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Spoken or not, the contemporary intellectual climate seems to bear with it a rather weighty obstacle for the honest student of the humanities. That obstacle, presented in the form of natural science's remarkable progress in demystifying the once sacred words and actions of the human being, is that of academic legitimacy. The question for the literary scholar must be directed inwardly within the discipline: can creative literature as a defined object of study really offer the contemporary mind any sort of real "truth" independent of the rigorous scientific method?

Avoiding the uncomfortable position of limiting a nearly 3,000 year constancy in human culture to the level of non-academic reflection, we must answer: yes, it can! There are indeed "truths" to be discovered apart from the lettered coding of the human genome, but they require the revising of a fundamental construct of Western thought in order to be arrived upon. The problem at hand dates back to Aristotle in hi \"de Anima,\" and it is the idea that the human being can be categorically defined as a \"rational animal.\"

For Aristotle, what we call the human being is the result of a process of rational acquisition. An infant, for example, does not possess the rational instincts of a fully developed adult, so it is only potentially rational rather than actually rational. As he or she grows and experiences the pressures of life, the infant becomes a child, adolescent and eventually an adult. Rationality is the defining characteristic which separates the human being from the beast. The problem is, though, this essential difference is only a difference of degree-not a categorical, infinite difference. In fact, to be consistent, it is useless to even consider the word "person" as completely removed from the animal kingdom.

In our contemporary context of evolutionary biology, of course, little has changed regarding the problem of human identity as separate from the animal kingdom. In fact, the idea of process is even more heavily empha- sized now (now thought to be more than 3 billion years). Humankind is now described as "the fittest" living organism, and Aristotle's concept of rationality is exactly why this is so.

If Aristotle were correct to say that human beings are merely the current result of an organic development process, then there would be literally no room for humanities (as we understand it today, at least) in the realm of legitimate academic discussion. If we needed explanation for a character's action in a novel, for instance, we would only have to look to the immovable law of natural selection for a direct, irrefutable interpretation. This is not the case, of course, and the reason is quite simply that Aristotle is not right at all.

It is at this point that the modern turn in Western culture is of assistance to the discussion at hand. Rather than trying to locate the individual's experience in the presupposed context of objective reality, modernity generally aims to locate objective realty in the presupposed context of the individual's experience. This is extremely important to understand because it strips Aristotle's notion of the rational organic process of its dominance. Rather than the process informing us of all we have to know about human beings, it is now the human being who in- forms us about all we have to know about processes. Human experience in itself is the fundamental reality for modernity-not the object of human experience.

This "subjective turn" is precisely what allows for the humanities. Whereas natural science does have quite a lot to say in the realm of empirical, objective reality, it has absolutely nothing to say about the human experience per se (it is impossible to measure things like heartbreak, joy and compassion, after all). Nevertheless, as evidenced in the modern critique, the subjective closeness of human experience is just as real and "truth-bearing" as that objectivity-perhaps even more so. It is here in the realm of the human experience per se that the literary critic must operate if he or she is to be a contributor to the world of ideas.

But what does this entail, precisely? The answer must lie with relationships-namely, the unique experiences of teacher-student and text-student relationship. Language itself is the rational articulation of its first principle, communicative relationship. So, while the literary critic must not ignore or deny valuable information about the human experience-evolutionary biology, for example-he or she must always be aware that literature is primarily concerned with the experience itself.

Aristotle's picture of the human being fails because it idolizes one facet of the human experience, rationality, and uses it as an identifying element of personhood. The human being is not just a "rational animal"- although he or she certainly is in a secondary sense. Instead, the human being is primarily and categorically a relational person who acts as a subject in congruence with authored values in accordance with those relationships. This is the difference between human beings and animals, and it is not a difference of degree (unless, of course, there is ample evidence for certain species of animal with value systems and relationships).

The foundational dynamic for human beings is not the choice of rationality or irrationality; it is the choice of love or fear. Here, in the context of the human necessity of relationship, the literary critic must reside. His or her ultimate goal must be the identifying and preserving of this idea of relationship in the discipline of literary study. This is the unique legitimacy of the humanities scholar.