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Rescuing the humanities from itself

By John Armstrong - posted Friday, 11 February 2011


I was recently talking to an engineering student and the conversation happened to turn to ethics. I was surprised by how confidently she handled the topics: she had a well-informed view about utilitarianism and its strengths and weaknesses. Having, in the past, often taught introductory courses on ethics, I was rather envious of her lecturer. I feared that few of my students would have come away with such a good education. How had she come to understand all this? She explained that she’d been watching a series of lectures on YouTube by the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandal. The lectures were so good, she said, it was like watching a brilliant documentary.

There’s no reason why all lecturing should not be provided in this way. A hundred or so superb communicators could take over the whole of that task. The more intimate aspect of education - the cultivation of capacities - would then be the primary focus of teaching.

The stakes are high. We need the humanities to flourish. But this will require reformation: the humanities need to become more eloquent, more focused on other people, more adept at facing competition, more connected to the economy, more sympathetic to aspiration.

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If we will it, this is not the twilight of the humanities: it is early morning. We have to shake off our dogmatic slumbers.

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This is an edited extract from Griffith REVIEW 31: Ways of Seeing (Text Publishing) www.griffithreivew.com.



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About the Author

John Armstrong is Senior Advisor, Office of the Vice-Chancellor, at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of several books on art, love and beauty, including most recently In Search of Civilisation (Penguin, 2009).

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