This paper is an in-depth examination of the cont
This is an excerpt from the paper...
This paper is an in-depth examination of the contemporary study of the humanities in Western society. Unlike most of the other major academic disciplines, the humanities as they are taught and studied at present constitute a relatively recent area of examination. They have also been strongly criticized for what traditionally has been an almost exclusive emphasis on the works of white, European males. This paper seeks to define the scope and goals of the discipline, examine its evolution and future, and consider some of the ways in which a humanities-based perspective is essential to every human life. Because the humanities require historical distance to apply analysis and understanding, they can be particularly useful in clarifying cultural commonalities. The humanities as a discipline focus on the individual human being and the learned behavior that constitutes human culture. This study is therefore complex, controversial, and open to a wide range of interpretations. It is also necessary for cultural progress and individual vitality. The first problem with any examination of the humanities rests in defining the discipline itself. Howard Mumford Jones describes "those vast areas of human knowledge that lie outside the physical, natural, and mathematical sciences, the field we vaguely call the humanities" (v). He contends that "the three great categories of knowledge" are the sciences (including mathematics), the social sciences, and the h
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tural progress is the result of the emergence of "creative personalities who command a following because they are pioneers . . . [creating] dynamic motion along a course of change and growth" (49). The humanities are concerned with the specific individuals who made the creative leaps that impelled their societies to grow - Sophocles, Michelangelo, Rodin, Stravinsky - rather than the lesser-known artists who followed in their wake. The study of the humanities is, to a large degree, the study of individual human beings.
Ultimately, it is also an individual process. Jones writes, "The enduring puzzles of life are not of a public or social nature, but are private and individual, like falling in love, the experience of disaster, or the glory of success. The personal experience of these profound events cannot be quantified" (58). Toynbee sees the personal impact of the humanities as essential to the individual's growth within the larger culture:
A society . . . is confronted in the course of its life by a succession of problems which each member has to solve for itself as best it may. The presentation of each problem is a challenge to undergo an ideal, and through this series of ordeals the members of the society progressivel
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Approximate Word count = 4935
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)
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