Keynote Address: Practicing the Humanities in the Face of Injustice: Lessons from Benjamin, Marx, and Ishiguro
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Authors
Fraser, Nancy
Issue Date
2014-11-14
Type
event
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Language
Keywords
American Politics
Philosophy
Alternative Title
The Liberal Arts in an Unequal Society
Abstract
Current debates about the liberal arts center on two different accounts of their value. An “extrinsic” approach holds that humanities education is a means to an external end–that, for example, it enhances US economic competitiveness, advances the national interest in the realm of geopolitics and/or promotes internal social cohesion. An “intrinsic” model holds that the liberal arts are valuable in their own right–that they cultivate, in the individual, intellectual and spiritual depth, richness of imagination, and moral capacity. In this lecture, I offer some criticisms of both of these views and then proceed to develop a third alternative, which draws on some ideas of Walter Benjamin, John Rawls, and the young Karl Marx. To illustrate my approach, I offer a reading of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2005 novel, Never Let Me Go. In my reading, the book is a profound reflection on the very same nexus of beauty and barbarism, humanity and inhumanity that I identify as the core of the liberal arts.