This review-essay examines two books about the history of the modern humanities: Permanent Crisis: The Humanities in a Disenchanted Age by Paul Reitter and Chad Wellmon and Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today by Eric Adler. Both studies reconstruct genealogies of discourse and practice by which to understand the “crisis” of the humanities, yet they draw disparate lessons from these reconstructions. The review traces the two monographs’ competing accounts of the historical continuity of (...) humanities practices and the moral dimension of humanistic inquiry. Together, Permanent Crisis and Battle of the Classics describe an antinomy that can be neither resolved nor ignored: the methodological norms of the modern university tend to subvert the humanities’ investment in meaning and value, but without that investment, humanistic study loses the motivations and purposes that define it. (shrink)

The term ‘humanism’ is Western in origin. It denotes the tradition that places special emphasis on cultivation of letters for education. In the West, this tradition was originated with sophists and Isocrates, established by Cicero, and was developed by Renaissance humanists. East Asia, however, also has its own humanistic traditions with equal educational relevance. One of these is a Japanese version of Confucian humanism established by Ogyu Sorai (1666–1728). This tradition is based on the interpretation of Confucius as a lover (...) of poetry and a teacher of rites. In this article, we discuss the main features of East Asian humanism represented by Sorai and Confucius. Then, after an overview of Western humanism, we aim to elucidate both the convergence and divergence of the two traditions. The investigation will help us (hopefully) to envision humanistic education of the twenty-first century. (shrink)