Academic Illusions in the Field of Letters and the Arts: A Survey, a Criticism, a New Approach, and a Comprehensive Plan for Reorganizing the Study of Letters and Arts

Subjects of study. Personality of a teacher of the humanities. Tests. Examinations. Credits. Evidence of qualification. The objective of the humanities.

The theory of constants and integral variables which has determined the fundamental principles and crucial standards for differentiation of the essence of meaning and form in the arts and letters from that of other types of knowledge and understanding, should furnish the decisive criteria for a reorganization of the teaching and study of the arts and letters in our institutions of learning.

The deadliness of the ruling system is not a matter of detail or even of this or that personality who has managed to build up a powerful personal machine. Tinkering with details, reforms of this or that item of administration or technic, even sincere public pronouncements of the best intentions will bring no enduring good. The system is equal to any emergency. It absorbs and turns into a specious vehicle of its unchanging technology any terminology which does not expose and challenge its premise of the ultimate supremacy of constants in the arts and letters. Only by changing the system itself in such a way that the very agent of the change cannot be in turn converted into the heir of the system is there any

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