Will the Humanities Save Us? by Stanley Fish

"Teachers of literature and philosophy are competent in a subject, not in a ministry. It is not the business of the humanities to save us, no more than it is their business to bring revenue to a state or a university. What then do they do? They don’t do anything, if by 'do' is meant bring about effects in the world. And if they don’t bring about effects in the world they cannot be justified except in relation to the pleasure they give to those who enjoy them."

Will the Humanities Save Us? by Stanley Fish

At first I was really angry when I read this opinion piece, thinking about the business of the humanities. I mean, here I am, a college graduate with a BA in Creative Writing, a BA in Rhetoric and Discourse, a minor in Environmental Studies, about to finish my MFA in Writing. What skills have I learned that would increase the revenue earning power of some business?

My degrees have been earned largely for pleasure. I like writing. I want to write for a living, but those jobs are far and few between. Scarcer yet are the job that would support a fledgling author of short stories.

However, the question is, Will the Humanities Save Us?

My answer is, YES!

Life, no living a life, at its base core is an enthymeme and if you have not been sufficiently armed to decode them with critical thinking that can only be learned through the humanities, then you will lost to a harsh world wrought with over mediation. Everything that you hear, see, feel, smell, or taste, is an argument that needs to be untangled.

Most authors of science fiction speculate at what will happen to society if we lose the ability to perform simple math functions in our head. However, what would happen if we lose the ability to decontextualize and deconstruct our soundings, our culture, our lives?

Stanley Fish specifically picks on poetry and poets. Now, I don't read enough poetry, but I do read it. Poetry is important. Poetry is the language of the soul. Big business knows this, every marketing jingle, every ad you see uses the rhetorical advantages that poetry presents. And if we are to fully understand the arguments that are put before us, fight them, win back our souls from them, then, YES, we need poetry and we need the humanities.