About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

7 Law, Culture & Human. 5 (2011)

handle is hein.journals/lculh7 and id is 1 raw text is: Editorial Law, Culture and the Humanities 7(1) 5-5 Editorial @TheAuthor(s) 201I Reprints and permission:sagepub. co.ulk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/17438721 10386293 http://Ich.sagepub.com OSAGE The humanities are under attack in the modem, corporatized university. The humanities seem unable to generate useful knowledge at a time when utility is the order of the day. The humanities seem frivolous or self indulgent in an era of high seriousness. With oil gushing beneath the Gulf of Mexico, the crisis of sovereign debt threatening to unwind the European Union, an unending war raging in Afghanistan, and countless other crises, what can the humanities contribute? I recently read a defense of the humanities, written as if to an audience of college students, from the conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks. Among other things Brooks argued that studying the humanities improves your ability to read and write ... Studying the humanities will give you a familiarity with the language of emotion ... Studying the humanities will give you a wealth of analogies. People think by comparison - Iraq is either like Vietnam or Bosnia; your boss is like Narcissus or Solon. People who have a wealth of analogies in their minds can think more precisely than those with few analogies. If you go through college without reading Thucydides, Herodotus and Gibbon, you'll have been cheated out of a great repertoire of comparisons. Brooks went on to explain that humanistic knowledge equips people to understand human pas- sions and drives that don't lend themselves to systemic modeling ... (and) yearnings and fears that reside in an inner beast. In this issue of LCH the Commentary Section takes up a form of human behavior that does not lend itself well to systemic modeling and that stirs up the deepest yearnings and fears, namely sacrifice. As you read the commentaries I hope you will have the occa- sion to think about whether law itself depends on sacrificial acts and practices, whether law lends legitimacy to those acts and practices by state and non-state actors, and whether law transforms sacrifice. The commentaries published in this issue take up and exem- plify some of the most important/persuasive critical perspectives on the relationship of law and sacrifice. As I read those pieces I am convinced of the utility of humanistic perspectives on law and that humanistic perspectives are neither frivolous nor self-indulgent. But, I am not part of the audience that needs convincing. As to how those who need convincing would read them ...? Austin Sarat

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most