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 in depth the role of characterology in justifications for the humanities that rest (as all justifications must, at some level) on the perception that they possess distinctive objects of study and a distinctive understanding of what constitutes knowledge
