1. Introduction to
Humanities
Just What Are Humans?

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

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

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

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.”

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)

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.

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

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

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

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)

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)

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

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

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)

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

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.

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