Scholar says humanities ‘thinks small’

Kronman elicits a lot more than 20 questions at lively session

By Corydon Ireland

Harvard News Office

What is the meaning of life?

To some of us it’s the Monty Python movie. Or what gets discussed, via beer and beardless youth, at 2 a.m. in college dorm rooms.

To Anthony T. Kronman, it is a serious question that reaches back into the roots of religious wonder and philosophical examination — and it’s a question, he said, that is being neglected in the curricula of American colleges and universities.

Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School, brought his troubling thesis to Harvard this week (April 1) in a “20 Questions” lecture sponsored by the Humanities Center.

The “20 Questions” series, inaugurated in the fall of 2006, is designed to explore topics of universal interest in a conversation-like format.

Kronman is the author of the recent “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life” (Yale University Press, 2007). He argues that the core questions traditional to the humanities — including the one about the meaning of life — have been pushed to the margins of academic inquiry and supplanted with what he calls “the modern research ideal,” which honors and rewards incremental thinking.

“If they want to succeed in that venture” of modern research, said Kronman of humanities scholars, “they must think small ... [and] choose an inch or two of the garden to cultivate.”

Along with this change in the way scholarship is pursued, he said, the humanities are suffering from a sense of inferiority compared with “more objectively accumulative” academic pursuits in the natural and social sciences.

At the same time, an atmosphere of political correctness has chilled inquiry within the humanities, said Kronman, compromising “central educational values.”

Responding to Kronman’s remarks at the Barker Center’s Thompson Room were six members of the Harvard faculty — the “questioners” typical in the “20 Questions” format. Their sometimes tumultuous interrogatories — supplemented by even more energetic dissent from a capacity audience of 110 — were moderated by political philosopher Michael J. Sandel, Harvard’s Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government.

The evening’s questioners were Humanities Center Director Homi Bhabha, the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities; James Engell, Gurney Professor of English Literature and professor of comparative literature; James T. Kloppenberg, David Woods Kemper ’41 Professor of American History and Harvard College Professor; Martha Minow, Jeremiah Smith Jr. Professor of Law; David Rodowick, professor of visual and environmental studies and acting chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies; and Judith Ryan, Robert K. and Dale J. Weary Professor of German and Comparative Literature.

The “canon” — the ever-debated defining texts thought necessary for studying civilization — is not a big part of Kronman’s book. (He teaches in Yale’s Directed Studies Program, a selective program for freshmen that’s designed to explore Western civilization.) But the canon entered into the “20 Questions” debate.

Aren’t there very recent works useful for exploring the meaning of life? asked Ryan. (The most recent text on the Yale list is Hannah Arendt’s 1951 “The Origins of Totalitarianism.”)

Kronman said he had “no principled objection” to expanding his book list, but “you can’t add anything without deleting anything.”

He acknowledged that Western civilization had its shortcomings and “misuses,” but that an educated person should have a grounding in the “tropes and traditions” of the literature, history, politics, and philosophy of the West.

Engell said perhaps the meaning of life and other big questions are out of line in the face of a new generation of students who predominantly want direct preparation for lucrative careers.

Kronman acknowledged that “demand side of the equation,” but that the magnitude of the change in students “is grossly exaggerated.” Students need “strong, directing guidance” to a core education in civilization, he said — and it will demonstrably help them in a diversity of careers, including medicine and business.

Minow pushed the hot button of the evening — Kronman’s contention that “political correctness [was] killing off humanities inquiry.”

A “culture of political correctness” has given the humanities a “narrowing perspective” on lives and values, said Kronman — intolerance “under a flag of tolerance.” It makes sense to study the origins of Western values — human rights, scientific objectivity, accountable governance — that are on their way “to becoming planetary ideals.”

Then again, he admitted, maybe best would be to study Western civilization for a year, then another civilization “with equal thoroughness and depth” for another year.

At any rate, said Kronman, universities are ignoring a “crisis of meaning” that grips the world today — and the humanities have to step up and confidently reclaim that territory of inquiry.

After all, the big questions are not going away, he said. They will just go elsewhere, including to “institutions of religious tradition and belief” that serve up fixed answers instead of a spirit of inquisitive exploration, skepticism, and critical thinking.

“We have the question,” said Kronman, in a closing meant as praise for scholars of the humanities, “and that’s all we have.”