The humanities: is everything contextual and contingent?

In 1996, a hoax perpetrated by NYU physics professor Alan Sokal exposed some of the ideological and professional blinders of academic publishing, particularly in the humanities. This and other examples build an interesting criticism of academic life as construed in the work of writer Stanley Fish in the New Republic:

The empirical truth that Fish proffers can hardly be challenged—intellectual life in this country has been highly professionalized—but its banality is hard to beat. In response to criticisms of an argument or questions about a particular interpretation, Fish merely outlines how the profession functions, as if this were an answer. The cult of theory ends in the cult of facts. Fish’s default position describes the activities of professionals. He seems convinced that this is a powerful sally—and advances it in perhaps his most consequential discussion, when he weighs in on the role of liberal education.

Here Fish is at his best and worst. He is at his best because he punctures some “grandiose claims” for liberal education—for instance, that it fosters moral uprightness, community involvement, or global justice. “What is really at stake” in the controversy over liberal education, Fish writes, are not large philosophical principles but “administrative judgment with respect to professional behavior and job performance.” What happened to the idea that liberal education is more than just skills and job performance? That it entails, as John Henry Newman put it in The Idea of a University, overcoming “narrowness of mind”? That it leads to comprehension, even enlightenment? Newman described the narrow mind this way: “Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing has a history or a promise. Everything stands by itself, and comes and goes in its turn.” Newman could be describing Fish’s educational ideal.

Just so. And we're going to cheer anytime column inches are devoted to the humanities in the popular press. But as the criticism of Fish strongly affirms, this is not enough. Only more discussions of the ways the academy comports itself will strengthen it as a profession and as a pillar of society , and reinforce the humanities and social sciences as mission-critical disciplines. They must continually present themselves for evaluation to steer clear of trends and fashion, all the while building out the body of the knowledge on which they stand.