Introduction to Humanities

Humanities -- What are they?

• They are studies of human attempts to understand our relationship to ourselves, to others, to our past, to the future, to nature, and to God.
• “When we reflect on the changes in our lives, when we recognize some of the things we love about the world, and when we resist loss and death with all our strength--we are participating in the humanities. All adults think and choose; all adults reflect and wonder. The humanities address our deepest contemporary concerns.” (Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist)
• “Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: what does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world in which irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope and reason. (Report of the Commission on the Humanities)
  • History
  • Art
  • Philosophy
  • Music
  • Literature
  • Architecture
  • Dance
  • Film

When did they big begin?

• 1250 A.D. --In Verona and Padua, there began a rediscovery of the total culture of classical antiquity: literature, history, rhetoric, ethics, politics. Humanism stressed the earthly fulfillment of humans rather than only seeing earth as a preparation for paradise.

Why study them?

• “Knowledge and skills alone cannot lead humanity to a happy and and dignified life. Humanity has every reason to place the proclaimers of high moral standards and values above the discoverers of objective truth. What humanity owes to personalities like Buddha, Moses, and Jesus ranks for me higher than all the achievements of the inquiring and constructive mind.” (Einstein)
• "It is not enough to teach man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine, but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he—with his specialized knowledge—more closely resembles a well-trained dog. . . .Premature specialization on the ground of immediate usefulness kills the spirit on which all cultural life depends, specialized knowledge included." (Einstein)

Greek Models

• Venus de Milo
• Renaissance Humanism: Michelangelo: Bacchus, God of Wine, and sketch of a torso
• Sandro Botticelli: The Birth of Venus

When did they big begin?

• Pico della Mirandola (1463-94) wrote the Oration on the Dignity of Man, a kind of manifesto of humanism. He put these words into the mouth of God’s character: “We have made you neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honor, as though the maker and molder of yourself, you may fashion yourself in whatever shape you shall prefer. . . . You shall have the power, out of thy soul’s judgement, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine.” (contrast with St. Augustine’s idea of will)

Renaissance Humanism

• Humanism is a contrast to the medieval Christian view of humans as sinful and depraved. Humanists praised humans as God’s highest creation, capable of learning and creativity.

Renaissance Art

• Titan: Madonna of the Cherries

Renaissance Art - Perspective

• Healing of the Cripple by Masolino
• School of Athens by Raphael
• Ognissanti: Madonna (Medieval)
• Leonardo da Vinci: Madonna of the Rocks

Renaissance Humanism

• A humanist was a student of Greek and Roman literature, history, rhetoric, and ethics. These subjects comprised studia humanitas, “the course that made one human.” In such studies, scholars reconciled Christian beliefs with the moral teaching of the ancients. They challenged the medieval notion that the material world contained only temptation and evil; instead, they glorified the beauty and order in nature.

Humanities: Why study them?

• “Where does one acquire wisdom? Courses in wisdom are not listed in college catalogs, but there are courses that can nurture the development of wisdom. You can find them listed under the title of humanities.” (Willard C. Butcher, Chairman, The Chase Manhattan Corporation)
• “It is never too late to strengthen our character by deepening our awareness of the humanities.” (Willard C. Butcher, Chairman, The Chase Manhattan Corporation)

Theme of this course:

• The history of western civilization is a story of a tension between faith and reason, religion and science.
• That tension is the source of much of our greatness.
• We have moved from a paternalistic view of governing people to humanistic democracy.
• Scientific determinism is the dark smudge on the bright banner of scientific progress.