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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 18 Apr \ on: The Practical Case on Why We Need the Humanities (2020) culture
The problem is, are humanities departments around the country actually training their students this way?
It seems to me the opposite. It seems to me, interacting with modern humanities department faculty, that they have the lowest epistemic humility of anyone in the university.
The other challenge is whether modern people can distinguish epistemic humility from moral relativism. Epistemic humility is good, but moral relativism just leads to chaos.
That's a problem indeed. He makes a point about viewing the humanities not just in terms of the Western canon, but as a window into every human society. The moral relativism endemic in our post-secondary institutions may be caused by the tendency to conflate the humanities with humanism, which actually favours scientific secularism, marxist dialectical-materialism, and the like...
It seems like the author is referring to the humanities in a non-normative sense, or by appealing to what it ought to be the case. While I agree that the writing comes off as a bit high-flown, I do, respect and see some value in maintaining a loftier vision to strive toward, especially in terms of our educational capacities.
The post has a great quote about teaching as well that pared out at the last minute since I found it not to be especially coherent with the main thrust. Perhaps :
Few who do can teach, but most who teach can do; they are different skills, only infrequently found together).
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