Myths of the contemporary humanities

DEFINITION OF THE TERM: Three basic areas of experience can be distinguished in the contemporary humanities. These are related to the epistemic field (thinking, cognition), pedagogy (defined by the idea of Bildung), and the university, which has been subject to numerous transformations (from the idea of the cathedral, through the myth of the Humboldtian university, to the corpo-university as a contemporary enterprise governed by the rules of the market).

HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE TERM: The contemporary humanities have travelled a long and complicated way from Renaissance humanism, belief in the ‘writing of things’, and fulfilment of the desire for representation, to today’s formula of the death of God, the author, and writing. They have determined the formula of Mediterranean education, secularised the status of the master to the role of an expert, and defined the place and role of the university: as the medieval cathedral and its trivium and quadrivium within the septem artes liberales, as Humboldt’s invention (myth), and as a contemporary enterprise which is subject to the rules of the free (?) market.

DISCUSSION OF THE TERM: The mythical patrons of the contemporary humanities include Eros (libido sciendi), Mnemosyne (the goddess of memory and cognition), Hermes (the humanities of renewal), Narcissus (the narcissistic humanities), Thanatos (the death of the university), and Tristan (sadness of thought). Reconfigurations of the Orphic-Pythagorean mysticism of numbers entail the search for unity, thinking in terms of binary oppositions, and attempts to think in terms of ‘trinity’ or ‘fourfold’. The central place in the contemporary humanities is occupied by two regulative ideas: Bildung and the university.

SYSTEMATIC REFLECTION WITH CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Two main strands of thinking about the contemporary humanities can be identified. The first includes thanatic discourses (e.g., nostalgia for a lost past and the end of the university), while the second strand includes discourses based on the hope that new research and interpretive techniques will bring about a renewal of the humanities.