Toolboxes, Preferences and the Humanities

So far, the focus of this book has been on showing that we—all of us, as in ‘We the People’—need the humanities. We need the depth of learning and the critical thinking found in the best humanities scholarship. In particular, we need that scholarship to be able to help us understand and deal with practical issues that affect the economy and other important elements of our daily lives. Some of those issues are the ones I have described in the areas of healthcare and civil liberties, which are likely to remain important and controversial well into the future. At the same time, these questions stand for the broader class of policy issues where a small number of powerful people— generally, high-level policy-makers appointed by our elected political leaders—will decide how the rest of us will live.