Humanist Reason, by Eric Hayot

“Let’s play offense” is the last sentence of Eric Hayot’s passionate rallying call for the humanities. He’s right. Instead of constantly “defending”, what would attacking look like? Hayot, with Aaron Hanlon and Anna Kornbluh, has set up a campaigning website, humanitiesworks.org (the British Academy has thisisshape.org.uk). But Humanist Reason has a more ambitious target.

We can lay out the value of the humanities for individuals, society and employers (who, incidentally, are increasingly interested in what we teach: collaboration, communication, “big picture” thinking, the significance of diversity, thoughtful open-mindedness, leading to both social and commercial entrepreneurship). But this is already to cede ground to our opponents, Hayot suggests. What if we had a better way, on which we could all agree, to explain to ourselves and to the public what we do? What if we had humanist reason?

Hayot argues that because humanist knowledge isn’t assumed to be true, as scientific knowledge is, our ideas can seem weak or, worse, ideologically driven (the key claim by the opponents of academia in “the culture wars”). We bickering humanists collude with this when we can’t or won’t call our own conclusions “true”. So, after two dense chapters moving through Kant and post-Kantian German thought, Hayot comes to his “Articles of reason: how humanists really (ought to?) think”, an account of how humanists reason and so produce truth – balanced, as the brackets show, between description and prescription.

What’s most important is where he’s right. He is right that we need to justify what we do through what we do, as well as pointing out the beneficial consequences of the humanities. When a humanities scholar talks about their specialism at a literary festival, the audience is gripped not by the sense that George Eliot or Plato will improve their careers but by the ideas themselves. Hard to pin down, sure, but our greatest resource. Hayot’s right, too, that the humanities reason through dialogue: we persuade, we share or teach our methodologies, we respond to challenges (in this respect, not so very different, after all, from the natural sciences).

So what’s wrong with this argument? Hayot’s “articles” of humanist reason, “beliefs that govern contemporary humanist scholarship”, really only apply to academics in literature and language departments: our colleagues in other disciplines will look askance. The literary-theory-ese style, despite passages of great clarity and humour, doesn’t reach out enough. The book’s content and style also reveal something more. Each of the separate disciplines within the humanities is characterised by a thoroughgoing distinctiveness, not just in our topics but “all the way down”, to how we each reason. This is, as they say, a feature, not a bug. Our most significant and productive arguments are about interpretation and the methods we use, rarely a “truth” per se. For myself, I wonder if Hannah Arendt’s insight that we are more interested in meaning than truth might be useful (and this proves Hayot’s point that humanists can’t agree, of course).

Humanist Reason won’t convince the marketplace scoffers and ideologues (what would?). It may not convince bickering humanists. But we should meet Hayot’s profounder challenge: to turn our own intellectual resources to face the wider world.

Robert Eaglestone is professor of contemporary literature and thought at Royal Holloway, University of London and author of Literature: Why It Matters.

Humanist Reason: A History. An Argument. A Plan
By Eric Hayot
Columbia University Press, 224pp, £20.00
ISBN 9780231197854
Published 16 February 2021