Critical Humanism

Оглавление

Ken Plummer. Critical Humanism

Contents

Guide

Pages

Dedication

Critical Humanism. A Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century

Copyright page

Boxes, Tables and Figures

Acknowledgements

Introduction

From Humanism to Critical Humanism

Box 0.1: Defining humanity

The Book and Manifesto Ahead: A Politics of Humanity

Notes

Part I Rethinking the World: Connecting Humanity

1 Critical Humanism

Critical Humanism as a Project

Humanist Sociology and Critical Humanism

Box 1.1: Connecting humanity: the critical humanist project

The Plurality and Hybridity of Humanisms, Humanity and the World

Debating Humanism: Learning from Controversies

Humanism as Western Enlightenment

Humanism as secularism

Humanism as rationality and science

The dark side of science

Humanism as humanitarianism

Humanism as rights

Box 1.2: An expanding concern over human rights

Humanism as dignity

Humanism as transhumanism

Humanism abolished: the posthuman

Moving Humanism On: The Dynamics of Diverse Thought

The Call of Humanity: Only Connect

The connective spirals of humanity

Living in Connection and Complexity

Notes

Part II Dehumanizing the World: Disconnecting Humanity

2 Damaging Humanity

Suffering in a Mutilated Covid-19 World5. Bare humanity

Degraded environments, deranged worlds

Box 2.1: Eight ways to destroy the planet over a few hundred years

Destructive technologies, digital threats

Dehumanized economies, crisis capitalism

Humanizing economics

Unequal humanity, immiserating inequalities

Excluded humanities, disposable life

Ignorant humanities and a post-truth world

Perpetuating violent humanities

The failing of human governance

The everyday corruption of human life

Disconnected humanities: a malaise in the world

Living in a Post-Covid World

Appendix: Monitoring the Mutilated World

Notes

3 Dividing Humanity

Background: Circles of Connective Humanity

From Difference to Division to Dehumanization

On human difference

On division and dehumanization

Creating enemies

Resisting the Fault Lines of Hierarchical Humanity

Resistances to division: the humanism of the subordinated other

Living Well Together: The Kindness of Strangers

A Toolbox for Connection and Conviviality

Notes

4 Traumatizing Humanity

Facing Humanity: Holocaust, Atrocity and Evil

The Disconnected Human World: Trauma and Atrocity at Large

Regimes of Dehumanization, Disconnection and Pervasive Anti-Humanity

Confronting cultural trauma

Racism and the trauma of cruel colonization

The trauma of gender atrocity

Owning Our Histories, Reckoning with Traumatic Pasts and Making Life Accountable

On truth and justice, peace and reconciliation

Institutionalized accounting

Memory, pluralizing pasts and the struggle for truth

Conclusion

Notes

Part III Humanizing the World: Flourishing Humanity

Notes

5 Narrating Humanity

Narrative Humanity: Capacities and Ecologies

Human capacity to tell stories

World landscapes, media and political ecologies of stories

Lineages of Narrative Humanity

Origins stories

A little species with a big story

Box 5.1: Stories of an emergent human species: critical moments

Narrative tensions of an axial age

Shaping some key early world narratives

Recent Times: Modern Ecologies of Narrative Humanity

Twenty-first-century narratives

Thinking Like a Planet: Narratives of Worldly Care

Box 5.2: Meta-narratives of worldly care: a few symbolic moments

Important but difficult ways ahead

Notes

6 Valuing Humanity

On Values, Narrative and Humanity

The complexity of values

The pragmatic account of values

Modern Narratives of Humanity: Transforming Values

Connecting and disconnecting: value narratives in the twenty-first century

Searching for Signs of Fallible Shared World Values

A search for fragile values in a twenty-first-century pluriverse

Environmental, earthly values

Existential values

Interpersonal values

Community and identity values

Society’s values

Cultural / pluriversal values

World values

Cosmic issues

Notes

7 Transforming Humanity

Narratives of Future Humanity

An apocalyptic world

Techno-futures and transhumanism

A progressive world

A case in point: The Human Development Project

Creative cosmopolitan communities

A Politics of Humanity: Creativity, Connection, Challenge

Connective consciousness: thinking like a planetary person

A mosaic of participatory worlds of pluriversal politics

Box 7:1: A cascade of effervescent politics of humanity

The emancipatory ideas of a caring world humanity

Box 7.2: Thinking beyond the West: an emerging consciousness

Grounded real utopianism

A caring, compassionate and critical digital citizenship

Cultivating humanity’s hope: movements and education for change

Ancestors, activism, futures and generational hope

The future of generations and the importance of responsibility

Acting to Transform the World

Notes

Part IV Transforming the World: A Politics and Literacy for Humanity

8 A Critical Humanist Manifesto for the Twenty-First Century

Preface: A Crisis for Humanity – Beyond Covid-19

The need for a politics of humanity and a pedagogy of hope

A MANIFESTO: NINE THESES. I Creating a Connective Planetary Imagination

II Healing the Mutilated World: A Politics of Harm Reduction

III Living Well with Difference: A Politics of Inclusion, Dialogue and Compassion

IV Reconciling with the Troubled Past: A Politics of Memory and Truth, Justice and Reconciliation

V Understanding the History of the Narrative World: A Politics of Narrative Worldly Care

VI Pursuing Common Shared Values: A Politics of World Values

A note on humanizing the digital world and connecting to human values

VII Creating a Connective World: A Politics of Generational Hope and Movements Grounded in Utopian Realism

VIII Transformative Futures: A Politics and Literacy for a Better World

IX Ultimately Connect: Think Like a Planetary Person

Notes

Epilogue: On Being Well in the World – The Joys of Everyday Living

Notes

Short Guide to Further Reading

Introducing Humanism

Recent Humanist Writings

Critical Problems

The World: A Background circa 2020

Covid-19: A Time of Pandemic

Damaged Humanity

Divided Humanity

Traumatized Humanity

Narrative Humanity

Emerging ideas of Global Humanity

Valuing Humanity

Transformative Humanities

The Politics of Humanity

Closing Thoughts

Index

POLITY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

Отрывок из книги

‘This book is an extraordinarily brave and enormously comprehensive attempt to re-energize an interest in the battered concept of humanism. Ken Plummer’s agenda for a new politics of humanity explicitly recognizes the manner in which past “humanisms” have been undermined by ethnocentrism and cultural insensitivity. These, and other impediments to a “critical humanism”, are courageously confronted in a volume that fully realizes its author’s intention to provide “a vision of something better”.’

Laurie Taylor, Emeritus Professor, University of York, and presenter of Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio Four

.....

Worse still, contemporary humanitarianism, in its rush to help those in distressed conflict situations, often find themselves perpetuating or amplifying wars – creating a kind of cosmopolitan dystopia.44 Didier Fassin’s important study, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present, clarifies all this; he takes us to the intellectual hub of this issue. Writing as a physician social scientist, a critical thinker who works in the field (sometimes for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)), Fassin notes:

A remarkable paradox deserves our attention here. On the one hand, moral sentiments are focused mainly on the poorest, most unfortunate, most vulnerable individuals: the politics of compassion is a politics of inequality. On the other hand, the condition of possibility of moral sentiments is generally the recognition of others as fellows: the politics of compassion is a politics of solidarity. This tension between inequality and solidarity, between a relation of dominance and a relation of assistance is constitutive of all humanitarian governance.45

.....