It's a pity the humanities let themselves get stomped for wokeness. They've decolonized the curriculum and graduates don't know the name Socrates or what he said.
But they're highly educated on what to be offended by.
Emergent order is a beautiful thing. It is beautiful to see that a love for literature and art is self-seeding in public space, despite the official demise of the academic humanities. I say this as an academic refugee who once taught literature to Ivy League undergrads but left when it became clear -- because it was already clear, 25 years ago -- that the academic humanities were committing suicide and doing a lot of harm along the way.
I re-read The Human Condition this month as research for an essay I'm writing about Antigone. The first third of the book as never left me since I first read it at 18. I'm up for a discussion any time about the oikos and the polis and the dangers of conflating the two. Come to think of it, it's time to re-read Christopher Lasch's The Fall of Public Man.
Michael Millerman is excellent, a very serious philosophical thinker, and you might be interested in Athenian Stranger as well, who is on Substack.
I've been noticing this too. Even more interesting is how this mirrors the Renaissance. That was a restarting of the humanities by people outside of the traditional academy as well. In their time the academy was stifled by scholasticism (very different from modern political stifling), and the thinkers of the Renaissance began to share ideas and write and grow the new movement outside the old system. Eventually their parallel system of the humanities got adopted by the universities.
I’m a humanities booster as much as anyone, and I love Substack - but this discourse outside the academy has its limitations. Yes some people get big, but many more, who would also have been academics in another age (not superstars but profs with tenured gigs and pension plans) are scratching it to earn 4 figures from paid subs on Patreon. The phenomenon of audience capture then comes into play (rather the flip side of the funder capture that Tyler Austin Harper wrote about with his piece on Mellon for the Atlantic).
The Arendt/ChatGPT irony is the sharpest move in here. She feared we'd outsource thinking to artificial machines, and you found her through one. That's not an anecdote. That's the whole thesis compressed into a single action. The Human Condition is one of my favorite books. Arendt earned this moment. Honored to be named alongside the writers he cited.
Everybody gets it wrong from time to time. Anyway, the machines are insensate which is one of their missing ingredients for actual thought. LLMs are prediction machines, a complex matrix of simple ingredients that are individually easily understood but the matrix obscures things, plus the hype doesn’t clarify. BTW - No AI was involved in the production of this thought.
Thanks for **explaining** AI.... Btw, I wonder if your thought would've been sharper if you bantered about it with AI first. You should hold that possibility. Technology can enhance as much as it can take away.
The formalized study of literature, poetry, and so on was always a corruption. Academia presupposes a "right answer" to it all, and forces "correct" interpretive frames. This was long before "wokeness" and Harold Bloom, it goes all the way back to Matthew Arnold. Amateurism was always the healthy path.
That being said, I'm not convinced this is a return to a healthy dillentatism. The Booktok people especially seem to care much more about showing off they read something than reading. Not sure about the other groups you mentioned.
There definitely are pros and cons. It’s shallow and not scholarly. But IDK about the BookTok thing. It’s easy to see it as performative, but I’m not sure reading and reviewing “The Brothers Karamazov” for clout is a bad thing.
I am in the other Human Condition reading group with the Catherine Project. Been an incredibly rewarding read. The book becomes more and more relevant by each passing chapter. The hour and half each week is never nearly enough to explore it all. Don't think I have read anyone that saw the future that was coming/had come for us as well as Arendt did.
We are still only about half way through, taking our time with it, looking forward to the second half. And yeah would love to hear what others perspectives are on the book.
I teach "The Human Condition" in Business Ethics at a pretty lousy university. The students end up adoring the work, even where praise for dense works is otherwise in short supply. However, it's kind of cheeky for the AI to recommend a book where Arendt transforms us from beings to predicates! That made me laugh. Have you had a chance to do Arendt's "Life of the Mind" yet? It's lovely.
Haha, I'm glad you saw the humor in that. I found it funny too.
That's impressive that you require "The Human Condition" in your business ethics class. It wasn't an easy read. I haven't read "Life of the Mind" yet, but it's now on my to-do list.
A thought occurred to me while reading this article. Maybe instead of denigrating departments in the humanities for their stupid post-modernism, social constructivism, and general wokism, I could actively encourage them to change their ways.
This is fantastic. I recently re-read The Human Condition and wrote a Substack piece about it just two weeks ago! And I’ve been wanting to sign up for a Catherine Project session for months. The hunger for this kind of learning is everywhere once you start looking for it.
It's a pity the humanities let themselves get stomped for wokeness. They've decolonized the curriculum and graduates don't know the name Socrates or what he said.
But they're highly educated on what to be offended by.
I agree with you.
Classics didn't whither away; they were emphatically killed.
Emergent order is a beautiful thing. It is beautiful to see that a love for literature and art is self-seeding in public space, despite the official demise of the academic humanities. I say this as an academic refugee who once taught literature to Ivy League undergrads but left when it became clear -- because it was already clear, 25 years ago -- that the academic humanities were committing suicide and doing a lot of harm along the way.
Excellent and timely article.
I re-read The Human Condition this month as research for an essay I'm writing about Antigone. The first third of the book as never left me since I first read it at 18. I'm up for a discussion any time about the oikos and the polis and the dangers of conflating the two. Come to think of it, it's time to re-read Christopher Lasch's The Fall of Public Man.
Michael Millerman is excellent, a very serious philosophical thinker, and you might be interested in Athenian Stranger as well, who is on Substack.
Thanks Chris, appreciate the suggestions. I’m up for discussion any time.
Currently kicking around ideas to propose for my next book seminar group. Tempted to go full Heidegger. Maybe Rene Girard. IDK.
I've been noticing this too. Even more interesting is how this mirrors the Renaissance. That was a restarting of the humanities by people outside of the traditional academy as well. In their time the academy was stifled by scholasticism (very different from modern political stifling), and the thinkers of the Renaissance began to share ideas and write and grow the new movement outside the old system. Eventually their parallel system of the humanities got adopted by the universities.
Yes. Thank you for this insight.
I’m a humanities booster as much as anyone, and I love Substack - but this discourse outside the academy has its limitations. Yes some people get big, but many more, who would also have been academics in another age (not superstars but profs with tenured gigs and pension plans) are scratching it to earn 4 figures from paid subs on Patreon. The phenomenon of audience capture then comes into play (rather the flip side of the funder capture that Tyler Austin Harper wrote about with his piece on Mellon for the Atlantic).
totally agree with you — the energy is amazing but over time I think we’ll probably need to establish new institutions for all this
The Arendt/ChatGPT irony is the sharpest move in here. She feared we'd outsource thinking to artificial machines, and you found her through one. That's not an anecdote. That's the whole thesis compressed into a single action. The Human Condition is one of my favorite books. Arendt earned this moment. Honored to be named alongside the writers he cited.
Everybody gets it wrong from time to time. Anyway, the machines are insensate which is one of their missing ingredients for actual thought. LLMs are prediction machines, a complex matrix of simple ingredients that are individually easily understood but the matrix obscures things, plus the hype doesn’t clarify. BTW - No AI was involved in the production of this thought.
Thanks for **explaining** AI.... Btw, I wonder if your thought would've been sharper if you bantered about it with AI first. You should hold that possibility. Technology can enhance as much as it can take away.
Ha ha, not am explanation, am deadpan…AI funtool not iron, nother character
The formalized study of literature, poetry, and so on was always a corruption. Academia presupposes a "right answer" to it all, and forces "correct" interpretive frames. This was long before "wokeness" and Harold Bloom, it goes all the way back to Matthew Arnold. Amateurism was always the healthy path.
That being said, I'm not convinced this is a return to a healthy dillentatism. The Booktok people especially seem to care much more about showing off they read something than reading. Not sure about the other groups you mentioned.
There definitely are pros and cons. It’s shallow and not scholarly. But IDK about the BookTok thing. It’s easy to see it as performative, but I’m not sure reading and reviewing “The Brothers Karamazov” for clout is a bad thing.
I am in the other Human Condition reading group with the Catherine Project. Been an incredibly rewarding read. The book becomes more and more relevant by each passing chapter. The hour and half each week is never nearly enough to explore it all. Don't think I have read anyone that saw the future that was coming/had come for us as well as Arendt did.
Wow, small world. It would be fun to get the two groups together.
In our group, each session feels like paddling into the jungle deeper and deeper. Sometimes we end up more enlightened, other times more confused.
I agree it got better the deeper into it we went. I enjoyed the second half of the book much more than the first.
We are still only about half way through, taking our time with it, looking forward to the second half. And yeah would love to hear what others perspectives are on the book.
I teach "The Human Condition" in Business Ethics at a pretty lousy university. The students end up adoring the work, even where praise for dense works is otherwise in short supply. However, it's kind of cheeky for the AI to recommend a book where Arendt transforms us from beings to predicates! That made me laugh. Have you had a chance to do Arendt's "Life of the Mind" yet? It's lovely.
Haha, I'm glad you saw the humor in that. I found it funny too.
That's impressive that you require "The Human Condition" in your business ethics class. It wasn't an easy read. I haven't read "Life of the Mind" yet, but it's now on my to-do list.
Doing my part: https://robincampbell3.substack.com/
A thought occurred to me while reading this article. Maybe instead of denigrating departments in the humanities for their stupid post-modernism, social constructivism, and general wokism, I could actively encourage them to change their ways.
Yes. Also check out www.alexandria.wiki - Free great books library with AI tutor (Virgil) in the margins.
I was feeling horny for philosophy is not a phrase I expected to encounter
😂
This is fantastic. I recently re-read The Human Condition and wrote a Substack piece about it just two weeks ago! And I’ve been wanting to sign up for a Catherine Project session for months. The hunger for this kind of learning is everywhere once you start looking for it.
I agree with much of this, but you really hadn’t heard of Arendt?
Of course I had. But the human condition wasn’t exactly top of mind.