I fear that most of the great philosophers prior to 20th century would have been very surprised, if not astonished, by such an argument. Almost no one of them would have considered democracy (in our common sense of complete equality of rights, universal suffrage, competition of political parties, and so on) as anything remotely different from the worst of the ideas. Furthermore, through almost all history, humanistic education (which was a synonym of ‘education’ simpliciter) has rather been an instrument for the social differentiation of economic and political elites, hence, the exact opposite of a tool for emancipation. It’s funny to consider how history, philosophy, literature, etc., something that since Ancient Greece was seen as a gentlemen’s privilege and a guarantee that those gentlemen’s children would keep the same social privileges as their fathers, has become, in less than a couple of centuries, as a necessary mechanism for the working of democratic societies.
2. “Knowledge of the humanities is indispensable for our realisation as human beings”.
I can’t deny that enjoying literature, history or philosophy may be one of the greatest sources of pleasure and understanding we humans can experience. I can’t also disagree with the claim that this enjoyment requires in many cases a long and more or less painful training before a child can start to experience it. But I know a lot of people, including myself, consecrated almost full time to these subjects, and I can promise you that we are, on average, not even a little bit less foolish in our private or public lives than those individuals that have not been lucky enough to make of humanities the gist of their jobs. Actually, we are not happier than the rest of the people enjoying a social or economic level similar to ours. Furthermore, I don’t really know of many people for whom having got a little bit more of humanistic learning at school (say, a few hours more listening about Homer or Rousseau) would have meant escaping from a miserable life of alienation.
3. “The powerful want to eliminate humanistic learning because they want us less critical individuals, consumers and entrepreneurs instead of citizens; this is why they are trying to replace humanistic for more economicist subjects”.
