The Case for the Humanities

Countering the perception that the humanities are unessential, this volume contends that their well-being has not only academic but also cultural, political, and existential ramifications.

This book is timely and innovative in addressing a longstanding debate about the usefulness of the study of the humanities in an increasingly science-driven world. As a professor of French and author of a number of other books with an interdisciplinary orientation, Touya (Clemson Univ.) is well positioned for this ambitious task. An introductory chapter argues that the humanities are important for infusing policy issues with ethical awareness and sound critical thinking. Chapter 1, ‘The Humanities in the City,’ builds on the thesis by focusing on how the humanities positively infuse and orient the social sciences and science. Chapter 2, ‘Humanizing Economics,’ shows that the study of economics is enhanced by a human-centered approach. Chapter 3, ‘Searching for STEM’s Telos,’ advances the case further by arguing that the role of the humanities is fundamental to define the limits and purpose of science and technology. Chapter 4, ‘Transcendent Humanities,’ concludes the argument by showing through examples that the humanities contribute to the understanding of key policy issues.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels.

Some declare and yet others bemoan our obsolescence. Eric Touya de Marenne downright refuses both. Rather, he invites us on a spectacular intellectual odyssey that winds its way from Antiquity through the Renaissance and from Auschwitz to Rwanda as he develops a set of newly smelted interdisciplinary concepts for shaping powerfully productive intellectual and pedagogical research programs. Touya de Marenne’s penetrating planetary purview and erudite minutiae charts the exquisite convergence of sciences, ethics, history, literature, philosophy, and mathematics that make for the emergence of new epistemological borderlands. Read The Case for the Humanities and know with certainty that the deep reason the humanities matter today, yesterday, and tomorrow: They are knowledge!

The Humanities have increasingly been under scrutiny in the age of educational reforms directed toward upholding the economic orientations of capitalism and its structures of exclusion. More and more, educational outcomes are being aligned with an ideology stipulating the cultural capital of knowledge be vested in questions of economic profitability rather than human development and emancipation. Eric Touya de Marenne's The Case for the Humanities: Pedagogy, Polity, Interdisciplinarity is a lucid and engaging book that addresses arguments for and against the Humanities from its philosophical roots in antiquity to the contemporary "crisis" of technologically driven world. It takes up the conversation that Jean-François Lyotard began in The Postmodern Condition about human freedom in relation to mnemo-technical pedagogies and uncontestable master narratives rooted in stable archives of meaning. Much more than a simple defence of the Humanities, Touya's book is an essential progression of the critique of educational imperatives that disregard considerations of democracy, critical citizenship, human rights, and the public good. An essential read for anyone interested in the history of educational reform past, present and future.

In this artful and provocative study Eric Touya de Marenne conveys how the fate of the humanities in institutions of higher learning today is vulnerable to a number of compromising institutional pressures and thought regimes. Touya’s trenchant analysis of the crisis in liberal arts education amounts to a compelling call for change. Drawing on a wide range of sources, from classical philosophy to the most recent pedagogical discussions in the professional literature, Touya demonstrates the perennial importance of the humanities as an essential area of learning for all students. In chapters focusing on economics and STEM studies, fields that increasingly serve as models for today’s universities (and receive ever greater funding), Touya suggests that instruction in these areas lacks the necessary grounding in relational thinking, epistemology, ethics and aesthetics. The practical thrust of the book, which benefits from the conciseness and elegance of Touya’s prose, is complemented by its theoretical range and subtlety.

Eric Touya de Marenne received his Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago and he is currently Associate Professor of French at Clemson University. He is the author of Musique et poétique à l’âge du symbolisme (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005), French-American Relations: Remembering D-Day after September 11 (University Press of America, 2008) and Francophone Women Writers: Feminisms, Postcolonialisms, Cross-Cultures (Lexington Books Publishing, 2011).