Twentieth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Digital humanities with its systematic use of digital resources in the humanities fosters a new way of research, teaching, and publications, based on collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computational engagement. As such, digital humanities present a new platform for exploration of unheard of and not yet disclosed potential in humanities on the universal level. Incorporating the common denominators of various past and present theological, spiritual, philosophical, cultural, and political interpretations about the essence of being human, digital humanities allow us to comprehend anew the perennial question of what it means to be human, or what is even more important, how to become more human. Following this logic, digital humanities open the door to a much more complex and integrative understanding of the Ancient Greek belief that man exists at the center of the universe, as expressed by Protagoras in his claim that “man is the measure of all things.” While the Ancient Greeks were able to tackle this inquiry only within their own religious, philosophical, and cultural environment, the digital humanities are invited to allow us to create a humanitas rooted in moral and spiritual education, magnanimity, dignity, respect, wit, gracefulness, sensitivity, mildness, kindness, and generosity as they are understood in the past and present cultures, traditions, and religions. In short, digital humanities should be viewed as the instrument necessary for creation of an universal humanism in the sense of the Greek katholou (καθόλου) comprising both universality (universal, general, altogether), as well as wholeness (entire, at all, whole, all inclusive).