Why the Humanities?

from communication center at the university of texas at austin this is university forum air merry meeting place for the wide ranging world of ideas opinion and analysis in this week's programme we feature two speakers who will both address the question why the humanities are first speakers dr charles frankel director and president of the national humanities center we've met to discuss a subject of great practical and professional interest to almost all of us who were here the proper role of government in relation to the humanities in the proper requirements which a humanistic endeavor should meet if they are to be supported by government in addressing myself to this subject i am unhappily a way out of a double disqualification and the first is that i have agreed to be the king or anyone who was

accepted such an assignment with regard to the topic of government in the humanities as clearly placed his own good judgment and a justified suspicion but my second disqualification i console myself i'm thinking is one which i share with most of the people in this audience in the main we're professionals scholars or educational administrator is or officers of government our experience and knowledge that there are gaps but we're probably ahead of most of our fellow citizens nonetheless in the ability to conduct if we choose a knowledgeable discussion of government and the humanities certainly society has assigned us in any case special responsibilities with regard to the nurturing of humanities and the maintenance of a fruitful partnership between government and humanistic community yet it is just for these reasons that we may also suffer from a disability

it is an impediment that goes with our special acquaintance with the issues and special responsibilities towards you it is what the french call a professional deformation we are likely to think since we all we are that the problem of government and the humanities is because you really our problem but if we do we shall be picking a problem up at the wrong hand and seeing it in the wrong proportions that in any rate is the position i should like to invite you to consider me as a possible point of departure for our discussions for what is at stake in a review of the history of government support for the humanities or in an examination of possible future policies it's not the convenience and contentment of congressional committees or endowment officials it is not even if my academic colleagues can ever forgive me the

content of humanistic scars or their cozy feeling when they go to work laws what is at stake is the quality of the environment in which americans live that environment in its most important aspect not as physical aspect of that jews of all what it's imaginative it's moral its aesthetic its intellectual aspects what country offer its members as a diet for the minds and souls they are citizens of a free society they must make their own decisions about the glittering beautiful as about the genuine article on the fate of the useful and useless the profitable and the un profitable but their individual mines their individual schemes of value and stretches of beliefs all largely formed by the social and cultural atmosphere with college education relentless educational

effect in july only from among the alternatives that are institutions public and private make available to them and they must do their choosing within a pricing system that inevitably affects their choices and that has influenced not only by market forces but by public policy in the movement of public revenues no institution within hours certainly not government as the capacity to control this cultural and moral wings are we can be thankful this is so nevertheless any citizen and certainly anyone with public responsibilities or anyone who was the trustee for tradition of civilized achievement must ask what part he or she can play in shaping the environment in which we americans must live and find our being what images of human possibility well american society put

before its members what standards would suggest to them as befitting the dignity of the human spirit or decent balance among human employment will exhibit would speak to americans only of success and celebrity and the quick fix that makes you happy i would find a place from grace elegance nobility and a sense of connection with the whole human adventure what jews will be given to our citizens those who were living and those still to be born and again to them or authoritative institutions of our nation such as schools and also were regarded as of transcendent importance these are the questions that are really at issue it seems to me when we consider place of the humanities on the national scene and the

role that government should play in their care and feeding and they are important enough i think to suggest a light it may be worthwhile to continue to live and struggle with the paradox and challenge of government programs or humanities or should not be possible any longer to deceive ourselves the troubles that have been experienced in making these programs work are inherently they are not caused by foolish administrative errors or for worst impressions or disagreements to grow out of clashes between personalities or political parties such things aggravate tensions that already unavoidably president and that are as intrinsic to the game and as much a part of its funding as tackling is to football the paradox same challenge of government programs in support of humanity's reside in the attempt on the government side spent public money in and accountable manner without

managing or directing or intruding on free intellectual enterprise the paradox and challenges lie in the hope and humanistic community so that it can receive government assistance in solving its problems and that it can still persist in the established habits and attitudes of probably the most highly individualistic of all the departments of intellectual activity of government doing business with humanist humanists meeting in committee with congressman or budget makers are presidential appointees this is the set before ourselves the task of maintaining a modus vivendi between politicians and poets accountants and admirers of camden city bureaucrats and followers of thoreau it is says though we were to take to radical extremes of the american character the capacity to plan and called together the members of the team

and the disposition to lawlessness into an arctic individual so and demand that they make peace mr prophet each really are still it can be done the record supports that judgment in my opinion and if it can be done the achievement is so considerable that we have some reason to look to the future with confidence and i think that the effort is worth continuing yet given what we know other troubles that the regimes the misunderstandings that inevitably sore arms effort it is also natural to ask why bother and there are other reasons to ask that question as well the growing conviction that government has been seeking to do too much the apparently declining confidence fell by humanist themselves in liberal education and not least the dissolution themselves two decades with professors and their doings

whether they give their advice to president in the oval office or from picket lines across history in the present national movement it is not only inevitable but it is necessary and imperative why you see in maintaining so odd relationship as one between the government and the humanities why should government give specifics of corporate directors and why should the humanities claim such support and do they accept any reciprocal responsibilities when they do although i would like to try i shall not seek often hear a general definition of that use the phrase humanities i should like to focus on some curious feature he's noticed by most people look at the words i believe this may help us to see what some of the functions all the amenities are for the humanities are a curious combination of involvement and detachment

the searchers aren't having objectivity in your regrettable personal reason of piety georgia brown and a critique of private passion and commitment some humanistic disciplines display one or another of these tensions were conspicuously and others why hasn't the opinion or they are character born lot of all we human let me begin with a mixture of involuntary action characters the humanistic disciplines might be described maliciously as personable they are that is to say second order to feed on other people's work they would not exist if human beings did not quite independently of these disciplines engaging certain distinctive kinds of activity they worship

they talk rants saying a great beauties of level of retail store and maintain legend build monuments try to discover fresh live by rules make choices between better and worse complain about injustice the puzzle over the mysterious ways of god and man all these activities human beings bring passion engage in them for motives of all all alone or crack or advantage and sometimes out of sheer physical excitement or emotional exaltation they do not engage in them coldly well because it has been proven to them by some abstract intellectual formula that they should do so why is that owens activity there is a tendency in sophisticated

civilizations what a certain turning inwards certain process of feeding on what has gone before the arts like religion mall war or politics develop a professional tradition in the arts for example a playwright pinter novelist employs old myths and symbols already uses them he presents his own ideas and images at one level and then he offers an inquest a commentary on what his predecessors would though saying that resembles your dresses a living organs but he's also speaking to people whose minds programs and senate versions haven't been shaken our company of men and women with whom he feels bound of course the ages people at work the same territory and use the same path marks for their purposes and in speaking to his living artist

is counting on beer having minds and i wrote resumes are virgins i haven't part been shaped by the very mixed images and symbols using our region the artists or writers spontaneity and originality of us products of a biological process in which you're she plays we do and against received heritage the sharpness and depth of the effects that subsequently city she in retelling the story of you guys these are due to this dialect that this persistent double oratorical there's an inherited system of symbols is exploited and remade body art and the humanities humanities are not except incidentally the repositories of the arts or professions techniques for doing things successfully there is a day

of business directly to write poems or fight battles will legislate for society they are the disciplines that comment arm and appraisers such activities that reflect on the meaning and seek to clarify the standards by which they should be job the human a scholar pete catches herself as it were from baton rouge as follows engaged passionate commitment yet his the detachment is not a rejection nor is it a useless for it grows usually from affection from a desire to understand more deeply and appreciate more intensely was around one sense of beauty or or and it contributes and that atmosphere of informed expectation that audience whose sympathies are broader one whose standards are

sophia which every first great talent in every field needs florida humanities babar said no but they also enraged that on which they feed nevertheless it is intelligible humanistic scholars are often resented and seen as killjoy usual troublemakers matters worse they are strange our monocle resistant and seeming to prefer talk in talk about talk straightforward embrace of that which they love thus leeches condemnation of socrates socrates was a critic a philosopher a mere power cynical second order mind effect on other people's vitality took a passionate and turned to gold he made the unconscious conscious therefore separated the great geniuses dionysian

inspiration we turned ages judgment socrates which is a verse one observation about the character you're like scholarship sean however fat out of iraqis that i've given really incomplete do not recognize the inherent danger pham one in which humans carter humanistic scholars who wants a calm disciplined the last physical book offers to detach themselves so completely from the pirate curious they no longer offer commentaries on science all patients rather commentaries on the commentaries on the counter then becomes an exchange of memoranda between members of a closed club lived by taking in one another's laundry and a forgotten the

original business of the book in every human is because there isn't necessary undesirable concentration on refining the ideas and tools which the discipline has developed over the centuries in which it needs to do its work but no one who has ever contributed greatly to humanistic discipline has been without a larger question it is sort of that discipline from outside a social bomb or a religious aggression or intellectual curiosity that was painful for most people have their activities analyze them and joins the second it is also important to see the humanist engaged in these exercises themselves with divided feelings it is their capacity to maintain involvement and detachment equilibrium that is always on trial and it

is the largest societies capacity to tolerate and appreciate such a state of precarious balance gives the measure of its level of civilization it's strange is the fate that as human beings grow more conscious of themselves and what we're doing more self aware or self critical they do not reduce their enjoyment of life they intensify it is the fate that discrimination and chased do not nearly emotions what makes them crash furiously we have what you saw the humanity is what they do and the answer is not there to find because look for a chain of course isn't perfect if we look down the line for a distant it was not as immediate it is in the difference of each individual

experiences he or she knows the background of what's happened fifty he or she has the metaphors and symbols good experience would shape the only example of what the lore and legend of studies and arguments that song baseball contribute to our enjoyment of the game they make the game as anyone can discover our sitting next to someone who is uninitiated these observations take me to a second of the polarity that seemed to me to characterize humans as it is their mixture of concern or an in person or scientific objectivity irresponsible elements of personal idiosyncrasies historians whose works are monuments of the discipline of lucidity given lord acton for example that effort to make sure their sources to evaluate alternative explanations to get the facts straight

connect the stories retell with the principles that applied also to a broader range of human experience qualifies them as a scientific marvel are impaled by an ideologue who has that from which to personal preference prevailing prejudices individual works of the normal yet the work they produce there's zero unmistakable individual market has clearly as the work of dickens mr perkins we can use them with anyone else there is an ultimate pay those in most great works of history its writers will grow you'll see farther than the conventions of his time lawful vision not allowed to speak and be understood by people who live in vastly different

period yet the author never escapes himself for its time reading his word we were not only the independent facts of history in a period or marines mr allen we enter i would not for a moment just a humanistic disciplines are not disciplined do not mean to suggest that they aren't highly expressive or a lyric or a function a big part of where they are what we are no more we are humanistic when this affected what when we're asked to contemplate not only a proposition but the proposal when we hear the human voice on what is being said and humanities sink in the pantry

when they lose a squirrel they no longer was knowledge with a commitment whitehead speaks somewhere up the difference between significant knowledge a knowledge that is in their knowledge which gives is no sense of its bearing on our lives or its connections with the imagery and the pain of human nature destiny one function of humanity's is to green knowledge alive to record it to moral and philosophical use and one way in which humanity service functions is to maintain this are running tension between the personal and the in person we turn now to a more obviously public civic function of urine for almost two hundred years modern readers took place in france and

england and intense debate among scholars and man of letters known as a quarrel of the ancients them aren't the greek and roman writers have been retried what their works to be presented to the european mind as models of achievement and wisdom with artists writers and critics could do no better than to imitate were these ancient personages creators of an extraordinary tradition to be viewed as all already figured we supposed to ask the monitors your life of a civilization was like the light of an end of a jill and that it was the years that came later won a majority here it was letting men and women were marking what the true they stood on the shoulders of their predecessors benefited from the accumulated experience and could see farther than their predecessors would come at the dawn of civilization accordingly it was

incumbent on teachers college and critics of literature history the article last week not to bow down pulling apart of the past matthew arnold characterize the modern age as one that is characterized by a general tendency to criticize or c dispensation in this sense of the great enlightenment was a moderate and was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at the self conscious modernity of power or civilization took shape marnie played a crucial part in the process i offer this example as one among many humanistic disciplines up or curiously for pringles of continuity and change it and rebellion few of these disciplines can be understood to accept as part of the continuing historical tradition they are recruiting problems symbols judgments ranch that come to us on the

past they are among our principal means for maintaining continuity with that and if we do not we are without barriers for the future what you know dynamic and rapidly changing society is it possible to maintain continuity with the past namely by acts of veneration it has to be brought to life that means it has to be interpreted and reinterpret this is a major functions of humanity you cannot underestimate its significant modern world almost by definition is a world in which no knowledge and techniques produce rapidly changing social conditions which in turn produces protectionist changes in human beliefs the coherence the people for being seen things is regularly broke your sense of connectedness was wonderful fun of

unintelligible direction where we're going is disrupted human history scholars are more knowledgeable they are only occasionally mars or a miracle they usually has long scully neighbors what's fueling the effort to find career is to restore a sense of continuity interaction cannot be left only to visionaries or slovenly years or since i made it a newspaperman the leaders of political parties if people with knowledge of philosophy literature history you not take part if people have time specifically set aside for them to permit them to think do not take part holy crap and humanistic scholars have performed this function in the past that you or when jon stewart noted take two examples from victorian england

george saviano oliver wendell holmes jon do we are we know what richard hofstetter an exhibition examples and twentieth century american intellectual history graner sweeping vision when a wrenching event like that indiana takes place we cannot necessarily lose our intellectual moorings we asked even without the help of the russians every pundit and headline writer in the united states it seems in charge of those areas what happened to the country once solve social problems what new social elements explain this car but in the early sixteenth century and munster in westphalia it was established a community based on a combination of theocracy and communism we sought shelter suggestion gender or re conquest of the world and when the surrounding world descended on it its inhabitants and frightening numbers are accepted the mandate that they must

die there are many other are now in the middle ages in ancient rome in the cultures of desperate people to have never known technology or capitalism well historically world you're surprised sociologist this tool is a function of humanity if it was in touch with the past the deepest in touch not only with the changes in humans what would the reverses well it may not be comforting to be reminded that are progressively to some of the old fashioned forms of letters he didn't want me it saves us from that special version of recent crime which holds that we learned when we americans no matter what we do or evo always knowable and bigger and better and more original i don't think that i've said all that can be said about the uses of

newark's they're certainly not said where could be fair about the many abuses which mayoral role i've been talking about them and that we asked why the house of representatives why the oil industry why water wine and women women want a pungent little league we cannot mean to consider these things at their words they're backed replace their awkward socially the humanities of the activities in the law we're doing here is to say that it doesn't need ironing sense of bureaucratic sell a set of purposes for itself which honest and reflective men and women and credit foreigners wanting to record uses government

that is needed they can be little doubt that the pressures of the presents to go through the educational marketplace of the current economic situation are all adverse to help the evolution of humanistic studies in many ways to the existing structure of the universities is at her we are in grave danger of losing a generation of talent that will be forced into other occupation now the federal government of course cannot quote humanities by itself even in recent years its financial contributions are remarkable as compared to the contributions of state and municipal governments and private libraries museums and individual philanthropist should we imagine that the financial aspect of the problem is growing from the point of view of the federal budget to be among those who believe in fiscal question

no what i wished to argue that that part of the federal budget the vote is sort of humanity's is the only portrait should not rigidly but on a comparative reduce the amount spent by the federal government are not large and he is not here yet what the federal government does will be critical we're probably not in a period of growth for the humanities will be diminished if they do not receive that extra support from the government which they are unlikely to receive anywhere else and they will be diminished and not only in saws not really is what is most important their own sense of themselves and the apple pencil in the world nothing has happened on a greater importance in the history of american humanistic scholarship and the invitation of the government to scholars to think in a more public fashion

and empty the presence of their fellow citizens in mind it would be tragic if that invitation will now made less certain or where we were in the end i developed confidence freshness original it only when it is fed not by its own professional concerns along what might the doings of human beings outside the study those rules of humanity's harboring material for new initiatives gaza been persuaded that they really where our of the larger community of their prose they are also made the largest contributions to their own discipline i don't like the rally jon lauck james madison i'm not remembered for the intellectual recluse is indeed there was one thing above all which a government can do for you

so you can give them a larger better informed more demand in order an audience that expects them to write well and i think well and i think along with it a public in a separate part human his guards much themselves a lot more dr charles frankel president and director of the national humanities center addressing the question why the humanities next dr joseph the deputy chairman of the national endowment for the humanities what's the type of the chairman the national guard for the humanities has been celebrating our field of endeavor and trying to convince public officials are also dozens of the nation i do not find that a difficult task in the desert or privilege as well as a responsibility by will assume that we're not here discussing the future the humanities in america because celebration is now at the top of our agenda we are here

because of a shared sense of what many have described as crisis store or difficulty the crime sense of being out of the humanities as an endangered species ah which is a quite clear if one looks at the romance that while problem so many of our libraries and other resources for many of you here who can speak more knowledgeably about those particular problems alike and so let me free mike focus down however to what i think is the heart of the question what threatens the humanities most today is their fragile relationship or our sense of their fragile relationship to the rest of our social network to a life in america they point out that the humanities have taken many different social forms over a long history former pastor the humanities had been redefined in response to changing intellectual currents those of us are concerned with the health of humanistic inquiry today are they then need to

understand its relationship to the new social and intellectual condition for a time i will asks for just three of those changes in the intellectual and social conditions of our nation i suspect most of you would have candidates for the pressing challenges beyond the ones i suggest the mine would be first the growing complexity of choice and decision our daily lives suddenly the consequences of increasing specialization technical sophistication or areas of knowledge and third something has been touched upon every session and this these conversations the growing awareness of cultural diversity and heroism in american society it is the first of these which i think has been the subject of medicine physicians the growing complexity of choice and decision i will cry just briefly summer summarize or to save time intensive than leave for the record my own more lengthy comment i'm simply referring here to what i think has been clearly documented

why social scientists and others that we were aware of it and then you go in anyway the fact that despite only the protections of a kind of sameness and normally which would characterize modern mass it lives of most people have been opened up to a tremendous are a range of choices that's one reason why we use this new word and even deceive and see ourselves and they have the kind of freedom to choose is we put a lifestyle and options it's the whole set i'll work of modern society in which we are confronted with the necessity of making and eve sensing the freedom broad range of opportunities and choices with respect to our water when it clears on the corresponding level the awareness of that with respect to sell it i think that president johnson was the first president clearly well

confront this problem and indian in social and public philosophy time to provide some leadership as we began to think about the fact that as a nation becoming aware of ourselves with a rich civilization and many strands and resources which had belonged to contribute to this great tapestry which is our society we were in a sense now having to the five men interpret the very nature and definition of our life and history and early one finds in his speeches and leah nineteen sixties are bringing together of this long problem of the search for social justice with this broader understanding of what he called in some of those addresses to quell questions of the quality of life and of the nature of our cultural life together and it's that that opportunity in the back a partial

ought to make these kinds of decisions the awareness about freedom that makes the op ed the kinds of resources in our history and in literature there are for interpretation and for choice borrow from which is really to feel in essence la luna by the humanities was so important not the humanities make those decisions early any easier or that they smooth the transactions of daily log maybe the value has never really instrumental or pork or making decisions a year public in our social or personal decisions easier the humanities often make a more complex to sometimes our greatest need and reveal that these actions however have dialogues and those choices have analog antecedents before us and helped us to manage a self professed importance on the president some time make us all about home were a more honest and our expectations all of which are not bad cop traditions an actual water perhaps the greatest gift is to help assembly on clutter the crucial aspects of our lives your

lives are filled with choices and the range of alternatives sometimes are distressingly narrow we are bombarded with advice for we are nation in the dissent pointed out the last couple of weeks with individual searching sense of detachment from established or traditions and yet in the process of reinterpreting one and choosing and fusing together well heritage we now understand that those kinds of decisions the decisions in the sense of a great culture and so that was my first point is that is that it's that particular personal situation in public sector and social situation of the society wow that to which the americans as a feel of learning from starship never particularly of speech second change i've mentioned follows upon pursuit of ordinary lives activities appear to be increasingly complicated and how much more cell has become specialized work

which many amazing day for our livelihoods in the sense of the intellectual area of your field of knowledge like a critically the professional work in every professional occupational category complex technical language and simple systems are rumors be with a lifetime's of most of us increasingly more complex which by definition are outside of the layman's per view from wind diagrams and blueprints to environmental impact statements an ocean romeo of chemical engineering for the quantity of calculations in history department will from the statistical production of the air traffic control or construct was politics of the literary critic abstraction jardine intricate puzzle making really dominated so much of the world of work and of mahler emanuel's of instruction telling us how to operate all the life of heavy equipment we can lay our hands on a code looks to find quick answers to all our problems we have telephones agreed forcing calculators a computer consoles who weren't so that we

are actually out because we come to this kind of period of intense specialization is there a place for the humanities admits a kind of explosion of technical specialization only place i think that i mean he critical part of the public in the wage of the profession speech language and what's often incapable being translated into another what role is there for the traditional language of the humanities or muskrat language itself become of that has in some cases some areas exercise in the time we have today we can hardly begin to respond to this complex set of issues that are raised by the impact of specialization and technical language upon vocational ed thorp little like a public park just one response was in farming and making more explicit legitimate limits many of these new artificial languages and so called gollum orientations i find it reassuring that there are actually some books on the sociology of management in which the authors admit since for processing problems

may have their limitations or the corp executives and managers finally many cases after alliance in some measure on things the asperger qualities are called experience and intuition and wisdom but these are sellers describe in terms of opportunities for reflection for deeper sort of education in the midst of the work process itself indeed they're often presented his temper obstacles which can and will be cleared away as the systems approach is perfect inevitable humans are dubious about these pretensions we sense that the edge of every discipline their rise not won more technical are more technical problems with questions of value and chores using the provinces of the humanities lead to clarify them as our field of interest the limits of the statistical computations of the air traffic controllers charge for example there are definitions of risk which are fundamentally moral and political not to support technical at the boundary of the

historians analysis of the reasons for choosing between rebellion or royalty and seventeen seventy six or eight and sixty one there is a vision of the human soul as a political animal which cannot be caught robert merritt of the accumulation of more evident because the humanities always really a phenomenon of modern life elements of a long tradition that helped integrate our distinctive technical specialist at their best they can make every scientist technician an expert practitioner in our society feel more himself or herself are over product of the humanistic tradition which we all share this task i think are more in the training of apprentice scholars and teachers there's a great educational challenge before teachers and the americans during free must explicate to communicate a sense of the social world of value and meaning which surround the practical realm of expertise or squatting way students of the united nations because the cultural traditions or preserve not only in the work of critics and scholars were also an immature or intellectual property of every day life the

process of technical specialization which i refer is one which threatens to frighten our language our culture and finally our social order it's critical they are for the humanities player rolf finding and enjoying the issues of me and purposely need specialized area of knowledge and then stressing in relationships of those issues then there's a third major shift in american water challenge that i've described in the last one we want to speak to has to do with our changing sense of america as a nation of nations far three and not melting pot pose of many diverse ethnic racial and religious traditions for onetime we feared that deferring some legitimacy on the diction of black americans for respecting the child rearing traditions of american indian or keeping alive the courtship customs of various ethnic groups would somehow destroy our culture it was subtly waiting for congress to emphasize the historical antecedents of

our dominant cultural form post enlightenment liberal protestant anglo saxon culture last thing i would do is to denigrate the classic traditions of art and thought audrey is much more important to me than jeremy ben sims game of push them respect for the classical tradition was not really well served for many decades in this country by the hardy scholarship which dominated the humanities until after world war two the tradition which defined it as once was the finest wine and genteel learn as blind at us from seeing the spiritual complexity for example a pre enlightenment cultures or be acetic splendor of african or asian peoples so what is it it right today we're beginning to widen our definition of culture they comprise the depth diverse traditions of the american people for our scholarship particularly in linguistics literature urban family history another field has been immeasurably stimulated by this recognition of

diversity want to deny or minimize the fragmenting effects of this heightened awareness of american journalism however i think that's what the last couple of days of reminded me we're now is now beginning to dawn upon many others what is beyond the celebration of our diversity which was so critical as a kind of rebellion or many other siblings to claim that i get from the mountain as many others did from traditions that were really never a part of the kind of history were taught now we're beating ask what is beyond that once we have a sore throat or over obama i'd argue that the humanities concert to rejoin the fragments of technical jargon by stressing the universality of the questions that the edges injunctions of the disciplines the perhaps more a more crucial question is this will and the humanities play a role and overcoming fragmentation and a culture composer sharply differing traditions their culture which is only laid come to a recognition of its rich rich diversity if anything i think the past

year of more typical is harder i believed find the disjunction reach of our mother tongues what is the ways our local information or cultures taught us to think and the various languages and humanities again however recognizing disjunction does a prelude to discovering common ground even the most private and intimate issues our sense of intervene and solitude are expressed and the traditions of the humanities in terms that are accessible to others quite interesting background that's where the humanities can be a source of jazz genuine public line which we mean by this term we begin begun to you lose your record three changes our region changes in borneo which i could refer to the exercise of or what i can only call mindfulness in america the increasing complexity of ordinary lives decisions and socialization fragmentation specialization of technical forms of action in communication

diversification of our cultural i've made very precarious our golden crusted sense of what the humanities were each of these transformations is a challenge to be all commonplace tradition whereby our society and thrown certain conventions we're far apart as being authoritative for all they are new ways of improving our lives and new products and new ideas possibly dying on finalists we all intimidated by specialization we no longer existed complicated technical statements be translated into language which every citizen can understand and so there is a particularly resources of whirring teaching scholarship and the infield we called nana i'm troubled of our look at the landscape of humanistic scholarship today for the difficult financial and organizational columns which i mentioned earlier in which we apply london these days i'm even more troubled at the growing insularity of many scholars and teachers

for literary criticism there's much talk these days of what some people also referee geology for more protection as if the novel or a sauna for only a set of internally consistent signs and symbols that bear no relation of a shared universe we all experience and sometimes called the real world which a debate the wisdom of that approach to literature criticism i'm concerned scholar of protests so much your relevance of their work for the rest of our culture and philosophers insist upon an apt use technical marvel cripples our peoples and when historians discovered a pass to be isolated in our playground far away from our contemporary concerns or problems or intellectual and their economic landing in those cannot be separated experience in the last fifteen years has shown us i think that in the bush years and lean years when the humanities are better supportive they are free to be more generous free to be more open to the contributions of women and minority groups and those well who

are struggling now the justice who will write speak you heard because it is going to be a more difficult period florida there's no repercussions under pressure on hard to work and he rides to work they're more or more generous more humane more just and wiser word i'm proud of the role of national which national endowment for the humanities far beyond my rivals or even merging liberal spirit humanistic in court over the last thirty years with my colleagues like in that myself to working hard to maintain and expand in that role well i'm convinced that the humanities have much to say to the complexities of american life of everyday life in modern america specialization of our work and our knowledge into the diverse traditions of our people i think we can muster this hilarious can reconstitute a privilege order of language and me oh really

but the humanities cannot survive is the ornament of a privilege social class for the pastime of the provisional electoral you prove themselves in our lives that we have sort of the path the extent that they help make sense of all that that's in the richness of our world it really opportune share in the city dr joseph the dumping chairman of the national endowment for the humanities you addressed the question why the humanity earlier in the program we heard dr charles frankel president and director of the national humanities center of speakers in this programme were participants in a recent symposium on government and the humanities sponsored by the lbj presidential library and the university of texas at austin you've been listening to university for gorham is produced at k u t fm and is distributed by communication center university of taxes or

arapahoe mr horton radio network