| FEL-267436-20 | Research Programs: Fellowships | Eric Hayot | An Inquiry into Humanist Reason | 7/1/2020 - 6/30/2021 | $60,000.00 | Eric | | Hayot | | | | Penn State | University Park | PA | 16802-1503 | USA | 2019 | Literary Criticism | Fellowships | Research Programs | 60000 | 0 | 60000 | 0 | Completion of a book on the philosophical
history of the divide between humanities, social sciences, and science, and the future of humanistic thought.
This project first describes, and then revises,
our understanding of how scholars in the humanities think -- how they use
evidence, how they argue, how they come to the truth. It begins with an
exploration of the philosophical roots of humanist epistemology in the
formation of the modern, tripartite university (characterized by the division
into the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences). It continues
through an exploration of the Kantian roots of that philosophy, and closes with
"articles of reason:" a list of principles that most humanists today
believe in and practice in their scholarship and teaching. Against caricatures
of the humanities as ideologically motivated, or even well-meaning descriptions
of humanist work as subjectively oriented toward the individual or the unique, this
project makes the case for the humanities as reason, as a critical social form
of thinking and argument that is, like every other such form, supported (and
changed) by the evidence it makes. |