Kate in Omaha, Nebraska, wonders about the expression Doctor of Humane Letters, an honorary degree conferred by Creighton University. The words humane and letters in this case mean something slightly different from their modern meanings. The older, scholarly sense of the word humane comes from studia humanitatis, or “the studies of humanity,” once used to refer to grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy—those subjects that form the basis of the study of humanities. The word letters in the academic title refers to literature and literary scholarship, as in the phrase a man of letters. The word doctor itself is etymologically related to words involving teaching, such as docent. The full Latin title is Literarum humanarum doctor, often abbreviated LHD or DHL. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “What Is So Humane About a Doctor of Humane Letters?”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi.
Hi.
Kate from Omaha, Nebraska.
Hi, Kate in Omaha.
Welcome to the show.
What’s up?
I’m calling to ask about the meaning and origin of honorary degrees.
I work at a Jesuit Catholic school in Omaha called Creighton University and each year we give honorary degrees to some individuals, maybe one or two, and their doctorate degrees and I thought, I wonder what that is and it’s not medicine or philosophy and it’s I think it’s in humane letters but I’m not sure what that means or where that comes from.
So not inhumane is one word, but you mean in space humane.
Okay.
Yes.
So yeah.
So to summarize here, you’re asking about the honorary doctorate degree name.
Yeah.
Doctorate of Humane Letters.
Doctorate of Humane Letters.
Okay..
Gotcha Martha, is there a clue here that it’s a Jesuit university?
Well, there’s a clue that it’s a university for sure.
Okay.
Because the tradition of awarding honorary degrees, you were asking about that.
It goes back all the way back to 15th century European universities.
I think Oxford awarded the first one.
And later in this country we, began doing that too, certain universities.
Today, universities typically award the degree you’re talking about to people whose contributions have enriched society and culture.
And the key to the title, Doctor of Humane Letters, goes back to Latin and maybe that’s what you were getting d at Grant with the Jesuit yeah, ’cause the Jesuits ha usually have a strong Latin program.
Yes.
The key here is that the word humane doesn’t mean what we usually think of it as meaning.
It doesn’t necessarily mean kind or compassionate.
That’s the modern adjective.
But this is a much older scholarly use of the word humane.
It actually comes from the Latin humanus and the Renaissance phrase studia humanitatis, which literally means the studies of humanity.
And for Renaissance scholars, the studia humanitatis were the subjects that made you a fully cultivated human being.
You know, grammar and rhetoric and history and poetry and moral philosophy, all those ideas that give us the word humanities.
So humane letters in this older academic sense meant literature and learning and cultural and intellectual life.
And it’s the same letters.
You’ve probably heard the phrase a man of letters.
He’s a man of letters.
It doesn’t mean that he’s, you know, sitting there eating alphabet soup or anything.
It means he’s a real scholar.
And so when you give somebody the doctor of humane letters title, it’s literarum humanarum doctor, which is abbreviated, I don’t know how they do it at Creighton, but but it’s either abbreviated L H D or D H L.
Do you happen to know?
Yeah, I think it might be D H L.
Okay.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And that just simply translates as a doctor of the humanities and and doctor in this case being related to words like docent.
It has to do with teaching.
Well, that’s great.
Kate, thank you so much.
We really appreciate it.
Okay.
Say hello to the zoo there for me.
We will.
Thanks for calling, Kate.
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