When thinking of the definition of humanities, I focused on the main part of the word which is humanity. The concept of the humanities is how people see the world around them. Humanity not only encompasses humans, but it includes people’s ideas, thoughts, and what makes them who they are. Lowercase humanities focuses on how people see the world around them and their thoughts along with beliefs. No one will see the world the same way; the humanities is a way people can express what they say and believe.
In Unit 1, we discussed identity. Many of the authors, such as Morrison and de Beauvoir, mention how humans tend to place each other into the category of “other.” One thing I do not understand about humans is how we treat each other differently even when we are supposed to be diverse in our beliefs and ideas. The humanities recognizes no one is the same and people see the world in different ways, but humans have never been good at accepting the differences. Unit 3 expanded on this by describing how everyone has different experiences, so we cannot truly have empathy for someone because we do not know what they went through. We can sympathize with and for them, but we cannot truly empathize unless we went through exactly what they did. The humanities shows how everyone has a different view of life, but sometimes those differences are the only things we see.
Unit 2 described conceptual schemes and how it consists of a set of principles through which we see the world. To change a conceptual scheme is a kind of revolution, and it is normal for people to change what they believe and how they see the world. When looking at similar things, people have different views and beliefs about them. This goes into Unit 4 when we talked about how religion can be used in various ways. Everyone sees and interprets it differently, and it can be used by two sides for very different reasonings. Lowercase humanities has many different aspects to it, but it all comes down to how people see the world around them. It is complex because there is never one answer to how we should view the world. Everyone has a different understanding of it, but humanities gives a name to all the differences.
