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:Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world in which irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason. —From the Report of the Commission on the Humanities, 1980
The humanities are a group of academic subjects united by a commitment to studying aspects of the human condition and a qualitative approach that generally prevents a single paradigm from coming to define any discipline.
In academia, the humanities are generally considered to be, along with the social sciences and the natural sciences, one of three major components of the liberal arts and sciences.
While the precise definition of the humanities can be contentious, the following disciplines are generally recognized to form their core:
- The Classics:
- Literature and literary criticism
- Philosophy
- The study of religion
- Jurisprudence
- Art, art history, art criticism , and theory
- Women's studies
- African-American studies
- Area studiesIn the humanities and social sciences, area studies is interdisciplinary research and scholarship pertaining to a particular geographical or cultural region. The term exists primarily as a general description for what are, in the practice of scholarship,
- Regional interdisciplinary fields such as East Asian studies and American studiesAmerican studies is a distinct interdisciplinary field that promotes a broad humanistic understanding of American culture past and present. American Studies is both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary in character and encourages scholars from diverse
The contents of the humanities are nowhere particularly prescribed. Some expand the definition to include other studies of human life using qualitative description and analysis:
- Cultural anthropologyCultural anthropology also called social anthropology or socio-cultural anthropology, is one of four commonly recognized fields of anthropology, the holistic study of humanity. It reflects in part a reaction against earlier Western discourses based on an
- HistoryHistory is often used as a generic term for information about the past, such as in "geologic history of the Earth". When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the study and interpretation of the record of human societies. The term histor
- SociologySociology is the study of social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as members of associations, groups, and institutions. A typical textbook definition of sociology calls it the study of the social lives of huma
- Political sciencePolitical science is the study of politics. It involves the study of structure and process in government or any equivalent system that attempts to assure safety, fairness, and closure across a broad range of risks and access to a broad range of commons fo
- ArchaeologyArchaeology or archeology ( American English) is the study of human cultures through the recovery, documentation and analysis of material remains, including architecture, artefacts, biofacts, human remains, and landscapes. The goal of archaeology is to sh
- Some branches of economicsEconomics is the social science studying how society uses its limited resources to meet desires and wants. Put otherwise, economics studies what, how and for whom society produces. This involves analyzing the production, distribution and consumption of go
