Well, it looks like Porphyrogenitus has written a great post.
Critical Mass and I have written on what could be considered the deterioration of humanities into a Marxist ideological travesty of the liberal tradition of free thinking at various institutions of higher learning.
Porphyrogenitus seems to be convinced that humanities lead to a complete education. My question is: can the humanities throw off its recently acquired philosophy of non-dissent, rigid rules of "proper" discourse, etc., and go back to its liberal roots?
NOTE: I've got better things to do than erase the childish, immature, psychotic, obscene comments from looney Roger Weidner and his gang of illiterate morons, so just put your opinions at the Johnhays.net Forum.
Yep, that's the question. And that's the goal worth striving for. The consequences of failure, or the consequences of deciding the subject matter is as worthless as many of its current practioners and tossing the whole thing out (which to me is the same as failure), would be dire.
I recommended in an earlier post in this week's series that people read VDH's Carnage & Culture, but from what some people are saying they don't think they (or anyone else) would learn anything or discover anything from the study of books like that.
Well, I dissent.
The question is whether we can get from where we are now in these spheres to where we should be. Pretty much a humanities question, that. {*_+}
Posted by: Porphyrogenitus at October 31, 2003 07:21 AM | Link
I studied the classical liberal arts at an undergraduate school* whose motto is "I make free adults out of children by means of books and a scales." That is, learning the bases on which Western humanities AND laboratory sciences rest is the basis for being responsible adults in a democracy.
What the wise people who taught me know, that the post-modernists don't, is that is is possible to step back from one's culture to see it clearly without becoming alienated from it.
My husband and I, both graduates of this program, both went on to do fine on the 'other side of the aisle' -- I as a software pro who now teaches computer science & he as a PhD in Operations Research with a background in space-related national security systems who also now teaches at the college level.
*St. John's College, Annapolis MD
Posted by: rkb at October 31, 2003 12:12 PM | Link