George Steiner - The Humanities Don't Humanize

what is worse in signal instances writers musicians artists and academics sided more or less overtly or by indifference with the agencies of the inhuman Goethe's garden is a few thousand yards from Buchenwald Heidegger lectured on her Dylan software regarded occupied Paris I quote as a perfect for literary and philosophical action end of quote in short when we invoke the ideals and practices of the humanities there is no assurance you touched on this in your most generous introduction there's no assurance that they humanize my sense of the question simply to immense me I use the great phrase of the American poet Wallace Stevens supreme fictions supreme fictions may may enable us to forget the cry in the street I come from a seminar in the afternoon having taught let's say the certain force act of Lear I am completely completely enveloped in the tortures of Cordelia and the cry of Leah never never never never never and somebody's screaming in the street helped me and I don't hear it in some mysterious sense I don't hear this haunts me a second major factor may relate to the democratization of higher education to the accelerating extension of University entry to virtually every order in society yes human potentialities are indeed widespread yes they are far too often suffocated by economic injustice and discrimination ladies and gentlemen the faculties of the human mind its potentialities are not are not infinitely elastic sorry talent let alone genius in the arts is enigmatic ly rare and unpredictable so it is in the gymnastics of the brain the number women of men and of men of men and of women qualified to respond to a chorus in Aeschylus to categorical proof in comment to it we know Duino elegies Rilke may be larger than hierarchical reactionary ideologies assume it is not however limitlessly large the sciences have no hypocrisy about this we do we humanists lie to ourselves continually the sciences say sorry you can't do an equation of the fifth degree sorry goodbye become a banker you don't survive a first-rate science course of the first year if you don't know how to do the damn things they don't block they can't Bluff they're not going to lose that time with bluffing the science is rapidly weed out the inept those tomb elliptical functions or string theory are simply inaccessible there is no egalitarian contract no Democratic agreement with transfinite numbers believe me today the humanities flinch from any rigour in recruitment from any acknowledgment that the enrollments in many spheres of social and literary studies are bloated and vulgarized to a destructive measure it has become almost impossible to get rid of students totally unqualified to take your class has become almost impossible administrative leap oolitic li ideologically our science colleagues have no such problems they know what they're doing and they say sorry this is becoming true and true as the science has become more and more complex li mathematical there may in the final analysis be a structural element in our crisis we noted the co logical origins of our Western universities and that the emancipation from theology has left a kind of emptiness a disabling void Cardinal moves in academic teacher and research were grounded in theological assumptions of authority outdoor eat us that beautiful world of textual precedent and reference of tradition inevitably the secular disciplines transferred developed techniques of understanding communication and former presentment inherited from what are understandably still schooled schools of divinity but the substantive legitimation the underwriting that's a very powerful word to under write something to reinsure the underwriting on which these axiomatic reflexes were founded on now like reproachful ghosts they can no longer provide reinsurance in the beginning was the word the logos from it evolved human istic literacy when that word is no longer audible the ontological foundations of philosophic literary and historical studies abroad

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Length: 6min 37sec (397 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 22 2013