Teaching the Humanities in a Fractious World

A Reply to Sceptics
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-98401-8
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 140 Seiten, Format (B × H): 145 mm x 222 mm, Gewicht: 319 g

This book confronts an ever more popular suspicion – that a university education in the humanities and social sciences is an ‘elitist’ indoctrination into ‘leftist’ or ‘liberal’ views. Having taught them for nearly 40 years, Gavin Kitching shows that, on the contrary, studying these subjects leads one to question all political and social views (left-wing, right-wing, ‘elite’, ‘popular’, religious, secular) and to be sceptical of all the beliefs about human identity (whether racial, gender, national, or class) to which they give rise.

The book is divided into 34 brief sections which can be read as stand-alone discussions of some topic or as sequential steps in an argument. This modular structure makes it an excellent teaching text for students. It is written in an accessible, even colloquial, style which gives it the broadest possible appeal, and its arguments are illustrated by a host of ‘everyday’ linguistic, sociological and psychological examples. These not only enliven the book but demonstrate that philosophical ideas are most persuasive when used to illuminate non-philosophical matters. Accordingly, Teaching the Humanities… explores such issues as the climate crisis; individualism and postmodernism; nationalism; globalisation and its relationship to economic inequality and political polarisation; all of which are currently the subject of fierce debate inside and outside the university.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kitching, Gavin

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. So What? 1 2. Who For? 3. Academics Impotent or Potent? 4. Academics Pernicious or Virtuous? 5. Universities and Knowledge (and Wisdom?) 6. Known Unknowns or Unknown Unknowns? 7. Critical Thinking 8. Cool Views 9. Doubts, Philosophical and Non-Philosophical 10. The Crunch 11. Patriotism and Me 12. Globalisation and Me 13. Political Ignorance 14. Knowing Better 15. Patriotism, Globalisation, and Me 16. Patriotism and Me, Yet More 17. An Imagined Time Machine 18. How Come? 19. Community and Money 20. Modernity 1 21. Modernity 2 22. Modernity 3 23. Who’s Who 24. Modernity and Knowledge 25. Modernity and Capitalism 26. Watts Up 27. Nasty Catches 28. Back to the Campus 29. Really 30. History and Philosophy 31. Words and Doings 32. Social Relations 33. Another Evil Demon 34. So What? 2 35. Appendix. Questions and Answers. Select Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Gavin Kitching is an internationally distinguished scholar and researcher in the fields of Third World development, agrarian and rural development, and the philosophy and methodology of social science. He is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Social Sciences Academy.