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176-456: A revisionist movement. He believed humanism to be a bourgeois individualist philosophy that posits a "human essence" through which there is potential for authenticity and common human purpose. This essence does not exist: it is a formal structure of thought whose content is determined by the dominant interests of each historical epoch. Socialist humanism is similarly an ethical and thus ideological phenomenon. Since its argument rests on

264-531: A social science or a humanities discipline, depending on one's perspective. Some see it as a social science because of its objective and measurable nature, while others view it as a humanities discipline because of its focus on values and interpretation. Law is not always enforceable, especially in the international relations context. Law has been defined in various ways, such as "a system of rules", "an interpretive concept" for achieving justice, "an authority" to mediate between people's interests, or "the command of

352-519: A subjectivism and idealism that must be avoided. Like Hegel before him, Heidegger rejected the Kantian notion of autonomy , pointing out that humans were social and historical beings, as well as rejecting Kant's notion of a constituting consciousness. In Heidegger's philosophy, Being ( Sein ) and human Being ( Dasein ) are a primary unity. Dualisms of subject and object, consciousness and being, humanity and nature are inauthentic derivations from this. In

440-487: A degree in the humanities. By 2010, this figure had risen to 2.6%. This represents a doubling of the number of Americans with degrees in the humanities over a 60-year period. The increase in the number of Americans with humanities degrees is in part due to the overall rise in college enrollment in the United States. In 1940, 4.6% of Americans had a four-year degree, but by 2016, this figure had risen to 33.4%. This means that

528-465: A field called the digital humanities . Antihumanism In social theory and philosophy , antihumanism or anti-humanism is a theory that is critical of traditional humanism , traditional ideas about humanity and the human condition . Central to antihumanism is the view that philosophical anthropology and its concepts of " human nature ", "man" or "humanity" should be rejected as historically relative, ideological or metaphysical . In

616-531: A means for the weak to constrain the strong; as such, they do not facilitate the emancipation of life, but instead deny it. The young Karl Marx is sometimes considered a humanist, as he rejected the idea of human rights as a symptom of the very dehumanization they were intended to oppose. Given that capitalism forces individuals to behave in an egoistic manner, they are in constant conflict with one another, and are thus in need of rights to protect themselves. True emancipation, he asserted, could only come through

704-418: A moral and ethical basis, it reflects the reality of exploitation and discrimination that gives rise to it but never truly grasps this reality in thought. Marxist theory must go beyond this to a scientific analysis that directs to underlying forces such as economic relations and social institutions. Althusser considered "structure" and "social relations" to have primacy over individual consciousness , opposing

792-463: A mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down on the latter as unscientific, the latter regarding the former as philistine . […] The difference comes down to the fact that social science really wants to be predictive, meaning that man is predictable, while the humanities say that he is not. For many decades, there has been a growing public perception that a humanities education inadequately prepares graduates for employment. The common belief

880-433: A particular path. In the liberal arts tradition, musicology is also used to broaden skills of non-musicians by teaching skills, including concentration and listening. Theatre (or theater) (Greek "theatron", θέατρον ) is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle — indeed any one or more elements of

968-454: A red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade and reflection). A characteristic of this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet and Japan. Religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometry instead. The physical and rational certainties depicted by

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1056-411: A scientific observer. The semiological work of Roland Barthes (1977) decried the cult of the author and indeed proclaimed his death. Jacques Lacan 's reformulation of psychoanalysis based on linguistics inevitably led to a similar diminishment of the concept of the autonomous individual: "man with a discourse on freedom which must certainly be called delusional...produced as it is by an animal at

1144-441: A semiotic materialist, "a subject position in an infinite web of discourses – the discourses of power, sex, family, science, religion, poetry, etc." Charged with taking a bleak deterministic view, she retorts, "antihumanist, yes; inhuman, no...the truly determined subject is he who is not aware of the discursive formations that determine him". However, with greater life-experience, she comes closer to accepting that post-structuralism

1232-589: A source of reliable benchmarks to guide analysis of the state of the humanities in the United States. The 1980 United States Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities described the humanities in its report "The Humanities in American Life": Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of

1320-575: A sovereign" backed by the threat of punishment. However one likes to think of law, it is a completely central social institution. Legal policy is shaped by the practical application of ideas from many social science and humanities disciplines, including philosophy, history, political science, economics, anthropology, and sociology. Law is politics , because politicians create them. Law is philosophy , because moral and ethical persuasions shape their ideas. Law tells many of history 's stories, because statutes, case law and codifications build up over time. Law

1408-481: A surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface. Common tools are graphite pencils , pen and ink , inked brushes , wax color pencils , crayons , charcoals , pastels , and markers . Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, hatching , crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling , and blending. A computer aided designer who excels in technical drawing

1496-426: A trend of thought which emphasizes science and within it tends towards a deterministic view of the world. He clearly identifies positivist theorist Auguste Comte as an important proponent of this view. For Todorov, " Scientism does not eliminate the will but decides that since the results of science are valid for everyone, this will must be something shared, not individual. In practice, the individual must submit to

1584-589: A universally accepted definition, but which has variably included all written work; writing that possesses literary merit; and language that emphasizes its own literary features, as opposed to ordinary language . Etymologically the term derives from the Latin word literatura /litteratura which means "writing formed with letters", although some definitions include spoken or sung texts . Literature can be classified as fiction or non-fiction ; poetry or prose . It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as

1672-541: A variety of settings, from small dance studios to large theaters. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social , cultural , aesthetic , artistic , and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as Folk dance ) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet . The great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the ancient civilizations, such as Ancient Japan , Greece and Rome , China , India , Greater Nepal , Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica . Ancient Greek art saw

1760-520: A veneration of the human physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features (e.g., Zeus ' thunderbolt). The emphasis on spiritual and religious themes in Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages reflected the dominance of

1848-551: A world where irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason. The Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences 2013 report "The Heart of the Matter" supports the notion of a broad " liberal arts education ", which includes study in disciplines from the natural sciences to the arts as well as the humanities. Many colleges provide such an education; some require it. The University of Chicago and Columbia University were among

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1936-636: Is also a specialized form of fine art in which the artists perform their work live to an audience. This is called Performance art . Most performance art also involves some form of plastic art, perhaps in the creation of props . Dance was often referred to as a plastic art during the Modern dance era. Musicology as an academic discipline can take a number of different paths, including historical musicology , music literature, ethnomusicology and music theory . Undergraduate music majors generally take courses in all of these areas, while graduate students focus on

2024-517: Is also economics, because any rule about contract , tort , property law , labour law , company law and many more can have long-lasting effects on how productivity is organised and the distribution of wealth. The noun law derives from the Old English word lagu , meaning something laid down or fixed, and the adjective legal comes from the Latin word LEX . Literature is a term that does not have

2112-529: Is also used to describe methods of non-verbal communication (see body language ) between humans or animals ( bee dance , mating dance), and motion in inanimate objects ( the leaves danced in the wind ). Choreography is the process of creating dances, and the people who create choreography are known as choreographers. Choreographers use movement, music , and other elements to create expressive and artistic dances. They may work alone or with other artists to create new works, and their work can be presented in

2200-404: Is commonly regarded as a social science . Based on current knowledge, it seems that all known cultures, both in the past and present, have some form of belief system or religious practice. While there may be isolated individuals or groups who do not practice any form of religion, it is not known if there has ever been a society that was entirely devoid of religious belief. The definition of religion

2288-471: Is cut or shaved down to the desired form, like stone and wood. In the West, the history of the humanities can be traced to ancient Greece, as the basis of a broad education for citizens. During Roman times, the concept of the seven liberal arts evolved, involving grammar , rhetoric and logic (the trivium ), along with arithmetic , geometry , astronomy and music (the quadrivium ). These subjects formed

2376-403: Is distinguished from other ways of addressing these issues by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument, rather than experiments ( experimental philosophy being an exception). Philosophy used to be a very comprehensive term, including what have subsequently become separate disciplines, such as physics . (As Immanuel Kant noted, "Ancient Greek philosophy

2464-436: Is factored in). He paid little attention to the individual and instead concentrated on systems of signs as they operated in primitive societies. For Levi-Strauss, cultural choice was always pre-constrained by a signifying convention. Everything in experience was matter for communication codes. The structure of this system was not devised by anyone and was not present in the minds of its users, but nonetheless could be discerned by

2552-459: Is impossible to express subjectivity . Conscious discourse is the effect of a meaning beyond the reach of a speaking subject. The ego is a fiction that covers over a series of effects arrived at independently of the mind itself. Taking a lead from Brecht 's twin attack on bourgeois and socialist humanism, structural Marxist Louis Althusser used the term "antihumanism" in an attack against Marxist humanists , whose position he considered

2640-473: Is in principle exchangeable for other sounds or concepts. A sign is only significant as a result of the total system in which it functions. To communicate by particular forms of speech and action ( parole ) is itself to presuppose a general body of rules ( langue ). The concrete piece of behaviour and the system that enables it to mean something mutually entail each other. The very act of identifying what they say already implies structures. Signs are thus not at

2728-506: Is no formalized register of colors. However, the Pantone system is widely used in the printing and design industry to standardize color reproduction. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, for example, collage . This began with cubism and is not painting in strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand , cement , straw or wood for their texture. Examples of these are

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2816-546: Is no longer statistically significant. Humanities graduates can boost their incomes if they obtain advanced or professional degrees. Humanities majors are sought after in many areas of business, specifically for their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. While often considered "soft skills", humanities majors gain skills such as "include persuasive written and oral communication, creative problem-solving, teamwork, decision-making, self-management, and critical analysis". The Humanities Indicators , unveiled in 2009 by

2904-426: Is not some meta-linguistic substance or identity, some pure cogito of self-presence; it is always inscribed in language". Michel Foucault challenged the foundational aspects of Enlightenment humanism. He rejected absolute categories of epistemology (truth or certainty) and philosophical anthropology (the subject, influence, tradition, class consciousness), in a manner not unlike Nietzsche's earlier dismissal of

2992-456: Is not universal, and different cultures may have different ideas about what constitutes religion. Religion may be characterized with a community since humans are social animals . Rituals are used to bound the community together. Social animals require rules. Ethics is a requirement of society, but not a requirement of religion. Shinto, Daoism, and other folk or natural religions do not have ethical codes. While some religions do include

3080-415: Is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman . Literally, painting is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or medium ) and a binding agent (a glue ) to a surface (support) such as paper , canvas or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense, it means the use of this activity in combination with drawing , composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest

3168-476: Is that graduates from such programs face underemployment and that incomes are too low for a humanities education to be worth the investment. Humanities graduates find employment in a wide variety of management and professional occupations. In Britain, for example, over 11,000 humanities majors found employment in the following occupations: Many humanities graduates may find themselves with no specific career goals upon graduation, which can lead to lower incomes in

3256-590: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences , are the first comprehensive compilation of data about the humanities in the United States, providing scholars, policymakers and the public with detailed information on humanities education from primary to higher education, the humanities workforce, humanities funding and research, and public humanities activities. Modeled after the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators, Humanities Indicators are

3344-1058: The Baháʼí Faith . Religions must adapt and change through the generations because they must remain relevant to the adherents. When traditional religions fail to address new concerns, then new religions will emerge. The performing arts differ from the visual arts in that the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal, or paint, which can be molded or transformed to create some art object . Performing arts include acrobatics , busking , comedy , dance , film , magic , music , opera , juggling , marching arts , such as brass bands , and theatre . Artists who participate in these arts in front of an audience are called performers, including actors, comedians , dancers , musicians , and singers . Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting and stagecraft . Performers often adapt their appearance , such as with costumes and stage makeup , etc. There

3432-581: The Letter on Humanism (1947), Heidegger distances himself from both humanism and existentialism . He argues that existentialism does not overcome metaphysics, as it merely reverses the basic metaphysical tenet that essence precedes existence. These metaphysical categories must instead be dismantled. Positivism is a philosophy of science based on the view that in the social as well as natural sciences , information derived from sensory experience , and logical and mathematical treatments of such data, are together

3520-565: The Renaissance Latin phrase studia humanitatis , which translates to study of humanity . This phrase was used to refer to the study of classical literature and language, which was seen as an important aspect of a refined education in the Renaissance . In its usage in the early 15th century, the studia humanitatis was a course of studies that consisted of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy, primarily derived from

3608-465: The novel ), poetry and drama , also lies at the heart of the modern humanities curriculum. College-level programs in a foreign language usually include study of important works of the literature in that language, as well as the language itself. In everyday language, law refers to a rule that is enforced by a governing institution, as opposed to a moral or ethical rule that is not subject to formal enforcement. The study of law can be seen as either

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3696-425: The novel , short story or drama ; and works are often categorised according to historical periods, or according to their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations ( genre ). Philosophy—etymologically, the "love of wisdom"—is generally the study of problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, justification, truth, justice, right and wrong, beauty, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy

3784-414: The secular curriculum in universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently defined as any fields of study outside of natural sciences , social sciences , formal sciences (like mathematics ), and applied sciences (or professional training ). They use methods that are primarily critical , speculative, or interpretative and have a significant historical element —as distinguished from

3872-540: The universal law of reason was a guide towards total emancipation from any kind of tyranny. Criticism of humanism as over-idealistic began in the 19th century. For Friedrich Nietzsche , humanism was nothing more than an empty figure of speech – a secular version of theism . Max Stirner expressed a similar position in his book The Ego and Its Own , published several decades before Nietzsche's work. Nietzsche argues in Genealogy of Morals that human rights exist as

3960-436: The 19th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein and of unseen psychology by Freud , but also by unprecedented technological development. Increasing global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art. Drawing is a means of making a picture , using a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on

4048-583: The Logic of the Social Sciences (1967), that "the positivist thesis of unified science, which assimilates all the sciences to a natural-scientific model, fails because of the intimate relationship between the social sciences and history, and the fact that they are based on a situation-specific understanding of meaning that can be explicated only hermeneutically ... access to a symbolically prestructured reality cannot be gained by observation alone." Structuralism

4136-472: The Symbolic Law. Since the unconscious is only accessible to the psychoanalyst in language, the most he or she can do is decode the conscious statements of the patient. This decoding can only take place within a signifying chain; the signified of unconscious discourse remains unattainable. It resides in a pre-signified dimension inaccessible to language that Lacan calls " The Real ". From this, it follows that it

4224-437: The West, but elsewhere white may be. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe , Kandinsky , Isaac Newton , have written their own colour theories . Moreover, the use of language is only a generalization for a colour equivalent. The word " red ", for example, can cover a wide range of variations on the pure red of the spectrum. Unlike music, where notes such as C or C# are universally accepted, there

4312-412: The analysis of language and to the question of whether, as Wittgenstein claimed, many of our philosophical confusions derive from the vocabulary we use; literary theory has explored the rhetorical, associative, and ordering features of language; and historical linguists have studied the development of languages across time. Literature, covering a variety of uses of language including prose forms (such as

4400-410: The article's talk page . Humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture , including certain fundamental questions asked by humans . During the Renaissance , the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature and language, as opposed to the study of religion, or " divinity ". The study of the humanities was a key part of

4488-423: The bulk of medieval education, with the emphasis being on the humanities as skills or "ways of doing". A major shift occurred with the Renaissance humanism of the fifteenth century, when the humanities began to be regarded as subjects to study rather than practice, with a corresponding shift away from traditional fields into areas such as literature and history ( studia humaniora ). In the 20th century, this view

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4576-455: The categories of reason, morality, spirit, ego, motivation as philosophical substitutes for God. Foucault argued that modern values either produced counter-emancipatory results directly, or matched increased "freedom" with increased and disciplinary normatization. His anti-humanist skepticism extended to attempts to ground theory in human feeling, as much as in human reason, maintaining that both were historically contingent constructs, rather than

4664-405: The church. However, in the Renaissance , a renewed focus on the physical world was reflected in art forms that depicted the human body and landscape in a more naturalistic and three-dimensional way. Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art , namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for

4752-606: The collectivity, which 'knows' better than he does. The autonomy of the will is maintained, but it is the will of the group, not the person […] scientism has flourished in two very different political contexts […] The first variant of scientism was put into practice by totalitarian regimes." A similar criticism can be found in the work associated with the Frankfurt School of social research. Antipositivism would be further facilitated by rejections of scientism ; or science as ideology . Jürgen Habermas argues, in his On

4840-417: The concept of deities, others do not. Therefore, the supernatural does not necessarily require the existence of deities. Rather, it can be broadly defined as any phenomena that cannot be explained by science or reason. Magical thinking creates explanations not available for empirical verification. Stories or myths are narratives being both didactic and entertaining. They are necessary for understanding

4928-503: The cornerstones of the humanities; however, its popularity declined during the 20th century. Nevertheless, the influence of classical ideas on many humanities disciplines, such as philosophy and literature, remains strong. History is systematically collected information about the past . When used as the name of a field of study , history refers to the study and interpretation of the record of humans , societies , institutions, and any topic that has changed over time. Traditionally,

5016-586: The development of the class consciousness of an historical subject - the proletariat - Althusser's antihumanism removed the role of human agency ; history was a process without a subject. Post-structuralist Jacques Derrida continued structuralism's focus on language as key to understanding all aspects of individual and social being, as well as its problematization of the human subject, but rejected its commitment to scientific objectivity. Derrida argued that if signs of language are only significant by virtue of their relations of difference with all other signs in

5104-487: The early stages of their career. On the other hand, graduates from more career-oriented programs often find jobs more quickly. However, the long-term career prospects of humanities graduates may be similar to those of other graduates, as research shows that by five years after graduation, they generally find a career path that appeals to them. There is empirical evidence that graduates from humanities programs earn less than graduates from other university programs. However,

5192-405: The empirical evidence also shows that humanities graduates still earn notably higher incomes than workers with no postsecondary education, and have job satisfaction levels comparable to their peers from other fields. Humanities graduates also earn more as their careers progress; ten years after graduation, the income difference between humanities graduates and graduates from other university programs

5280-402: The establishment of communism , which abolishes private property. According to many anti-humanists, such as Louis Althusser , mature Marx sees the idea of "humanity" as an unreal abstraction that masks conflicts between antagonistic classes; since human rights are abstract, the justice and equality they protect is also abstract, permitting extreme inequalities in reality. In the 20th century,

5368-482: The exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge. Positivism assumes that there is valid knowledge (truth) only in scientific knowledge. Obtaining and verifying data that can be received from the senses is known as empirical evidence . This view holds that society operates according to general laws that dictate the existence and interaction of ontologically real objects in the physical world. Introspective and intuitional attempts to gain knowledge are rejected. Though

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5456-456: The expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Painting has been used throughout history to express spiritual and religious ideas, from mythological scenes on pottery to the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel , to body art. Colour is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in

5544-474: The first schools to require an extensive core curriculum in philosophy, literature, and the arts for all students. Other colleges with nationally recognized, mandatory programs in the liberal arts are Fordham University , St. John's College , Saint Anselm College and Providence College . Prominent proponents of liberal arts in the United States have included Mortimer J. Adler and E. D. Hirsch, Jr. In 1950, 1.2% of Americans aged 22 had earned

5632-467: The goal of the human sciences was "not to constitute, but to dissolve man". He systematised a structuralist analysis of culture that incorporated ideas and methods from Saussure's model of language as a system of signifiers and signifieds. His work employed Saussurean technical terms such as langue and parole , as well as the distinction between synchronic analysis (abstracting a system as if it were timeless) and diachronic analysis (where temporal duration

5720-573: The human predicament. Some other possible characteristics of religion are pollutions and purification, the sacred and the profane, sacred texts, religious institutions and organizations, and sacrifice and prayer. Some of the major problems that religions confront, and attempts to answer are chaos, suffering, evil, and death. The non-founder religions are Hinduism , Shinto , and native or folk religions . Founder religions are Judaism , Christianity , Islam , Confucianism , Daoism , Mormonism , Jainism , Zoroastrianism , Buddhism , Sikhism , and

5808-405: The humanist emphasis on creativity, freedom and purpose. Saussure held that individual units of linguistic signification - signs - only enjoy their individuality and their power to signify by virtue of their contrasts or oppositions with other units in the same symbolic system. For Saussure, the sign is a mysterious unification of a sound and a thought. Nothing links the two: each sound and thought

5896-520: The humanities accounted for 15% of the bachelor's degrees awarded by colleges and universities in the United States. As of 2022, they accounted for less than 9%. Researchers in the humanities have developed numerous large- and small-scale digital corporations, such as digitized collections of historical texts, along with the digital tools and methods to analyze them. Their aim is both to uncover new knowledge about corpora and to visualize research data in new and revealing ways. Much of this activity occurs in

5984-547: The humanities and closer to the formal sciences , becoming much more analytic. Analytic philosophy is marked by emphasis on the use of logic and formal methods of reasoning, conceptual analysis, and the use of symbolic and/or mathematical logic , as contrasted with the Continental style of philosophy . This method of inquiry is largely indebted to the work of philosophers such as Gottlob Frege , Bertrand Russell , G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein . Religious Studies

6072-494: The humanities reject. Renaissance scholars and artists are also known as humanists . Some secondary schools offer humanities classes usually consisting of literature , history , foreign language , and art . Human disciplines like history and language mainly use the comparative method and comparative research . Other methods used in the humanities include hermeneutics , source criticism , esthetic interpretation , and speculative reason . The word humanities comes from

6160-452: The humanities, these are often considered social sciences . Similarly, disciplines such as finance , business administration , political science , economics , and global studies have closer ties to the social sciences rather than the humanities. Scholars in the humanities are called humanities scholars or sometimes humanists . The term humanist also describes the philosophical position of humanism , which antihumanist scholars in

6248-583: The late 18th and 19th centuries, the philosophy of humanism was a cornerstone of the Enlightenment . Human history was seen as a product of human thought and action, to be understood through the categories of " consciousness ", " agency ", " choice ", " responsibility ", " moral values ". Human beings were viewed as possessing common essential features. From the belief in a universal moral core of humanity, it followed that all persons were inherently free and equal. For liberal humanists such as Immanuel Kant ,

6336-452: The mainly empirical approaches of science . The humanities include the studies of philosophy , religion , history , language arts ( literature , writing , oratory , rhetoric , poetry , etc.), performing arts ( theater , music , dance , etc.), and visual arts ( painting , sculpture , photography , filmmaking , etc.). Some definitions of the humanities encompass law and religion due to their shared characteristics, such as

6424-471: The mercy of language". According to Lacan, an individual is not born human but only becomes so through incorporation into a cultural order that Lacan terms The Symbolic . Access to this order proceeds by way of a " mirror stage ", where a child models itself upon its own reflection in a mirror. Language allows us to impose order on our desires at this " Imaginary " stage of development. The unconscious , which exists prior to this Symbolic Order, must submit to

6512-433: The other performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera , ballet , mime , kabuki , classical Indian dance , Chinese opera , mummers' plays , and pantomime . Dance (from Old French dancier , perhaps from Frankish ) generally refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social , spiritual or performance setting. Dance

6600-416: The philosophy of the subject. For Althusser, individuals are not constitutive of the social process, but are instead its supports or effects. Society constructs the individual in its own image through its ideologies : the beliefs, desires, preferences and judgements of the human individual are the effects of social practices. Where Marxist humanists such as Georg Lukács believed revolution was contingent on

6688-460: The positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of Western thought, the concept was developed in the modern sense in the early 19th century by the philosopher and founding sociologist, Auguste Comte . Comte argued that society operates according to its own quasi-absolute laws, much as the physical world operates according to gravity and other absolute laws of nature. Humanist thinker Tzvetan Todorov has identified within modernity

6776-485: The same system, then meaning is based purely on the play of differences, and is never truly present. He claimed that the fundamentally ambiguous nature of language makes human intention unknowable, attacked Enlightenment perfectionism, and condemned as futile the existentialist quest for authenticity in the face of the all-embracing network of signs. The world itself is text; a reference to a pure meaning prior to language cannot be expressed in it. As he stressed, "the subject

6864-442: The service of a subject; they do not pre-exist the relations of difference between them. We cannot seek an exit from this purely relational system. The individual is always subordinate to the code. Linguistic study must abstract from the subjective physical, physiological and psychological aspects of language to concentrate on langue as a self-contained whole. The structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss proclaimed that

6952-573: The study of Latin and Greek classics. The word humanitas also gave rise to the Renaissance Italian neologism umanisti , whence "humanist", " Renaissance humanism ". Classics , in the Western academic tradition, refers to the studies of the cultures of classical antiquity , namely Ancient Greek and Latin and the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Classical studies is considered one of

7040-491: The study of history has been considered a part of the humanities. In modern academia , history can occasionally be classified as a social science , though this definition is contested. While the scientific study of language is known as linguistics and is generally considered a social science , a natural science or a cognitive science , the study of languages is also central to the humanities. A good deal of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy has been devoted to

7128-553: The study of language and culture. However, these definitions are not universally accepted, as law and religion are often considered professional subjects rather than humanities subjects. Professional subjects, like some social sciences, are sometimes classified as being part of both the liberal arts and professional development education, whereas humanities subjects are generally confined to the traditional liberal arts education . Although sociology , anthropology , archaeology , linguistics and psychology share some similarities with

7216-457: The total number of Americans with college degrees has increased significantly, resulting in a greater number of people with degrees in the humanities as well. The proportion of degrees awarded in the humanities has declined in recent decades, even as the overall number of people with humanities degrees has increased. In 1954, 36% of Harvard undergraduates majored in the humanities, but in 2012, only 20% took that course of study. As recently as 1993,

7304-403: The universals humanism maintained. In The Archaeology of Knowledge , Foucault dismissed history as "humanist anthropology". The methodology of his work focused not on the reality that lies behind the categories of "insanity", "criminality", "delinquency" and "sexuality", but on how these ideas were constructed by discourses. The heroine of the novel Nice Work begins by defining herself as

7392-464: The view of humans as rationally autonomous was challenged by Sigmund Freud , who believed humans to be largely driven by unconscious irrational desires. Martin Heidegger viewed humanism as a metaphysical philosophy that ascribes to humanity a universal essence and privileges it above all other forms of existence. For Heidegger, humanism takes consciousness as the paradigm of philosophy, leading it to

7480-569: The works of Jean Dubuffet or Anselm Kiefer . Modern and contemporary art has moved away from the historic value of craft in favour of concept ( conceptual art ); this has led some e.g. Joseph Kosuth to say that painting, as a serious art form, is dead, although this has not deterred the majority of artists from continuing to practise it either as whole or part of their work. Sculpture involves creating three-dimensional forms out of various materials. These typically include malleable substances like clay and metal but may also extend to material that

7568-464: Was developed in post-war Paris as a response to the perceived contradiction between the free subject of philosophy and the determined subject of the human sciences. It drew on the systematic linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure for a view of language and culture as a conventional system of signs preceding the individual subject's entry into them. In the study of linguistics the structuralists saw an objectivity and scientificity that contrasted with

7656-465: Was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic.") Today, the main fields of philosophy are logic , ethics , metaphysics , and epistemology . Still, it continues to overlap with other disciplines. The field of semantics , for example, brings philosophy into contact with linguistics . Since the early twentieth century, philosophy in English-speaking universities has moved away from

7744-618: Was in turn challenged by the postmodernist movement, which sought to redefine the humanities in more egalitarian terms suitable for a democratic society since the Greek and Roman societies in which the humanities originated were elitist and aristocratic. A distinction is usually drawn between the social sciences and the humanities. Classicist Allan Bloom writes in The Closing of the American Mind (1987): Social science and humanities have

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