humanities essay examples

humanities essay examples

The Importance of Studying Humanities

1. The Relevance of Humanities in Modern Society

Discourse on the relevance of humanities in modern society is both a contentious and a revered topic. This topic can be approached from many angles. An analysis of the current position of the humanities in the modern world, and their relevance, is one which I will approach, guided by an argumentative style. I will begin by considering the changing status of the humanities over the past fifty years. I will then approach the notion of relevance in many forms: the personal relevance of humanistic study to the individual, the perceived relevance in the form of translation into an occupation, and the more generalized relevance to the population. I will argue that the humanities are in fact highly relevant today. This importance is not always obvious, because the meaning of relevance is not always consistent or well understood. This topic comes at a time where humanities education is being placed on the backburner in light of the rising importance of science and mathematics worldwide. The main reasons commonly given to explain this phenomenon are economic ones. It’s true that humanities graduates do not fare as well as those of other disciplines in terms of immediate remuneration. Furthermore, funding for arts courses in universities and subsequently research grants is also on the decline. Share of GDP spent on culture and the arts in the UK has fallen 5% in the past 20 years. These figures are often used as evidence that today’s populations, and more importantly governments, don’t place much value on the humanities anymore. Economic argument is only part of the story, however. Economic rationalism in its current form has been accused of short-sightedness. An education is an investment in the future, and the humanities have a crucial role to play in the development of human society.

2. The Benefits of Humanities Education

Lastly, the world has always needed great leaders, be it in any field. History has witnessed some of the greatest men to have lived. The past and the present are replete with men of great intelligence and caliber. What is essential here is that today’s leaders need to have a broad-based knowledge to take decisions of any sort. Humanities can act as a guide to achieve this knowledge and with the knowledge of humanities, the understanding, decisions, and actions of the leaders will definitely be more sagacious and commendable.

Humanities education also imparts significant writing and speaking skills. Today, good communication skills are imperative. Be it any profession writing and speaking are the basic ways to communicate. In this technology-oriented world, there has been a decline in the use of language and how people are expressing their ideas. This has led to many problems today. Humanities can play a vital role in reviving this situation as the students willing to take this education will easily practice how to use the right words and it can act as an outset for them in presenting their ideas in a very sophisticated manner.

Humanities enable a person to have perennial and informed views about the universe and the creation in it. In a scientific world today, this is becoming increasingly necessary. It familiarizes us with great ideas and events of the past so that we are not confined to the world of today only. In a sense, it gives us a perspective to look into the future and to see what the world is likely to become.

What the current generation lacks are human values. The world has become so materialistic that every action of ours is guided by the consideration of money and power. This has led to grave distortions in the form of acts of unscrupulous and corrupt persons who have put the very survival of humanity at stake. Humanities educate a person and prepare him to deal with others. It teaches him compassion and understanding for his fellow men and makes him a better human being thus improving his quality.

Humanities education offers students a broad knowledge of the arts, philosophy, and letters. It raises questions about issues in every era and is concerned with the meaning of human life. The benefits of studying humanities are immense. Today’s life is extremely complex and to go through the rigmarole of life, one needs a clear mind and a rational mind. This is exactly what humanities education enables man to do. It equips him with rational and critical thinking. A man who has these qualities is the need of the society today.

3. The Role of Humanities in Cultivating Critical Thinking

– If humanities is the practice of critical thinking and it is a discipline that relies on teaching a skill more than specific knowledge, then it is important to have an outcome that shows the increase in the skill that is being taught. A double-blind trial conducted by the APA showing the use of a humanities-based approach to medical students, as opposed to a traditional case-based approach, found that the humanities approach better taught the physicians in training to observe, tolerate ambiguity, and suspend judgment, and was more effective in decreasing premature closure on diagnostic exercises. Although in this case the trial was comparing a humanities approach to a different discipline, it is an example that the humanities meet the increased use of critical thinking. In one study, the humanities is worth doing, then importing the skills from the humanities to other disciplines.

– Critical thinking is a skill that is essential to practice the humanities. Some form of critical thinking is involved in everything that is written or accomplished in the humanities, for it is the defining characteristic of the discipline. For example, when reading, it is necessary to first understand what the author is saying and then to view the writing in a critical manner, evaluating whether the author was right in his assumptions, etc. Other disciplines often have a specific area where they need to apply critical thinking, but it is something that is consistent throughout all fields of the humanities. Writing is another example of where critical thinking is essential. All writing must be done in a persuasive manner. It is a failure to be persuasive if any reader can find a fault in your writing, so every possible counter-argument must be addressed and solved in the persuasion.

– Critical thinking involves the ability to take information from what is seen, heard, or read, to define a problem (often a confusing or conflicting statement), to search for solutions using the best available information, and finally to make a judgment. The application of critical thinking in our lives is endless. We need it to make good personal decisions (such as what school to buy a house in, who to vote for president), to find the right morals and values, to understand and make a determination about public issues, and even to perform everyday tasks like planning how to get somewhere. It is also a skill that is highly transferable to many different areas of work and study.

4. The Impact of Humanities on Empathy and Understanding

An empathetic understanding of human problems and conditions will always be a primary concern of the humanities. This, in turn, is an essential part of any education aimed at helping to improve the human condition. When asked about various policy changes and actions to be taken regarding social issues, a medical doctor with a specialty in infectious diseases was emphatic in saying that those making the decisions should first have a good understanding of the conditions in which the affected people live. He later said it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a physician on the team either. In this case, understanding the social environment and conditions of certain peoples is not an easy task; often society’s less fortunate members don’t have a voice, and when they do, what they say is said in terms of the art that only accurately reflects historical context.

The understanding of individual and societal behavior has long been a component of the humanistic enterprise. Students of literature, for example, can learn how people act on the basis of their needs and desires. In history, the importance of understanding another person’s epistemological framework is evident. Philosophers have also been interested in the motivation behind human action. Those studying music, art, and art history can develop an understanding of the cultural, economic, and social environment in which works of art are/were created and how they reflect their creators’ or society’s outlook. With a strong emphasis on the methods of cultural anthropology, humanities become an important tool in discovering what causes things to happen the way they do and how to better understand cultural phenomena.

5. The Future of Humanities in a Technological World

The necessity of good humanities education has often been an article of faith in educational policy discussions that has been sorely tested, with attacks coming from both sides of the political aisle. Traditionalist conservatives decry a decline in standards and in ‘core knowledge’ and raise fears that utilitarian vocational training will displace traditional liberal education in the rush to get ever greater numbers of citizens into and through the college system. Egalitarian progressives, while disdaining to defend ‘old canons’ that have little appeal for multicultural constituencies of the new US university, nonetheless argue that the humanities in some form, and ideally a form that includes access to the history and thought of other cultures and to the critical faculties developed by self-awareness of one’s own cultural contingency, are essential to the formation of educated democratic citizenries.

The digital revolution promises both new delivery systems for the traditional objects of study in humanities – art, literature, history, philosophy – and also entirely new subjects of inquiry, such as video games and digital art forms. Many humanists are calling for the development of a new digital humanities field that would bring computer scientists together with artists and humanists to develop new tools for the analysis of traditional and new media. Advocates argue that the traditional objects of study in the humanities are too important to future societies to be left to the mercies of a for-profit educational marketplace that is motivated to cut costs and use the wonders of the new technology to dumb content down, so that it can be delivered without the mediation of more highly trained (and more highly paid) educators.