The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning

A commentator in The New York Times today said he thought there was no point to the humanities. They are of no purpose, no use and have no measurable value to the world. Perhaps.

My favorite college English professor once told me that, as he saw it, the purpose of a college education was to make you unhappy. (When he said college education, I can only assume he meant an education in the humanities, for he taught at a liberal arts school and was of the type to whom no other education counted.) He thought college should open our eyes to the injustice and ethical problems in the world and make us unsatisfied with the status quo. Education would make us forever fretful, unable to rest because we saw the truth—the world is hard and cold and ugly and we are taxed with the job of working to improve it.

A lot of students didn't care for my favorite professor. He was a little too harsh, too demanding in class. He was even known to laugh out aloud when someone volunteered an answer he found particularly wrong. But I think he was right. The humanities—art, literature, history, philosophy—make us unhappy with our lives. Money and success become dry and tasteless when we understand how they have been used in the past.

But the truth is that sorrow can enrich life. It can teach us to feel more deeply, and even to love with more passion. Seeing the bad for what it is makes the good that much brighter. So when my professor said education makes us unhappy, I think he really meant unsatisfied. Because we know that we can never rest easy when we know the world. The humanities bring that world to us. At their best, they shouldn't lock us in an Ivory Tower. They should unlock our hearts, so we can feel the pain of our neighbors, and understand the love that triumphs over that agony.