Why we need Akkadian
7th September 2010
Read it and stretch your brain a bit. It will do you no harm.
Sections of the humanities have engaged in any amount of elitism. If we wanted an example, we could look at how Latinists have eliminated J and V from texts, in favour of texts only using I and U — and then printed them, not in capitalis, but in the lower case script invented in the 15th century! The process introduced a barrier to ordinary people, made the learning and reading of Latin harder, and privileged a caste of professional scholars. Claims that it was more authentic merely sought to sugar-coat the real effect – and the real purpose — of the change. Such elitism, the creation of professional classes, the claims that disciplines like history — or theology — are owned by those drawing salaries are malevolent. Once the people who pay are excluded, they will naturally ask why they are paying.
I do not think any here will suspect me of undue reverence for the humanities. My training is as a scientist, and the use of the humanities to decorate with authority the claims of some political or religious position is why I can’t take much of it seriously. The manner in which some disciplines have been prostituted for political purposes is known to us all. Sociology died of such a process; economics barely survived being gang-banged for the ends of state socialism. Theology does not deserve to survive unless it purges its culture of Christian-baiting and seeks to escape the process whereby the assured results of scholarly investigation have always reflected the desires of those who control university appointments. The way in which the scholarly study of Lucian in 19th century Germany reflected precisely the attitude of the state authorities towards anti-semitism, lucidly document by Holzberg in “Lucian and the Germans”, indicates that classics has no objective standard on which to operate. The list might be extended probably endlessly.
Why history? Why teach it? What does it matter, how the despots of the Byzantine empire fought off their foes? Do we care about the processes whereby the Fathers decided whether Cyril or Nestorius should be condemned?
It does matter. It matters deeply to us all. Our society came into being by the rediscovery of the classical world. The education provided by the classics, both those of the Greek and Latin world, and of the English-speaking world, is one that can never become outdated, except in the eyes of those whose hate for our society exceeds reason or sanity. To know them is to become an educated man. To listen to their voices is to escape the tyranny of the present. To love them is a liberal education.