Is Literature Human Studies? — A Response

7,783 characters2007.10.08

This is a response to UNIC; taking this opportunity, I’d like to briefly state my attitude toward conceptual analysis and inquiry.

You want to say “literature is human studies,” and that’s fine; I do not object. Of course, this phrase is not your own invention, but already a widely used expression. I looked it up, and its source seems to be Gorky; it has also been used by many writers on different occasions.

Every sentence has its context and must be judged within a specific context. Otherwise, a bald assertion dropped out of nowhere cannot be properly understood or assessed. For example, I say “the Earth is round.” Is that right or wrong? If the context is that the Earth is not flat, then the sentence is right; but if the context says the Earth is an irregular sphere, then the sentence is wrong. Without contextual support, if you abruptly throw out a sentence like “literature is human studies,” then I can neither support it nor properly oppose it; all I can do is nod and say yes, yes—after all, the feeling of that kind of statement is quite nice.

Philosophy can indeed be irritating at times, especially conceptual clarification and linguistic analysis. In certain contexts, such as when Gorky says “literature is human studies,” there is no need to pursue the following questions: what exactly is literature? How should “human studies” be defined? How is it to be distinguished? … An excessive fixation on conceptual analysis is a rather dull affair. I count myself as someone who knows how to read the room: when you say literature is human studies, I can grasp the spirit, and so I won’t keep pestering you with questions.

However, if you have not given a clear definition, I can also borrow these metaphors to offer further explanation. I can say that if literature is human studies, then so-called “humanities” are in fact human studies. At this point, however, if you high-handedly reject my extension and instead insist further that humanities and human studies are entirely two different categories, that only literature is human studies while philosophy is not, history is not, and science is even less so, then you are the one trying to launch an attack; at that point, you must be responsible for that high-handedness—you must make clear why only literature may monopolize the title of “human studies,” while other disciplines are not allowed to set foot in it.

Thus at this point, I am forced onto the defensive and to counterattack. For when I say “humanities” is “human studies,” I am not without grounds. I can find support from history and from semantics; if you still insist that the human studies you speak of and the human studies I speak of are two different things, then at the very least you should explain what exactly you mean by human studies. You absolutely cannot get away with circular reasoning—literature is human studies, human studies is literature—and then conclude that philosophy is not human studies on the grounds that philosophy differs from literature. After all, here the term “human studies” is not being used in its ordinary sense; you must make clear exactly what you are claiming before you have the right to launch an attack.

On what grounds do you say that “humanities” and “literature” or “human studies” are entirely different categories? Perhaps you have a fuller grasp of “literature,” but at any rate I have some degree of understanding and feeling for what “humanities” means and for its place in the history of Western thought; I have also thought about what “humanities disciplines” and “scientific humanities” actually are, and have had direct experience of them. I believe my right to speak on this term is at least no less than yours.

A casual look through a dictionary may sometimes yield unexpected insight. Like “literature,” the word “humanities” of course also comes from the West. “Humanities” — “humanity” — can also mean “human nature, humaneness, compassion,” or refer to humanity as a whole. Etymologically, “humanism” — “humanism” — is the same word as “humanitarianism” and “human-centeredness”; in some contexts it might also be translated as “human-ism.” At the same time, this word can directly mean “human nature, human feeling, humaneness”; and finally, the term can also specifically refer to “the study of classical literature during the Renaissance.”

As everyone knows, “humanism” is the core of the entire span from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, the theme of the whole history of modern Western civilization. What is the Renaissance? As the name suggests, it is the revival of literature and art. Then why is the revival of literature and art precisely the revival of “man”?

Therefore, I completely agree with the statement “literature is human studies”: the awakening of literature is the awakening of “man.” Yet from this we can see that these concepts are all intertwined and implicated in one another. “Humanities” is “human studies,” is “human nature” and “humaneness,” is “man” himself. How can one say that humanities, literature, and so-called human studies are entirely different categories? They are fundamentally one and the same concept.

So what exactly is “humanities”? Wu Laoshi once proposed “letting science return to the humanities” and the ideal of “free science”; these two formulations are consistent. “Humanities” is to say “freedom.” Historically speaking, humanism is the same: it means that people once again bring “man,” that is, ourselves, back to the center—knowing oneself, establishing oneself, relying on oneself. This awakening of “man” is also the awakening of “self,” and thus the awakening of “freedom.”

My guess is that Gorky’s “human studies” probably also means “humanity”; at the very least, it can be determined that his line of thought is certainly in the same tradition as the entire Western modern current of “humanism.”

I think that although I have only sketched this in outline here, I have already explained my position clearly enough. If you still want to attack my view, then you must make clear what exactly you mean by “human studies”? — If your “human studies” has nothing to do with “humanities,” that is, if it is an entirely different category from words such as “humaneness,” “human nature,” and “humanity,” then what category exactly is it?

October 8, 2007