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The Public Value of the Humanities Bate, Jonathan. "Introduction." The Public Value of the Humanities. Ed. Jonathan Bate. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. 1–14. The WISH List. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 27 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781849662451.0006>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 27 September 2021, 18:11 UTC. Copyright © Jonathan Bate and contributors 2011. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 1 Introduction Jonathan Bate (University of Warwick) Seven lean cows In chapter 41 of the Book of Genesis, Pharaoh has two troubling dreams. In the fi rst, seven lean cows rise out of the river and devour seven fat cows. And in the second, seven withered ears of grain swallow up seven healthy ears. Pharaoh sends for experts and wise men, but they are unable to interpret these dreams. Then, however, his chief cupbearer tells him of a young captive Jew named Joseph who has proved himself adept in the art of interpretation. Joseph is called for. He suggests that the dreams are predicting that seven years of abundance will be followed by seven years of famine. Pharaoh should accordingly store up surplus food supplies during the good years. He must fi nd a wise and discerning man to take charge of the process. Pharaoh responds by giving the job to Joseph, who builds massive grain stores in the good years, with the result that Egypt thrives during the years of famine – not least by exporting grain to other countries that have not shown such foresight. In public life in the twenty-fi rst century, the experts who are usually asked to predict the future are scientists (for example, climatologists) and social scientists (for example, economists). The scientists offer warnings that anthropogenic global warming will lead to famine and fl ood, causing mass migration and widespread disruption to settled ways of life. The economists advise on the setting of bank interest rates as a predictive mechanism for the control of infl ation. But scientists cannot yet predict when earthquakes and volcanic eruptions will take place. And economists signally failed to predict the banking crisis of 2008. Joseph, who did such a good job of predicting the future, was neither a scientist nor an economist. He was an interpreter of narrative, for which another name would be a literary critic. At another level, of course, Joseph is not a real expert but a character within a narrative: the Book of Genesis is not a factual document but a story about the origins and values and cultural identity of the Jewish people. Stories – myths, plays, pictures, novels, histories – are among humankind’s chief instruments for understanding ourselves and our world. The Book of Genesis is one of the foundational texts of the Western and Middle-Eastern worlds. The three great religions that have shaped the history of those worlds – Judaism, Christianity, Islam – all have their origins in the Abrahamic stories that are recorded there. In order to understand the meaning of what we read in Genesis and its sequels we need the expertise of Bate.indb 1 24/11/10 3:05 PM 2 INTRODUCTION language scholars (to translate from Hebrew and Greek), of palaeographers and bibliographers (to decipher the manuscript and print traditions that have transmitted the Bible to us), of historians and archaeologists (to locate the Abrahamic narrative in time and place), and of anthropologists and theologians (to explain what the stories tell us about humankind and our need for divinity). There is a collective name for all these experts: a faculty of humanities. In the light of the recent historical developments for which ‘9/11’ serves as shorthand, it was perhaps unfortunate that the swingeing funding cuts to higher education in the early 1980s fell with particular severity on supposedly marginal areas of the humanities such as Islamic Studies. At one level, Joseph succeeds in predicting the future when all the acknowledged experts have failed because he sticks to common sense. It is not rocket science to see that both the weather and the economy move in cycles and that it is accordingly a good idea to ‘put something away for a rainy day’ or to build up your fi nancial reserves during the boom years so that you will be better prepared for the recession that will inevitably follow. At another level, the story is much more complicated, tapping into deep archetypal structures of narrative that occur in many different cultures and eras: reversal and recognition, the wisdom of the fool, the exile and the prisoner who rises to power and eminence. The person who appears to be useless turns out to be very valuable indeed. Joseph’s predictive skill is a little allegory of what faculties of humanities can do for society. Humanists look long and hard at the past, and at stories and ideas. They can impart some common sense to our public debates by way of the lessons of the past and the understanding of human nature. But they can also impart some healthy scepticism regarding easy solutions by way of their demonstration that, when humankind is involved, things are usually more complicated than they fi rst seem. On ‘value’ In 2010, a number of governments committed themselves to a new age of austerity. A time of restraint upon public spending is a good moment for asking fundamental questions about value. What are the things that must be fi nanced from the public purse? A health service, counter-terrorism, public transport, basic literacy and numeracy, housing for the poor and advanced research into non-carbon energy sources? What possible case could be made for, let us say, the budget of the Arts & Humanities Research Council when measured against these more urgent demands? Should governments that have overspent in the years of plenty continue to spend ‘taxpayers’ money’ funding research into ancient Greek tragedy, philosophical conundrums, the history of landscape, literary value and the aesthetics of design? Is it possible to demonstrate that such research delivers ‘value for money’ and ‘public benefi t’? And what exactly is research in the humanities? People readily grasp the idea of scientifi c research (discovering a new star, a new cell, a new Bate.indb 2 24/11/10 3:05 PM INTRODUCTION 3 source of fuel, a cure for cancer), but humanities scholars are often met with puzzlement when telling taxi drivers that they conduct ‘research’. There is, however, a simple answer to the question ‘what is the value of research in the humanities?’ It is that research in the humanities is the only activity that can establish the meaning of such a question. What do we mean by ‘value’, by ‘research’ and by ‘the humanities’? These are questions that can only be answered by means of the tools of the disciplines of the humanities. They are questions of semantics and interpretation. And they require philosophical and historical understanding. Language, history, philosophy: the humanities. By the same account, a further value of research in the humanities is that it is the only activity that can answer the question ‘what is the value of research in the sciences?’ It is generally assumed that the value of research in the sciences is to advance knowledge so as to improve the quality of human life. The value of medical research is to cure disease, relieve suffering and lengthen life. Among the potential values of research in climatology, biochemistry, physical engineering and several other scientifi c disciplines might be the discovery of various means to fi x an array of environmental problems. But questions such as why we should value long life and what ethical obligations we might have to future generations, to other species, or indeed to the planet itself, are ‘humanities’ questions, only answerable from within the framework of disciplines that are attentive to language, history and philosophy. In Act 2, Scene II of Shakespeare’s rigorously intellectual (and wildly bawdy) tragedy Troilus and Cressida, the Trojan lords debate whether it is worth fi ghting a war for the sake of the beautiful Helen. Hector proposes that ‘she is not worth what she doth cost / The keeping.’ ‘What’s aught but as’ ’tis valued?’ asks Troilus in reply. ‘Value’ here is initially conceived in economic terms. According to the Oxford English Dictionary – an essential product of humanities research – the primary meaning of the word value is ‘That amount of some commodity, medium of exchange, etc., which is considered to be an equivalent for something else; a fair or adequate equivalent or return. [As in the] phr[ase] value for money (freq[uently] attrib[uted, used metaphorically]).’ Value, then, is a term referring to a commodity, a medium of exchange, something quantifi able. It is interpreted in terms of the market, of ‘economic impact’. According to this argument, there will always come a point where the price is simply not worth paying. Hector, though, comes back with a counter-argument that shifts the meaning of the term: But value dwells not in particular will: It holds his estimate and dignity As well wherein ’tis precious of itself As in the prizer.’Tis mad idolatry Bate.indb 3 24/11/10 3:05 PM 4 INTRODUCTION To make the service greater than the god. (Shakespeare, Act 2, Scene 2, lines 58–62) The word ‘value’ must now be understood in the light of another of its defi nitions in the Oxford English Dictionary: The relative status of a thing, or the estimate in which it is held, according to its real or supposed worth, usefulness, or importance.
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