THE 11th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF

  ISSEI
International Society for the Study of European Ideas

in cooperation with

 

 

University of Helsinki, Language Centre

Section IV:  Art, Theatre, Literature, Music, Culture

 

Workshop:

Irrelevant Humanities and Dehumanized Sciences: Is the 21st Century in Peril? 

 

Chairs: Denise Egéa-Kuehne and Michèle Lemettais

 

In the United States, the new leitmotiv in education has been for some time,  “let’s emphasize math and sciences in the classroom” and we all applaud.  So, children and students might learn about numbers and formulae but they come out of school unable to write a coherent paragraph, unable to point to their own country on a map of the world, unaware that within the pages of the books they shun for their computers and video games life is teeming in all its complexities.  But, not only is “literature the best way to know the human world“ as the critic and writer Tzvetan Todorov noted recently, “it can teach how to live better.”  The necessity of reconciling literature and science, is underlined by many contemporary thinkers who note as the philosopher Finkielkraut does:  “There is no direct access to reality, to a pure, naked reality divested of all prior shaping.  There is no experience without reference: words are lodged in things, a third authority slips in between us and the others, us and the world, us and ourselves. And, as we cannot escape the mediation, as literature is decidedly all powerful, the question is to know to which library does one entrust one’s destiny.” 

 

Part of the problem resides in the fact that literature is badly taught.  In some European schools and on some American campuses, the study of the meaning of the text is not sought after as that approach to literature is not considered scientific enough.  “Nowadays, the literary work is represented as an absolute, a self-sufficient, closed language object,“ remarks Todorov.  This explains why so few students want to study literature today and why they fare so poorly in their science classes. 

 

In 1992, the philosopher, scientist and author Michel Serres emphasized “the necessity of establishing ‘links’ among disciplines, as opposed to clinging to  the myth of an ‘absolute knowledge’ as each technique transforms our relations to the world and at the same time the relations among individuals.  If not, the humanities run the risk of remaining disconnected from the world, and the sciences of becoming inhuman.”

 

In this session, we would like to discuss how we can face the new responsibilities brought upon us by the unprecedented development in the sciences as we continue to explore the object of literature which is the human condition.

 

Denise Egéa-Kuehne

Dekueh@LSU.edu

 

Michèle Lemettais

Lemettais@cpcs.umb.edu

 

 

 

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