{"product_id":"the-battle-of-the-classics-how-a-nineteenth-century-debate-can-save-the-humanities-today-9780197680810","title":"The Battle of the Classics: How a Nineteenth-Century Debate Can Save the Humanities Today","description":"These are troubling days for the humanities. In response, a recent proliferation of works defending the humanities has emerged. But, taken together, what are these works really saying, and how persuasive do they prove? \u003cem\u003eThe Battle of the Classics\u003c\/em\u003e demonstrates the crucial downsides of contemporary apologetics for the humanities and presents in its place a historically informed case for a different approach to rescuing the humanistic disciplines in higher education. It reopens the passionate debates about the classics that took place in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America as a springboard for crafting a novel foundation for the humanistic tradition. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eEric Adler demonstrates that current defenses of the humanities rely on the humanistic disciplines as inculcators of certain poorly defined skills such as \"critical thinking.\" It criticizes this conventional approach, contending that humanists cannot hope to save their disciplines without arguing in favor of particular humanities content. As the uninspired defenses of the classical humanities in the late nineteenth century prove, instrumental apologetics are bound to fail. All the same, the book shows that proponents of the Great Books favor a curriculum that is too intellectually narrow for the twenty-first century. \u003cem\u003eThe Battle of the Classics\u003c\/em\u003e thus lays out a substance-based approach to undergraduate education that will revive the humanities, even as it steers clear of overreliance on the Western canon. The book envisions a global humanities based on the examination of masterworks from manifold cultures as the heart of an intellectually and morally sound education.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEric Adler \u003c\/strong\u003eis a Professor and Chair of the Department of Classics at the University of Maryland. He is the author of \u003cem\u003eClassics, the Culture Wars, and Beyond\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eValorizing the Barbarians: Enemy Speeches in Roman Historiography\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50454279520530,"sku":"9780197680810","price":27.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_e8004288-834a-4ed9-ac8f-9df3c5c9a0d1.jpg?v=1729864133","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-battle-of-the-classics-how-a-nineteenth-century-debate-can-save-the-humanities-today-9780197680810","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}