Beyond the Debate on Abolishing the Humanities – YOSHIMI Shun.ya

Speaker : YOSHIMI Shun.ya (Tokyo University)
Moderator : Nicolas MOLLARD (UMIFRE 19 – MFJ)

In What is a University? (Iwanami Shinsho, 2010), Yoshimi Shun.ya took a historical look at the issue of universities and the media. More recently, he has focused on the past decades to explain the social changes that lie behind the recent debate on abolishing Humanities departments in Japanese universities. This debate has shed light on a more fundamental problem, namely that neoliberal policies since the 1990s have undermined the foundations of higher education in Japan.
In this talk he challenges the view that the humanities are of no use. Yoshimi believes that the humanities do matter, but the question is why? The fact is that the perception of what is useful or not to a society is determined by its system of values at a particular historical moment. What was considered useful yesterday might suddenly become useless tomorrow. What really matters is our ability to criticize established values and create new ones; in other words, to put the values and norms we take for granted into perspective. Only the humanities can nurture this ability.

Org. : Bureau français de la MFJ
Co.Org. : CCI France Japon