and historical), but in the historical (and thus epistemological) perspective that one adopts toward any given object. In this way, the logic (and philosophy) of scientific investigation moves from a set of decisions about the nature of the objects studied to a work of philosophical epistemology, framed entirely by the apparatus and needs of human culture."

"The difference between cold physics and warm history does not merely reflect a happenstance of scholarly production. Things could not have been the other way around: warm physics is an oxymoron. Because what is at stake, Windelband says, laying out a general philosophical justification for the work of historical research, is a question of the very value of human life."

"The event and the law thus define the limits of philosophy in the modern era. We know from the history of failed attempts to derive “the particular from the general, the ‘many’ from the ‘one,’ the ‘finite’ from the ‘infinite,’ and ‘existence’ from ‘essence’,” Windelband says, that these two juggernauts—the unique and individual historical particular and the reproducible, eternal, colorless rule—constitute the ne plus ultra of human thought. We cannot think beyond them."

"For while the nomothetist makes laws (nomos) and puts or places them, arranges them (tithein), the idiographer treats particulars by drawing them, or writing them down (graphein)."

"Humanistic knowledge, in this conception, is the kind of knowledge that shares properties with its object. This is true not only because both knowledge and object are bound together as historical particulars, but also because the very ethos of humanistic knowledge declares that to understand the object properly requires borrowing from it the fundamental structures by which it will be evaluated, and therefore valued."

"The felt difference between nomothetism and idiographism, the sciences and the humanities, therefore, has to do not with an orientation toward the particular or the general as such, but rather with the relationship between particularity and generality—with analytic scale—as it is established in each discipline’s rhetoric and practice of knowledge-formation—with, that is, a complex of attitudes and signaling mechanisms that describe a particular relation established between the particular and the general, not the precise number of particularities or generalities involved."

[Jeremiah Batson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This analyzes the epistemological, ethical, and heuristic foundations of the Humanities (academic studies including history, philosophy, art, literature, etc.). This book criticizes the over-compensation that occurs in the face of scientific positivism (for example, the discipline of history moving moving toward becoming more "scientific"). Eric Hayot seeks to eliminate the rigid distinction between universalism (general laws, "objectivity", etc.) and particularism (idiography, "subjectivity", etc.) that characterizes humanist scholarship. This involves him, for example, and removing art critism from the shadow of Immanuel Kant's "Critique of the Power of Judgment." This work is completely inaccessible for anyone who is not a career-academic and, therefore, not incredibly useful outside of those circles. Dissapointing.

[LaanSiBB]

Quite interesting book but would be better if provide more historical discussion as back up

[Roy Kenagy]

Folder Made

An approach to defending public libraries against neoliberalism?

Library in Society
Humanities
Precarious Values