Philosopher Judith Butler on the Value of the Humanities and Why We Read | Brain Pickings | June 2013
“[The humanities allow us] to learn to read carefully, with appreciation
and a critical eye; to find ourselves, unexpectedly, in the middle of
the ancient texts we read, but also to find ways of living, thinking,
acting, and reflecting that belong to times and spaces we have never
known. The humanities give us a chance to read across languages and
cultural differences in order to understand the vast range of
perspectives in and on this world. How else can we imagine living
together without this ability to see beyond where we are, to find
ourselves linked with others we have never directly known, and to
understand that, in some abiding and urgent sense, we share a world?”