Product details
- ISBN 9781421430492
- Weight: 272g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 26 Jan 2020
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Originally published in 1973. Toward Freedom and Dignity is a humanist's view of the humanities in an age of burgeoning technology. O. B. Hardison Jr. deals with the status of the humanities and their future—how they are regarded and how they may come to contribute to a genuinely humane society. He argues that humanistic studies are not a luxury in either education or society. They are central to the preparation of human beings for the kind of society that is possible if we manage to avoid an Orwellian technocracy. Social goals and priorities must be set in terms of the ideal of a culture truly adjusted to human needs and human limitations.
In framing his argument, Hardison draws on ideas of the humanities since the Renaissance, especially on the philosophical humanities that emerged in Europe in the works of authors like Kant, Schiller, and Coleridge. He is untroubled by anti-humanistic trends in college curricula and the surrounding culture, and he contends that we have only one practical option: to ensure that culture evolves toward a more humane society, toward freedom and dignity.
O. B. Hardison Jr. was the director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. He taught at the University of North Carolina, Princeton University, and the University of Tennessee. Among his books are Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages (awarded the Haskins Medal by the Mediaeval Society of America); The Enduring Monument; Aristotle's Poetics: A Translation and Commentary; The Forms of Imagination; and The Quest for Imagination.
