Complacency

2022-04-22 • 132 pages • EN

Written by John T. Hamilton

"In response to philosopher Simon Blackburn's portrayal of complacency as a vice that impairs university study at its core, John T. Hamilton examines the history of complacency in classics and its implications for the twenty-first century. The philosophies and literatures of ancient Greece and Rome were once treated as the foundation of learning. Hamilton investigates what this model of superiority shares with the current hegemony of mathematics and the natural sciences. He considers how the qualitative methods of classics relate to the quantitative positivism of big data, statistical reasoning, and presumably neutral abstraction, which often dismiss humanist subjectivity, legitimize self-sufficiency, and promote a fresh brand of academic complacency. In acknowledging the reduced status of classics in higher education, he questions how scholarly stagnation continues to bolster complacency today."--