What is it to be human? On the humanities and practical self-understanding

The future of the humanities is regularly questioned. What should the place and function of the humanities be within the university and in the world outside the university? What distinguishes them from the social sciences and the natural sciences? What kind of knowledge do they offer us? The aim of the conference is to explore one specific answer to these questions: the humanities are important because they contribute to our practical self-understanding. By ‘practical self-understanding’ we refer to the reflective capacity of human beings to integrate the diverse ways in which we can think about ourselves into a perspective that is able to offer us meaningful orientation and normative guidance in our lives and in the world.

Human beings constitute the research subject of many different disciplines. The natural sciences study the human body and the physical basis of human behavior and mental activity. The social sciences identify regularities in individual and social behavior. The humanities are characteristically understood as those disciplines that study human beings in their linguistic, artistic, historical, and religious expressions and manifestations. In addition, there are normative disciplines like ethics and law that see human beings as agents with responsibility or dignity. How do these different perspectives relate to each other? Can we bring this diversity into a consistent whole? If not, how else should we deal with it?

In this conference, we will investigate how these diverse perspectives on what it means to be human interact with each other, and ask which role the humanities could play in the integration of these diverse perspectives, in order to develop forms of practical self-understanding. Researchers and scholars from a variety of disciplines are invited to reflect on this theme: scholars from the whole spectrum of humanistic disciplines, as well as social scientists and natural scientists who are interested in these questions.

The conference is organized by the research group ‘What Can the Humanities Contribute to Our Practical Self-Understanding?’ run jointly by Utrecht University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Tilburg University, and Leiden University, led by Prof. Marcus Düwell and financed by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).