The Humanities In The Age of Disenchantment

Anthony Kronman, Ph.D., Sterling Professor of Law, Yale University, presented a stimulating lecture December, 2, 2011, on disenchantment as defined by Max Weber, the German philospher where scientific understanding is more highly prized than belief. Dr. Kronman pointed out that during the first two hundred years of university education in America students were taught knowledge that had been accumulated in a classical context. The base of that education was religion. In the last hundred years, he said, universities have departed from the ideal of learning the great philosophies of the ages. Instead the emphasis is on finding new knowledge. For example, he pointed to the demand on doctrinal candidates to produce a body of new knowledge based on their research rather than demonstrating their grasp of all that has come before. The problem for students and for society is that striving for secular success leaves the individual with no grounding in the everlasting and no ties with the continuity of a divinity.