Three Humanities

Barend van Heusden1

Summary
This paper contributes to the discussion on the humanities by arguing that they do not
constitute a homogeneous practice, but in fact consist of three separate domains, marked by a
specific attitude (reflection), skill (interpretation) and body of knowledge (science of culture).
Each domain is briefly characterized in terms of its properties, its problems, and its relation to
the university. The misty relation between the three domains is an important reason for the
recurring ‘crisis’ of the humanities. Clarifying this relation will strengthen the position of the
humanities, both in the university and for the public.

When we discuss the humanities – a discussion framed in the debate on the societal function
and value of the university (Nussbaum 2010; Collini 2012; Small 2013; Belfiore and
Upchurch 2013; Verbrugge and Baardewijk 2014) – it seems obvious to conceive of the
humanities as a more or less homogeneous entity, about which we can make general
statements. This conception is wrong, as I will argue in this paper, and not because the
humanities span so many disciplines, from history and archeology, literary studies and
linguistics, cultural studies, to philosophy, theology and art criticism and -theory. The fault
lines run deeper, crisscrossing all the disciplines.
Three domains that determine scholarly work in the humanities stand out: a specific
attitude (reflection), a skill (interpretation), and a domain of knowledge (the science of
culture). They overlap at times, but differ when it comes to methods and aims of research.
Below, each domain is discussed in terms of its properties, its problems and challenges, and
its relation to the university. The misty relation between the three domains is an important
reason for the recurring ‘crisis’ of the humanities – the recurring discussion on the value of
these traditional disciplines. Clarifying the relation between the separate domains will also
clarify the values we can attribute to the humanities, and strengthen their position, both in the
university and for the public.

1
Barend van Heusden, department of Arts, Culture and Media, University of Groningen. Address: Oude
Boteringestraat 23, 9712GC Groningen; b.p.van.heusden@rug.nl; http://www.rug.nl/staff/b.p.van.heusden/
The text was translated from the Dutch by E. Van Es.

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An attitude: reflection
The first domain involves the broad range of reflections on culture. This domain coincides
with the Anglo-Saxon humanities, as advertised at Stanford University.

Today, humanistic knowledge continues to provide the ideal foundation for

exploring and understanding the human experience. Investigating a branch of
philosophy might get you thinking about ethical questions. Learning another
language might help you gain an appreciation for the similarities in different
cultures. Contemplating a sculpture might make you think about how an artist's
life affected her creative decisions. Reading a book from another region of the
world, might help you think about the meaning of democracy. Listening to a
history course might help you better understand the past, while at the same
time offer you a clearer picture of the future.2

These humanities involve the reporting on culture in journalism or history writing, the
creation of culture in the arts, including literature, the valuation of culture in (cultural)
criticism and social or cultural philosophy, and the analysis of culture in the cultural sciences.
Herodotus’ history writing belongs to these humanities, as do a documentary about an autistic
boy and his family, a comic book about the life of Vincent van Gogh, an essay on
contemporary culture, or an analysis of the ways in which the teaching of literature at primary
schools may affect the empathy of children and adolescents. The films of Chaplin and
Tarkovsky belong to this domain, as well as the children’s books of Astrid Lindgren and the
songs of U2.
Tony Judt’s autobiography (The Memory Chalet, 2010) forms an impressive example
of this reflexive attitude, combining personal memory, history writing, literature, political
criticism and sociological analysis. Reflection, developing a feel for what it means to be
human, connects Judt’s book and the humanities as a whole, demarcating them from other
domains of culture. In the humanities, a collective consciousness takes shape: ‘The precise
questions to which the humanities furnish imprecise, partial, and indirect answers are, What is
humankind? What does it mean to be human? And what makes a significant/worthy/fulfilled
life?’ (Harpham 2011: 16).

2
Stanford Humanities Center - http://shc.stanford.edu/why-do-humanities-matter; accessed 15 July 2016.

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With regard to this first domain, marked by our reflective skills, we can ask ourselves three
basic questions. First: why is reflection carried out in the humanities important? Why should
we dedicate time, effort and money to these disciplines? Second: which problems do the
humanities face, and what are the challenges to be overcome? Third: how do the humanities
compare to the university? Or rather: how does the university compare to the humanities?
What is the importance of the humanities? Why should we even pay attention to
reflexive cultural skills and our collective consciousness? When acting consciously, both
privately and publicly, our behavior is grounded in our self-image. This self-image involves
ourselves as individuals and the communities we belong to. In society, on the streets, in shops,
at elections, in court, and while travelling we act on the basis of individual and collective self-
consciousness. While reflecting on who and what we are, or are supposed to be, we create our
self-images by making use of the media, education, and politics. In the humanities myriads of
self-images – ideologies – are processed, transmitted and, when appropriate, discussed and
adapted.
The major problem that the current humanities face is the de-stabilization of traditional
ideologies and concomitant identities, under the growing influence of Western democracy,
economization and globalization. The question is what, under these modern pressures, our
underlying values are, and how the humanities can still shape and conserve these values. The
traditional ideology of mainly national democracies, based on consensus between party
policies, cannot hold its ground, making it harder to share one’s self-image and convictions
with others. In line with this development, the humanities have shifted from processing
ideologies themselves, to teaching ways to deal with concurring ideologies – teaching ‘meta-
ideology’. This shift has not come easy, as the many debates on multi-culturalism and the
artistic, historical or cultural canon can attest to. New identities to be developed are
effectively meta-identities, which ensure the freedom to construct individual identities,
provided that these are considered as constructions, not as naturally ‘given’ entities – the
overarching right being the right to construct a personal identity.
Do the humanities, thus portrayed, belong at the university? In the USA, art-curricula
(including creative writing programs) are fully accepted parts of academic training. The
humanities, for instance, are an integral part of liberal arts curricula (Zakaria 2015). In the
Netherlands and in Flanders the arts are taught mainly in vocational schools – reflecting the
opinion that arts education, similar to journalism, does not belong at the university. When we
ask ourselves whether the domain of reflection is or should be the responsibility of the

3
universities, we should start with the question what we expect from universities in the first
place. This question will recur below – keep it in mind for the time being.

A skill: interpretation
The second domain to be discussed here, which covers many disciplines of the humanities, is
that of the skill of interpretation. This is the domain of hermeneutics, of what Schleiermacher
and Dilthey, founding fathers of the Geisteswissenschaften, called Verstehen (Schleiermacher
1977 (1838); Palmer 1969). In hermeneutics aspects of reality are being interpreted, thus
acquiring meaning. In principle anything can become meaningful: natural phenomena like
climate change, human behavior like the performance of rituals, cultural phenomena like the
politics of the Russian president Putin, an archeological find from ancient times, a novel or
poem, or past events. Capturing phenomena in language, resulting in the production of
meaning is the core business of hermeneutics.
‘Translating’ (often complex) situations or events to language is by no means easy.
The possibilities are endless, when it comes to the art of description (for a witty illustration,
see Raymond Queneau’s Exercises de Style (1947)); moreover, descriptions and the meaning
they produce are never objective – producing meaning always entails value judgments.
Objects and events, when translated to language, not only assume multiple forms of meaning,
they also become ‘meaningful’ or ‘meaningless’. Language and ideology are never far apart
(Volosinov 1973 (1930)) and language is never a private, always a shared or public practice,
which means that the interpretations that are produced with language always concern one or
more communities of language-users. Interpretations can exist because they are grounded in
communities: ‘Une interpretation ne vaut rien d’autre que la communauté qu’elle parvient à
réunir autour d’elle’ (Citton 2010, pp. 66-; cf. Fish 1980).
The domains of hermeneutics and the humanities do not coincide. Hermeneutics is
restricted to the interpretation of phenomena with language. On the other hand, hermeneutics
is not constricted to the interpretation of culture – it is not necessarily a self-reflective
practice. All other non-cultural aspects of reality can be interpreted. Good examples include
the ‘medical humanities’, or the ‘blue humanities’ – sea criticism.
With regard to hermeneutics we can ask ourselves the same three questions as before.
First: what is the importance of this practice, why should communities invest their time, effort
and money in it? Second: which problems and challenges does it have to face? And third: how

4
does hermeneutical practice compare to the university; or rather: how does the university
compare to hermeneutics?
What is the importance of interpretation? What is the importance of meaning? Why
are we eager to find out what something means? The short answer is: because we want to (and
must) know whether something can work to our advantage or disadvantage, and whether we
should involve ourselves with it – or not. This is the domain of the human will. Meaning is a
precondition for action, or rather the first stage of every action. By interpreting a situation and
deciding on our values we know what we are up to, what needs to be done, or what should be
left undone. Hermeneutics is the traditional practice associated with the work of humanities
scholars: “Humanists are specialists in an activity upon which we daily depend, consciously
or not, in everything we do: the making and assessment of meaning. The making of such
meaning shapes the world of the arts; it is the operating principle of politics and
understandings of the law; it rules our religious belief; it lies at the core of higher education
and the development and spread of new knowledge” (Bloch 2009).
Not only does our language-use produce meaning and values, it also shapes our
communities. Images, objects, models and logic are universally accessible, but an
interpretation is always connected to a specific language and language-community. “Font
communauté ceux qui partagent – intuitivement – les mêmes interpretations des situations et
des discours qui les entourent et les constituent” (Citton 2010, 68). Anyone can ‘read’ a
picture, but only by having mastered a language can we decide upon its meaning (this
becomes apparent in the overviews of news-pictures that are being published in the media at
the end of each year: without explanations in language, it is hard to remember to which
(narrative sequence of) events they refer). The same goes for art and technique: anyone can
feel, hear or see what is offered to the senses, but what these impressions mean depends on
the language one commands. This is also true for science: scientific models and formulas are
in principle universally accessible, and can therefore be translated to any language with ease.
However, what scientific knowledge means to the public cannot be expressed in models or
formulas – only in language. In short: interpretation is the basis of communal action. Hence
the importance for each community to have access to an accurate interpretational practice, and
of a solid command of one’s language.
Literature, literary criticism and Literaturwissenschaft are special parts of the
hermeneutic specter. In literature the domains of a reflective attitude (by means of the
imagination) and interpretative skill (through language) come together. This can explain the
status aparte of literature amongst the arts. More than any other art form, literature produces

5
meaning, which in itself can be at odds with the interpretative space and ambiguity invoked
by the imagination. Literary criticism as hermeneutic practice must deal with this double
(imaginative and meaningful) message: on the one hand the object of study demands to be
interpreted, on the other hand the object of study is itself an interpretative practice, with which
the literary critic should engage, as in a dialogue or battle between forms of meaning. Unlike
other art forms, the literary text ‘talks’ or ‘writes’ back when being interpreted. This can
explain the acute awareness amongst literary scholars that when interpreting a literary text,
one always interprets with a text, trapping aspects of reality in language. When interpreting a
novel, a historical document or a creed, scholars are not so much interested in the texts
themselves, but in what they are about. And a novel is not about itself, but about life.
Which problems and challenges does contemporary hermeneutics have to live up to?
Again, we touch upon a topic that exceeds the boundaries of the humanities: the role of
language in a culture dominated by ultrashort messaging on social media, in clips and in
soundbites. We live in times in which there is little attention left for the kind of language-use
that, as argued above, forms the basis for communitarian action. Before we can act
adequately, we should be able to assess the meaning and value of relevant situations and
events, and this is a time-consuming matter, which requires advanced forms of language
proficiency. Those who are not proficient in this respect are less able to judge the situations
they are in, the rhetoric of peers, and they are more susceptible for the direct emotional
rhetoric (without words) of images. To begin with, language education is disappearing
quickly from school curricula. Children gifted with language-skills often miss the boat called
‘Science and Technology'. In educational discourse there is a lot of talk about ‘language and
maths-skills’, but in fact the focus is entirely on mathematics here. The language-skills taught
in contemporary schools are by and large instrumental skills, which are tested quantitatively.
The most important instrumental function of language, however, is often overlooked.
Language is more than thinking of tricks to find your way through a debate, translating
sentences correctly, or writing a summary according to rules that have been prescribed. Doing
well in language should mean understanding what one reads or hears. It should mean being
able to put into spoken or written words what one feels or thinks. Those who are able to write
a proper essay need a full command of their language(s).
People who can use their language well create our public space, the quality of which
suffers from a culture that attributes little or no value to language. Public spaces are not made
by means of images, object or formulas – these spaces can only be maintained through
language. They are the bases of collective action. This can explain why, in the nineteenth

6
century, the humanities were often referred to as ‘moral sciences’. Hermeneutics is the
domain in which we negotiate our values, and discuss them rationally. In this sense,
democracy cannot survive without the humanities. Not because, as Martha Nussbaum has
argued, the humanities embody values that democracy cannot do without (Nussbaum 2010),
but because the ability to constitute a public space in which events can be interpreted
carefully, representing the many perspectives that are present in a given community, is a
precondition for democratic debate. The humanities have been accused of being ‘just talk’.
And rightly so – of course the humanities are just talk! What is (implicitly) being denied here
is the importance for society of people who are skilled talkers. A culture dominated solely by
images and formulas is at risk.
The main challenge for hermeneutics is to show the public the importance of language.
To achieve this, a two-dimensional culture dominated by images and formulas should be
rebalanced with cultures revolving around language-use, supervised by an overarching meta-
perspective on culture – which could well be maintained by the humanities – that can achieve
this balance between the different aspects of culture (images, artefacts, language, formulas)
that are available to us.
Does hermeneutic practice belong at the university? The humanities, when conceived
of as critical practice, are not part of science. Meaning cannot be observed, and interpretation
does not equal theory. Thus the two basic elements – theory and observation – of science are
not part of hermeneutic practice. Meaning cannot be ‘discovered’; meaning is invented by
means of language. Meaning is made: it is behavior. Interpretation is a skill that requires
instruction and exercise. The critical, historical or philosophical profession is in essence not
different from what happens in a book-club or in a discussion between friends; the
professionality of the literary scholar, historian and philosopher, however, should ensure that
their talking is done more proficiently, on the basis of advanced knowledge and experience. In
this respect, scholars in the humanities can be compared to professional artists, who can only
be discerned from amateurs for having more talent and experience than others when it comes
to their profession.
Academic hermeneutics presupposes a rational attitude. The argumentation for or
against an interpretation should preferably be logical, intersubjective (in this case: based on
consensus about the appropriate use of language), and critical. The entire history of academic
hermeneutics (and philology in particular) since Schleiermacher has been one continuous
attempt at the rationalization of hermeneutics: making it historically correct, verifiable, and
logically valid. This is why hermeneutic practice often comes down to the endless ‘working

7
on a text’: formulating, rereading, comparing, reformulating it, to sharpen the written tool. In
a recursive gesture, rational interpretation is also used in hermeneutic practice to self-reflect:
ideally, the academic interpretative practice itself is monitored constantly by means of
judgements and analyses (Korthals Altes 2014, chapter 1).
Rational analysis as meta-hermeneutic activity is the point where hermeneutics and a
science of culture can meet; interpretation is a form of cultural behavior, which can itself
become the object of scientific research. Within hermeneutics, rational analysis does not
combine well with the hermeneutic necessity to ‘pick a side’. Interpretations are never
neutral; categorizations are actions, and actions presuppose choices. This can explain the
often heard reproach that the humanities are ‘political’ or ‘ideological’, rather than scientific
pursuits, regardless of the political viewpoints that are being expressed. Cultural studies,
gender studies, the New Historicism, but also (post-) structuralism, as well as their opponents
– from Eagleton to Scruton, from Adorno to Habermas and Steiner and Bloom – each have
represented political standpoints, which were incorporated in their research.
An important cause of the unremitting ‘crisis of the humanities’ is that hermeneutics is
judged according to the standards of the empirical sciences, or – which is worse – that the
hermeneutic disciplines understand themselves to be empirical sciences. This conception is
represented in its self-reflective discourse. Interpretation thus becomes the ‘observation’ and
‘research’ of texts – in fact, reality itself becomes a text: studying reality becomes the
‘discovery’, or even ‘explanation’ of meaning (Cassirer 1960, 173). In an attempt to assume
the guise of science, interpretation has since the early twentieth century been dressed up as
science – and the hunt was on for the ‘structure’ of texts, language and images. Instead of a
means to interpret anything that may strike our eyes, ears or minds, texts thus become objects
and interpretational frames become theories. From that point onwards, the term ‘theory’ has
come to denote a ‘conceptual’ or ‘lingual’ frame of interpretation. Or, as Yves Citton with
regard to literary criticism (/Literaturwissenschaft) has stated acutely: Ce n’est qu’à
l’occasion d’une bouffonerie tragique et suicidaire que les littéraires ont pu se proclamer
‘spécialistes’ d’une ‘science’ propre à la dissection d’un corpus de discours identifié à la
littérature’ (Citton 2010, 94-95).
One of the strange and harmful effects of this pseudoscientific attitude is that the
public will start asking itself why the meaning that the humanities seek to discover is never
actually found. In this context, eyebrows are raised when the umpteenth interpretation of
Shakespeare’s Hamlet pops up (Collini 2012, 65-66). When we realize that Hamlet is not an
object but a proven means to interpret the changing dynamics of our cultural world, the

8
eyebrows can stay down. Hamlet is not about Hamlet, Hamlet is about life, and life changes.
There is not one Hamlet, but there are as many Hamlets as there are proficient language-users
who devote their attention to this play. Hamlet is not their object of interpretation; it is the
point of entry through which suitable meaning can be produced. Hermeneuticists are
professional language-users; they are ‘scholars’, not ‘researchers’.
The question whether the professional use of language belongs at the university thus
depends on one’s conception of the university. If the university is to represent an institute in
which theoretical-empirical research is carried out, hermeneutics does not belong there. If one
conceives of the university as an academy, as the place where future elites are being educated,
hermeneutics and the humanities do belong there. In the latter case, studying language is very
important – not because students should be taught to master their own or foreign languages (a
university is not a language institute), but because they should be taught to interpret their
surroundings by making use of multiple languages, and to understand the cultures that use
these languages, in order to be able to communicate and react accurately. Ukrainians or the
Chinese are better understood on their own terms than on ours.
Universities are progressively limiting themselves to theoretical and empirical research
– as are the societies that surround them. The danger of this development is obvious: if
universities throw everything out but empirical research, where do we educate our intellectual
elites? Where does this leave the skill to give shape and meaning to our changing culture? The
scientists that are educated at one-dimensional universities lack the context in which their
work can become meaningful. This is not a pleasant prospect – nor for the scientists, nor for
the societies to which they report back.

Knowledge: a science of culture

The third domain that constitutes the humanities is the scientific study of culture. This part of
the humanities is not essentially different from other kinds of scientific pursuit. A science of
culture is ‘ordinary’ science, making use of quantitative and qualitative methods of research
and, whenever possible, of (quasi-)experimental setups, approaching human culture as a
specific aspect of the natural world. Cultural science seeks to discern the underlying structures
of culture, or of its separate aspects, like language, art or history. Since the 1970s the science
of culture has gained ground, at the cost of the humanities and hermeneutics. Its frontrunner is
linguistics, which, starting from behavioristic schools, has grown to be a full-fledged
empirical science, bordering on computer science, artificial intelligence and the cognitive

9
sciences. It is no coincidence that linguists feel right at home at contemporary universities.
The same is true for analytical philosophy, and parts of archeology grounded in physics and
chemistry.
The fault lines demarcating the humanities, hermeneutics and the science of culture
cover all disciplines. These domains can be identified by the type of behavior that is displayed
by their inhabitants, not by their objects of research. In the study of literature, empirical
science is employed in cognitive and sociological research into the characteristics of texts,
readers and literary institutions. With the instruments of science, literary phenomena like
narrativity, fictionality, (literary) value or ‘strangeness’ are being researched, with the aim of
discovering underlying cognitive and /or sociological patterns.
With regard to the domain of the science of culture, we can (again) ask ourselves three
basic questions. First: what is the importance of cultural science, why would ‘we’ spend our
time, effort and money on it? Second: what are its problems and challenges? Third: how do
the sciences of culture compare to the university? Or rather: how does the university compare
to the sciences of culture?
To start with the third question: there is no doubt that our contemporary universities
and the scientific approach of culture match well. However, it is not always clear how the
cultural sciences should be categorized. Are they part of physics? Of biology? Of psychology
or sociology? It would seem that the scientific study of culture as type of human behavior
should be based in general knowledge of the workings of nature, life and behavior. In
addition, we require knowledge of what can make nature, life and behavior ‘cultural’. The
second additional step is difficult and to date unresolved, severely hampering the development
of the cultural sciences as a discipline.
On to the second question raised above: what are the problems and challenges that the
cultural sciences face? Again, the answer is straightforward. The scientific study of culture
suffers from a lack of theory. About this type of theory, Ernst Cassirer once noted that it ‘must
seek its realization in a philosophy of symbolic forms’ (Cassirer 1960, 174), which is to say
that theories of culture should be sought in the realm of semiotics. Culture is grounded in
semiosis, the use of signs, or, in philosophical terms, in intentional behavior. But what is
intentional behavior? Cassirer provides some guidelines:

From the analysis of form we advance to that procedure which we can

characterize as act-analysis. This is not a question as to the achievements, the
works, of culture; nor is it a question as to the general forms in which they

10
 present themselves to us. Our question concerns the mental processes from
which they have come into being and whose product they are. What we are
looking for here is, for example, the character of that ‘consciousness of
symbols’ which makes itself known in the act of human speech; we are
inquiring into the manner and orientation of the building of representations,
feelings, fantasies, and beliefs, in which art, myth, and religion have their being
(Cassirer 1960, 174).

At the moment, there are no theories of culture available that offer sufficient cues for testable
hypotheses and empirical research. There is no clear sense of the ontological status of the
object of research: culture. Cultural science in its current state is located somewhere between
philosophy – that is to say, a hermeneutical approach of culture resting on concepts, rather
than structure – and the social sciences, in which culture is treated as kind of behavior, while
the specific nature of cultural behavior is not recognized (yet). In this open space between
philosophy and the social sciences, a science of culture must seek to position itself.
This lack of theory is particularly obvious in the emerging ‘digital humanities’.
Thanks to the computer, the humanities can now make easy use of huge databases. It is to date
unclear, however, what we want to know from these data. What are we looking for? How to
put all that digital power to work sensibly? The same is true for the hugely popular
neurosciences. With advanced techniques there is a lot to find out about the working of the
brain. The question is what we are looking for here. What are the issues that we want to
address with these advanced techniques? In the absence of sound theory, a lot of our current
cultural science comes down to ‘datamining’, or ‘grounded theory’ (Corbin and Strauss
2008): wild observation, in the hope to find interesting patterns.
The scientific study of literature also suffers from a lack of theory. Literary processes
and genres are being researched, in the absence of theoretical frameworks that can enable us
to determine the characteristics of the genus (culture) and the differentia specifica of
literature. We do not know what the structure of literature is – if there is one – or of
narratives, imagery or lyrics. The same goes for other sciences of culture – see for instance
the many unresolved questions with regard to language, meaning and grammar, sixty years
after the appearance of Chomsky’s influential Syntactic Structures (1957).
The development from concepts to structure – from description and taxonomy to
theory and models – is a necessary development for each science, which the cultural sciences
still have to perform. One of the remarkable consequences of the lack of theories of culture is

11
that the separate disciplines in het humanities do not offer common, shared first-year
programs. This is different from scientific degree-programs like biology or physics; unlike
these disciplines the humanities do not have a shared base of knowledge which is relevant for
all their disciplines (Boyd and Richerson 2005, 375ff.; Richerson and Boyd 2005, 245ff.). I do
not know of any classes called ‘Introduction to Science of Culture’ of which every student of
the humanities should take note. Just as all aspiring physicists should know about elementary
particles, and just like all biologists need some basic knowledge of DNA and the structure of
cells, students in the humanities should be allowed to acquire some basic knowledge about the
structure of culture, before specializing in the study of specific forms or aspects of culture.
This basic knowledge, possibly building on the evolutionary, neuroscientific and biological
disciplines will invoke and strengthen communication and interdisciplinary work within the
humanities, which are by and large absent now, in the absence of common frames of
reference.
To come back to the third basic question: what is the importance of a science of
culture? The answer is straightforward. Cultural science is an important mode in which we
can self-reflect; in this respect it is a logical part of the humanities. By performing empirical-
theoretical research we try to acquire knowledge about who and what we are as humans, as a
species. What is culture, what is language, what is art, what is consciousness, what is the
soul? Are we our brains? Are thoughts always coded in language? How does creativity work?
What is intentionality? These are all questions that can be addressed within science. In a
rational culture that values scientific rationales highly, it makes sense that we invest in
sciences of culture to do (part of) the job. Human culture is for a large apart unknown territory
for scientists. There is still a lot to be discovered – and this knowledge can later be used to
adapt our cultures to our changing surroundings.

Conclusion
For each domain of the humanities – reflection, interpretation and cultural science – we have
argued what their importance could be, what their problems and challenges are, and how they
compare to academic teaching and research. Now is the time for some preliminary
conclusions. The issues that the humanities need to address are complex, but can be reduced
to three core problems:
1. The first problem is the unclear identity of the humanities themselves. It is far from
obvious for the public that the humanities constitute a complex conglomerate of widely
differing types of activities – what is more, it is often unclear how these activities relate to

12
each other. I have argued that the humanities unite forms of reflection on culture, of which
cultural science is one. Reflection can also take place as interpretational practice, which in
itself covers a broader range than the humanities, because other aspects of reality than culture
can be made meaningful. The humanities and hermeneutics, then, overlap insofar they
produce interpretations of culture. The two other major forms of reflection, reporting (in
journalism and history writing) and the imagination (in art and entertainment) of culture are
beyond the range of hermeneutics and the cultural sciences. The tension between
interpretation (hermeneutics) and science is a tension between two approaches (Snow 2008
(1959)) – the interpretation of meaning and the analysis of structure. Within the humanities,
however, the second major tension is between the two abstract forms of reflection –
hermeneutics and cultural science – and two forms of reflection that use concrete stories and
images: journalism / history and art.
2. The second issue to be addressed by the humanities consists of the separate
challenges for each domain (reflective attitude, interpretative skill, a science of culture). For
the humanities, the question is from which overarching conception of culture our (individual
and collective) identity takes shape – what that identity is, and how we can report, imagine,
interpret and analyze it. Bloch (2009) is optimistic:

On the model of our common humanity, a common humanities holds the promise of
uniting the diverse cultures of a globalized world. Leaving aside the very real
differences of language and culture, history and tradition, in favor of what is shared by
all, one could imagine a humanities oriented around a set of common questions and
forms, not present at all times everywhere, but sufficiently enduring to constitute a
core of common inquiry and concern (Bloch 2009).

In hermeneutics the question is how interpretative skill and the required language-skills can
acquire and maintain a distinct status in a culture dominated by sounds, images and formulas.
The crucial matter here is not the maintenance of language skills alone, but of public spaces
and communities. For the cultural sciences the key question is what the necessary elements
are of theories of culture that enable empirical research.
3. The third crucial issue to be addressed by the humanities is whether they are fit for
the universities of today. This depends on our conception of what a university is or should be.
If we conceive of universities as institutes in which theoretical-empirical research is
performed solely, then large parts of the humanities and hermeneutics do not belong there.

13
The cultural sciences can aspire to a fixed place at these universities. Interpretation, however,
is not an empirical science, and the same is true for other forms of cultural reflection, like the
arts and journalism. If we want to maintain the highest professional standards for
hermeneutics, the arts and journalism, perhaps we should found a separate institute – an
academy. In that case, C.P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’, hermeneutics and science, would become
separated institutionally. We can wonder whether this new academy should also harbor other
forms of cultural reflection, like the arts and the news media. It should be clear what is at
stake here, regardless of its desirability. An academy of this sort could work to the advantage
of primary and secondary education, because it would show that a gift for language or
reflection should be merited on its own terms, and not according to the standards of empirical
science.
If, however, we conceive of the university as an education for future intellectual elites
which will be of crucial importance for our societies – intellectual elites that should not
operate above but amongst other elites – universities should offer, apart from scientific
education, the programs that can educate those who can interpret, create and picture – those
who are potentially talented users of the media, the arts and language. “Universities are
elitist”, Tony Judt stated, “they are about selecting the most able cohort of a generation and
educating them to their ability – breaking open the elite and making it consistently anew”
(Judt 2010, 145). The major advantage of this university is that the different cultural domains
can stick together, and inspire and criticize each other. Research in the humanities combines
an attitude (reflection), a skill (interpretation) and kind of knowledge (of culture). This
combination is also the ideal of a liberal arts education, of which Bloch has noted the
following:

One notices it might have been beneficial had more of the players in our irrational
markets read their Homer, Dante, Dickens, or Balzac. There are no guarantees, of
course, but greed and appetite have been exposed in literature and moral philosophy
since the ancient Greeks. Nor has modern thought neglected this important subject.
More education via Locke, Rousseau, Hobbes, or John Stuart Mill, or a serious course
of Gibbon, Marx, or Tocqueville, could have helped some particular individuals and
their institutions gain some purchase upon the consequences—or at least the
feasibility—of their actions (Bloch 2009).
This broad, ‘liberal’ university presupposes an overarching frame, not based on the conviction
of the hegemony of the empirical sciences, but on a cultivated balance between the different

14
forms of culture that are available. This balance could provide a model for our societies, in
which available skills and convictions should not be subordinated to one another when this
not necessary, but which should cooperate on the basis of equality.

15
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