Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

As we become exponentially more linked and wired, we are at the same time growing magisterially, existentially isolated. Our identity-constituting narratives, whether personal or professional, tend to be increasingly limited by our chosen interlocutors, professional environments, and ever-shrinking circles of others with whom we share our ever-decreasing intellectual and social energies. Why, especially as successful professionals, ought we try to imaginatively, empathetically enter a world that is not our own, feeling its odd foreignness, its disturbing otherness? In this paper, we argue that we, as humanists and humanities-minded professionals, must do the hard thing: we must interrogate the “other” by turning to, and teaching, a radical interdisciplinarity that makes possible the kind of narrative competence that moves us toward what Martha Nussbaum calls “moral competence.” We have to teach others, and ourselves, to (re)connect not only with other perspectives and epistemologies, but to engage in often uncomfortable dialogues with distant others through direct encounters with narratives, with stories. We must, in other words, introduce lawyers to literature. We begin with a brief discussion of the growing need for such moral competence, especially among those whose professions tend to regard the humanities as ephemeral at best. Second, we offer an account of what we mean by radical interdisciplinarity, and how it can lead to narrative, and subsequently moral, competence. We conclude with a narrative of how an engagement with Dostoyevsky can indeed lead not only to a more enlightened legal practice, but to a more humane one. It is our hope that these deeply interdisciplinary approaches to how we understand ourselves and others will effectively counteract the master narratives of splintered professional geographies and growing personal insularities, making connections among us all visible – and vital.