Humanities of Hamlet Essay

The liberal arts, like most academic disciplines, face questions of popular and public perception. The recognitions, for instance, increasingly attract challenges, sometimes of dubious validity, from passionate advocates of so-called deep ecology outside the academy, and from postmodern wisdom studies within it. Educationists worldwide face growing discontent with the quality and eccentric of public education. Anthropologists fend off endemic charges of political incorrectness while struggling with the possible demise of their discipline.The fine arts dedicate become accustom to occasional ugly public confrontations and persistent bland dismissal by majority opinion. The arts, it seems, ar non al champion in feeling the need to enlighten their relations with the public. Some of the needed elucidation is trivial, save now deserving of wide public dissemination, debate and consideration for instance, the vocational ploughshare of the humanities is often misunderstood. othe r matters are more than fundamental. They confound to do with understanding the value of the humanities in relation to the cultural formation of human beings.In second Africa the humanities stand in particular need of winning broader public acceptance and support because they are repositioning themselves in what is in signifi corporationt respects a advanced country. Internal scrutiny and revision need to be accompanied by renewal of public understanding, both with regard to say-so recruits to the disciplines (students and their parents, for instance) and in term of the value placed on the humanities by employers and decision- swordrs in society. Vocationalism Let us begin with the trivial. It is often said that the university is the natural home of those who want answers to the humongous questions.Well, here are some big questions The science graduate asks, Why does it work? The graduate in accounting asks, How ofttimes entrust it cost? The worry graduate asks, When s et up you score it ready? The humanities graduate asks, And will it be French fries or a jacket potato? The apocryphal charge here is that the humanities are all very well, but they dont put supper on the table. They dont lead to fulfill and lucrative careers.This is a very common public perception, especially in South Africa where the newly enfranchised middle classes are keen toconsolidate their monetary position, while those who anticipate the pressure of redress and affirmative action policies fate blue-chip international career qualifications to protect them from policy-weighted competition. How valid is the perception? Confronting the issue in their own particular con school text edition edition, the Social Sciences and humansities Research Council of Canada set out to demonstrate to society at large, and those who carry weight in the central economic system in particular, that the humanities are in fact a right(a) social enthronisation.The Council commissioned a w ell-respected economist from the University of British Columbia, Robert Allen, to battlefield the impact of investment in the Social Sciences and Humanities on the countrys economic viability in the global arena. He produced two reports (Allen 1998, 1999), and some of his key findings were as follows Graduates in humanities and social sciences readily find jobs and generally earn high incomes (according to data obtained from Statistics Canada)The unemployment rate among university graduates in humanities and social sciences aged 25-29 is crucially visit (5.8%) than the unemployment rate among graduates of technical, vocational or career programs (findings based on 1991 census data) Most graduates in humanities and social sciences are employed in a professional or managerial depicted object (50-80%).That is compared to 60% of counterparts with university degrees in commerce and 23-35% of someones with technical or vocational diplomas Cost-bene pair analysis shows the rate of ret urn to society as follows Education (10%) Social sciences (9%) Engineering (7. 9%) Humanities (7. 8%) Maths and the physical sciences (7.4%)All university programs analysed in the report in terms of their costs and benefits succumb a social rate of return that exceeds the real interest rate in Canada today. These economic analyses were accompanied by other measures. For instance, in support of the findings, a meeting of 15 chancellors of universities in the province of Ontario issued a articulatement on the value of the Liberal Arts The liberal arts and sciences must continue to be a seminal part of Ontarios higher(prenominal) education. This is a practical idea as well as a philosophic one.A subjugate of recent studies have clearly underlined that a well-rounded, general education learning to think, to write and to express ones ideas clearly is as valuable to future employability as technical or expert training. (http//www. trainyourbrain. ca/english/supporters/chancellors . html) Perhaps carrying more weight in relevant quarters than the views of the chancellors (which might, of course, be interpreted by sceptics as alone selfserving conservatism), was an associated statement put out by 30 CEOs of leading Canadian Hi-tech companies in which they affirmed, We stand with the chancellors of Ontarios universities.Their document urges Yes, this country needs more technology graduates, as they fuel the digital economy. But it is impossible to operate an effective corporation in our new economy by employing technology graduates alone. We have an equally strong need for those with a broader oscilloscope who can work in tandem with technical specialists, fortune create and manage the corporate environment. A liberal arts and science education nurtures skills and talents increasingly valued by modern corporations.Our companies function in a state of constant flux. To prosper we need creative thinkers at all levels of the enterprise who are comfortable dealin g with decisions in the bigger context. They must be able to communicate to reason, create, write and peak for shared purposes For hiring, training, managing, marketing, and policy-making. In short, they provide leadership. (http//www. trainyourbrain. ca/english/tools/ceo. html) Clearly, these CEOs are no apologists for irrelevancy, fuddyduddy-ism or aristocratic, leisure-class values.They are arguing in the best interests of their companies, as part of a concerted campaign to counter popular misperceptions concerning the value of the humanities to the Canadian economy. What nigh South Africa? This is no interrogative sentence heartening for advocates of the humanities but that was Canada, this is South Africa. In the years immediately following our transition to democracy, Canada was ranked first in the United Nations Global Human Development Ratings South Africa stood at ninety-third (Africa Institute 1996 24). 1 Might there be grounds for comparison?Would similar findings eme rge here? The late Jacob Bronowski, long-familiar for his contributions to the public understanding of science, put forward with admirable lucidity his view that the kind of society humanity seeks to create is identical with one which enables the work of science (and the arts) to proceed. He writes As a set of discoveries and devices, science has mastered nature but it has been able to do so only because its values, which derive from its method, have create those who practise it into a living, stable and incorruptible society.Here is a community where everyone has been free to enter, to speak his mind, to be heard and contradicted The society of scientists is simple because it has a say purpose to explore the truth. Neverthe little, it has to solve the problem of every society, which is to find a compromise amongst man and men. It must encourage the single scientist to be independent, and the ashes of scientists to be tolerant. From these basic conditions, which form the prime values, there follows step by step a clip of values dissent, freedom of thought and speech, justice, honour, human self-worth and self-respect.Our values since the Renaissance have evolved by just such(prenominal) steps. (74-75) Let us accept, for the sake of argument, Bronowskis idealistic description of science and the community of scientists, and full ac familiarity the tremendous achievements of science, associated with the pursuit of these values. For all its omissions and exclusions, the kind of society portrayed by Bronowski is attractive both to those who adhere to creative exploration as a primary human motivation (mainly the well-to-do), as well as those for whom the increasingly widespread satisfaction of basic human needs is of primary importance.Yet can it plausibly be betokend that the stable, ordered society science needs to make its optimal impact will result primarily from a concentration on science or, more mundanely, on maths, science and technology in genera l public education? Science (as opposed to scientists) has very little to say active how human feel should be lived, even by implication. Secondly, the serious pursuit of scientific knowledge has always been a minority undertaking, and the delicious puritanism celebrated by Bronowski is undermined at every point by human nature.Truth-seeking is compromised by self-aggrandisement, overlook of initiative, cultural dissonances, wayward appetites, untoward psychological complexities, sloth, factionalism, poverty, dogmatism and stupidity all the regrettable variations that complicate (and embellish) human experience. Material progress alleviates some of these features and aggravates others, but in all societies, the true scientific proclivity is a minority interest, even among those render merely to make use of scientific findings, and who rely on them in their daily work and other interests.Bronowski has, in authoritative respects, got it wrong. Science depends for its very select ion upon the creation of a society which respects the values of science and permits them to thrive, and that can only be a society in which the values of the humanities have taken root, are constantly reviewed and renewed, and are shared by the overwhelming majority of the citizenry. It could plausibly be argued that this country needs the humanities even more than a society like Canada.Consider, as one example, the AIDS crisis in South Africa the belated response to the situation, the culpable delays, the fatuous controversy over antiretrovirals and their provide to sufferers. Is this crisis the result of scientific failure? No, the science is there. The crisis has been the result of poor leadership, political obfuscation, part-plays, cultural regression, lack of social integration and poor, under-trained governmental bureaucracy.Similarly in the local anesthetic government environment it is not paucity of maths and science education that challenges create by mental act delivery it is the poverty of middle-order leadership, the inability to delegate effectively, the lack of initiative and capacity in ordinary civil and bureaucratic functions. The planning is often in place, but the general level of education and its social orientation is in adequate to(predicate) to make effective use of it.In addressing such shortcomings a key misapprehension is the assumption that because the country is desperately short of scientists and technologists, maths and science must be an absolute priority in our schooling system. This is to mistake the part for the whole. The fact is that many children not only South African children because of innate disposition, home background or poor education, are light-years from the possibility of attaining a marketable competence in maths or science2, yet they may be highly innate(predicate) and suited to a great many useful, even exalted, functions in government and the economy.Given good teaching, they can learn to think well and searchingly about deep issues that plague contemporary society. It does not take profound mathematical understanding to read a balance sheet, or even to lead a large corporation. Statistical projections, financial control and scenario-planning are service functions, not necessarily leadership tasks. Yet the myth is steadily propagated that mathematical intelligence, more so even than scientific literacy, is what South Africa needs. This is a harmful distortion.Of course we need mathematicians and scientists, as many as we can produce, but unaided they will not be able to deliver the kind of society in which we all want to live. There are no scientific solutions to the problems of underdevelopment and civic education, only alpha ancillary contributions. Science functions optimally in a democratic, relatively stable and wealthy society. On its own, science is powerless to create such conditions. These conditions are deliver the goods and sustained, not through science, but in societ ies that are absorbing at depth the lessons of the humanities.People want to believe that because science and technology are total to modern developing economies, such economies will develop if only sufficient emphasis is placed on maths and science in the education system. In fact, the sequence has to be reversed. The conditions of stable governance, effective bureaucracy, adequate infrastructural maintenance, basic skills development, and responsible social services are pre-conditions for the adequate functioning of a scientific and technological culture.Well-educated scientists obviously acquire and exercise their civic imaginations in support of such conditions, but it is more than likely that the products of an education system that marginalizes or travesties the humanities will fail both science and society. The upshot of this realization, if decision-makers could be persuaded to look it in the face, implies, not a down-grading of the emphasis on science and technology, but a much closer and more concerned look at what teachers in schools and universities are doing with the humanities.Successful socio-economic and cultural development requires a conscious balance surrounded by the sciences and humanities, and it is far from certain that humanities education in South Africa is sufficiently strong and healthy to carry its share of the burden. Here we come to the second challenge. Do humanities practitioners in South Africa have adequate answers to the questions society is implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) putting to us? Can scholars in the humanities explain their contribution to the public good? Vocationalism in the university Let us start by considering the humanities in the universities.This after all is where much of the understanding that gradually work its way through the schools and into society originates. One of the first things advocates of the humanities would need to make clear to interrogators is the character of a university education as distinct from a purely vocational one. It is not the existence or otherwise of a more or less direct linkage to specific career opportunities that determines whether or not such an education can be described as vocational, but the character of the education undergone.The tone may be characterized as follows. A vocational education transmits a particular range of knowledge, ideally in its current, up-to-date state, in a mode designed to relate it most near to a context of application in society. So, accounting studies emphasize principles and best practice in relation to the sound and policy framework pertaining today, and the present state of the South African business and corporate environment.It is of course possible to teach accounting at variant levels of complexity, finesse and specialization, but there is little fillip to move the subject away from its severely practical orientation. PhDs in accounting are rare. With focus, the situation shifts slightly, in that a rang e of management theory will normally be explored, emanating from diverse situations, and whose applicability becomes very much a matter of contextual judgment. It is certainly possible to earn a PhD in management studies, but the subject matter is likely to edge towards issues that belong in the social sciences and humanities proper.The paradigmatic qualification in business studies is the MBA, a programme designed to develop cutting-edge managers and business leaders for different contexts, and among the entry requirements is typically a substantial period of practice. This stipulation is there to ensure adequate integration of theory and practice in the educational process. Law has the potential to move fully into the university paradigm, in that practical legal training can be (and, depending on the level of qualification, should be) supported by rigorous emersion in the history and ism of law.In fact, it would be difficult to conceive of adequate legal practice emerging from an academic culture divorced from the humanities. It should be apparent, then, that while many popular career options can be placed along a continuum running between the poles of the narrowly vocational and the so-called purely academic, it is always the degree of emphasis placed on the other-than-vocational component that qualifies the programme for inclusion in the domain of true tertiary study.When we turn to the core disciplines comprising the humanities, the connection with a specific profession or career is weak or absent (unless transmittance and extension of the discipline itself comes to be counted as such). True, there is often a loose affiliation between the humanities and vocations such as librarianship, teaching, advertising, writing and publishing, but the connection is not intrinsic or necessary. This fact in itself can be problematic, because students whose thinking is constrained by the vocational paradigm, whether through the influence of parents or other socialpres sures, will tend to define the value of a humanities degree solely in terms of particular vocational outcomes. school text versus linguistic process If then, humanities undergraduates are not preparing directly for a vocational career, what are they doing? And why arent they preparing directly for a career? I want to answer, first, in terms similar to those proposed by Michael Oakeshott (1967 308-312). The paradigmatic government note is that between knowing a text and learning a language.A university discipline expresses a particular mode of enquiry, one language in the array of languages that makes up the intellectual capital of humanity. Each particular language of enquiry is embodied in a vast array of performances in these languages good, bad and indifferent performances that we might call texts. Vocational education exhausts itself in knowing particular texts, and these texts are elect because they are current and relevant in the world of practice and application. Learn th e text, become expert in it, and youve attained the end of vocational education.Once you kick the bucket the educational institution lets fancy it doesnt call itself a university you may lack experience (though, as has been indicated, many vocational programmes extend to incorporate work experience so as to minimise this gap), but you are, or should be, ready to perform the text or texts you have learned, this time in the workplace arena. Because of the rapidity of social change, your text, or range of texts, will soon become redundant, out-of-date, and then you must learn additional texts. You trained in run VWs, now you must learn Renaults.You learned to programme Fortran and Basic, now you must master C++ and XML. You studied Management by Objectives, now you must re-shape your appearance to fit transnational corporate policy. You will gain broader experience, you will always be learning, but what you will be learning is text after text after text and thoroughly necessary and rewarding the experience may well prove to be. The point of higher education from the outset is to learn the language. In higher education, texts are studied not simply for their own sake, but for what we can learn from this study about the mode of enquiry of which they are a good example.In other words, texts are treated as emblematic of some aspects of the language, and we choose the particular texts we study as part of a higher education because they are in a proper state to yield insight into the language they exemplify (Oakeshott 314). Our object of study is not only the text but the language, and, usually at graduate level, we go on to reach towards a language of languages, which we might call philosophy. The swerve from higher education The distinction between text and language on which I am harping, is rather mysterious and fascinating. Consider this.In order to appreciate, say, crossroads, I must know the language. In order to know the language, I must read Hamlet. The apparent circularity is embarrassing, and the sort of thing that tends to compromise the humanities in the eyes of the uninitiated. M. A. K. Halliday explores the distinction between text and language and it is fundamental to the mission of the humanities in general no less than Hallidays particular discipline of linguistics by agency of an illuminating analogy the analogy whereby language is to text as climate is to weather is useful to think with.It reminds us that these are not two different things, or rather what we call climate and what we call weather are the same phenomenon seen from different angles, or different trices of time, and so it is with language and text much misunderstanding has been caused by counterposing these two terms, with language and text being treated as if they were different orders of reality. He goes on to point out a significant limitation to the analogy Like all analogies, its very partial.Its an abstract tool for thinking with, not a stri ct proportion, because semiotic systems are not like physical systems. In particular, an instance of a semiotic system carries value instances of physical systems do not. Of course you may prefer one kind of weather to another, but thats got no relevance whatever to the status of an instance of that weather in relation to climate its just something to be observed and measured like any element.But a text has its own value, not necessarily, in fact, probably not usually, fixed and authoritative And the relation of the discourse value to the underlying system is in fact highly complex. I refer to this as the Hamlet factor. (Halliday 2001, transcr. Kilpert) A good teacher of the humanities must know the language the text under discussion instantiates, and must be able to move the student from reading text to exploring language, to reveal the distinctiveness of text in relation to the homologies and contrasts available in the language.Some texts disturb, redefine, modify the language in which they are formed. They have a perennially evolving afterlife. In the broad historical perspective of cultural climate they remain instances of weather that are of intrinsic and perennial interest. This is what Halliday means by the Hamlet factor. Indeed, not altogether coincidentally, to the best of my knowledge, Hamlet is the only literary work to have a fully-fledged academic journal devoted to its study.3 Ignorance of the distinction between text and language, and all that it implies, is symptomatic of the kind of confusion that influences well-intentioned but ignorant tertiary institutions to swerve from true higher education towards subtractive vocationalism disguised as higher education. What can philosophy do that society values? Aha critical thinking. Right, lets forget about philosophy and teach critical thinking. What useful outcome can we expect from the literature student? Aha parley skills. Right, lets forget literature and teach communication skills.And so the reduction goes on, relentlessly impoverishing the tertiary environment, the individual student and society, in the name of relevance, vocationalism, contextualised learning, public accountability (in the shallowest of senses) and all the other misnomers that disguise a lack of educational understanding. Why we unruffled need the humanities today Each of us is born into a relatively narrow life-world. This is as true for those fortunate few who enter upon the human scene embraced by sheltered luxury as it is for the many who expend their years in poverty, far from the seats of wealth, power or influence.Moreover, the character of the world as it impinges on the individual is changing rapidly, everywhere. (This statement is probably valid even for those who strive most to avoid the world, such as those who spend their time in religious retreat. ) What this suggests is that ordinary means of social transmission, where values, attitudes and judgments are passed from generation to generation within the family, or from mentor to prentice in society, are no longer adequate or may prove so only in the most exceptional of cases.These processes may still be necessary, indeed fundamental, to individual human development, but they cannot be sufficient. Rapid technological change and the shifts in values that result, increasing mobility, population growth, the communications and reading revolutions, the differential impact of social change on pre-established world views in fact all the cliches of the globalizing world add up to an uncertain field of potential experience for the individual.The resources of the family, even in optimal or exceptional circumstances, are insufficient to interpret, let alone adequately to evaluate, this complexity, especially since it is increasingly likely that the individuals activities and proclivities will shift to arenas and predicaments beyond the experience of the senior generations.This is where the educational potential of th e humanities becomes such a powerful resource. By exposing students to detailed study of particular artifacts works of literature, examples of fine art, philosophical systems, politicalprescriptions, musical compositions, social theories we avail them of the opportunity to form and test their own judgments, to challenge received opinion, to argue positions within a community of informed discussion and debate, to think and re-think their views in the company of major artists and diagnosticians, each of whom has put their work forward for exactly this purpose, namely, to serve shape and re-shape human beings.The power of critical thought, trained and developed in this manner, is central to the formation of a creative democratic citizenry anticipated, for example, in South Africas White Paper of 1997.4 As a society, we need the formal space of the humanities in which to engage with a full range of estimates concerning human potential, past and future. In the course of such studies s tudents will also, no doubt, learn to think clearly and write well, but this is incidental. The mission of the humanities is to impression human identity and purpose in relation to changing times and circumstances. No other field of enquiry, not science, not sociology, not established religion, can meet this imperative need quite as well.Some will claim never to have felt such a need, or to have abandoned it for the real world after fleeting initiation at school or university. For these, the humanities are so much frippery, a merely decorative intellectual surplus, or shallow entertainment which ignores the imperatives of the way the economic world works. Such people intend to stick to the text they inherit, and perform it unthinkingly to their own best advantage. The abject misery of thousands, though it seems melodramatic to say so, comes to rest on the shoulders of those who have reached this conclusion.The founding impulse of the humanities To counter such views from a fons et origo, we might go back to a period before the Romans, before Plato even, to the founding moment of the humanities. It is commonplace to acknowledge, as do scientists and everyone other than proponents of ethno-science, that science arose once only on planet earth, among the ancient Greeks (Wolpert 25). 5 It is less commonly acknowledged that the western humanities, too, rose at a particular moment among the Greeks, though in all probability similar moments passed un enter in other cultures.The originary impulse is expressed (or invented) during Socrates famous discourse in the Apology, as recorded and fictionalized by Plato If I tell you that this is the greatest good for a human being, to engage every day in arguments about virtue and the other things you have heard me talk about, examining both myself and others, and if I tell you that the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being, you will be even less likely to believe what I am saying.But thats the way it is, gentl emen, as I claim, though its not easy to convince you of it. (Apology 38a, trans.Nussbaum 1) The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being (emphasis mine) thats the way it is. This is the bald standpoint of the humanities expressed in a nutshell, and it is not the easiest position to justify to defenders of the status quo, either inside or outside the academy. Lets look at some of the issues.Why was Socrates on mental testing for his life? He was teaching that the juvenile ought to devote time and intelligence to finding satisfactory arguments to justify their beliefs, rather than simply following those of their parents and the civic authorities. non even the gods were to be exempt from rational enquiry. Aristophanes, in his comedy The Clouds, viewed Socrates as dangerously subversive of orthodox education, which he took to be a process whereby the young are indoctrinated in the traditions and values of their culture, as is the case in traditional societies everywhere . In other words, for Aristophanes education meant learning the text of your society. Not so with Socrates. He wanted people to study the language of humanity, though he recognized that this was no easy matter.We are back to the relation between text and language? Socrates held that by systematically questioning text, probing it from all possible perspectives, exploring alternatives, we may by degrees arrive at the language, or at least important elements of it. It is important to stress, from all possible perspectives, because Socrates was also an early advocate of truly democratic learning. He was willing to engage in philosophical discussion with anyone and everyone, in the hope that they might know more than he did, or contribute something uniquely valuable.Plato, by contrast, wanted to restrict radical questioning to an elite who, through philosophical investigation, would gain access to timeless truths, enabling its members to rule justly over the masses. Here we have the orig in of the tension between the humanities as a source of elite leadership the Platonism of government and corporate management and the humanities as a democratic investigation of human meaning and value. 6 Socrates was utterly serious in his claim for intensive rational enquiry as essential to discovering a true mode of living, the good life. The unexamined life is fit only for something less than a human being.Those who unthinkingly follow tradition, who defend and reproduce text uncritically, are trapped in what Wittgenstein might call a form of life (241). Plato likened it to living imprisoned in a cave, pursuing a troglodyte existence ruled by convention and fear of the hidden (Republic Book 7). It is interesting to speculate that the tame Platonic puppet show may have primitive origins in the image of early humans huddle together in solidarity round a fire, the cave walls patterned by flickering shadows, their shapes shifting and unaccountable, while outside lie unknowable d angers, not tobe confront in the dark, and largely indecipherable within the cave despite the artificial fire-light. It is a potent representation of fear. Those venturing forth on the intellectual scramble to seek the source of the shadows (to find truth) must be prepared to risk themselves on two counts first in view of what they might find outside, and second on account of what their fellow humans might do to hold them to the text that currently governs behavior in the cave.Those leaving the enchanted circle may not return. Those remaining have to learn to tolerate the courageous quest of those who go beyond, and to deal with the emotional disturbance and communal risk involved. We know what happened to Socrates. We worry that todays South African society, focused wholly on instrumental programmes directed to immediate ends, will not have the courage, vision or knowledge to support the quest.