Philosophy of the Humanities

This lecture course offers a systematic introduction to the philosophy of the humanities, a diverse and ever-expanding array of scholarly endeavors. While their institutionalization within universities began in the late 18th century, continued through the 19th, and reached its highest degree of diversification and specialization in the 20th and early 21st centuries, the roots of the humanities extend much further back, reaching into late medieval and early modern humanism and, in some respects, even antiquity. Today, the humanities—referred to as "Geisteswissenschaften" or "Kulturwissenschaften" in German-speaking countries—encompass a wide range of disciplines and fields of study, including archaeology, history, art history, visual studies, linguistics, literary studies, film and media studies, musicology, religious studies, ethnography, gender studies, and, more recently, global and postcolonial studies. Despite their multiplicity and diversity, the humanities share common epistemological and methodological foundations. These include epistemic curiosity, critical reflection, rigorous evidence-gathering procedures, and, most importantly, the multidimensional contextualization and historicization of any pertinent object as indispensable means of understanding human actions, interactions, institutions, and artifacts. Throughout this course, we will engage with key thinkers—such as Wilhelm von Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Droysen, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Dewey, Panofsky, Gadamer, Joachim Ritter, Jürgen Habermas, Ernst Tugendhat, Bernard Williams, and Martha Nussbaum—to explore these foundational aspects. By the end of our exploration, which includes extensive comparisons with the histories and methodologies of the natural and social sciences, you will be able to aptly characterize the humanities in both descriptive and normative terms.