These days that question tends to get turned around. But this is the title of one of Stanley Fish’s op-ed pieces for The New York Times, January 6th, 2008. He concludes as follows:

Teachers of literature and philosophy are competent in a subject, not in a ministry. It is not the business of the humanities to save us, no more than it is their business to bring revenue to a state or a university. What then do they do? They don’t do anything, if by “do” is meant bring about effects in the world. And if they don’t bring about effects in the world they cannot be justified except in relation to the pleasure they give to those who enjoy them. 

To the question “of what use are the humanities?”, the only honest answer is none whatsoever. And it is an answer that brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instrumental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good.

In my experience, at least 90% of humanities faculty would generally agree with this. As a faculty we are strongly opposed to any notion of “instrumentalism,” and we are quite stolid in our assertion that the humanities are useless, except for the purposes of self-replication.

Admittedly it can be interesting to observe the contortions of cognitive dissonance that are required to both assert that one’s work is aligned with the goals of social justice while also saying that it is not instrumental. But in the end, like humans in general, humanists are only of use to themselves. And most people concur with our self-assessment, though perhaps for different reasons.

That said, Fish’s argument relies upon separating the humanities as a discipline from the humanities as a set of departments and employees in an academic institution. Unlike the humanities, humanities departments and humanities faculty definitely do things. What do they do?

1. They cost money.
2. They deliver courses and grant degrees.
3. They take up physical space.
4. They publish research.
5. They go to lunch.

And so on. The humanities, whatever that is, may not be instrumental but humanities departments and faculty certainly are. They/we are instruments of the university and academia. We serve functions. So while the humanities themselves have no value whatsoever beside self-perpetuation, we do have value, which is why there may be legal consequences if you try to kill me, and we do do things, like breathe.

A senior colleague was telling me today that in the corporate world “soft skills” are now called “power skillz” (I don’t know for a fact that they spell it with a Z, but I’m hoping).

What are power skillzz? Rhetoric. They’re rhetoric. How do I know? Because anyone talking about power skillzzz has 100% been rhetricked by somebody. The standard blah, blah goes on about how the humanities teach soft skills power skillzzzz. The “how” is by osmosis or really by accident because very few humanities faculty would knowingly permit students to learn anything useful in their courses. Such an experience is anathema to the humanities themselves.

Of course I have no issue with teaching rhetoric as a practical art. To the contrary I am all for it, though you have to figure out how to do that in the emerging cognitive media ecology. However I see that as only partly falling within the auspices of the humanities. Just as rhetoric preceded the Academy, it also exceeds it, especially as a practical art, a liberal art, as would have been said a millennium ago. And especially exceeds the humanities as it pertains to digital culture.

The same humanities faculty who reject the notion of doing work that is useful for anyone but themselves also tend to reject the idea that the digital world is worth studying at all. As I’ve said before, the proverbial alien came down to Earth and read the titles of the humanities courses at your institution, they could learn a lot of things about how we understand and organize ourselves. They would not have any idea that the internet exists. The humanities are something like the Amish in this regard.

And of course people are allowed to approach the world this way. They are also allowed to fail as a result of their choices and actions.