Being in the World: Dialogue and Cosmopolis

4. Humanizing Humanity: Education for World Citizenship

59 4. Humanizing Humanity Education for World Citizenship It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. —Albert Einstein This is indeed a momentous gathering: the first “World Humanities Forum,” the first international meeting designed to underscore the importance of the humanities in our world.1 And significantly, the gathering is called and organized by UNESCO, that institutional branch of the world community whose assigned task is the promotion of global learning and education. As we read in the charter establishing that world body (in 1946): “The wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to the dignity of man.”2 To be sure, education whose promotion is entrusted to UNESCO is not limited to the humanities or to what we also call the “liberal arts”; however, one can argue—and I shall in fact argue—that the humanities occupy a crucial and indeed pivotal place in the educational household of humankind. This has, in part, to do with the fact that, in many contexts, the humanities are an endangered species. In many colleges and universities today, programs in the humanities or liberal arts are curtailed if not eliminated in favor of a focus on technology and narrowly professional training.3 Such a shift of focus—I want to argue—comes at a steep price. As we know, our world today is nearly overrun by atrocities: torture, terrorism, genocide . We have new categories in international law to combat these atrocities: we speak not only of war crimes but of “crimes against humanity ” (where the latter term is equivalent both to “humankind” and 60 Being in the World “humaneness”). But how can such crimes be combated or reduced if there is no deliberate cultivation of humanity and humaneness— which is precisely the aim of the humanities? Looked at from this angle, the frequent charge leveled against the humanities is revealed as utterly baseless: the charge that such education is useless or devoid of tangible benefit. Surely, the reduction of slaughter and mayhem would be of immense benefit to humanity at any time. What is correct about the charge—although not intended as such—is the fact that the humanities do not yield an extrinsic benefit and are not cultivated for the sake of such benefit; to this extent, their cultivation—as Martha Nussbaum has correctly noted—is without profit or “not for profit.”4 Philosophically stated, the yield of the humanities is an “intrinsic” good, in the sense that their cultivation—just like the reading of poetry and flute playing—carries its benefit in itself : namely, in the ongoing transformation and “humanization” of the practitioner. This does not mean, of course, that this benefit may not also have broader social and political ramifications; in fact, in my view, these ramifications—like the reduction of mayhem—are part and parcel of the intrinsic good: the humanizing practice of the humanities . In the following, I want to do mainly three things. First, I shall explore the meaning of the “humanities” by turning to the history of the liberal arts and the so-called classification of disciplines in recent centuries. Next, I want to highlight some of the prominent and distinctive features of the humanities and their educational significance. Finally, I want to discuss the crucial contribution the humanities can and should make to the emergence of a properly humane cosmopolis. Humanities and the Liberal Arts The humanities are often also labeled “human studies” because of their primary concern with human life, human conduct and experience . To this extent, Socrates may be called the father of the humanities because of his shift of attention from astronomy and metaphysics to human affairs (ta anthropina), including ethics, politics, and social psychology. In a way, Plato continued this shift with his emphasis on the transformational quality of genuine education, leading from random opinion to reflective insight. From Aristotle we have inherited the important division of human knowledge or inquiry into three main Humanizing Humanity 61 branches: “theoretical” science, “practical” inquiry, and “productive” (or constructive-technical) endeavor. While, in the first type, the scientist observes and analyzes phenomena from a detached or neutral standpoint, practical inquiry requires the concrete engagement of the practitioner in human affairs (particularly on the level of ethics and politics); constructive endeavor, finally, involves the fostering of technical “know-how” useful for instrumental purposes. As can readily be seen, among...