Antihumanism Not to be confused with anti-human with anti-human sentiment. sentiment.
tence. For Heidegger, Heidegger, humanism takes consciousness takes consciousness as as the paradigm of philosophy, leading it to a a subjectivism and idealism and idealism that that must be avoide avoided. d. Like Like Hegel before In social social theo theory ry and philosophy, philosophy, antihumanism (or him, Heidegger rejected the Kantian notion of autonomy of autonomy,, anti-humanism ) is a theo theory ry that that is crit critic ical al of tradi tradi-pointing out that humans were social and historical betional tional humanism humanism and tradition traditional al ideas ideas about about humanity humanity ings, as well as Kant’s notion of a constituting consciousand the human the human condition. condition.[1] Central to antihumanism is ness. ness. Heideg Heidegger ger neverth neverthele eless ss retains retains links both to huthe view that concepts of "huma "human n natur naturee", “man”, or manism and to existentialism despite existentialism despite his efforts to dis“humanity”, should be rejected as historically relative or tance himself from both in the “Letter on Humanism” metaphysical..[2] metaphysical (1947).[10]
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Ori Origin gins 2
In the late 18th and 19th centuries centuries,, the philosoph philosophy y of humanism was was a corne cornerst rstone one of the Enlighte Enlightenment nment.. From the belief in a universal moral core of humanity it followed lowed that all persons are inherently inherently free and equal. For liberal humanists such such as Kant, Kant, the univer universal sal law of reason was reason was a guide towards total emancipation from any kind of tyranny.[3]
Posi Positi tivis vism m and “scienti “scientism” sm”
Positivism is a philosophy of science based on the view Positivism is that in the social the social as as well as natural sciences, sciences, information information derived from sensory from sensory experience, experience, and logical and mathematical treatments of such data, are together the exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge. [11] Positivism assumes that there is valid knowledge (truth) only in sciknowledge.[12] Obtaining and verifying data that Criticism of humanism being over-idealistic swiftly be- entific knowledge. gan gan in the 19th 19th Century. Century. For For Friedrich Nietzsche, Nietzsche, hu- can be received from the senses is known as empirical evidence..[11] This view holds that society operates acmani manism sm was was noth nothin ing g mo more re than than an empt empty y figure gure of spee speech ch evidence [4] cording to general general laws laws like like the physica physicall world. IntroIntro- a secular version of theism of theism.. He argues in Genealogy cording of Morals that human that human rights exist rights exist as a means for the weak spective and intuitional attempts to gain knowledge are rejected. Though the positivist positivist approach has been a reto constrain the strong; as such, they deny rather than fa- rejected. [13] the cilitate emancipation of life.[5] Nevertheless the author current theme in the history of Western thought, Claude Pavur Pavur in a book called Nietzsche Humanist argues argues concept was developed in the modern sense in the early that “there “there are excel excellen lentt ground ground for for reading reading Nietzsc Nietzsche he first first 19th century by the philosopher and founding sociolo[6] gist, Auguste gist, Auguste Comte. Comte.[14] Comte argued that society opand foremost as a humanist”. erates according to its own quasi-absolute laws, much as The youn young g Ka Karl rl Marx Marx is someti sometime mess cons consid ider ered ed a the phys physic ical al worl world d operat operates es acco accordi rding ng to gravi gravity ty and other other humanist,[7] as opposed to the mature Marx who became [15] absolute laws of nature. more forceful in his criticism of human rights as idealist as idealist thinker Tzvetan Todorov has Todorov has identified within or utopian or utopian.. Give Given n that that capitalism forces individuals to Humanist thinker Tzvetan behave in a profit-seeking manner, they are in constant modernity a trend of thought which emphasizes science a deterministic view deterministic view of the conflict conflict with one another, and are thus in need of rights to and within it tends towards a world. wor ld. He clearl cl early y identifi ide ntifies es positiv posi tivist ist theorist theorist Auguste Auguste protect themselves. themselves. Human rights, Marx believed, believed, were a [16] For produ product ct of the very very dehu dehuman manisa isatio tion n they they were were inten intende ded d to Comte as an important proponent of this view. "Scientism does does not eliminate the will but deoppose. oppose. True emancipa emancipation tion,, he asserted, asserted, coul could d only only come come Todorov "Scientism through the establishment of of communism, communism, which abol- cides that since the results of science are valid for everyishes the private ownership ownership of all means of production. production.[8] one, this will must be something shared, not individual. In practice, the individual must submit to the collectivIn the 20th century, the view of humans as rationally auity, which “knows” better than he does.” The autonomy tonomous was challenged by Sigmund Freud, Freud, who beof the will is maintained, but it is the will of the group, lieved humans to be largely driven by unconscious irranot the person...scientism has flourished in two very diftional desires.[9] ferent political contexts...The first variant of scientism Martin Heide Heidegger gger viewed viewed humanis humanism m as a metaph metaphysiysi- was put into practice by totalitarian by totalitarian regimes.” regimes.”[17] A simcal cal phil philoso osoph phy y that that ascrib ascribes es to humani humanity ty a unive universa rsall ilar criticism can be found in the work associated with essence and privileges it above all other forms of exis- the 'Frankfurt 'Frankfurt School' School' of social research. Antipositivism 1
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would be further facilitated by rejections of 'scientism'; or science as ideology. Jürgen Habermas argues, in his On the Logic of the Social Sciences (1967), that “the positivist thesis of unified science, which assimilates all the sciences to a natural-scientific model, fails because of the intimate relationship between the social sciences and history, and the fact that they are based on a situationspecific understanding of meaning that can be explicated only hermeneutically ... access to a symbolically prestructured reality cannot be gained by observation alone.”[18]
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Structuralism
Structuralism was developed in post-war Paris as a response to the perceived contradiction between the free subject of philosophy and the determined subject of the human sciences;[19] and drew on the systematic linguistics of Saussure for a view of language and culture as a conventional system of signs preceding the individual subject’s entry into them.[20] Lévi-Strauss in anthropology systematised a structuralist analysis of culture in which the individual subject dissolved into a signifying convention; [21] the semiological work of Roland Barthes (1977) decried the cult of the author and indeed proclaimed his death; while Lacan's structuralist psychoanalysis inevitably led to a similar diminishment of the concept of the autonomous individual: “man with a discourse on freedom which must certainly be called delusional...produced as it is by an animal at the mercy of language”.[22] Taking a lead from Brecht's twin attack on bourgeois and socialist humanism,[23] Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser coined the term “antihumanism” in an attack against Marxist humanists, whose position he considered a revisionist movement. Althusser considered “structure” and “social relations” to have primacy over individual consciousness, opposing the philosophy of the subject.[24] For Althusser, the beliefs, desires, preferences and judgements of the human individual are the product of social practices, as society moulds the individual in its own image through its ideologies. For Marxist humanists such as Georg Lukács, revolution was contingent on the development of the class consciousness of an historical subject, the proletariat. In opposition to this, Althusser’s antihumanism downplays the role of human agency in the process of history.
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Post-structuralism and deconstruction
Post-structuralists such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida rejected structuralism’s insistence on fixed meaning, its privileging of a meta-linguistic standpoint;[25] but
continued all the more to problematize the human subject, favoring the term “the decenter-ed subject” which implies the absence of human agency. Derrida, arguing that the fundamentally ambiguous nature of language makes intention unknowable, attacked Enlightenment perfectionism, and condemned as futile the existentialist quest for authenticity in the face of the allembracing network of signs. He stressed repeatedly that “the subject is not some meta-linguistic substance or identity, some pure cogito of self-presence; it is always inscribed in language”.[26] Foucault challenged the foundational aspects of Enlightenment humanism,[27] as well as their strategic implications, arguing that they either produced counter-emancipatory results directly, or matched increased “freedom” with increased and disciplinary normatization. [28] His anti-humanist scepticism extended to attempts to ground theory in human feeling, as much as in human reason, maintaining that both were historically contingent constructs, rather than the universals humanism maintained.
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Cultural examples
The heroine of the novel Nice Work begins by defining herself as a semiotic materialist, “a subject position in an infinite web of discourses - the discourses of power, sex, family, science, religion, poetry, etc.”[29] Charged with taking a bleak deterministic view, she retorts, “antihumanist, yes; inhuman, no...the truly determined subject is he who is not aware of the discursive formations that determine him”.[30] However, with greater life-experience, she comes closer to accepting that post-structuralism is an intriguing philosophical game, but probably meaningless to those who have not yet even gained awareness of humanism itself.[31]
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See also •
Anti-foundationalism
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Antimaterialism
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Humanism
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New Historicism
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Marx’s theory of human nature
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Modernism
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Nancy Fraser
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Postmodernism
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Stanley Fish
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Structural Marxism
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References
[1] J. Childers/G. Hentzi eds., The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (1995) p. 140-1 [2] Childers, p. 100 [3] Childers, p. 95-6 [4] Tony Davies, Humanism (1997) p. 37 [5] Genealogy of Morals III:14 [6] Claude Pavur. Nietzsche Humanist . Marquette University Press, 1998
[25] Appignanesi, p. 76-9 [26] Quoted in John D. Caputo, The Tears and Prayers of Jacques Derrida (1997) p. 349 [27] G. Gutting ed., The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (2003) p. 384 [28] Gutting, p. 277 [29] David Lodge, Nice Work (1988) p. 21-2 [30] Lodge, p. 22 [31] Lodge, p. 153 and p. 225
[7] Marxist Humanism [8] Karl Marx On the Jewish Question (1843)
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[9] Peter Gay, Freud (1989) p. 449
Further reading •
Roland Barthes, Image: Music: Text (1977)
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Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (1966)
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Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (1977)
[10] What becomes of the Human after Humanism? [11] John J. Macionis, Linda M. Gerber, “Sociology”, Seventh Canadian Edition, Pearson Canada [12] Jorge Larrain (1979) The Concept of Ideology p.197, quotation:
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one of the features of positivism is precisely its postulate that scientific knowledge is the paradigm of valid knowledge, a postulate that indeed is never proved nor intended to be proved.
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[13] Cohen, Louis; Maldonado, Antonio (2007). “Research Methods In Education”. British Journal of Educational Studies (Routledge) 55 (4): 9. doi:10.1111/j.14678527.2007.00388_4.x.. [14] Sociology Guide. “Auguste Comte”. Sociology Guide. [15] Macionis, John J. (2012). Sociology 14th Edition. Boston: Pearson. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-205-11671-3. [16] Tzvetan Todorov. The Imperfect Garden . Princeton University Press. 2001. Pg. 20 [17] Tzvetan Todorov. The Imperfect Garden . Princeton University Press. 2001. Pg. 23 [18] Outhwaite, William, 1988 Habermas: Key Contemporary Thinkers , Polity Press (Second Edition 2009), ISBN 9780-7456-4328-1 p.22 [19] Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan (2005) p. 332 [20] R. Appignanesi/C. Garratt, Postmodernism for Beginners (1995) p. 56-60 [21] Appiganesi, p. 66-7 [22] Jacques Lacan, Écrits: A Selection (1997) p. 216 and p. 264 [23] M. Hardt/K. Weeks eds., The Jameson Reader (2005) p. 150 [24] Simon Choat, Marx through Post-Structuralism (2010) p. 17
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Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (1947) reprinted in Basic Writings Karl Marx, “On the Jewish Question” (1843) reprinted in Early Writings Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) Stefanos Geroulanos, An Atheism that is not Humanist (2010)
External links •
James Heartfield, Postmodernism and the ‘Death of the Subject’
10 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES
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Antihumanism Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihumanism?oldid=654264818 Contributors: Skysmith, JasCollins, Banno, Jfdwolff, Benw, Karol Langner, Zenohockey, Pearle, Woohookitty, Jshadias, Hanshans23, Bhny, Retired username, Anetode, Morgan Leigh, Thevmail, Rhwentworth, SmackBot, Zazaban, AgentFade2Black, Fuhghettaboutit, Savidan, Adamarthurryan, Navidnak, Byelf2007, Santa Sangre, Mr. Here, JoeBot, RookZERO, CmdrObot, Smoove Z, Shanoman, Alaibot, Bobblehead, Transhumanist, Car54, Zahakiel, NewEnglandYankee, CA387, Tomsega, Struway, Jacks.place1, SummerWithMorons, Saddhiyama, SPECVLVMSINCERVS, Niceguyedc, Sirius85, SoxBot III, XLinkBot, Addbot, Lightbot, Geistsucher~enwiki, Jarble, Yobot, Eduen, AnomieBOT, Worldsgreen2012, J04n, Omnipaedista, Yejiel19, FrescoBot, Baucham, Arman Cagle, Jacobisq, Mcc1789, ClueBot NG, BG19bot, AK456, Asisman, BreakfastJr and Anonymous: 69
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