There is no doubt that the human world is in a moment of crisis. New technologies, instead of enhancing human life, increasingly seem to threaten it. War, massive human inequalities within and between nations, as well as new imperial practices, have become the order of the day. In such a context, what is the work of the humanities? This lecture will argue that the humanities, in the words of the Caribbean poet and thinker Aimé Césaire, is made within the “measure of the world”, a necessary requirement for humans to grapple with – and ultimately change – the world.