The first set of problems that I am concerned about is: Why is it that only scholars of the humanities are discussing this crisis? Is this an occupational crisis or occupational sensitivity?

During the middle of the last century, scientist and novelist Charles Percy Snow proposed the concept of ‘two cultures,’ portraying the contrast between humanists and scientists. He stated that these two types of people live in completely different worlds, where the ‘intellectual, moral and psychological climate had so little in common,’ being separated in the middle by an ‘ocean’.Reference Snow¹ They misunderstand and misrepresent each other, and even share a mutual hostility and dislike; not only do they have different attitudes when confronting problems, ‘even on the level of emotion, they can’t find much common ground’ (Ref. Reference Snow1, p. 4). While the former type is represented by ‘intellectuals’, the prime example of the latter is the physicist. One can imagine that when scientists assume the leading role in a university, having the authority to override everything else, scholars of the humanities tend to suffer.

If we say that Snow’s statements above offer only a basic description of the phenomenon, then Weber touches upon a deeper level of the unbridgeable conflict between modern society and culture, and specifically the tension between instrumental rationality and value rationality:

1. (1) Instrumentally rational (zweckrational), that is, determined by expectations as to the behaviour of objects in the environment and of other human beings; these expectations are used as ‘conditions’ or ‘means’ for the attainment of the actor’s own rationally pursued and calculated ends;

2. (2) Value-rational (wertrational), that is, determined by a conscious belief in the value for its own sake of some ethical, aesthetic, religious, or other forms of behaviour, independently of its prospect of success.Reference Weber²

It is worth pointing out that Weber emphasized the fact that value rational action has a complex relationship with instrumentally rational action. From the perspective of the latter, value rationality is always ‘irrational’, for ‘the more unconditionally the actor devotes himself to this value for its own sake, to pure sentiment or beauty, to absolute goodness or devotion to duty, the less is he influenced by considerations of the consequences of his action’ (Ref. Reference Weber2, p. 26).

Logically speaking, whether it be the humanities or another academic discipline, value rationality should be the internal logic of all intellectual action. However, with the development of social and scientific research activities, instrumental rationality has progressively acquired the upper hand, while at the same time becoming increasingly distanced from value rationality. Taylor used concise language to describe Weber’s idea of instrumental reason, stating that it is ‘the kind of rationality we draw on when we calculate the most economical application of means to a given end’, where ‘maximum efficiency, the best cost-output ratio, is its measure of success.’Reference Taylor³ This direction of maximizing outputs has become the hidden underlying force in scientific and technological research, and has even spread to the social sciences. This is exactly what Lewis means by ‘excellence without a soul’, where ‘without a soul’ refers to the loss of value rationality.Reference Lewis⁴ Many scholars have noted that in scientific research, value, meaning and ethics are often missing. Interestingly, the humanities and humanist scholars have always defended value rationality, emphasizing the importance of value, meaning and ethics. Although Weber believed that the relationship between instrumental rationality and value rationality was complex, he was deeply worried about the undiminishing tension between the two; while some scholars also believe that no such tension should exist between the sciences and humanities, the fact is that scientific activities continue to spread instrumental rationality, while eating away at the foundations of value rationality.

The problem is that there follows a severe transformation in university education when instrumental rationality becomes the general tendency of people’s actions, when value rationality is forgotten, and when positivism, empiricism and pragmatism emerge as increasingly popular. First, science, along with other related disciplines, becomes the absolute leader in university research and education, constantly eroding the humanities’ former ground and making humanists feel that their space is shrinking. For many years in universities in North America and Europe, humanities departments have experienced diminished funding, reduction of faculty, and a decline in student enrolments. At the first sign of a financial crisis, the first door to be closed is that of the humanities. The influence of scientific ‘imperialism’ in today’s university system is immeasurable. While the humanities departments at Chinese universities have yet to see this decline, I believe that this trend is just around the corner.

Second is the expansion of the scientific research paradigm. Since the 19th century the flourishing of the sciences has caused their research paradigms to exert a complex influence on the humanities. In a short time, humanists began to follow the models of the natural and technical sciences, using the paradigm of the exact sciences to transform the humanities; for example, scientific aesthetics and experimental aesthetics, the attempt to make of literary criticism a scientific process during the ‘New Criticism’ movement, art psychology’s reliance on experiments and data, etc. After the Chinese economic reforms (gaige kaifang) there followed a period in which system theory, control theory and information theory became popular as a direct result of this scientific trend. Today, while the appeal and pressure from the scientific paradigm have diminished somewhat, research in the humanities is often vulnerable to subjectivity. The social sciences at the same time are moving away from the humanities and evolve towards increased experimentation, statistics, models and paradigms. Once, philosophy was the mother of all sciences and its practitioners were thought to possess superior wisdom, today though it has become nothing more than a teaching position at a university or research institution. Even more disturbing is that in China today the most intelligent students all choose to study science, technology and the social sciences, with future job salaries determining the popularity of the different fields of study.

The crisis of the humanities seems to make it clear that this is a crisis of a particular trade or occupation. Just as arts and crafts went through a crisis of feeling ‘outdated’ during the modern mechanical industrial age, so now scholars of the humanities experience the crisis in higher education as characterized by low salaries, fewer jobs, and difficult employment. Scholars engaged in scientific and technological research receive adequate funding, order people around, and are surrounded by students willing to help. Humanists, on the contrary, are like the master of a workshop; not only must they look after their own research, they also need to edit papers, write recommendations and find jobs for students. Although we cannot say that the humanities is a ‘declining industry’, its current situation is obvious for all to see. Therefore, the crisis of the humanities is a struggle for survival that is felt most severely by its own scholars. Thus, their discouraging yet powerful cry for recognition is not at all surprising. This is my first conclusion.

The second set of problems I would like to discuss is: why do the humanities resort to tradition? What relation is there between the humanities and modernity?

While science and technology are always presenting new theories regarding the future, the humanities seem to prefer a return to tradition. Contrary to scientific knowledge that is constantly changing, the issues in the humanities appear to always be the same. Thomas S. Kuhn believed that while science has no history and is always searching for a single correct answer, art and the humanities are replete with disputes and differing opinions. Hence, scientific development is of a replaceable nature, with new discoveries replacing old theories. In contrast, art is very different, with later artists, no matter how great their accomplishments, never able to replace the magnificence of their predecessors. Perhaps it is for this reason that we continue to enjoy older works of art and read the classical writings of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi and Zhuangzi. However, no one today thinks of learning physics by reading Aristotle’s Physics, or referring to Hegel’s dialectal account of positive and negative poles to gain a deeper understanding of electricity. While their ‘science’ lacks validity for present-day scientists, the philosophies of Aristotle and Hegel are still widely read by contemporary scholars of the humanities. Kuhn’s conclusion is that ‘what are ends for the artist are means for the scientist, and vice versa.’Reference Kuhn⁵ Thus, ‘Picasso’s success has not relegated Rembrandt’s paintings to the storage vaults of art museums’ (Ref. Reference Kuhn5, p. 345). In contrast, new scientific breakthroughs cause the removal of previously important works that have now become outdated; in other words, ‘unlike art, science destroys its past’. From this, we arrive at a much more thorny issue: different from the futuristic direction of the sciences, what relationship is there between the humanities’ appeal to tradition and their current level of development? How is classical knowledge able to be effective in explaining a present society classified by terms such as ‘liquid modernity’ and ‘knowledge systems’?

In all fairness, the crisis that the humanities face today is partly due to external factors, such as the technology-driven trend that is causing the traditional humanities to diminish. But there are also inner factors causing this crisis, specifically the past-oriented nature of the humanities and their failure to respond to modernity. Therefore, it makes no sense to simply complain about the negative effect that the scientific trend is having on the humanities. Recognizing the problems and limits of the humanities is an important part of solving this crisis. According to popular views, the humanities touch upon the three principles of value, meaning and ethics. From the study of the western classics to that of their Chinese counterparts, basic academic theory is grounded in these principles. To borrow the words of Geoffrey Galt Harpham, President and Director of the American National Humanities Center, the Humanities concern ‘the scholarly study of documents and artifacts produced by human beings in the past that enables us to see the world from different points of view so that we may better understand ourselves.’Reference Harpham⁶ Harpham believes that the humanities can be summed up in three words: textuality, humanity and self-understanding. Textuality refers to the various historical documents, such as the numerous literary, philosophical, historical and artistic artefacts from ancient times, that are available to scholars of the humanities. Harpham’s opinion is that textuality has a tendency to point towards the past, stating: ‘[T]he key fact is pastness: … the “turn of mind” distinctive of the humanities is “toward history”’.Reference Harpham⁶

Obviously, the humanities cannot avoid historicizing and contextualizing. Still, when faced with the constant upheaval of modernization and the explosive developments of knowledge systems in our global age the question is whether the academic traditions so scrupulously upheld by the humanities are capable of adapting themselves in a society and culture of change? Sociologists have already described contemporary life as ‘fluid’ or ‘liquid’, and Marx’s famous prophecy that ‘All that is solid melts into air’ has already come to pass. Charles Baudelaire described modernity as ‘the transient, the fleeting, and the contingent’, all of which, from different perspectives, reveals the trends of contemporary social development. Thus, burying one’s head in a heap of musty old books and papers clearly no longer fits the demands of a modern society. Hence, it is extremely urgent that the humanities ‘re-invent’ themselves. Unfortunately, there is currently a large market for the academic method of digging through ancient classics and using the ancient to interpret the ancient. This, to some extent, is preventing a modernizing shift in the humanities, while at the same time weakening the latter’s understanding and interpretation of modern society and culture. Therefore, in higher education, the humanities may be losing its affinity with and attractiveness to young students. This, in turn, inevitably leads to questions and challenges the legitimacy of the humanities in the education system. This being the case, how is the humanities able to prove its high ability and effectiveness in explaining modern knowledge? It is important to note that there are an immense number of contemporary books arguing the importance and necessity of the humanities but, strangely enough, these arguments do not seem to have made any fundamental change to the decline of the humanities. So we cannot help but ask, is it these limitations of the humanities that are making it difficult to restore it to them to their former glory in this scientific and technologically-driven age?

Returning to Harpham’s three keywords for the humanities, other than textuality, with its intimate relationship to the classical tradition, the other two concepts – humanity and self-understanding – fall into a more important category. The relationship between textuality and these two concepts is complex, but I believe that it is through a modern explanation of textuality that the classical concept of humanity takes on a modern meaning, becoming a category with modern force. Value, meaning and ethics are the most common valued principles in the humanities and appear in our modern understanding of the concept of humanity. Further, it is only through such a description of humanity that the complete concept of self-understanding is formed. Therefore, education in the humanities is different from scientific and technological education, focusing more on educating citizens and cultivating citizenship in a healthy society.

The good news is that there has been a series of notable developments recently in the humanities. Developments that, I believe, on the one hand are a response to misgivings regarding their legitimacy, while on the other hand they greatly expound their horizons and methods. For example, the traditional concept of textuality is no longer limited to ancient literary texts, but now is being enlarged to take in new media as well as visual symbols, urban space, and virtual reality. In particular, the emergence of the so-called digital humanities may prove a miracle that opens up new areas for research. Well beyond simply referring to how the humanities approach computerization, but covering issues such as data mining, information visualization, geo-spatial analysis, multi-media and cross-media, the advent of the digital humanities prompts changes in research content and ideas. New methods and ideas are being integrated into the digitalization of cultural resources, thus bringing about a novel interpretation and understanding of classical tradition. As one scholar optimistically states:

Another recent development in the humanities is the emergence of interdisciplinary research. Actually, originally no strict disciplinary boundaries applied in the humanistic classical formation of knowledge, with literature, history and philosophy regarded as one ‘family’ in ancient China. It is only modernity’s differentiation of knowledge and between disciplines that has led to the specialization of the humanities and the formation of independent fields of study. Through a simple comparison between the research of literary scholars from the May Fourth era and the research of contemporary scholars it is not hard to see that enormous changes have taken place in humanistic knowledge over the past century. In my opinion, interdisciplinary knowledge production in the humanities has two important functions. First, and as humanists have not failed to point out, in contemporary intellectual systems any one discipline is only a part of the whole humanities. Whether we are talking about philosophy, history, literature, art, or rhetoric, they each only contain a portion of the value, meaning and ethics of the humanities. For example, rhetoric furnishes us with the abilities of self-expression and communication, literature explores imaginary worlds and the meaning of life, while philosophy is an inquiry regarding the ethics of metaphysics or justice. Therefore, the incorporation of these disciplines in research and education is helpful in nurturing in the students a complete system for self-understanding, thus overcoming individualized or fragmented self-understanding.Reference Wolin⁸

Second, a more important problem is that, in the massive contemporary knowledge system, if the humanities want to achieve considerable progress it is inevitable that it works together with the social sciences, natural sciences and even technological sciences. While we earlier stated that the humanities have many fundamental differences from other disciplines, it is precisely these differences that have allowed the humanities to be able to introduce their concepts and methods, along with new discipline resources, thus progressively changing the conservative, rigid and outdated features of the humanities. Many major issues in contemporary society are far from being resolved by a single discipline, providing new opportunities for the humanities to broaden its participation. From bioethical issues in the life sciences, historical and humanistic dimensions of environmental research, to the exploration of social problems such as gender studies, education research, public policy, governance, business ethics, urban culture, etc, they all would be difficult to resolve without input from the humanities. It is here that the traditional resources of the humanities can be put to great use. Interdisciplinary research involves not only a transformation of the traditional knowledge of the humanities, it also implies a reconstruction of the role and intellect of the traditional humanists.

At this point, the second conclusion can be drawn, which is that the traditions of the humanities can converge and converse with modernity. The key is how to prevent the humanities from being ‘museumized’. In addition, transforming an ‘old track’ into a ‘new track’ is key to underpinning their legitimacy in a modern knowledge society.

The third set of problems that I will discuss is: how do we restore the humanities in contemporary higher education? Is there a new path to be discovered that will advance current humanities education?

Why, when compared with the past, are the humanities, and the education they provide, in a state of decay today, with issues of human value, meaning and ethics becoming less and less frequently studied or taught? Perhaps Lewis’s statement about today’s universities pursuing ‘excellence without a soul’ gets to the root of the matter:

This situation applies to many universities throughout the world: in their quest for excellence, universities are forsaking their own spirit, soul, and ethics. The issue is particularly urgent with Chinese universities, for not only can they be classified as pursuing ‘excellence without a soul’, but even more frightening, as pursuing ‘mediocrity without a human spirit’. Many unimaginable events are occurring within our universities. Commonly heard terms such as ‘envy’, ‘jealousy’ and ‘hate’ are a reflection of the current risk of being part of a Chinese university community, a risk made even more apparent with the frequent newspaper reports of campus poisonings, murders, destruction, framings, etc. Such a startling phenomenon is like an alarm sounding: the humanities must take practical action to change the direction of development in university education.

I believe that in order to confront this crisis of the humanities, our emphasis should not be on the theoretical proof of the importance of the humanities, but instead on practical action. In other words, resolving the crisis of the humanities is not so much a theoretical problem as a matter of practice. If we view this crisis as one of praxis it may be useful to coin a slogan such as ‘the humanities in action’.

First of all, the humanities and the education they provide need to be given more space and influence. They need to be effectively integrated with other academic disciplines. There are currently two types of education provided by the humanities in higher education institutions. The first is a professionally oriented humanities course of studies, meant for a small number of elite students, and thus very limited. The second consists of humanities courses that form part of general education, and these are taken by students from a variety of academic disciplines and majors. In my opinion, these two types of education have obvious limitations. In order to change the current situation of the humanities fundamentally, a possible route is to have the humanities ‘invade’ other academic disciplines. To this end we should promote a type of ‘guerrilla war’ action strategy, where scholars of the humanities would make connections and associations, whether it be private exchanges or institutionalized activities for promoting friendship, with scholars from other disciplines and establish academic connections based on friendship. Through this process, basic principles of the humanities, such as ethics and value, would be able to permeate into the professional education of other disciplines. The key element here is that this does not focus on a student audience, but becomes part of the education of the teachers. If professors in the various disciplines are trained in the humanities, with their professional courses containing varying degrees of humanistic values, meaning, and ethical concerns, then the humanities will no longer be confined to a small field of games played by the few but instead become a universalized professional discipline in public education content. This way, even while looking for excellence, university education will not have lost its ‘soul’. How are scholars of the humanities to launch such a ‘guerrilla warfare’ behind the ‘enemies’ backs’? How do we develop the humanities into an effective component of other professional courses of education? How do we develop an effective model in working together with other disciplines? Perhaps these are the questions to which scholars of the humanities need to turn their attention.

As the saying goes, ‘scholars tend to scorn one another’, with C.P. Snow already pointing out that scholars of the humanities and scientists are often hostile to, and mutually misunderstand, one another. Academic exchanges and cooperation between scholars of the humanities and scientists, then, becomes an issue of great importance and urgency. On the one hand, humanists need to better understand scientific knowledge. On the other hand, scientists need to be better trained in the humanities. The ‘ocean’ that divides the two is bridged as interdisciplinary studies are mobilized. How do we incorporate metaphysics or issues of value into physics and mathematics? How do we include discussions of life ethics into the research of the life sciences? Or, is it possible to incorporate discussions of the relationship between man and nature along with environmental ethics while researching our increasingly serious environmental problems? Ideally, each professional course should include several units discussing relevant issues in the humanities. Moving out of the original pattern and into other disciplines is how the humanities is going to be able to reconstruct a new knowledge system. Cooperating with scientists in preparing materials for other disciplines is also a current task for the humanities. Under specific circumstances, teachers from the humanities and other disciplines should cooperate in teaching classes, thus better achieving interdisciplinary activities between humanists and scholars of other disciplines.

Regarding this move from theory to practice and promoting the education of the humanities, there is still one other possibility: inventing a new tradition. E.J. Hobsbawm’s theory of ‘invented tradition’ refers to the emergence of a new tradition due to the rapid shifts and weakening of established traditions in a society. As Hobsbawm puts it, ‘“Invented tradition” is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.’Reference Hobsbawn and Ranger⁹ Hobsbawm emphasizes that the ‘invented tradition’ is highly practical, instilling specific values and behaviour norms through repetition, a point that is instructive with regard to how we can improve the education of the humanities. If our goal is to see the humanities transition from learning to doing, they cannot be confined to the classroom and the campus. Are the principles of values, meaning and ethics, as taught by the humanities, through well-designed curricula or extra-curricular activities, able to turn into a lively ritualistic set of practices? As a result, we would be able to move the liberal arts education outside of the classroom, from the campus to the community, and from academic research to all aspects of social life. For example, every ethical issue in social life might be spread throughout society by teacher and student; issues regarding environmental ethics could be further researched and expounded upon through teacher and student participation in environmental activities; or the Chinese traditional values of universal love, respecting the old and cherishing the young, helping the weak and aiding the needy, and cherishing nature could be publicized through a ritualized and symbolic practice. In short, a transformation from theoretical to practical humanities is an effective method in solving the legitimacy crisis of the humanities.

Finally, I would like to change the subject. The humanities as a classical knowledge system that is tradition-oriented is closely related to the rhythm of traditional leisure life. Hegel once commented that Minerva’s owl would fly only at night. I believe that this is a metaphor for the condition of thought and wisdom. Today, when we are too immersed in the practices of instrumental rationality and busily working our fast-paced jobs, it is difficult for our ‘thinking owl’ to take flight. Whenever we do have leisure time, we are so addicted to various types of busy entertainment activities that our ‘thinking owl’ is nowhere to be found. Faced with this dilemma, what can scholars of the humanities do? Other than careful teaching in the classroom, what can we do to make sure that the humanities is not just specialized knowledge? I think that taking the profound knowledge of the humanities and turning it into publicized knowledge is essential. Throughout history there are many successful role models of scholars who not only realized outstanding achievements in their respective areas of expertise, but also admirably promoted and popularized knowledge in the humanities. This type of universal humanistic knowledge is what makes Minerva’s owl not only take flight in the evenings, but instead become our partner at all times throughout the day. The only way that the humanities will recover from this crisis is through the general public’s acceptance, recognition and respect for the ideas, values and ethics emphasized in the humanities.

Thus, my third conclusion is: a shift in the humanities from an academic knowledge system into the practice of social life is one option for restoring the humanities.