Sixth and final lecture First lecture in the Value of Humanities series in which Professor Helen Small discusses the philosophical idea of intrinsic value, or the humanities as valuable for its own sake. Most of the other justifications treated in these lectures are consequentialist, resting on a conviction that the humanities have good effects in the world by their impact on our cultural life, our happiness, our politics. That consequentialism will be attractive to anyone tasked with...

Fifth lecture in the Value of Humanities series in which Professor Helen Small discusses the idea that a flourishing democracy needs the Humanities. This is the most ambitious argument now regularly heard for the humanities in Britain and more widely-close to a piety for many of their advocates. It has a proximate source in the American liberal arts tradition and prominent recent exponents in Martha Nussbaum, Geoffrey Harpham, and (in the UK) Francis Mulhern. Its longer roots lie in Socrates'...

Fourth lecture in the Value of Humanities series in which Professor Helen Small discusses the Humanities' contribution to happiness. Lecture 4 explores the claim that the humanities have a contribution to make to our individual and collective happiness. This may be their least trusted line of defence now, within the academy, but it has a distinguished history and renewed topicality within government at the time of writing. Efforts to understand gains to the public good in ways that go deeper...

First lecture in the Value of Humanities series in which Professor Helen Small discusses the ideas of use and usefulness in the context of the value of the humanities. There is an old line of argument that the humanities are necessarily (even laudably) useless, or at a remove from accounts of practical ends and economic utility. This has been a common line of resistance to political economists from Adam Smith onwards who have stressed usefulness as a desirable aim of publicly funded...

Second lecture in the Value of Humanities series in which Professor Helen Small discusses how the humanities is distinct from other academic disciplines. This lecture pursues a definition of the humanities that can accurately account for the distinctive kinds of work done under their aegis and discriminate them credibly from other intellectual fields. It examines the history of two and three cultures arguments as they have helped and hindered that work of definition thus far. It then explores...

First lecture in the Value of Humanities series in which Professor Helen Small discusses the broad political and social context in which to place these lectures. Reading list available. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

First lecture in the Value of Humanities series in which Professor Helen Small discusses the broad political and social context in which to place these lectures. Reading list available. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/