Wilfred McClay in The New Criterion:
Back in the 1980s, an editor at Harvard University Press had the bright idea of asking some of the leading lights of the day to write their own version of a philosophical dictionary, modeled on Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique (1764). The project petered out rather quickly, presumably because there turned out to be so few scholars around who had the breadth and wit to write such a book. But the great sociologist Robert Nisbet rose to the challenge and produced a philosophical dictionary, with the saucy title Prejudices, that was infinitely more charming and enlightening than its French model. It appeared in 1982.
Among the topics appearing in the table of contents for Nisbet’s dictionary is the term “Humanities.” The essay on that subject provides us with an excellent starting place for the present inquiry. It begins as follows:
A faculty member was accosted by a colleague with the words, “I understand you spoke against the humanities the other day at faculty meeting.” “No indeed,” was the reply. “I love the humanities. I would die for the humanities. All I asked was, what the hell are the humanities?”
More here.