Helen Small
Auteur van The Value of the Humanities
Over de Auteur
Helen Small argues that if we want to understand old age, we have to think more fundamentally about what it means to be a person, to have a life, to have (or lead) a good life, to be part of a just society. What did Plato mean when he suggested that old age was the best place from which to practice toon meer philosophy, or Thomas Mann when he defined old age as the best time to be a writer-and were they right? If we think, as Aristotle did, that a good life requires the active pursuit of virtue, how will our view of later life be affected? If we think that lives and persons are unified, much as stories are said to be unified, how will our view of old age differ from that of someone who thinks that lives and/or persons can be strongly discontinuous? What constitutes a fair distribution of social resources between young and old? And should recent developments in evolutionary theory have any impact on our answers to these questions? toon minder
Werken van Helen Small
Literature, Science, Psychoanalysis, 1830-1970: Essays in Honour of Gillian Beer (2003) 6 exemplaren
Wuthering Heights 1 exemplaar
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Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Geslacht
- female
- Nationaliteit
- New Zealand
- Geboorteplaats
- New Zealand
- Woonplaatsen
- Wellington, New Zealand
England, UK - Opleiding
- Queen Margaret College, Wellington, New Zealand
Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
University of Cambridge - Beroepen
- professor of English Literature
- Organisaties
- Oxford University (Pembroke College)
- Prijzen en onderscheidingen
- Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford University
Leverhulme Research Fellowship
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- 7
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- 76
- Populariteit
- #233,522
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- 3.9
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- 1
- ISBNs
- 20
Fortunately most of the other sections have been written in a general tone. The author does possess broad learning and a good touch for clear argumentation, but she exhibits it much too reluctantly and always prioritizes earlier literature over her personal arguments. Her analysis actually becomes unintentionally ironic towards the end. After all, what could possibly be a better way of demonstrating the disutility of the humanities than a humanities book which defends the humanities with bizarre sentences such as this one from p.139: "We do not have to endorse Hardt and Negri's 'inebriate' vision of 'power through [political] faith' (I quote Tom Nairn), to claim, contra Baier, that the humanities might be, as it were, a large collective gadfly, for example by reminding present-day society of inconvenient but pertinent facts about its past and its cultural heritage."
So if you're looking for a defense of the humanities I would not recommend this book. Even so, its main points are valid and they are summarized in clear language on pages 174-175: (1) humanities do a distinctive kind of work which produces qualitative understanding of knowledge inextricable from human subjectivity, (2) the humanities assist in preservation and curation of cultures and the skills for interpreting them, (3) they contribute to individual happiness, (4) humanist faculties are centres for higher study and practice of the skills of critical reasoning, debate and evaluation of ideas, and (5) humanism has value for its own sake.… (meer)