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Early Modern Humanism and Postmodern Antihumanism In Early Modern Humanism and Postmodern Antihumanism in Dialogue Jan Miernowski Editor Early Modern Humanism and Postmodern Antihumanism in Dialogue Editor Jan Miernowski University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison , Wisconsin , USA ISBN 978-3-319-32275-9 ISBN 978-3-319-32276-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-32276-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016953818 © Th e Editor(s) (if applicable) and Th e Author(s) 2016 Th is work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and trans- mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Th e use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. Th e publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Th is Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature Th e registered company is Springer International Publishing AG Th e registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Pref ace What Would Humanists Say? How would Renaissance readers of Cicero and Aristotle consider animal rights ? What would Erasmus say about Foucault ’s death of the author or how would he respond to Derrida ’s assessment of the “ human bomb ”? Th ese are some of the questions posed by this book. Th ey all stem from contemporary concerns: the moral responsibility of the artist, the place of religious belief in our secular societies, legal rights extended to nonhuman species , the sense of “ normality ” applied to the human body, the politics of migration, the extent of individual political freedom , and international terrorism . Yet, while embedded in our culture, all the questions underly- ing this book point in their search for answers to early modernity. Going back almost 500 years in search of insights into our current aff airs requires some justifi cation. When we ask Renaissance humanists for their perspectives on our contemporary problems, we do not expect them to feed us “timeless” wisdom, or to reconnect us with our long- forgotten cultural past. Let’s face it, we know quite well that we are in conversation with strangers, for whom our sense of justice , governmen- tality, freedom , normality , religious faith, moral responsibility, and our understanding of wartime terror would largely seem exotic, if not out- right absurd. Yet, although stemming from a foreign culture of the past, v vi Preface the voices of Erasmus , Rabelais , and Montaigne resonate anew when they take part in our debates which have been often confi ned to the circle of our mid-twentieth-century master thinkers ( Foucault , Derrida , Deleuze , etc.) and to the lineage they were eager to claim ( Kant , Hegel , Nietzsche , Heidegger , etc.). Confronted with the antihumanists of our declining postmodernity, Renaissance humanists bring to the discussion dissent- ing voices which can revive our critical thinking about specifi c problems that, quite unexpectedly, matter both to the recent and to the distant past. After all, is not the clash of ideas what humanism is really all about? Should we see humanism as a perennial, essentialist metaphysics of Man, providing an ideological basis for some institutionalized disciplines of learning (the humanities ), or should we not rather consider humanism to be a lively dialogue between very unlike-minded people, separated by belief, language, and way of thinking? In the fi fteenth and sixteenth cen- turies, such “conversation” involved Western European, Christian intel- lectuals, and the newly rediscovered ancient Pagans, whom the former greatly admired, yet struggled to understand. Now, at the dawn of the twenty-fi rst century, a hopefully equally fascinating dialogue can involve recently departed antihumanists and Renaissance humanists who seem so foreign to our enlightened and disillusioned contemporaries. Th e time to begin such a conversation is ripe. Not so much because of the pervasive feeling that the humanities at European universities and in American academia are “in crisis.” Indeed, even if limited to the last two or three decades, a bibliography of books deploring the closing of the humanistically oriented mind, the end of liberal education, and the increased professionalization of the university would constitute a large volume by itself. However, when considered from the perspective of Renaissance humanists, the current battle between the humanities and the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) loses its dramatic urgency. Indeed, already Petrarch and Erasmus complained about the narrow specialization of disciplines of learning, which suppos- edly even in the times of humanistic paideia were more interested in min- ute technicalities particular to their respective fi elds than in pondering Preface vii the virtuous, Christian life. 1 If Renaissance humanists felt compelled to defend the bonae litterae which in their eyes taught their students how to become more human, it should come as no surprise that we are called upon to justify our contemporary humanities which, for better or worse, cannot rely anymore on a coherent ethic nor on a theology of a transcen- dent absolute , nor on any correlated anthropology of Man elevated to the rank of a privileged creature. In a world beyond good and evil, with Man’s death following closely the death of God, the humanities cannot hope to revert to the studia humanitatis , the study of a humanity the existence of which is being strongly contested or even negated outright in the aftermath of the genocides and totalitarianisms of recent history and in the wake of transhuman copulations of our bodies with technological gadgets. Th e point, however, is not to establish continuities between our post- modern intellectual culture and early modernity, or to build bridges that could lead us back to humanism and the essentialist metaphysics it once relied upon. Th e goal is to see the late twentieth-century antihuman- ism in the contrasted light of Renaissance humanist ideas. Inviting such intentionally anachronistic confrontation between authors who think in vastly diff erent ways and who have rarely or never met is all the more timely because the antihumanism of the 1960s, although its aftermath is still felt on both sides of the Atlantic, is nonetheless already a dated phe- nomenon. Seen from a distance of 50 years, postmodern antihumanism can be put into its historical context and discussed in the same dispas- sionate way as early modern humanism from 500 years ago. Humanisms… In order to achieve such critical distance which will set the stage for the dialogue between humanism and antihumanism regarding the specifi c issues analyzed in this volume, we need fi rst to acknowledge that both 1 Erasmus , Ratio seu Methodus verae theologiae (1519); Petrarch , Epistolae familiares, XVI, 14, referred to by Eckhard Keβler , “La lecture comme acte d’innovation. Le cas de la grammaire humaniste,” in Penser entre les lignes. Philologie et Philosophie au Quattrocento , ed. Fosca Mariani- Zini (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2001), 30. viii Preface terms have diff erent meanings depending on who uses them and when and in what languages they are used. Th roughout the twentieth century, thinkers representing very diff erent currents of thought have aspired to the label “humanist” and have been opposed by other thinkers claiming radically diff erent visions of “ humanism ” or rejecting any “ humanism ” whatsoever in the name of, again, a quite diverse sets of ideas. One could almost say: “Show me the humanism you battle against, and I will tell you what sort of antihumanist you are.” For a contemporary English-speaking reader, “ humanism ”—to begin with the most common sense of the term—refers primarily to a system of thought in which human beings have the capacity for rational think- ing and for moral action based on free will. Consequently, humanism presupposes a sense of humanity, which is understood in two correlated ways: fi rst, as a collective entity with specifi c interests and privileges, and second, as the capacity of humans to be “humane,” that is, to be con- cerned for fellow human beings. When such concern for Man is opposed to Man’s reverence for God, humanism may be seen as a secular ideol- ogy fi rmly opposed to theistic religions. 2 In addition to its ethical mean- ing, “ humanism ” is also often understood in a historical sense, as the period in European intellectual and artistic history in which philological study was emphasized, especially, though not exclusively, the study of “humane letters,” that is, the writings of Greek and Latin Pagan authors who excelled in their purely human intellectual and moral capacities while being unable to directly benefi t from the grace of the Christian revelation contained in the “divine letters” of the Bible. 3 Th e English 2 Th is encapsulates, grosso modo , the meanings 4, 5a, and 5b of “ humanism ” in the Oxford English Dictionary , second edition, 2013, accessed online January 30, 2015. Th e philanthropic meaning of “ humanism ” appears also in French as early as 1765, although in an isolated occurrence (“Humanisme,” Le Trésor de la langue française informatisé, accessed January 30, 2015, http://atilf.
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