Humanism, the Humanities, and Political Correctness

Abstract

I have been arguing that one of the ironies about current debates regarding the practical utility of a humanities education is that the very courses that most effectively teach students the critical-thinking skills they need—courses that stress theory and methodology—are routinely disparaged by those who claim the humanities have become marginalized and irrelevant. In fact, as we have seen, theory courses can play a central role helping to train students in just the kind of critical-thinking they will need no matter what career they choose. In this chapter I want to expand my discussion of the impact critical theory has had on the humanities by exploring how it has productively transformed the way we think about humanism. While many traditional humanists complain bitterly about the critique of humanism mounted by contemporary critical theory, dismissing it as “political correctness,” and while many theorists themselves present that critique as anti- or post-humanist, I want to argue that theory’s critique of humanism ought to be seen as part of the long history of humanist thought and therefore as part of the ongoing attempt to expand the inclusivity both of its characterization of the human and the rights it advocates. In doing so I do not want to downplay the significance of theory’s critique of traditional humanist thought.

What happens when the guardians of culture reject the authority of the philosophical, historical, and literary traditions that defined a cultural consensus and made its transmission possible? How can we teach when there is no more “we,” meaning a group of people who, whatever their differences, agree to respect a certain inherited body of knowledge and the traditional valuations accorded it? How, indeed, can the humanities exist at all without respect for tradition, since the humanities have always been—at least since the great Renaissance humanists—essentially about preserving and transmitting tradition?

—Peter Brooks, “The Humanities as a Cultural Combat Zone,” 1992¹