Humanism and Its Critics

TitleHumanism and Its Critics
Publication TypeBook Chapter
AuthorsPinn, Anthony B., Slavica Jakelić, and Slavica Jakelić
Pagination264-293
PublisherOxford University Press
ISBN Number978-0-19-092153-8
AbstractThe most significant contemporary challenges to humanism do not come from critics who relegate it to anti-religiousness or exclusively immanent concerns, but from those who critique humanitarianism and human rights as the most powerful humanist discourses of our time. These critics bring two important insights: they identify humanism as both religious and secular in character, and they point to it as an enacted rather than merely an intellectual disposition. The critics in question, however, sustain a narrow, Western centric understanding of what humanism is. This chapter seeks to destabilize that view but also to move beyond the mere “critique of critics” (Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique ) to gesture toward the particularity and plurality of humanist traditions as platforms for ethical and political practices—humanitarianism and human rights included.
URLhttps://oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190921538.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780190921538-e-8
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