Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished Age - Hardcover

Hanson, Victor Davis; Heath, John; Thornton, Bruce S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1882926544 ISBN 13: 9781882926541

Publisher: Isi Books, 2001

Synopsis

With humor, lucidity, and unflinching rigor, the acclaimed authors of Who Killed Homer? and Plagues of the Mind unsparingly document the degeneration of a central, if beleagured, disciplineclassicsand reveal the root causes of its decline. Hanson, Heath, and Thornton point to academics themselvestheir careerist ambitions, incessant self-promotion, and overspecialized scholarship, among other thingsas the progenitors of the crisis, and call for a return to academic populism, an approach characterized by accessible, unspecialized writing, selfless commitment to students and teaching, and respect for the legacy of freedom and democracy that the ancients bequeathed to the West.

About this title

About the Author

Victor Davis Hanson is Professor of Greek and Director of the Classics Program at California State University, Fresno. He is the author or editor of many books, including Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (with John Heath, Free Press, 1998), and The Soul of Battle (Free Press, 1999). In 1992 he was named the most outstanding undergraduate teacher of classics in the nation. John Heath is Associate Professor of Classics at Santa Clara University. His books include Actaeon, the Unmannerly Intruder (Peter Lang 1992) and Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom (with Victor Davis Hanson, Free Press 1998).

Bruce S. Thornton is Professor of Classics and Humanities and in the Department of Foreign Languages at California State University in Fresno. Thorntons books include Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality (Westview, 1997), Plagues of the Mind: The New Epidemic of False Knowledge(ISI Books, 1999), The Humanities Handbook (Prentice Hall, 2000), and Greek Ways: How the Greeks Created Western Civilization (Encounter, 2000).

From the Inside Flap

“Professors Hanson, Heath and Thornton have written a set of powerful essays that combine scholarship, passion and wit in a devastating critique of the errors and sins that have brought the condition of the humanities low in America’s colleges and universities. They take on the elite rulers of what has become a shrinking and increasingly embattled kingdom with a vigor and zeal that embody the power latent in studies that are truly humanistic. Their assaults resemble the attacks made by the humanists of the Renaissance against the scholastic pettifoggers of their day and, in time, are bound to win a similar victory.”—Donald Kagan, Hillhouse Professor of History and Classics, Yale University “The true enemies of the Humanities are an unholy alliance between the tenured ideological dictatorship of deconstructive Leftists and the corporate-managerial mentality of fat overpaid administrators. Hanson, Heath, and Thornton are resolved to give these nefarious forces a run for their money. What makes this book genuinely splendid is that its authors know where to start: in Classical Antiquity, the indispensable foundation for any education that wants to see young minds growing into their full human potential.”—Virgil Nemoianu, William J Byron Distinguished Professor of Literature and Ordinary Professor of Philosophy, Catholic University of America Classical studies, once considered the foundation of all higher learning, is today nearly moribund. Students—and the general public—seem no longer interested in what the Greeks and Romans did or what they had to say. They certainly have no expectation of discovering wisdom in our classical past. The rejection of the relevance of the past, moreover, has increasingly spread throughout the humanities. Why is this occurring? And does it matter? Though many have sought to explain, or explain away, the problems of contemporary higher education, and the humanities in particular, few authors have examined the problem as deeply or as thoroughly as have Victor Davis Hanson, John Heath, and Bruce S. Thornton, well-known classicists and the acclaimed authors of such books as Who Killed Homer? and Plagues of the Mind. No one has explained so well, as these authors, the crucial linkages between the discipline of classics and modern Western civilization. They demonstrate here that no one can understand, much less hope to defend, the modern West without a thorough grounding in the classical authors and ideas that were its progenitors. In Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing the Classics in an Impoverished Age, Hanson, Heath, and Thornton begin by unsparingly documenting the degeneration of classics. They also reveal the root causes of this decline. They point to the academics themselves—their careerist ambitions, incessant self-promotion, and overspecialized, inaccessible work, among other things—as the source of the crisis, and call for a return to “academic populism,” an approach characterized by accessible, graceful writing, selfless commitment to students and teaching, and respect for the legacy of freedom and democracy that the ancients bequeathed to the West. Subsequent chapters detail the betrayal of classics by classicists, including chapters discussing the hypocrisy of Professor Martha Nussbaum’s attempt to justify the radicalization of classical studies, the self-indulgent careerism of humanities professors, the solipsistic narcissism of recent academic work in classics, the postmodernist contradictions and inanities now plaguing classical studies, and the disappearance of the disinterested humanities professor. An epilogue reviews the hilariously bizarre (but disturbing) “Unabomber episode,” in which authors Hanson and Heath were turned in as potential Unabomber suspects by one of their feminist colleagues. Hanson, Heath, and Thornton write in a style that is as illuminating as it is engaging. No one who reads this book will be able to deny the seriousness of the crisis in classics and the humanities at large; it will be equally impossible to deny the cultural significance of this crisis. Fortunately, the authors lay out detailed proposals to arrest the decline in humane learning. These proposals, and especially their call for professors to embrace academic populism, merit a fair and widespread hearing. Bonfire of the Humanities should be read by anyone interested in a sophisticated yet accessible analysis of the root problems affecting academia and the necessary measures to effect recovery.

Reviews

It has become quite common over the past 20 years for various groups of humanists to cry like prophets in the wilderness over the demise of the classics both in small liberal arts colleges and large state universities. Hanson and Heath (coauthors of Who Killed Homer? and professors of classics at, respectively, Cal State, Fresno, and Santa Clara University), along with Cal State classicist Thornton, contend that these arguments generally fail to strike at the heart of the problem which is, they say, that contemporary academics are hypocrites who decry racial discrimination, sexism and democratic capitalism from the vantage point of well-paid, tenured positions. These professors whom they deride as "Savonarolas... ideologues of the multicultural and postmodern Left" also purportedly contribute to the death of the classics by writing jargon-filled articles and books about ancient Greece and Rome that are inaccessible to a broader audience. In addition, such academics refuse to teach undergraduates, exploiting instead graduate teaching assistants who do not have the wealth of research to share with these younger students. The authors, who define their own enterprise as "academic populism," address this elitism and hypocrisy in a series of scathing essays and book reviews, which, unfortunately, suffer from many of the same problems of which they accuse their opponents (for instance, those they criticize, such as philosopher Martha Nussbaum and classicist Judith Hallett and thus these critiques themselves are more likely to be read by scholars than by a general audience). At best, the authors engage in defensive, whining, self-righteous diatribes in an effort to show how misguided their opponents are. At worst, Hanson, Heath and Thornton use this book to vilify those whom they perceive to have wronged them.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

In this collection of new and previously published essays, classicists Hanson (California State Univ., Fresno), John Heath (Santa Clara Univ.), and Bruce S. Thornton (California State Univ., Fresno) prove that the old saying "academic politics are so poisonous only because there is so little at stake" is true. Railing against what they perceive as rampant careerism among modern-day exponents of "fashionable" theories such as postmodernism, feminism, and multiculturalism, Hanson and Heath return to the question that they posed in their earlier work, Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, and provide the same answer, i.e., "They did." While the authors might compare their work to broader criticisms of the academy such as Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind (LJ 5/1/87) and Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal Education (LJ 3/15/91), this work is so steeped in the academic infighting specific to the field of classical studies that it is unlikely to find much of an audience beyond those already involved in the conflict. Recommended only for academic collections supporting advanced teaching and research in classics. Scott Walter, Washington State Univ., Pullman
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Isi Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1882926544
• ISBN 13: 9781882926541
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 373