The Arrogance Of Humanism

Attacks nothing less than the currently prevailing world philosophy--humanism, which the author feels is exceedingly dangerous in its hidden assumptions.

According to bestselling historian Yuval Noah Harari, today’s average American has their foot in three ideological camps: nationalism, free market capitalism, and humanism. The first two might seem obvious, but the third? It’s entirely possible that most who qualify for that label would be hard pressed to explain its meaning, much less use it self-descriptively. This book is designed to serve two important purposes: First, to provide an accessible resource for anyone curious about the humanist tradition and the arguments advanced by leading contemporary proponents. Second, to address what the author believes is a critical question for our time, the era of the Anthropocene: Is humanism’s seemingly benign package of values at least partially responsible for some of the world’s most pressing problems? To answer the last question, Schuler draws from an elective collection of commentators, including life scientists, spiritual writers, public intellectuals, technologists, novelists, and even poets. In the end, this wide-ranging survey will help the reader determine whether humanism makes sense for them.

Humanistic studies has been subjected to critiques from the inside of the university disciplines and shrinking support structures on the outside; moreover, recent technological developments have trapped humans in the maws of the information machine, where will, agency, and dialogue are constantly stunted and mediated, disclosing a nihilistic, dilated present. Against this panorama, Peter Carravetta argues that there is a need to recover the “human” in humanistic reflection, here described as a free social, creative, yet elusive being, caught between idealizations (utopias, concepts of society, autonomy of powers), the realities of survival (basic economics and geographies), and the dynamics of power (the languages and the praxis of actually running the society). The Humanist Project: Will, Judgment, and Society from Dante to Vico presents Dante as the first true humanist, with his stressing the preeminence of free will and individual responsibility in the life of the polis; Boccaccio’s later encyclopedic works as a philosophy of existence and history; Pico della Mirandola’s autopoiesis of the thinking and acting human in light of recent theories of interpretation, the self, and society; Machiavelli and the challenge of chance in determining sociohistorical patterns; Campanella as the last true utopic writer and first to conceive of a realist, world-scale political vision; and Vico as the thinker who identifies and describes the dialectic between historical recurrences and the free will of the individual.

"The Oxford Handbook of Humanism aims to cover the history, the philosophical development, and the influence humanist thought and culture. As a system of thought that values human needs and experiences over supernatural concerns, humanism has gained greater attention amid the rapidly shifting demographics of religious communities, especially in Europe and North America. This outlook on the world has taken on global dimensions as well, with activists, artists, and thinkers forming a humanistic response not only to traditional religion, but to the pressing social and political issues of the 21st century. To address these areas, the chapters in this volume discuss humanism as a global phenomenon-an approach that has often been neglected in more Western-focused works. The Handbook will also approach humanism as both an opponent to traditional religion as well as a philosophy that some religions have explicitly adopted. Sections are divided into regional studies, intellectual histories, humanist organizations and movements, the impact on culture, humanism in the public arena, and influence of humanism on social issues. Keywords: Humanism, atheism, unbelief, free-thought, secularism, philosophy, religious studies, sociology, history"--

During the twentieth century, theological and religious perspectives have been marginalized, if not utterly excluded in many of our colleges and universities. The essays in this book argue in different ways for the critical, appreciative inclusion of theological and religious perspectives in higher education. The contributors believe that even in our secular, religiously disestablished era, religion and God continue to occupy an important and dynamic role in personal and social life. If our colleges and universities are to fulfill their higher aspirations of educating whole persons for the real world in all of its diversity and challenge, we need to go bravely against the flow and “give God tenure.”

This book, first published in 1981, explores why it is that the modern built environment, while successfully providing material comfort and technical efficiency, none the less breeds despair and depression rather than inspires hope and commitment. The source of this paradox, where material benefits appear to have been gained only at the expense of intangible values and qualities is found in humanism, the persistent and powerful belief that all problems can be solved through the use of human reason. But humanism has become increasingly confused, rationalistic, callously devoted to efficiency, and authoritarian. These confusions and contradictions, together with the anti-nature stance of humanism and its failure to teach humane behaviour, lead the author to conclude that humanism is best rejected. Such rejection does not advocate the inhuman and anti-human, but requires instead a return to the ‘humility’ that lies at the origin of humanism – a respect for objects, creatures, environments and people. This ‘environmental humility’ is explored in the context of individuality of settings, ways of seeing landscapes, appropriation and ways of building places. This title will be of interest to students of human geography.

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