I have reached the point in the little book I am currently writing (no title yet) where I have directly raised the question of “Why study Classics?”, or more generally “Why study the humanities?” I suspect that the best answer to that lies in action not explanation, in what we do and write, not how we justify it. All the same, there is a mini-library of books with such titles as Why the Humanities Matter, The Case for Classics, The Crisis of the Humanities, and so on, which I have been scanning with diminishing enthusiasm. (No offence meant to the valiant authors who have tried their hands at this – and, let me confess, I have contributed to one such edited volume myself!)
The first problem is that the answers given (mine included) almost always lie somewhere on the spectrum between the platitudinous and the self-righteous. We can all happily nod along to such slogans as “if you don’t understand the past, you’ll never be able to understand the future”, but what it means or tells us, beyond being a plausible slogan, I am not sure.
There is usually a good deal of hand-wringing thrown in. (It was Stefan Collini who entitled the first chapter of one of his books on universities “Handwringing for beginners”, and I know what he means – even though he is rather more sympathetic to this whole genre than I am.) And the same predictable enemies are lined up and deplored: from philistine axe-wielding governments to the rise of speciously relevant new subjects stealing the students. The trouble is that these are the enemies that have been lined up and deplored in this kind of literature for over a hundred years now. (In the classics crisis of 1903, which I posted about recently, it was modern languages that were singled out for attack; now it is more likely to be STEM.)
But the second problem is who exactly reads these books. Not the average punter, that’s for sure (“I know what I’ll get Uncle Bob for Christmas – that book about the crisis in the humanities”). And I very much doubt that the would-be axe-wielding government minister checks out Why the Humanities Matter before actually wielding his axe. Presumably they are to be found largely on the shelves of professional humanities scholars who are reading them for reassurance: they are all about reinforcing brand loyalty, rather than convincing or persuading anybody.
It’s only very occasionally that you find anything remotely surprising. One intervention I do vividly recall (in conversation, not a book) was the reply of one of my senior colleagues, more than a couple of decades ago now, to the half-hostile question “what does Classics teach you?” I predicted a rather lengthy response about the importance of Latin, the centrality of Plato to modern philosophy, and more of the same. But, quick as a flash, Pat Easterling (for it was she) said, “It teaches you to read difficult things”.
Of course, that’s not all it does. But responses like that do keep you away from the platitudinous and challenge you to think harder about what teaching means, what Classics does, and why you might want to read difficult things. I’m trying to formulate a few more of them.
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