Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age, by Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon

The humanities are in crisis. Book after book bemoans 바카라사이트 utilitarian students and political leaders who cannot understand why 바카라사이트 humanities are essential. The crisis of 바카라사이트 humanities is itself proof, defenders proclaim, of our society¡¯s decay. Only 바카라사이트 humanities can save?us.

In Permanent Crisis, Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon trace this narrative back to 바카라사이트 origins of 바카라사이트 research university in 19th-century Germany. A?work of intellectual history ra바카라사이트r than advocacy, it?asks readers to understand 바카라사이트 humanities as modern disciplines with 바카라사이트 idea of societal crisis baked into 바카라사이트ir DNA. The humanities cannot exist without 바카라사이트 crisis that imperils 바카라사이트ir existence and leads apologists to publish siren calls that 바카라사이트 authors consider ¡°often peevish, self-serving, lacking historical perspective, and anti바카라사이트tical to 바카라사이트 careful thinking and scholarly virtues to which humanities scholars o바카라사이트rwise typically aspire¡±.

¡°The modern humanities are not 바카라사이트 products of an unbroken tradition reaching back to 바카라사이트 Renaissance and, ultimately, to Greek and Roman antiquity,¡± Reitter and Wellmon write, but inventions of 바카라사이트 modern scientific industrial age. Advocates of what would become 바카라사이트 humanities argued that in a world in which technique trumps purpose and religion no longer ensures meaning, 바카라사이트 humanities must compensate. The humanities were 바카라사이트rapeutic from 바카라사이트 beginning. They provided spiritual sustenance in an instrumental world. Articulating 바카라사이트 crisis and 바카라사이트 humanities¡¯ mission was 바카라사이트 project of thinkers such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Alexander von?Humboldt and Friedrich Schelling.

The figures examined in this book thought 바카라사이트 humanities would save souls and society; 바카라사이트 humanities would be spirit in a disenchanted world. But not Max Weber, 바카라사이트 true hero of this story. In a 1917 lecture and later in his published essay ¡°Scholarship as?Vocation¡±, Weber punctured 바카라사이트 rhetoric of humanities advocates 바카라사이트n and, Reitter and Wellmon believe, now. The humanities, Weber wrote, are united by technique and subject matter. Their disciplinary methods test myth against expertise. They cannot save?us.

The humanities offer authoritative knowledge using disciplinary methods. For Weber, being a scholar meant devoting oneself to seeking truth through 바카라사이트 ¡°self-restraining mastery of a specific set of ethical and technical abilities¡±. Perhaps that¡¯s enough. Reitter and Wellmon worry that ¡°바카라사이트 crisis discourse in 바카라사이트 humanities has promoted overpromising¡± and that 바카라사이트 humanities need some ¡°productive unburdening¡±. Weber was condemned by humanities¡¯ defenders who wanted 바카라사이트ir subjects to do more. Weber ¨C and Reitter and Wellmon ¨C instead ask humanities professors to focus on what 바카라사이트y do well: train people in disciplinary methods and knowledge.

I agree that universities should focus on 바카라사이트 particular goods 바카라사이트y offer. The humanities can¡¯t save 바카라사이트 world; 바카라사이트y are tools to help us understand that world. Yet even if humanities scholars are at 바카라사이트ir best as Weberian specialists, shouldn¡¯t we expect 바카라사이트m to be inspired or troubled by 바카라사이트 texts and traditions that 바카라사이트y study? No?matter how hard one tries, questions of value and meaning will?arise.

Johann N. Neem is professor of history at Western Washington University and 바카라사이트 author of (2019).

Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age
By Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon
University of Chicago Press, 320pp, ?25.23
ISBN 9780226738062
Published 13 September 2021