Title: Why Humanities? | HuffPost
Headings: Why Humanities?
Why Humanities?
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Content: Literature helps develop these skills through the novelist’s ability to capture a complex, fluid set of social relationships. Third, we need to be able to empathize with other people. We need to be able to recognize that their experiences are different from ours, and their wants and needs deserve attention. But to understand another person’s experience we need to have developed the intellectual and emotional skills that permit us to recognize the nuances of that experience. It is only by learning to join imaginatively in the lives and values of other people that we can gain a meaningful capacity for empathy. The experience of literature and the arts helps greatly to cultivate strong understanding of the complex lives of others. Finally, the analytical skills of humanist scholars who study cultural products are themselves an important component of critical thinking. A great teacher of literature or art is able to lead the student to ask new questions, to probe the intentions and choices of the artist, and to attempt to uncover hidden assumptions and values. Follow T. J. Clark through his analysis of the French Impressionists and you will never again think that these are just pretty pictures (see The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers ).