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(2012) After postmodernism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Recently I came across a governmental report about future strategies for adapting the humanities to a global economy and a knowledge-based society with an eye on "experiential culture." Sadly, now such goals are important objectives in modern research policy. The first sentence of this report defines the humanities as disciplines working with the development and understanding of human beings, people, society, communication, language, and culture, and the interactions between these disciplines. Then the second sentence states that which is alleged to be essential to all these studies: "Humanistic research is characterized by seeking to interpret the world." This statement illustrates perhaps better than anything how the hermeneutic distinction between explanation and understanding still forms the ideological basis for a common demarcation between the natural sciences and the humanities. The humanistic sciences are interested in the understanding of human beings, which demands the interpretation of actions, languages, and the meaningful objects that are produced by them.
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Faye, J. (2012). Introduction, in After postmodernism, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-7.
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