Tarp vertės ir poveikio: apie tikrą ir tariamą humanitarinių mokslų krizę ir jos įveikos būdus

• Kirtiklis, Kęstutis
• Gedutis, Aldis

LTDviejų autoritetų nepripažįstančių filosofų Kęsto Kirtiklio (VU) bei Aldžio Gedučio (KU) monografija išsamiai nagrinėja krizėje atsidūrusius humanitarinius mokslus. Šiandienos humanitarinių mokslų įvaizdis yra siejamas su dvasios mokslais, praeities tyrinėjimais, tačiau jų teikiama nauda individui bei kolektyvinei dimensijai sumenksta dėl prastų darbo sąlygų, didelio darbo krūvio, neadekvataus atlyginimo. Teisinimosi režimu veikiantys humanitarai retai pastebi tai, kad pati jų bendruomenė yra susiskaldžiusi, išsibarsčiusi, be orientyro ir nekritiškai įtikėjusi savo tyrimų verte. "Humanitarinių mokslų krizės diskursas yra itin sujauktas - daug tekstų, daug liūdesio ir desperacijos, daug nepatiklumo ir kaltinimų, žodžiu, tikra galo, Brisiaus galo, nuojauta. Todėl itin svarbu nustatyti, kas galimai pribaigs Brisių – natūralios priežastys ar šūvis". [Leidėjo anotacija]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Frascati vadovas; Humanitariniai mokslai; Humanitarinių mokslų klasifikacija; Humanitarinių mokslų krizė; Humanitarinių mokslų poveikis; Humanitarinių mokslų vertė; Humanitariniųi mokslų krizė; Poveikis; Vertė; Classification of humanities; Crisis in humanities; Crisis in the humanities; Frascati Manual; Humanitarian Studies; Humanities; Humanities' impact; Impact; Lithuania; Value; Value of the humanities.

ENThe recent decades have witnessed rapid transformations of the global academia, which are quite often perceived as an assault on the humanities. Various groups put pressure on the humanities, demanding to justify their very existence in the contemporary world where the neoliberal grand narrative of economic value seems to prevail. The book "Between Value and Impact: On Real and Imaginary Crisis in the Humanities and the Ways to Overcome It" aims at a philosophical and sociological analysis of the arguments for the value of the humanities, which are presented in global as well as local debates. The main focus, however, is on the local / Lithuanian argumentation, and the analysis of the global context serves mostly as an inevitable backdrop, but also as examples o f best practices, helping Lithuanian humanitarians grasp the essence of the problem as well as suggesting strategies of argumentation, providing the arguments which have not been used yet by Lithuanian scholars. We start the book with an attempt to define the meaning of the term humanities. The analysis of the conceptions of the humanities and their demarcation from the social and natural sciences in different countries - such as Australia, Germany, France, USA, Norway, Russia, UK, and India - shows that many countries struggle with defining which disciplines, fields of studies, and / or approaches should be included in the realm of the humanities, and which research objects should be assigned to them. Hence, we find that it is rather impossible to provide a globally valid definition of the humanities. The Lithuanian case, in its turn, has its own peculiarities.In Lithuanian the humanities are called humanitariniai mokslai (literally: humanitarian sciences), which not only evokes the debates around the grounds on which they should be considered sciences (we will turn to that later), but also puts humanities on par with the natural and social sciences. According to the Lithuanian classification of the fields and disciplines of sciences, the humanities consist of philosophy, theology, art history and criticism, philology (including modern languages), history and archeology, and ethnology. Despite the lack of a global consensus on what the humanities are, there definitely is a shared belief that the humanities experience decline and crisis. Surely, the discourse of crisis has a long history, dating back to the Husserlian notion of the crisis of European sciences, Kants Conflict of Faculties, and Descartes’ search for a method which might serve as an impetus for philosophy to move away from its decline. However, we focus on the recent notions of this crisis, dating from the mid-20th century and later on. Though there are many attempts to define the crisis, most authors during the last sixty years have agreed on the following characteristics: the humanities have lost their social meaning, the specialisation of the humanities has reduced their ability to provide the students with a broader perspective, and they fall short of the expectations of society, transformed by the upsurge of science and technological progress. At the beginning of the 21st century, these social characteristics of crisis are being gradually supplanted by the institutional symptoms of the crisis: a decrease in the student numbers; the closure of departm ents and study programs; decreasing funding of research in the hum anities; and the dwindling social support for the humanities.Some researchers argue that such external crisis leads to internal crisis, where the new generations of scholars are accused of pursuing scholarly untenable in tellectual fashions and thus low ering the standards of research quality. Our research shows that humanitarians from many countries subscribe to the diagnosed crisis. The exceptions are just a few - Australia, Germany, and Japan (where humanities are apparently quite well funded). There are also two particular cases: China (where the hum anities correspond with the country’s attempts to exercise its soft power all over the world) and, paradoxically, Russia (which has its distinct version of the crisis, where the social and economic aspects come second after the ongoing, albeit transformed, ideological pressure). There are, we argue, two global responses to the crisis in the humanities - two apologetic discourses. One of them emphasises the value of the humanities, the other their (social and economic) impact. [...]. [Extract, p. 365-367]

• Filosofija / Philosophy
• Istorija / History