Editors’ Introduction
Ashar Foley and Teresa Moore
aegis 2004 4 edi-
Although Otterbein College enjoys a tradition of student publication, most notably with its literary magazine, Quiz and Quill, it has until now lacked a forum for student work in those disciplines that make up the humanities. Aegis aspires to be such a forum, providing a venue for the exhibition of our work and the exchange of our ideas. We welcome you now to the first of these conversations, a conversation that we hope will bring greater attention to alternative methods of inquiry to Otterbein and respond to the questions, “Why the humanities?” and, more specifically, “Why Aegis?” In order to answer the former question, we must consider the values of the humanities and how they differ from those of the Sciences, including the political and social sciences as well as the study of Business and Economics. These, the “epistemic disciplines,” praise the use of objective reasoning based on concrete evidence to answer inquiries. Trying to find an equally concise definition of the humanities’ values proves more daunting, however. Merely listing the disciplines found in conventional definitions of the humanities—History, Philosophy, Foreign Language, Linguistics, Literature, the history, criticism and theory of the Arts, Ethics, and Comparative Religion—proves insufficient. Instead, we must be more general and transcend the limits of these disciplines in order to understand their common, foundational values. In doing so, we realize that what these disciplines share is an emphasis on individual voice and the promotion of a subjective synthesis with our world, rather than an objective explanation of our world. The humanities thus allow each scholar to produce his or her own method of approach, in contrast to the scientific subordination of the data-gatherer to the system within which he or she works. With this in mind, it follows that every discipline has such a qualitative, individualistic undercurrent, as every discipline is made up of individual practitioners engaged in their crafts. Where the disciplines of the humanities and the sciences part ways, however, is the level of priority they ultimately give the practitioner and his or her experience. For better or worse, our world subscribes to the latter treatment of a person’s work—after all, scientific thinking and order produce more tangible, reportable results than do the humanities. As an unfortunate consequence, the merit of subjective, individual findings is often overlooked, science having no use for them unless “anchored in some kind of empirical study or procedure of practical reasoning” (Altieri 250). Thus, we see the true injustice done to the humanities in a scientifically-minded world: the qualitative inquiries of the humanities are held up to the same expectations as the quantitative inquiries of the sciences and asked to produce the same, objective results. This expectation, as we know, is unreasonable—like the sciences, the humanities are an ongoing conversation, but the accent is placed on the conversation itself and not on its outcomes. The former strives for a linear progress, forever building on and moving beyond the results of preceding inquiries; the latter’s brand of progress, however, is more of a network, constantly recalling past conversations and involving them in new discourses. The history and practices of psychoanalysis serve as a good example here: although rejected by the medical community in favor of more expedient drug-therapies, psychoanalysis
