By SHIDARTA (February 2026)

I am often asked what distinguishes humaniora from the humanities, and how both can be related to digital humanities as an increasingly important object of study in the digital era. In October 2014, I also wrote a short piece in Indonesian with a similar title (in this website), but framed in relation to the position of legal scholarship. This article can be regarded as a further clarification of that short article.

Coincidentally, in 2022 I delivered an inaugural professorial lecture in the field of legal philosophy, in which I addressed the theme of digital humanities. I am pleased that the lecture attracted considerable attention. To clarify the concepts of humaniora, the humanities, and digital humanities, I present this brief essay. In a limited way, I have also drawn on AI assistance to sharpen the writing; nevertheless, full responsibility for the substance remains entirely my own.

Humaniora and humanities have conceptual differences, although these terms are often used interchangeably. This interchangeability becomes even more confusing when we relate both concepts to digital humanities. Still, it is fair to say that they share a historical emphasis on broad and holistic education, and that is why the boundary between them often looks thin.

Humaniora has classical roots in the study of language, literature, rhetoric, and philosophy. This took place in the era of Ancient Greece and Rome. In that era, the division between liberal arts education and servile arts education was already known. Liberal arts education was regarded as more prestigious—not only in social rank, but also in purpose: it trained the mind for judgment, persuasion, and civic life, rather than training the hand merely for technical service.

The foundations of liberal arts were strengthened in the Middle Ages. At that time, there were seven liberal arts. The first three fields of study—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics—formed the core of early training. Then four further fields—arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music—followed as a continuation. Whether the institutional practice was always uniform is not the main issue here. The point is that the tradition of humaniora never stood alone. It was attached to a broader ideal of education: an ideal of forming the person through disciplined attention to meaning, argument, language, and rational structure.

So, there is a very close relationship between humaniora and liberal arts, even though the term humaniora has resurfaced more strongly in modern times. Liberal arts in the contemporary era are experiencing renewal, namely being used to foster intellectual and moral development. We can say: in a world that changes rapidly, liberal arts becomes relevant again because it trains the human person to interpret, to weigh, and to decide—rather than merely to execute.

The natural sciences have received enormous attention in the modern era. They are often seen as positive sciences that can reveal the mysteries of the universe “as they are.” In this spirit, the natural sciences are needed to master the universe. Humans can no longer only master know-what and know-why but also know-how. That is the signature of modernity: productivity, control, engineering, and effectiveness.

However, it is realized that more than these natural sciences are needed to answer many of humanity’s problems. The more advanced humans become in controlling nature, the more clearly we see that human life is not exhausted by physical explanation. Humans live in language, norms, meanings, institutions, identities, histories, and conflicts. For this reason, a branch of empirical inquiry that we now popularly call humanities took a clearer institutional form. It is not simply a rival to natural science; it is a response to a different type of question: questions of meaning, value, interpretation, and the structure of human life.

At this point, a new overlap appears. Humaniora and liberal arts are closely linked to the classical ideal of formation, while humanities is often used to name a modern family of disciplines concerned with human meaning and culture. People equate them partly because the two areas intersect in practice. The interconnection becomes even more obvious when discussing digital humanities.

I think this action to equate humaniora and humanities is not only because they both contain the word “human,” but more because, in their development, the two areas of study have increasingly crossed each other’s paths. Humaniora carries the mission of forming humane persons; humanities carry the mission of understanding human worlds. In the digital age, both missions meet the same challenge: human life is now inseparable from digital systems of representation.

Now we come to digital humanities (DH). We can claim DH as an area of study that sits precisely at the intersection between humans and digital technology. But we should be careful. If we define DH too widely—“everything related to humans and digital technology”—then DH becomes empty, because it becomes everything and therefore nothing. Yet if we define DH too narrowly—only as a set of tools—then DH becomes trapped as a technical matter, and the humanities lose their own voice.

So, DH should be understood as a space where humanistic inquiry meets digital methods, while also questioning what digitality does to humans, culture, institutions, and knowledge itself. This is the point. DH is not merely about using computers for humanities research. DH is also about turning the humanities’ critical attention toward the digital environment that increasingly structures reality.

Digitus Dei. The finger of God is here. I use this not as a theological argument but as a metaphor of our time: we are all invited to touch something that seems to open many doors at once. A small touch—one click, one query, one dataset, one algorithmic pipeline—can unveil patterns that were previously invisible. But the same touch can also distort, manipulate, and mislead. That is why DH must include not only excitement, but also responsibility.

In modern times, knowledge is produced through systematic series. Karl Popper illustrated the birth of science through three worlds. The first world is the physical world or the universe. This is a world of reality full of mysteries waiting to be solved. Then there is the second world, consisting of humans ready to use their thinking or cognitive powers. The third world is a virtual, objective world containing scientific theories—ideas that can live beyond individual minds.

The relationship between the first and second worlds can be described as follows. The first world encourages the second world to think and solve problems that arise from reality. On the other hand, the second world aims to regulate and control the first world. This ambition to regulate is part of modern thinking, the ambition to place humans above the physical world through knowledge and technique. Yet in the human sciences the situation is more complicated, because “reality” is not merely physical—it is social, symbolic, normative, and mediated.

The relationship between the second and third worlds can be described as follows. The second world produces theories, arguments, classifications, and interpretations, all of which are stored in the third world. On the other hand, the third world helps the second world, so humans can work more easily when they confront reality again. This is why knowledge is cumulative: theories become resources.

Lastly, the relationship between the first world and the third world: Popper assumed that the third world imitates the first world in the sense that theories are miniatures or models of reality. This is relatively easy to understand in the natural sciences. But it becomes different in the human sciences—especially when reality becomes increasingly difficult to locate.

Here I want to bring another perspective. Jean Baudrillard once described reality as moving through stages of simulacra. In the most extreme stage, representation no longer refers to reality, but produces something like hyperreality. Whether we fully accept this theory or not, it helps to name a condition we already feel: in the digital age, humans often live inside representations—feeds, metrics, images, algorithmic recommendations, and simulated communities—so that the boundary between “the real” and “the represented” becomes unstable.

Thus, it becomes more difficult to create a theoretical world (the third world) when scholars are faced with hyperreality. The object itself is moving. The object is mediated. The object is shaped by infrastructures. This is exactly why DH matters today: because DH is not only a method, but also a response to a new condition of reality.

If we ask what DH’s scope is, we will find that its impact is very broad. However, DH should not be limited only to questions of method. If this is the case, DH will be trapped into just “technical matter,” or into an adventure for passionate writers who immerse themselves in a set of computer tools. DH must also cover the effects of the digital environment on humans and humanity.

For example, we can point to four prominent ethical issues in today’s information age: privacy, accuracy, property, and access. These four issues are only a small part of the issues that DH must face. We may try to answer them using a monodisciplinary lens—law alone, or computer science alone, or philosophy alone—but it is time to answer them with an interdisciplinary approach. The reason is simple: these problems are simultaneously technical, cultural, political, and moral.

I want to point out several principles in DH. But I will arrange them in a way that shows DH is not only about tools. It is also about judgment.

  1. Interdisciplinarity: Digital humanities embrace collaboration across diverse disciplines, combining humanities scholarship with computational methods and tools. It encourages scholars to work together, combining their expertise to address complex research questions that cannot be answered from one single lens.
  2. Application of Theory: There is a belief that application is as important as theory. The humanities must not only interpret the world but also learn how digital systems operate in practice—because practice is where digital power often hides.
  3. Digital Representation: DH frequently engages in the analysis, encoding, and structuring of texts and archives. Representation of archival material involves computer-assisted means to describe and express print, visual, and audio-based material in tagged and searchable electronic form. But representation is never neutral. Every tag, label, category, and omission is already an interpretation.
  4. Critical Inquiry: Critical inquiry in DH involves algorithmically facilitated search, retrieval, and analysis, but it cannot stop there. DH must ask: what is made visible by the tool, and what is made invisible? What is treated as data, and what is excluded from data?
  5. Knowledge Representation and Responsibility: Understanding the tools used and the implications of decisions—drawing from artificial intelligence and strategies of knowledge representation—is crucial. DH scholars must engage critically with the implications of technology on society, culture, and scholarship. This involves questioning biases in algorithms, ethical considerations in data collection, and the broader societal impacts of technological advancement.
  6. Dissemination and Public Engagement: Efforts toward dissemination involve re-presentation and address issues related to digital communities, preservation in the electronic medium, professional electronic publication, and the challenges and opportunities arising with digital libraries. DH often emphasizes public engagement and dissemination beyond academic circles. Projects may involve interactive websites, digital exhibits, or platforms that bring scholarship into public life.
  7. Humaniora as a Moral Compass: Last but not least, I still believe in the importance of humaniora in shaping a humane society, fostering empathy, and cultivating a sense of shared humanity. If DH forgets this, DH will become only an instrument of efficiency.
  8. The Ultimate Goal: That is why, in my perspective as a humaniora scholar, the ultimate goal of digital humanities is to make humans more humane, instead of making machines become humans. The digital age does not reduce the need for the humanities; it increases it. Because when reality is mediated by systems, the need for interpretation, ethics, and human judgment becomes more urgent.

Conclusions

DH should not be reduced to a technical toolkit, because the digital age is not merely a set of tools but a condition that reshapes reality, representation, and human life. In this condition, humaniora and the humanities meet again: both must respond to how knowledge is produced, stored, and circulated through digital systems. DH therefore requires interdisciplinarity, critical inquiry, ethical responsibility, and public dissemination. Yet its deepest direction remains humaniora’s mission—forming humane persons. The ultimate goal of digital humanities is to make humans more humane, not to make machines become humans.