Re-shaping the Public Life: The Humanities and Being Human

M. Todd Hall

Architectural beauty: Canterbury Cathedral

In a day in which everything is political, and the political is incredibly polarized, it is vital that we develop a dialogue about ultimate things that goes beyond immediate and technical application. If we are to get out of this thing alive, we need to develop a long term discussion and a shared vision of human flourishing and responsibility that truly engages thought regarding the good, the beautiful, and the true. Theology, in dialog with the humanities, can serve as a vital partner in developing this vision.

We live in a “practical” world that is always in search of a technical solution. There are several reasons for this, of course. We won’t have time to exhaust them all here, but I want to explore a couple of these reasons and then suggest some ways that the humanities—rather than political or technical solutions—might better serve a society in search of longer term answers to problems that currently plague us.

The modern age has been characterized both by a devotion to positivism and a deep trust in (and even reverence for) applied science. In this environment, human knowing is largely instrumentalized: that is, knowledge is meant to serve as a tool for solving human problems, and thus there is a technical solution for every human problem, whether that solution is in the form of hard technology (for example, wind power in order to combat pollution from the use of fossil fuels) or “soft” technology (for example, bureaucratization or other technologies of social control). Thus, we are a society ever in search of a quick technical or political solution to every problem.

A further complication for us as we face the difficult challenges of late (and post) modernity is the tendency, since the Enlightenment, to limit the arena for “objective” knowledge discovery (and creation) to the realm of empirically-based scientific investigation. This has relegated non-scientific fields of thought to the mere “subjective,” and thus effectively removed them from the conversation of human knowing. The arts and the humanities are excluded from the discussion of “solutions” when it comes to the problems of late modernity.

This dedication to practical solutions, of course, has policy implications, and it can be illustrated in some fairly recent decisions at the executive level of the federal government. In 2001—in what seems like a primitive, far away world—then-President George W. Bush appointed the National Council of Bioethics to replace the National Bioethics Advisory Commission. The purpose of the council was to “advise the President on bioethical issues that may emerge as a consequence of advances in biomedical science and technology.” (See executive order 13237, here: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13237 ) Considering the pressing questions in bioethics at the time (cloning, fetal stem cell research, and the like), the establishment of the council made sense.

Interestingly, though, the council set out to explore the questions of bioethics through a deep exploration of what it is to be human. They produced readers in the humanities that were meant to encourage thoughtfulness about questions which are a priori to the “practical” questions surrounding the immediate issues. The introduction to one of the readers, Being Human, offers this explanation for what the council hoped to achieve in studying the humanities: “The council believes that readings of the sort offered here can contribute to a richer understanding and deeper appreciation of our humanity, necessary for facing the challenges confronting us in a biotechnological age.”

Ultimately, the council was disbanded and replaced in 2009 by then-President Barack Obama, who appointed a group to focus on more practical questions regarding public policy and bioethics. It is not my desire to focus on the political atmosphere surrounding the council (it was, as everything in the last several administrations, a fairly contentious experiment, as the American public has been fiercely polarized on most issues for some time now). However, I do want to note the shift away from the exploration of ontology—of what it is to be human—toward a more “practical” approach in debating public policy. This would be the norm in U.S. history, of course, as we are a very pragmatic people. It is also in keeping with the spirit of the postmodern impulse to deconstruct essentialized portraits of (especially) humans.

Nevertheless, there is something about the council’s desire to address more deeply the issues behind the practical policy decisions that seems vital to finding a way forward as a nation (and a civilization) in such a polarized environment. I contend that policy and even ethical positions are secondary to a solid vision of what it is to be human, and more specifically, to be human in this world. Christians, I believe—insofar as we have been focused on policy and ethics questions—we have been engaging the culture in precisely the wrong order, beginning with concerns which cannot be properly addressed apart from a unified vision of the good, the true, and the beautiful as it relates to human life and flourishing. Thus the place to begin engaging the culture around us is in the humanities.

In our own culture, with its fascination with technological and technical progress, contemporary Christianity has largely ceded the humanities to the “entertainment” industry, focusing instead on a search for political solutions to what is seen as a serious decline in the moral commitments of the United States. Often Christians with gifts in the area of humanities are discouraged from developing them in favor of more “practical” skills. Consequently, the vision of the human which has captivated contemporary Americans—including American churches—is that which has been developed in Hollywood, television studios, the music industry, and in the popular printing industry.

In thinking through the ways in which the church needs to engage the world in our current political and cultural climate, I am more convinced than ever that we must re-engage the humanities. We need to encourage our kids to read deeply in the classics and in the centuries of literature that have explored what it is to be human. We need to present them with visions of the “good life” that are different from what they normally receive via the entertainment industry. We need to consider developing our own institutions to engage in this task, insofar as humanities departments in universities are all too often filled with contextual philosophies (all the “isms” of academia) as a priori assumptions, without listening to alternative visions—they are breathing their own exhaust. We need to offer our future scholars, professionals, moms, dads, and all the rest of us, a different exploration of the true, the beautiful, and the good.

Much more could (and should) be said, and much thought needs to be put into this. But I believe, now more than ever, that we must pursue the humanities more deeply before we attempt to engage the culture any longer in political or technical reform. Insofar as the humanities are, I am suggesting, indispensable for understanding human ontology, it may well be that interaction with and production of beautiful literature, art, architecture, and other products of the humanities matter much more right now than positions on specific ethical and political questions.

Purchase the book A Voice in the Wilderness for similar considerations about the church and culture

Partner with CCS