Simply Smart Two—How to Get Smart About Humanities

By Robert DiYanni, New York University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
Introduction

Chapter One                 Getting Smart About Philosophy

Chapter Two                 Getting Smart About Religion

Chapter Three              Getting Smart About History

Chapter Four                Getting Smart About Languages

Chapter Five                 Getting Smart About Literature & Theory

Chapter Six                   Getting Smart About Art

Chapter Seven             Getting Smart About Music

Chapter Eight               Getting Smart with Provocative Pairs

References
Index

Preface

This volume takes up the challenge of getting smarter about different subjects and disciplines; it follows a companion book: Simply Smart—How to Get Smarter. That work explains how to develop smart skills—critical and creative thinking, critical reading and writing, effective listening and speaking. Simply Smart Two emphasizes knowledge—how to become smarter through understanding different broad subject areas. It explores fundamental ideas about a suite of disciplines across the humanities, including the arts.

Individual chapters explore basic questions and concerns of philosophy and religion; history and languages; literature and critical theory; music and art. My goal is to get you thinking productively, in a preliminary way, about each subject’s central issues and interests.

In his Analects, Confucius says: “Learning without thinking is useless; thinking without learning is dangerous.” For Confucius, thinking needs to be wedded to learning, and learning needs to be linked to thinking. Thinking and learning are inseparable. We can’t learn without thinking, and we don’t think without learning. Simply Smart Two—How to Get Smart About Humanities takes Confucius’ idea as a fundamental axiom–that learning develops best in context, in terms of specific fields of study. Considering the varied perspectives of different disciplines will make your smarter. (And it will also prepare you to converse intelligently on those social occasions when you are meeting new people with many different backgrounds and interests—the “cocktail party” scenario.)

Although I take a wide view of the disciplines included, I make no attempt to discuss every major topic. Nor do I try to go deeply into any single aspect of a particular discipline. I offer, instead, a taste of the disciplines included and an opportunity to get acquainted—or re-acquainted—with their fundamental facets and essential elements.

This book, thus, is not for experts, but rather for those with limited knowledge, perhaps a cursory knowledge of the fields and subjects included. For some readers (and for particular subjects and topics), it will serve as a primer; for others, perhaps you among them, it will offer an extension of what you know; for still others, it can serve, perhaps, as an opportunity for synthesis, consolidation, even provocation.

My consideration of disciplinary knowledge is both eclectic and synthetic. I consolidate and synthesize a wide range of sources, many of them recent books. Getting Smart Two—How to Get Smart About Humanities offers eight chapters to discover new ideas, exercise your thinking, and engage in thoughtful inquiry.

Throughout the book I take up the following questions: What approaches to knowledge do different humanities disciplines take? What matters most for each of those disciplines? What questions are central to each discipline? What makes each discipline what it is and not something else? What do influential practitioners do, and how have they become effective in conveying their craft and art? Considering these and related questions provides you with an opportunity to refresh and reconsider what you already know while broadening your knowledge base and deepening your understanding.

 I hope that you find in the following pages many intellectual pleasures and significant rewards.