  Letters Archive
Reclaiming the
Humanities
When George Steiner spoke at the Center in April he
said that the humanities—a uniquely Western
disciplinary area—have undergone a double trauma. The
rise in the social value of scientific disciplines,
or more specifically, of technological and
quantitative knowledges, and a deep transition within
the humanities provide this double shock. The hope
for recovery, he said, is found in the work of small
groups of people who relearn the arts of reading,
thinking, and interpreting. Such work constitutes a
recovery of values that have been lost in disciplines
that require deciphering more than reading, careful
calculation more than thought, and prediction and
control more than interpreting. And in this recovery
a transition in the humanities toward relatively easy
criticism, loss of fluency in several foreign
languages, and loss of intimacy with culture-forming
texts can be redirected.
It is a difficult redirection to follow. So far has
the word humanities slipped that when the
Center was founded I heard concern that people would
think that it is a center for leftist politics and
radical ethics. I have found in raising funds for the
Center that many people have no idea what the word
"stands for." And in my discipline and, I suspect, in
many of your disciplines, fast reading and writing
are often considered virtues. Speed of critical
judgment is sometimes encouraged, while
profound is associated with unclear,
and reading is assumed to be a skill taught in
elementary school.
When the Center was defined in 1986, Professor
Steiner's remarks were several years into the future.
But its conception was not far removed from the
values that he noted. It is designed to provide
encouragement and space for relatively small groups
of faculty members—and on occasion, students—to work
intensely on topics, texts, and questions that have
primary importance for the participants' scholarship.
The intention of the Center's existence is to bring
together people with common interests so that they
can work out of these interests on a specific issue
or text. They explore relatively new material or go
more deeply into territory that is already familiar.
Different passages of access arise when the
participants are educated in different disciplines.
Different values and perspectives are tested. The
seminar table is there to hold books and notes, to
take occasional pounding, to serve as a gathering
point, and to occasion the work of scholars in
diverse areas who feel the importance of what they do
as well as know how to go about processes of
discovery, elaboration, and articulation. It also
marks a time for common thought, reading, and
interpreting—arts that make novices of us all.
I believe that there is also a suspicion that is
built into this intention. It is a suspicion of what
is journalistic, easily grasped, easily applied,
easily disseminated. This is not a positive
evaluation of what is hard for the sake of its
difficulty. It is a suspicion based on the experience
that creative scholarship is very hard to carry out.
Imaginative questioning, recognition and elaboration
of powerful, yet obscure values, knowledge of words
and syntax, the formation of an idea or image, and
the cultivation of a style appropriate to a given
possibility or state of affairs: in a word, the art
of discernment comes hard if it comes at all. Hence
the Center's emphasis on seminars and small
conferences rather than on large events and broad
coverage of popular themes and controversies.
In such an undertaking the Center goes against a
strong pressure that I believe all colleges and
universities feel, the pressure to appear relevant to
the need of the hour, to make an immediate difference
for society, and to be able to solve problems by
developing new techniques and quick knowledge. Speed,
efficiency, and constantly changing relevance have
their importance. But another kind of importance is
found when highly trained people who teach other
people work for months or years to hear what a text
says, what a body of knowledge has for gotten, or how
poetry and empirical, historical research are
connected beyond the expectation of most poets and
historians.
The Center is affiliated with the patience of
scholars as well as with their passions. It is
intended to encourage both. It embodies the
assumption that reading, thinking, and
interpreting—with their multiple evaluations—are arts
that are easily compromised or lost in the pursuit of
knowledge. It is both the friend and critic of
established learning in the intensity and compass to
which it is dedicated.
For more information, contact the Center's executive director, Mona C. Frederick. [ RPW Center for the Humanities | About the Center | Visiting Fellowship Information | Howard Lecture Series | Seminars and Programs | Programs since 1987 ] [ Vanderbilt University | Site Index | Search Vanderbilt | Help ]
Created by Vanderbilt University
Publications & Design.
Copyright © 1998, Vanderbilt University |