Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age

"Any reader of the Chronicle of Higher Education can tell you that the humanities are in crisis. Seen as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, humanistic disciplines seem at the mercy of modernizing forces driving the universitytowards academic pursuits that pull in grant money and direct students to lucrative careers. But as Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show, this crisis isn't new--in fact, it's as old as the humanities themselves. Today's humanities scholars experience and react to basic pressures in ways that are strikingly similar to the response of their nineteenth-century German counterparts. In German universities of the 1800s, as in those in the United States today, humanities scholars felt threatened by the very processes that allowed the modern humanities to flourish, such as institutional rationalization and the commodification of knowledge. But Reitter and Wellmon also emphasize the constructive side of crisis discourse. They claim that the self-understanding of the modern humanities didn't merely take shape in response to a perceived crisis; it also made crisis a core part of its project. The humanities came into their own by framing themselves as a unique resource for resolving crises of meaning and value that threatened other cultural or social goods. With this critical, historical perspective, Permanent Crisiscan take humanists beyond the usual scolding, exhorting, and handwringing into clearer, more effective thinking about the fate of the humanities. Furthering ideas from Max Weber and Friedrich Nietzsche to Andrew Delbanco and William Deresiewicz, Reitter and Wellmon dig into the notion of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world"--
Leads scholars and anyone who cares about the humanities into more effectively analyzing the fate of the humanities and digging into the very idea of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world. The humanities, considered by many as irrelevant for modern careers and hopelessly devoid of funding, seem to be in a perpetual state of crisis, at the mercy of modernizing and technological forces that are driving universities towards academic pursuits that pull in grant money and direct students to lucrative careers. But as Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon show, this crisis isn’t new—in fact, it’s as old as the humanities themselves.  Today’s humanities scholars experience and react to basic pressures in ways that are strikingly similar to their nineteenth-century German counterparts. The humanities came into their own as scholars framed their work as a unique resource for resolving crises of meaning and value that threatened other cultural or social goods. The self-understanding of the modern humanities didn’t merely take shape in response to a perceived crisis; it also made crisis a core part of its project. Through this critical, historical perspective, Permanent Crisis can take scholars and anyone who cares about the humanities beyond the usual scolding, exhorting, and hand-wringing into clearer, more effective thinking about the fate of the humanities. Building on ideas from Max Weber and Friedrich Nietzsche to Helen Small and Danielle Allen, Reitter and Wellmon dig into the very idea of the humanities as a way to find meaning and coherence in the world.  ,