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© Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2008, Unit 6, The Village, 101 Amies Street, London SW11 2JW

[Expositions 2.1 (2008) 019–026] Expositions (print) ISSN 1747-5368  
doi:10.1558/expo.v2i1.019 Expositions (online) ISSN 1747-5376 

The Useful Uselessness of the Humanities

DAVID RoochNIk

Boston University

Stanley Fish responds to the question with which he titles his essay, 
“how Will the humanities Save Us?” by objecting to its implicit  
assumption. As he puts it, “It is not the business of the humanities to 
save us.” What, then, do they do? Fish answers: 

They don’t do anything, if by “do” is meant bring about effects in the 
world. And if they don’t bring about effects in the world they cannot 
be justified except in relation to the pleasure they give to those who 
enjoy them.

his voice here is not cynical, nor does he counsel despair, for he  
argues that it is precisely this doing-nothing, this inherent uselessness, 
of the humanities that 

brings honor to its subject. Justification, after all, confers value on an 
activity from a perspective outside its performance. An activity that 
cannot be justified is an activity that refuses to regard itself as instru-
mental to some larger good. The humanities are their own good. There 
is nothing more to say, and anything that is said…diminishes the  
object of its supposed praise.

With these remarks Fish comes perilously close to being right. But 
he’s not there yet. This is because he does not quite understand how 
in “doing” nothing, in failing to be useful or justifiable by reference 
to some value external to themselves, the humanities are actually use-
ful. Their usefulness is indirect, no doubt minimal, and perhaps even 
paradoxical, but useful they nonetheless are. Such, at least, is the thesis 
I will propose.

Full disclosure: the view I endorse actually belongs to Aristotle. And 
so, after briefly sketching a few of Fish’s arguments, I will devote the 
bulk of this short paper to some reflections about his Metaphysics and 
his Politics. In doing so, I will be forced to employ several Aristotelian 
notions that time will allow me neither to defend nor even to elaborate. 
I must, therefore, ask for the reader’s willingness to entertain the propo-

http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/expo.v2i1.019


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sition that, despite the formidable differences between the Aristotelian 
worldview and our own, on the issue that Fish raises there is sufficient 
commonality between them such that the comparison I offer will be 
germane.1

C

Fish begins his essay by asking the question regularly and properly faced 
by all of us who are in this business: “how does one justify funding 
the arts and humanities?” he quickly dismisses three familiar answers. 
First, “you can’t argue,” Fish says, “that a state’s economy will benefit by 
a new reading of  ‘hamlet.’” Second, he rejects the assertion that the 
“well rounded citizen” who can quote Shakespeare is a valuable com-
modity. Such an appeal may have had some “cash value” a century ago, 
but as a cultural ideal it is long gone. Finally, Fish rejects the position 
defended by Anthony kronman in his book, Education’s End: Why Our 
Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. In the 
past, it was assumed that “a college was above all a place for the training 
of character, for the nurturing of those intellectual and moral habits 
that together form the basis for living the best life one can.” Based 
upon his forty-five years in the profession Fish finds this preposterous. 
humanists are good at analyzing texts, but no better than anyone else 
at being decent colleagues, citizens, friends, or parents. As mentioned 
at the outset of this paper, Fish concludes that the humanities are use-
less except for the pleasure they give to their practitioners. This is, he 
maintains, what brings them “honor”: they are their own good. The 
humanities, then, are “auto-telic.” They are complete, for they contain 
their “end” or “purpose” (telos) in themselves. What Fish fails to under-
stand, but Aristotle does, is that this feature of the humanities not only 
confers honor upon them, but also makes them useful or practical, 
albeit in a highly indirect way. To explain, I must first turn to the Meta-
physics and Aristotle’s account of the genesis of knowledge.2

The process of knowing begins with perceptions, and then develops 
through memory and “experience” until it culminates in the attain-
ment of knowledge. Differently stated, it progresses from awareness of 
particulars to an understanding of the universal: from simply know-
ing “that” to knowing the cause or the “why.” “knowledge,” Aristotle  



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explains, “comes to be whenever from many thoughts that have emerged 
from experience one universal conception emerges about these simi-
lar things” (981a5–7). Most relevant here is the distinction Aristotle 
draws between those who have knowledge, and so can offer a “rational 
account” of the cause, and those who are merely “experienced” and 
whose purview is thereby limited to “the particulars.” When it comes 
to “acting,” the latter, precisely because they are fluent in the partic-
ulars, may actually “succeed more often”—and thus be more obvi-
ously useful—than the former. To explain by updating Aristotle’s own  
example: someone who has experienced the pain of many headaches, 
and then the relief that came from taking aspirin, may well advise a 
friend whose head hurts to do the same. And her recommendation 
may actually work. But she has no explanation for why it worked, and 
hence no real knowledge. The physician, by contrast, does. Nonethe-
less, even a physician with a firm grasp of the science of anatomy may 
goof in treating a patient precisely because the patient is particularized 
and thus only an incidental manifestation of a more general structure. 
Experience may be more useful than universal knowledge when deal-
ing with real people (See 981a5–b1).

Aristotle concedes this limitation but nonetheless insists that genu-
ine knowledge of the universal is superior to or more “honorable”—a 
word that he regularly uses—than even the most efficacious and “prac-
tical” forms of experience.3 on this point he cites the Egyptian priests 
who were the first to develop pure or theoretical mathematics. They 
were able to do so because they were allowed “leisure” (981b25). They 
were “counted as wonderful by others” (981b15) not because they had 
“done” anything useful, but simply because they were “wiser.” Theoret-
ical knowledge is good, is the best, not for any consequence or specific 
application it may generate, but simply as an end in and of itself.

Aristotle’s conception of theoretical knowledge is significantly differ-
ent from what we take to be the humanities, or even from what we take 
to be theoretical knowledge, for it embraces the natural sciences, math-
ematics, and theology, as well as philosophy.4 Nonetheless, it shares the 
central feature that Fish attributes to the humanities: it is auto-telic; 
it is its own good and so need not make any reference to an external 
result in order to justify itself. As Aristotle puts it, “it is clear that we 



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do not seek such knowledge for any other need; but just as we say that 
someone who is for the sake of himself and not for another is free, so 
of the forms of knowledge this sort alone is free” (982b24–27). 

C

I turn next to Book VII of the Politics where Aristotle sketches what he 
thinks is the “ideal” city. For the purpose of this essay, its salient feature 
is this:

A single city, the one which governs in manifest fineness, could be 
happy with respect to itself, if it is possible for a city to live by itself  
using decent laws. Its form of government would not be directed  
towards war or domination of its enemies. (1325a1–4)

Aristotle’s ideal city is self-contained and its army is strictly for the 
purpose of defense. It is not, in other words, expansionist or imperial-
istic. Instead, it is like an organic whole consisting of a set of dynami-
cally interacting and mutually enabling parts. As such, it can be maxi-
mally active without needing to extend beyond its borders. Aristotle 
strikingly employs a metaphysical phrase to describe it: it is happy or 
complete “with respect to itself.”5 In other words, a city can be like 
a “substance,” namely, a mode of being characterized by the highest  
degree of ontological independence. A substance does not depend 
on any other category for its being. By contrast, a quality (such as 
green) depends on there being a substance (such as a tree) in which it  
inheres. In an analogous fashion, a substance-like city would attain self-
sufficiency and remain content to stay within its political borders and 
economic limits. By contrast, war-like or expansionist regimes reflect 
ontological confusion: they wrongly elevate the category of quantity 
over that of substance. As a consequence they are doomed to failure.

What Aristotle next develops is the symmetry that obtains between 
the best life attainable by an individual citizen and the city. Both share 
the same “end” or “goal” (telos) for they are each governed by the 
same principle: “the telos of war is peace, and of lack-of-leisure leisure” 
(1334a15–16). An individual requires leisure in order to live well—
most important, in order to theorize (or to become a “humanist”). 
Analogously, a good city should aim to maintain the peace so that its 
best citizens can be free from the least leisurely of all activities, namely, 



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“military and political actions.”6 In order for a city to achieve this goal, 
its citizens must be law-abiding and show moderation. When the city 
is attacked, they must be courageous enough to put on their armor and 
hold their positions in order to defend it. When there is peace they 
must be sufficiently patient in order to engage in political deliberation, 
and be well enough disciplined to resist those who urge the city to at-
tack its neighbors or expand beyond its borders. 

Distressingly, however, it is during peace that the trouble begins. In a 
brief statement that has terribly sobering consequences, Aristotle says:

For war forces men to be just and moderate, while the enjoyment of 
good fortune and peaceful leisure makes them more violently arro-
gant. (1334a25–28)

As intrinsically desirable as both may be, peace and leisure are near-
ly impossible to sustain, for most men simply cannot tolerate them. 
Especially those with strong desires, those who are high-spirited and 
ambitious, become restless. They lack the ability to amuse themselves 
and the self-discipline required to use free time well. Unconstrained 
by external commands, they don’t know what to do with themselves 
and so become ill-at-ease. With too much time on their hands, they 
get bored. They start pointless fights and do stupid things. That this 
regularly occurs is yet another expression of the dis-ease that Aristotle 
locates at the heart of ordinary human and political life: most people 
and cities mistake the source of their own happiness. They devote their 
best energy to the pursuit of wealth, power, or fame and thereby mis-
construe the very meaning of their lives. They are incapable of appreci-
ating the gift of leisure and so they disturb the peace. As a result, most 
young men are far better behaved when they are in uniform. Military 
discipline forces them to act in a moderate fashion and to take heed 
of the common good rather than simply indulging their own violent 
impulses or selfishly seeking their own pleasures.

War is for the sake of peace, lack-of-leisure is for the sake of leisure, 
but most men can tolerate neither peace nor free time. But therapy 
is available. For when it “comes to leisure” (1334a23), philosophy—
in our lingo, one of the humanities—can play an instructive role. 
This is because it provides a paradigm for how to use leisure well. To  
reiterate, most people become restless or violent if no one tells them 



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what to do. Not the philosopher, not the humanist. She does not need  
external constraint to keep her in line because the world—whether it is 
the natural world or the world written in text—is inexhaustible in its  
invitation to be studied, is always present as a source of wonder and 
amazement. 

For it is on account of wondering and being amazed that human  
beings both now and at first began to philosophize. At first, they were 
amazed and wondered about those oddities that were staring them in 
the face, and then little by little they progressed and became puzzled 
by greater questions; for example, about the changing attributes of the 
moon and the sun and stars, and about the becoming of the whole.

(Metaphysics 982b12–17) 

Aristotle’s world is wonder-ful, beautiful, intelligible, nourishing and 
welcoming. For those who use their intellects, it promises rewards 
greater than money, power, or fame. Thus can philosophy, the theoriz-
ing of the world, satisfy even the most restless of souls.

Perhaps surprisingly, it is here that Aristotle locates the practical con-
tribution that philosophers, or for the purpose of this essay “human-
ists,” make to the well-being of their communities. By engaging in an 
activity valuable in and of itself, they function as a paradigm of how to 
use leisure well. As such, they are reminders to ordinary citizens that 
the too familiar urge to succeed in the city, and thereby to achieve a 
good whose only value is instrumental, is wrong-headed. humanists 
thus exhibit a telos of human activity without which there would be 
nothing for human beings to strive for but more of the same: more 
power, wealth, or fame, each of which is in principle infinite, that is, 
without-an-end.

To reiterate the caution offered above: there are a host of differences 
between Aristotle’s worldview and our own. There was, after all, a fierce 
battle waged between the Ancients and the Moderns, which the former 
decisively lost. his version of philosophy, for example, is quite unlike 
our own, and his conception of a moderately-sized city that is reso-
lutely local as it concentrates its energy on the well-being only of its 
own citizens is outdated in the age of globalization. Still, Aristotle’s ac-
count of how theoretical knowledge (indirectly) benefits a city can be 
suggestive even at this late date. We live in an age in which work has 



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almost entirely supplanted leisure, in which expansion is the norm, in 
which (most likely) peace is no longer the telos of war.7 In our universi-
ties, “research,” indeed science itself, must be applicable in order to be 
counted as valuable (and hence worth funding). Indeed, all intellectual 
activity is called upon to produce useful and measurable results. In 
these frantic times, the useless humanist, reading her books, crafting 
her essays, teaching her students, is the anomaly. But it is precisely in 
being anomalous that she illuminates the nature and limitation of all 
the other putatively more practical and apparently justifiable pursuits. 
They are for the sake of something other than themselves, while her 
work alone is for the sake of itself.

C
Stanley Fish comes close to being right about the value of the humani-
ties. They “do” nothing and certainly cannot save us. Despite the pro-
liferation of “applied ethics” courses in American universities, they are  
unable to make either their students or their teachers more moral  
human beings. (In other words, after twenty-five years in this profes-
sion, I have come to the same conclusion that Fish has in his forty-five: 
members of literature and philosophy departments are hardly among 
“the most generous, patient, good-hearted and honest people on earth.”) 
Nonetheless, the humanities are not useless. Precisely in being and cele-
brating their own lack of instrumentality, in defiantly proclaiming their 
own auto-telic nature, they serve a purpose: exhibiting a paradigm to a 
community that is preoccupied with more “practical” concerns. Doing 
so hardly leads to immediate or specific benefits. Reading Shakespeare 
won’t solve global warming. But without the humanities, without the 
pursuit of what Aristotle called theoretical knowledge, the city would 
be composed only of citizens who are constantly in pursuit of goods 
whose attainment leads only to further pursuit of more of the same.

Aristotle’s justification of theoretical knowledge, or philosophy, or by 
extension the humanities, is at best thin. Still, he identifies the peculiar 
civic value of a philosopher. Even if she wields no applied science and 
has an audience too small to become politically powerful, she nonethe-
less displays to her fellow citizens a fundamental human possibility: 
namely, that one can engage in an activity that is valuable in and of 
itself. This is a possibility worth taking seriously…and even funding.



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Notes

1. In “Aristotle’s Defense of the Theoretical Life: comments on Politics VII”  
(Roochnik 2008), I argue in detail for the same position that I present here only 
in outline.

2. Translations of Aristotle are my own. The Greek texts are the oxford editions of 
W.D. Ross (1942).

3. For a representative example of how Aristotle uses the word “honorable,” see 
Metaphysics 981a31.

4. In my estimation theoretical knowledge also includes ethics and politics, but this 
is a controversial claim.

5. In the Metaphysics this phrase is said to refer to “the essence of a being 
(1022a26).

6. Nicomachean Ethics 1177b5–6.

7. For an invigorating discussion of the role of leisure in culture, as well a lament for 
its disappearance, see Pieper 1963.

References

kronman, Anthony

2007 Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the 
Meaning of Life. New haven, cT: Yale University Press.

Pieper, Joseph 

1963 Leisure: The Basis of Culture. New York: Random house.

Ross, W. D., ed. and trans.

1942 The Student’s Oxford Aristotle. 6 vols. London: oxford University Press.

Roochnik, David

2008 Aristotle’s Defense of the Theoretical Life: comments on Politics VII. The 
Review of Metaphysic 61: 711–735.


