2020年第三十二届韩素音国际翻译大赛英译汉竞赛原文

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2024年3月12日发(作者：)

2020年·第三十二届韩素音国际翻译大赛·英译汉竞赛原文

Aesthetic Education and National Progress

[1] The diminution of emphasis on the arts and the humanities and the

corresponding increased emphasis on business and STEM disciplines (Science,

Technology, Engineering, and Math) has resulted in a normative conception of

national progress that excludes aesthetic education. In this essay, I argue that aesthetic

educators should challenge the normative understanding of national progress. (In the

humanities, aesthetic educators typically are educators of English, foreign languages

and literature, philosophy, art history and film studies.) To this end, I call attention to

the writings of the French philosopher Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) because in the

adaptation of her notion of progress lies possible hope for the future of the humanities

and the arts.

[2] In contemporary American society, national progress is more often than not

equated with job creation, and job creation is linked to advancement in business and

the STEM disciplines. For example, in his 2012 acceptance speech after the national

election, President Obama called for the United States to remain the leader in science

and technology, and then he exclaimed, “America, I believe we can build on the

progress we've made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunities and

new security for the middle class.”

[3] Lip service is paid to civic responsibility and its role in national progress,

while federal and state governments, as well as institutions of higher education,

drastically cut budgets and/or entire programs in the humanities and the arts. Aesthetic

educators know that these cuts will, in the long term, be devastating to civil society

because the humanities and the arts are precisely the programs that convey cultural

capital. More precisely, they cultivate in students the critical judgment and the

independence of thought needed to be able to make informed decisions about their

place in civil society. Given the number of indicators that point to a decline in public

and institutional support for the humanities and the arts, however, it has become easy

for aesthetic educators to become demoralized, feel irrelevant, and even believe that

we, in fact, have little or no role in national progress.

[4] As examples of indicators that point to the increasing irrelevance of the

humanities, in FY 2014, the appropriations to both the National Endowment for the

Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts(NEA) were cut by 13

percent from their peak 2010 numbers, while the National Science Foundation (NSF)

appropriations increased by almost 4 percent from 2010. Perhaps the 13 percent cut

would not have been so shocking if the NEH and NEA allocations did not represent a

mere 2 percent of the total NSF allocation. The pill is even harder to swallow when

one considers that, in 1979, the NEH and the NEA, respectively, received funding

equivalent to approximately 16 percent of the NSF.

2020年·第三十二届韩素音国际翻译大赛·英译汉竞赛原文

[5] Salaries represent a second measure of the diminishing consideration for the

humanities and the arts within university structures. The Oklahoma Faculty Survey by

Discipline, a study that surveys the salaries of professors at 114 “Research

University/Very High Research Activity” institutions, lists average salaries for all

ranks of tenure-track faculty in a number of disciplines. According to the 2013-14

study, the average salary of a faculty member in the arts was $71,463; in English,

$76,627; in philosophy and religious studies, $81,971; in physical sciences, $102,636;

in engineering, $114,827; and in business management, $139,093. While salaries in

2013-14 increased from 2011-12 in the physical science, engineering, and business

management, they decreased in the fine arts, English, and philosophy. If markets drive

salaries, the arts and the humanities are clearly not high in market demand. This lack

of demand for the humanities and the arts is further underscored in Governor Rick

Scott's proposal that tuition rates for Florida state universities be frozen for students

who major in “strategic areas”. Lizette Alvarez from the New York Times states of

Scott’s proposal, “The message from Tallahassee could not be blunter: Give us

engineers, scientists, health care specialists and technology experts. Do not worry so

much about historians, philosophers, anthropologists and English majors.” From

multiple perspectives, then, we see an explicit shift to STEM disciplines and a

discouragement of humanities and arts education, whether in program development,

faculty salaries, or student tuitions. Faced with what seems to be such overwhelming

confirmation of aesthetic educators’ irrelevance to today’s understanding of national

progress—namely, advancement in business, science and technology—aesthetic

educators in the humanities and the arts are struggling to communicate to others

outside our field, and to the public at large, our vital role.

[6] As demoralizing as the perceived irrelevance of arts and humanities

education may be and as disappointing as our attempts to articulate our relevance

have been, we may be able to begin to find hope and purpose in renewed debate

around how we think about “progress” and, more precisely, the role of aesthetic

education in “progress”. The writings of Germaine de Staël are particularly

illuminating because they situate aesthetic education squarely in the progress of the

nation and have bearing on the dilemma facing the humanities and the arts today. Her

prescient philosophy turns the definition of progress on its head and could give

aesthetic educators a powerful tool to fight for the increased relevance and vitality of

the humanities and the arts in the broader notion of progress.

[7] Germaine de Staël’s notion of progress—namely, the alignment of the

perfectibility of the human mind (accretion of knowledge) with the perfectibility of

the human species (interplay between individual morality and public morality) —has

direct bearing on the difficulties that we as aesthetic educators are having today in

articulating our essential role in national progress. Obviously, both types of progress

(perfectibility of the human mind and perfectibility of the human species) are essential

to the progress of the nation, but Germaine de Staël argues convincingly that they

must align. Aesthetic educators might thus remind the public that business and the

STEM disciplines neither have as their mandate the watchful alignment of individual

and public morality (the vector that guarantees freedom and the continual perfecting

2020年·第三十二届韩素音国际翻译大赛·英译汉竞赛原文

of the nation) nor do they have as their directive resistance against dogma.

Furthermore, investment in STEM at the expense of the arts and the humanities

parallels the Enlightenment’s obsession with progress as defined as the conservation

and accretion of empirical knowledge and material gain. This obsession, at least in

Germaine de Staël’s view, contributed to the neglect of the interior moral life of the

individual. It, furthermore, diminished emphasis on moral responsibility and

independence of judgment, which consequently led to increased partisanship,

culminating in the fanaticism of the Reign of Terror. While it is hard to imagine the

advent of a Reign of Terror in the United States, it can be argued that obsession with

unbridled advancement in science and business at the expense of aesthetic education

could lead to the weakening of individual morality—defined by Staël as the devotion

to freedom, human rights, and the possibility of collective happiness for all.

[8] If Germaine de Staël were alive today, she might argue that the solution to

our current humanities and arts crisis is a relatively simple one. First, argue for

national progress to be understood as the alignment of the perfectibility of the human

mind with the perfectibility of the human species. Scientific advancement at the

expense of the watchful alignment of individual and public morality poses a threat to

the stability of our nation. Consequently, any call for national progress must include

sufficient support of and funding for precisely the disciplines (the humanities and the

arts) that have this alignment as their mandate. Secondly, encourage educational

models that allow for the combination of a “useful” subject that contributes to a

knowledge-based economy and a subject in which they will receive an aesthetic

education.

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