The Liberal Arts and Belief in God

In my last two posts I discussed the relation of philosophy to the humanities and the liberal arts. I would like to complete my thoughts on these topics by presenting a hypothesis that I have been considering for some time. I am not at all sure if it is correct, so I am eager to receive any responses.

I have settled on an understanding of the liberal arts as any kind of study that is pursued for the intrinsic value of its object. I have presented mathematics as the liberal art par excellence because one's concern at least in pure mathematics is simply with the structures and patterns that one is studying without an immediate interest in the applications that any results about these structures may have. The same holds in the case of the "disinterested" study of the natural sciences, where the sheer beauty and complexity of the world is sufficient motive and reward for the scientist's efforts.

Yet this notion that the world is worthy of study for its own sake entails that there is an intrinsic goodness and value to the world. Absent that, one has no adequate justification of the liberal arts. For if all values are impositions on reality by humans based on their interests and purposes, there is no sense to disinterested study but only to knowledge that advances the interests of man. Hence a narrow, pragmatic focus on the value of education.

Now belief in the intrinsic goodness of the world has usually, though not always, depended on a belief in a benevolent creator-god. I don't mean to suggest that secular scientists and scholars do not have a sense of awe and wonder that is in many ways similar to a religious approach to nature. Nor do I ignore the existence of theists who have no place for the liberal arts. But it does seem to me that one can more readily argue for the liberal arts within a certain theistic framework than from without. So perhaps the present decline in the liberal arts is itself a symptom of a crisis of faith?

Is Philosophy a Liberal Art?

In my previous post, I asked whether philosophy belongs to the humanities. That question is difficult to answer unless one has a clear set of criteria that make a subject a humanistic. But I am more certain about what a liberal art is. And philosophy, as it is normally practiced, is certainly a liberal art.

My principal objection is that many people identify the humanities with the liberal arts. But this is neither historically nor conceptually defensible. The earliest formulation of the liberal arts mainly included what we now would call mathematics (which is usually not considered part of the humanities). But even today math is clearly a liberal art. For I understand the liberal arts to be those disciplines that may be studied simply to enrich one's life rather than to provide a training for a particular profession or occupation.

As an amateur mathematician (with the emphasis on "amateur") I have never used what I've learned in real analysis or abstract algebra to earn my livelihood. But I simply delight in their study! I am a happier person for understanding the fundamental theorem of calculus. And I think I'm a better philosopher for it too.

Now to be sure, math can be used for very practical ends. But that does not make it an illiberal art. For it can and very often is studied simply for its sheer beauty and depth. Philosophy, perhaps, is not so useful, and its charm resides principally in its power to enrich. But the study of both subjects embodies the ideal of a liberal arts education. As does the study of history, language, physics, economics, political science among many others.

So let the humanities die if they must! They seem to be a recent development in human history. But the ancient and hoary liberal arts--may they live on forever.

Is Philosophy Part of the Humanities?

I've been reading a number of articles recently that discuss the fate of the humanities. A couple of days ago someone put a copy of a New York Times article "In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth" in my box. And the literary critic Stanley Fish has posted several comments on the same site on the topic of the value of a humanities education. His entry on the "Last Professor" discusses the book with that title by Frank Donaghue, who argues that the humanities don't so much face a crisis but rather are already on their deathbed as the university becomes driven by purely practical concerns. "...all fields deemed impractical, such as philosophy, art history, and history will henceforth face a constant danger of being deemed unnecessary" writes Donoghue, according to Fish. Fish himself notes wistfully that he was lucky to get into the humanities business when things were still good, but otherwise seems to think Donoghue's pessimistic prognosis is correct.

I am not by inclination pessimistic. I also tend to think that the present is not that different from the past, and that in some sense the humanities have been dying and coming back to life (sometimes in new forms) as long as they have been around. What may appear to us as imminent demise may just be another stage in development.

But I'm not so interested in all that. I'm more interested in the question of whether philosophy is one of the humanities. I'm not so sure it is. According to Berry's general education classification, it is, but that is just a result of an arbitrary bureaucratic classification. Certainly it would be hard to make the case that the kind of philosophy I do has much in common with the other disciplines lumped together as humanities. I suppose that the humanities are concerned with the study of humanity. But my current research interest in philosophical logic is not principally (or, at all, for that matter) concerned with humans. And many sciences (biology, economics, political science) not usually considered humanities study humans. So such a characterization of the humanities as the study of humans is not very helpful.

There must be a special method or approach that distinguishes the humanities from other disciplines. But there again I think that much of philosophy would fail to be humanistic. Except for the more historical/literary approaches to philosophy, a lot of philosophy, especially the analytic sort, resembles more in its approach the formal methods of mathematics and linguistics than what usually goes on in literature or history departments.

So help me out here. What makes a discipline humanistic? And does philosophy as a whole (as opposed to just some forms of philosophy) count as humanistic?