A Third Way for the Humanities

It is perhaps in the nature of academics to fret about declining standards, especially as these academics age and become ever less attuned to the always-evolving expressions of the innate ingenium of youth. But even an eternal complaint can be truer in some eras than in others. With each passing year since the economic crisis of 2008, the familiar response to complaints of decline —that we must not let our spirits flag, that we must not retreat into cynicism and defeatism— has come to sound, to those who have not lost their hearing, ever more “late-Soviet”.