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////////////////////What defines the humanities? Well, I think it is history, mainly. The humanities are those disciplines that studied the human aspect of the universe, before the social sciences had a fit of independence. So now they are what is left over after social science, linguistics, psychology, mathematics, and the sciences in general have gone their own way. Great! They're a trashcan categorial.
Only I think there are positive fields within the humanities that have something definite about them. Philosophy is about metaphysics, epistemology and ethics (what is, what humans know about what is, and what humans think should be done about it). History is about what humans did in the past. Literary studies are about what humans have written, and how that gets received in human society. There is something starting to be a theme here. The humanities are about aspects of humans; it doesn't matter that not everything about humans is included in the domain. Even religious studies is about what humans think of a particular aspect of human behaviour (ritual and numinal).
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