Abstract
It has become commonplace to highlight that the humanities are undergoing a severe, acute and decisive crisis. The claim is that the crisis is the outcome of a longstanding process of decay and decline. Consequently, the humanities are facing a period of intense difficulty and danger threatening their very existence. This perception is voiced by various defenders of the traditional values of the humanities.
If the human sciences seek to hold onto what is deemed essential to the human and particular to the humanities, they risk missing out on the knowledge gains, dynamism and societal relevance that an exchange with other sciences can provide. With the withdrawal to the humanities’ ‘essential’ identity, the humanities cut themselves off from participating in and contributing towards the vast majority of current university activities.
This is all the more pertinent because the legacy of the humanities is not quite the carefully handed-down ‘silver heirlooms’ that the proponents of the ‘traditional’ humanities claim to polish. Since the foundation of the university and the humanities in an anthropocentric structure of knowledge that gathers around the human, the inception has been persistently contested. The initial centripetal foundation of the university has been followed by a continued opposing centrifugal movement experienced as an ongoing but productive crisis. As the disciplines at the faculty of arts have continually given rise to new branches of science and knowledge, the human sciences have had to continually reformulate and reassert themselves.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Said (2004): Humanism and Democratic Criticism.
- 3.
Nussbaum (2003): Cultivating Humanity, p. 9.
- 4.
Nussbaum (2003): Cultivating Humanity, pp. 9, 112.
- 5.
Nussbaum (2010): Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, p. xiv.
- 6.
Nussbaum (2011): Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach.
- 7.
- 8.
For a more developed discussion of the related notions of critique and crisis, see Röttgers (1975): Kritik und Praxis: Zur Geschichte des Kritikbegriffs von Kant bis Marx, as well as Koselleck (1973): Kritik und Krise. Eine Studie zur Pathogenese der bürgerlichen Welt and Raffnsøe (2017): ‘What is Critique? The Critical State of Critique in the Age of Criticism’.
- 9.
Goethe (1795–96/1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, p. 534.
- 10.
Goethe (1795–96/1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, p. 542.
- 11.
‘Ist eine Krise nicht Krankheit?’ Goethe (1795–96/1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, p. 542.
- 12.
Goethe (1795–96/ 1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, p. 542.
- 13.
Goethe (1795–96/ 1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, pp. 542–43.
- 14.
According to Canguilhem (1943/1966/1972/1992): Le normal et le pathologique, health is to be understood as the ability to overcome and reassert existence in a new form in the face of pathologies and other challenges. If one follows this lead, the history of the modern university and the human sciences is to be understood not only as an ongoing productive crisis, but also as an ongoing reassertion of health. Cf. also Raffnsøe (2013): ‘Pathology and Human Existence’.
- 15.
When discussing his own book Foucault, Deleuze also takes refuge in the notion of portraiture to specify the ambition of the monograph. Deleuze stresses how he ‘felt a real need’ to write this philosophical portrait of Foucault’s thought after his death: ‘When someone that you like and admire dies, you sometimes need to draw their picture. Not to glorify them, still less to defend them, not to remember, but rather to produce a final likeness you can find only in death that makes you realize “that’s who they were.” A mask or what he himself called a double, an overlay [une doublure]. Different people will find different likenesses or overlays. But in the end, he is most like himself [c’est lui qui se ressemble enfin] in becoming so different from the rest of us [en devenant tellement dissemblable de nous]. It is not a question of points I thought we had in common, or on which we differed. What we shared was bound to be rather indefinite [informe], a sort of background [un fond] that allowed me to talk with him. I still think he is the greatest thinker of our time [le plus grand penseur actuel]. You can do the portrait of a thought [le portrait d’une pensée] just as you can do the portrait of a man [portrait d’un homme]. I have tried to do a portrait of his philosophy. The lines or touches [traits] are of course mine [viennent forcément de moi], but they succeed [ils ne sont réussis] only if he himself comes to haunt the picture [que si c’est lui qui vient hanter le dessin]’ (Deleuze (1990): Pourparlers, p. 139/ Deleuze (1995): Negotiations, p. 102).
- 16.
‘Der echte Schüler lehrt aus dem Bekannten das unbekannte zu entwickeln’ (Goethe (1795–96/ 1997): Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, p. 533).
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Raffnsøe, S. (2024). An Alleged Crisis of the Humanities. In: A History of the Humanities in the Modern University. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46533-8_2
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