The battle of the classics : how a nineteenth-century debate can save the humanities today

Author/Creator:

Adler, Eric, 1973- author

Publication/Creation:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2020]

Resource Type:

Book

Edition:

First edition.

More Details

Additional/Related Title Information

Full Title:

The battle of the classics : how a nineteenth-century debate can save the humanities today / Eric Adler

Related Names

Additional Author/Creators:

Oxford University Press

Subjects/Genre

Subjects:

Classical education--United States
Education, Humanistic--United States
Culture conflict--United States

Description/Summary

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The sick man of higher education -- Skills are the new Canon -- From the Studia Humanitatis to the modern humanities -- A college Fetich? -- Darwin meets the curriculum -- Humanism vs. humanitarianism -- Toward a truly ecumenical wisdom.

Summary:

"The Battle of the Classics criticizes contemporary apologetics for the humanities and presents a historically informed case for a decidedly different approach to rescuing the humanistic disciplines in American higher education. It uses the so-called Battle of the Classics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a springboard for crafting a novel foundation for the humanistic tradition. The book argues that current defences of the humanities rely on the humanistic disciplines as inculcators of certain poorly defined skills such as "critical thinking." It finds fault with this conventional approach, arguing that humanists cannot hope to save their disciplines without arguing in favour of particular humanities content. As the lacklustre defences of the classical humanities in the late nineteenth century help prove, instrumental apologetics are bound to fail. All the same, the book shows that proponents of the Great Books favour a curriculum that is too intellectually narrow for the twenty-first century. The Battle of the Classics thus lays out a substance-based approach to undergraduate education that will revive the humanities while steering clear of overreliance on the Western canon. The book envisions a global humanities based on the examination of masterworks from manifold cultures as the heart of an intellectually and morally sound education"--

Language:

English

Physical Type/Description:

x, 256 pages ; 25 cm

Additional Identifiers

Catalog ID (MMSID):

9937240076402486

ISBN:

9780197518786
0197518788

OCLC Number:

1153648776

Barcode:

010003082113