Introduction to Humanities

Slide 1: Introduction to Humanities Just What Are Humans?

Slide 2: Humanities  The Study of the Human Condition  What is the human condition?  We remember the past  We imagine the future  We have emotions  We can reason  We know we will die

Slide 3: Taxonomy: We are Homo sapiens  We are the only human species worldwide  We can think  We can communicate using language  We can make and manipulate object  So we can paint, write, perform  We are bipedal

Slide 4: What Goes into Humanities? Language  Language is the backbone of the humanities  Cuneiform (left) was invented in the Near East.  Classical Languages are key to understanding the Greeks and the Romans  Latin was used by medieval churchmen  Written language (poetry, novels, drama)  No language, no humanities

Slide 5: What Goes Into Humanities: History  Humanities appeals to the past  Traditionally, scholars have to know their classical history  Systematic study of the families, societies and the great men (sometimes women)  Today, history is more of a social science with a dimension of time  Santayana: “Who ignores the past is doomed to repeat it.”  Faulkner: “The past is never dead: it isn’t even past.”

Slide 6: What Goes Into Humanities: Classics  Western Societies: The Greeks and the Romans  The philosophers: Plato (the ideal form) and Aristotle (empirical observation)  The Playwrights: Sophocles, Virgil, Horace the satirist.  Homer, the epic poet  Mesopotamia: the epic of Gilgamesh, Hammurabi the lawgiver  Egypt: The Book of the Dead (Last Judgment)  China: Confucius; Lao Tzu on the Tao  Tibet: Its own Book of the Dead (karma)

Slide 7: What Goes Into Humanities: Law  Law comprise rules the govern human behavior  Found where there are states:  The power holders make them;  The police and army enforce them  Law is also based on philosophy;  Values generate law.

Slide 8: What Goes into Humanities: Religion I  Concerns the supernatural:  Things and events beyond the five senses  Goes back to the Neolithic and beyond to animism  Half the world’s religions began with the patriarch Abraham  Who formed the root of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Slide 9: What Goes into Humanities: Religion II  Many are derived from the East with the doctrine of samsara (illusion), karma (consequences of past acts), and nirvana (liberation from samsara): Hinduism and Buddhism  Includes the question: where do we go after we die—the fundamental question of mortality

Slide 10: What Goes into Humanities: Philosophy  Philosophy means “Love of Knowledge.”  It asks who we are, what and how we know  The Greeks, especially Plato and Aristotle, founded and developed philosophy  Above: Scene at the Lyceum, school begun by Aristotle

Slide 11: What goes into Humanities: The Visual Arts  Sculpture  Greek and Roman sculpture of the human form  Drawings, from sketches to hatching to use of pastels (upper left, Escher’s Drawing Hands)  Paintings, involving the application of  a pigment within a medium and binder (glue)  on a surface:  (lower left Mona Lisa by Da Vinci)

Slide 12: What Goes into Humanities: Performing Arts I  Music is the interpretation of sound combined into melody and harmony  (Such as the nine symphonies of Beethoven, above)  Drama: the imitation of life on stage  (Below: Shakespeare included many historical re-enactments on stage—  Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Othello)

Slide 13: What Goes into Humanities  Dance: An expression of human movement on stage performance  Such as this ballet scene from Swan Lake  Or sometimes in a spiritual setting  Such as the Whirling Dervishes of the Sufis founded by Rumi  In a reaction against Muslim worldliness

Slide 14: The Territory Ahead: Historical Context I  First we look at the biology of humankind (upper):  Our anatomical foundations.  Then we look at the prehistoric phases of humankind:  The Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic (lower)  Finally we look at the formative civilizations prior to the Greeks:  The Egyptians of the Nile  The Mesopotamians of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers

Slide 15: The Territory Ahead: Historical Context II  This leads us to the Greeks  Then we look at the Romans  Then we look at the transitions from the Classic to the Medieval Periods  We look at Islam and How they preserved Western Culture  Then we conclude with the Medieval Period and the precursors of the Renaissance (lit. Rebirth)

Slide 16: The Territory Ahead: Topical Areas I  We will examine the philosophies of each era: they are the motor force of all humanities  We look at the societies that spawned the philosophies:  All were state level societies;  That includes codified law.  We then look at the religions and the supernatural beliefs

Slide 17: The Territory Ahead: Topical Areas II  We will then look at literature, the visual arts, and the performing arts.  We’ll see if they express the way society was in their time  Or whether they were the inspiration of individuals  Or perhaps some combination of both.

Slide 18: Coda: What Are the Humanities?  We may define humanities as  The integrated study of the visual and performing arts  Architecture and public spaces  Literature from narrative to poetry  Within the historical context  Of the societies and philosophies  With which they are associated