Humanism Is Too Vital to Dismiss

In his passionate reply (“Meeting Humanists? No Way”) on July 28 to my op-ed piece, Don K. Pierstorff made some excellent points.

Professional humanists have not done much for the public lately; they have jammed political correctness and cultural diversity down the public’s throat; they are wary of teaching white male European dead writers; they use a polysyllabic vocabulary “that masks the dust-covered trifles of their thinking.”

We have no agenda other than opening up our own minds and those of our interlocutors. And we have no better way of doing that than by using the great thoughts and great provocations of the great minds of the past and present--not as a ritual, or as catechism, but indeed as thoughts, and provoking ones.

My piece was not looking for a culprit. It was not interested in assessing blame, but in pointing out that, whoever’s fault it is, there is too much of importance in a tradition that includes Milton and Emerson and Johnson (though it does not end with them) to simply give up. Let us not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Let us show naked kings for what they are, and all together pick up where we left off: where we, professionals and nonprofessionals, can work at what most makes us humans.

ERMANNNO BENCIVENGA

Department of philosophy

UC Irvine