Introduction to the Humanities

Slide 1: Introduction to Humanities Just What Are Humans?

Slide 2: Humanities  The Study of the Human Condition  Just what is the human condition?  We remember the past  We can imagine the future  We have emotions: joy, depression, terror —the stuff of literature, the arts, philosophy  What enables us to think and express these things? Let’s look at ourselves a little closer

Slide 3: Taxonomy: We are Homo sapiens  We are the only human species on the planet  We have a brain; that’s why we think  We have a brain and system of speech: that’s why we have language  We have abilities to make and use tools  That’s why we can act, write literature, sing, draw pictures, create sculptures  And finally, we are bipedal; we stand and walk on two feet

Slide 4: What Goes into Humanities? Language  Language is the backbone of the humanities  Linguistics is the scientific study of language, but focus is on the aesthetics  Cuneiform (left) was among the first languages to be used in the Near East.  Classical Languages are the media for understanding the Greeks and the Romans  Latin was the language of the medieval churchmen  Written language is the foundation of literature (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, who emphasized the ideal, and Aristotle, who emphasized observation  The Playwrights: Sophocles, Ovid, Horace the satirist.  Homer, the epic poet  Mesopotamia: the epic of Gilgamesh, Hammurabi and his legal codes  Egypt: The Book of the Dead  China: Lao Tse, Confucius  Tibet: Its own Book of the Dead

Slide 7: What Goes Into Humanities: Law  Law comprise rules that govern human behavior  Found where there are state; it’s the power holders who make them; the police who enforce them  It is also based on philosophy, the values that create law.

Slide 8: What Goes into Humanities: Religion  Concerns the supernatural, that which is beyond the ken of the five senses and their extensions like the telescope or the microscope  Goes back to the Neolithic and beyond to animism  Half the world’s religions are Abrahamic—go back to the patriarch Abraham and form the root of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam  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 9: What Goes into Humanities: Philosophy  Philosophy means “Love of Knowledge.”  It asks who we are, and especially what we know and what is knowable  The Greeks systematized it, and Plato and Aristotle are the twin founders  Above: the philosophers are depicted at the Lyceum, the School of Athens

Slide 10: 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 of the Mona Lisa by Da Vinci)  Photography and digital art are the most recent examples

Slide 11: What Goes into Humanities: Performing Arts  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 state— Julius Caesar, Macbeth.  Dance: An expression of human movement on stage performance, or sometimes in a spiritual setting (such as the Whirling Dervishes of the Sufi sect of Islam

Slide 12: The Territory Ahead: Historical Context I  First we look at the nuts and bolts of what makes us human: our anatomy and how it works  Then we look at the prehistoric phases of humankind: the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic  Finally we look at the formative civilizations prior to the Greeks  The Egyptians  The Mesopotamians

Slide 13: The Territory Ahead: Historical Context II  This leads us to the Greeks  Then we look at the Romans  Then we look at the hiatus between the Classic and 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 14: The Territory Ahead: Topical Areas  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 law.  We then look at the religions and the supernatural beliefs  Then we’ll 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.