Galway Advertiser 2010/GA_2010_02_18/GA_1802_E1_035.pdf 

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February 18 2010

There's really no such thing as `useless knowledge'
NUIG's new philosophy professor to deliver lecture on why the humanities matter
BY KERNAN ANDREWS Appreciating the paintings of Claude Monet, knowing why TS Eliot is such an important poet, or being able to argue why the writings of Aristotle or Friedrich Nietzsche matter might not help you make money, discover cures to diseases, or come up with advancements in technology, but failing to appreciate the arts is missing out on a large part of the experience of being truly human. This is an idea that Prof Paul Crowther, the recently appointed Professor of Philosophy at NUI, Galway will explore in a lecture he will deliver in the Galway City Museum next week as part of the university's Professing The Humanities talks. Prof Crowther is an internationally renowned scholar who has written extensively on philosophical approaches to aesthetics and on the history of art. He has previously taught at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, the University of Central Lancashire, and in Jacob University in Bremen, Germany. In June 2009 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at NUIG and took up the post in September. Seven months on from that appointment, how is Prof Crowther settling into life here in the west of Ireland? "Galway's a good little city," he tells me, in a distinct and rich Yorkshire accent, as we sit in his office in the Philosophy Department in Distillery Row on a Tuesday afternoon. "It's full of rain, but then I like the rain so that's not a problem. Ireland is not that different from England. I lived in Scotland for seven years and that's much more different from England than Ireland is, especially the accent. I can't say it's a home from home but it's certainly not alien."

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THE INTERVIEW

Prof Paul Crowther, the recently appointed Professor of Philosophy at NUI, Galway

Up from Leeds
However Prof Crowther's first experience of Ireland and the Irish came at an early age and very close to home in his native Leeds. "I grew up in south Leeds which is a very working class area and life was hard in those communities," he says. "The big thing I remember most is that it was mostly Irish people there. I remember one of my best mates was called Billy McGinn. There was a guy who lived near me called Billy Quinn and another lad I'd meet at school called John Dunne. "All those are Irish names and yet I don't think any of them were Catholics. Leeds is a big Irish area so it's amazing how many of them were just absorbed. Wherever they went or got into they were just absorbed. It happened in my own family as well. In the 19th century two relatives of mine married Irishmen." Another Leeds-Irish connection is with Leeds United FC. In its late 1960s/early 1970s heyday one of the club's many star players was Irish soccer legend Johnny Giles who, alongside future Republic of Ireland manager Jack Charlton, Billy Bremner, Peter Lorimer, Norman Hunter, and controversial manager Don Revie, achieved numerous English league and cup victories, as well as two Fairs Cup (the forerunner to the Europa League Cup) wins in 1968 and 1971. Is Prof Crowther a

follower of the team? "Yes I am," he mutters ruefully, pained to be reminded of the club's dramatic decline in its fortunes since those heady Don Revie days, plummeting to League One and enduring financial implosion. Of late the team has been doing better, beating Manchester United in the FA Cup third round in January and riding high in Division One. It's still scant consolation to Prof Crowther. "Division One!" he says in disgust and sorrow, "moving quickly on..." Prof Crowther's interest in art and philosophy began when he was 16. "I found myself becoming interested in ideas about the nature of the universe and art," he recalls. "A friend of mine was studying art and I hung out with him and found I liked looking at pictures. When you get to that age paintings start to mean something more to you than just being a picture hanging on the wall, you see deeper things in them." Although he was enrolled to study modern history and politics in Manchester University, he was becoming increasingly interested in philosophy, so he switched to Leeds University, eventually achieving a joint honours degree in History and Art. Prof Crowther is now a highly respected academic, writer, art theorist, and philosopher, who has published eight books including The Language of Twentieth-century Art: A Conceptual History (1997), Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to Self-

Consciousness (2001), Defining Art, Creating the Canon: Artistic Value in an Era of Doubt (2007), and Phenomenology of the Visual Arts (2009). So what kind of philosopher is he? With which school of thought does he align himself? "I was trained in a way that emphasises analytic thinking, more so in the speculative tradition you find in continental European philosophy, in particular Kant, Hegel, and phenomenology," Prof Crowther says. "I find these people had a more complete understanding of reality and offer a more complete exploration of reality than the AngloAmerican tradition which is very piecemeal and just concerned with specific problems. "I believe philosophy should be comprehensive and offer a systematic, connected system of thought. An equivalent would be science's search for the `Theory of Everything'. Now that seems obvious but when you start looking at a problem, where do you stop? Most people just go to one place but I like the idea of going to many places, but in a way that will give you the greatest overall picture of the whole thing."

Useless knowledge?
NUI Galway is currently hosting a public lecture series, entitled Professing The Humanities, and the next lecture will be given by Prof Crowther. The title of his talk will be

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Substantial Freedom: The Virtues of Useless Knowledge. It will take place in the Galway City Museum on Wednesday February 24 at 7.30pm. So what can audiences expect on the night? "Useless knowledge is knowledge perused for its own sake rather then for financial or social benefit...and that's the Humanities and Social Sciences [subjects such as literature, history, philosophy, religion, visual and performing arts]," he says. "In the Humanities there is no intrinsic connection between the character of the knowledge and its practical application, whereas in science and engineering, the practical application flows from the knowledge." As a result of this, and as market forces have an increasing influence on university curricula and career choices, Prof Crowther is concerned the Humanities are coming under pressure to "become practical". By this he means study in linguistics or literature could only be approved or justified if they can secure funding. If they can not, they may not go ahead, so opportunities for investigation into and increasing understanding of the work of the Expressionists, Oscar Wilde, Mozart, or Irish folklore, etc, may be lost. "There is pressure on the humanities to base research on extracting funding," he says. "They have to earn money. The problem is that to do a lot of research, you don't need much funds. You can do the research yourself. I left my last post

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in Germany because they didn't care what you published as long as you got funding and the money was coming in. England is getting a bit like that now. I hope Ireland will keep away from that approach." Prof Crowther's talk will also look at why it is that humans need things like stories, art, music, theatre, etc, and why it is part of "being free" and being human. "What I will focus on in my talk is that human freedom involves acting on a narrative of who one is, what one is, and one's own relation to being," he says. "What satisfies human beings is not just animal gratification. There is a need for narrative systems and stimuli which are a form of aesthetic experience that are intrinsic to being human. I will argue that the Humanities have a special role in the maintenance of that narrative structure in human experience." After Prof Crowther, the next Professing The Humanities lecture will be given by Steven Ellis, Established Professor of History at NUIG, and an expert on Tudor Ireland and Britain, on Wednesday March 24 at 7.30pm. Prof Ellis's talk will be entitled The English Pale, Partition and `Two Nations Theory'. Lectures last for about 40 minutes and will be followed by a question and answer session. Refreshments will be available before each lecture. Those interested in attending should contact Karen Walsh on 091 - 495689 or email karenm.walsh@nuigalway.ie