Fall Institute: 'Objectivity and the Humanities'

This seminar will revisit our paradigms concerning objectivity in the humanities. To many, it seems as if the humanities provide us at best with less-than-objective knowledge claims. Arguably, there are at least two overall reasons for this. On the one hand, there is a tendency to associate objectivity with the kind of knowledge-acquisition, explanation, and justification characteristic of the natural sciences. On the other hand, the humanities themselves have contributed to the impression that they might be less relevant than the natural sciences to epistemic progress, due to internal discussions about the very concept(s) of knowledge, reality and objectivity. In order to reshape our account of the human being as the source and object of knowledge claims, our seminar will test the following thesis against a variety of objections: we cannot eliminate from our account of reality as such the standpoint from which humans grasp both human and non-human reality.