Do the Humanities Humanize?

What Can We Expect From Great Works?

According to George Steiner, one of the lessons of the Holocaust is that the Humanities don’t humanize—one can love Schubert and be indifferent to (or even enthusiastic about) genocide. Moral philosophers, so the argument goes, are not necessarily morally superior to anyone else.

Great art remains great, but it can’t protect us from committing or permitt…