The Battle of the Classics

Abstract

The Battle of the Classics criticizes contemporary apologetics for the humanities and presents a historically informed case for a decidedly different approach to rescuing the humanistic disciplines in American higher education. It uses the so-called Battle of the Classics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a springboard for crafting a novel foundation for the humanistic tradition. The book argues that current defences of the humanities rely on the humanistic disciplines as inculcators of certain poorly defined skills such as “critical thinking.” It finds fault with this conventional approach, arguing that humanists cannot hope to save their disciplines without arguing in favor of particular humanities content. As the lackluster defenses of the classical humanities in the late nineteenth century help prove, instrumental apologetics are bound to fail. All the same, the book shows that proponents of the Great Books favor a curriculum that is too intellectually narrow for the twenty-first century. The Battle of the Classics thus lays out a substance-based approach to undergraduate education that will revive the humanities while steering clear of overreliance on the Western canon. The book envisions a global humanities based on the examination of masterworks from manifold cultures as the heart of an intellectually and morally sound education.

Transcending the Technocratic Mentality through the Humanities

“…As Small (2013, p. 24) points out, 'The humanities concern themselves with human culture, not in the first instance with animal behaviour, or the physical world, or financial systems, or laws, or mathematical models, or the operations of businesses (though many of these things may come within their remit as they are represented in culture). ' Adler (2020) argues for the intellectual, aesthetic and moral value of studying profound works of art, philosophy, literature and religion. Through these texts, students are to be encouraged to reflect on major questions of life.…”