The death of Humanism

[danny la rouge]

How does it prove it wrong? You just have to pick other great works of art besides Goethe and Schiller.

Yes, I think there's a possible criticism that a top-down, I'm-the-jug-here-to-pour-knowledge-into-your-vessel, model of learning pervades liberal humanism, and also, therefore, the selection of knowledge to be imparted, but it doesn't therefore follow that the ideal is wrong. If learning art and literature is social glue, the questions to be asked are what is being glued, who is doing the glueing, why are they doing it, and so on.

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

I'm watching this tv series: The Tudors.

Last night, both Henry and Thomas More declared that they were humanists. Their humanism predated Goethe, and arguably had some positive results.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

This thread is stuck in a semantic quagmire.

 

[kyser_soze]

Quagmire?

Giggety giggety goo!!!

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm watching this tv series: The Tudors.

Last night, both Henry and Thomas More declared that they were humanists. Their humanism predated Goethe, and arguably had some positive results.

dude, what you posted earlier. I thort about it with my branes.

I used goethe and schiller as examples of the sort of 'high' art I assumed educated prussian/germans would have been exposed too. But regardless of the individual cannons and respected learning, isn't the idea that such are socially improving forces invalidated by the evils performed by people educated/exposed to such cannons?

if that makes sense

 

[kyser_soze]

I think the issue becomes one that anyone familiar with gorski's threads will know - there comes a point when those who know all that stuff start to see themselves as better simply because they know it, and with that kind of mentality the optimistic view that humanists have toward high culture being social glue starts to become divisive, it becomes a badge of etiquette - knowing Greek classics reduced to knowing how to select a fishknife!

Also, lets face it - classical literature isn't exactly edifying when it comes to personal growth, especially if you were living in an expansionist imperialist culture/era - all interpretations of said classics would be used to serve the existing elite's aims, and those certainly wouldn't have been in line with humanist ideas of any era...maybe...

 

[Santino]

fucking CANON

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

dude, what you posted earlier. I thort about it with my branes.

I used goethe and schiller as examples of the sort of 'high' art I assumed educated prussian/germans would have been exposed too. But regardless of the individual cannons and respected learning, isn't the idea that such are socially improving forces invalidated by the evils performed by people educated/exposed to such cannons?

if that makes sense

Yeah. What you're saying is that so called humanists took some dodgy art, or if it wasn't dodgy, interpreted it in a dodgy way, and ended up doing some really evil stuff.

What I'm saying, is the fact that this small subset of 'humanists', - and it's debatable that they were: imo, they paid lip service to this service of higher art, while actually serving xenophobic german cultural belief along with other assorted mystic mumbojumbo - got it wrong, doesn't invalidate the whole class of humanists.

 

[danny la rouge]

it becomes a badge of etiquette - knowing Greek classics reduced to knowing how to select a fishknife!

That is indeed one of the criticisms. Which is why the questions I posed earlier are important - what is being glued, why, who is doing it, how is it being done and so on.

 

[adc069975]

A desirable vision of society can't be constructed without humanism.

Btw, I am not working - unemployed, ta very much...

uhh. was drunk when I posted that (am also unemployed, as it goes.)

 

[Jonti]

He asks no Qs

This is not true.

What is true, is that g does not answer them!

 

[gorski]

Oh, yes it is true and you are a liar!!! Listen carefully: you are a damn LIAR and I can prove it!!! Thread by thread!!!

You and him are alike in at least one regard - you just run like hell away from the stuff that is inconvenient and you have no answers to them [you acknowledged it as your own "strategy", btw, in a thread where you were asked to answer some simple Qs on psychoanalysis, in one of your "weaker" moments] - see the long thread on sociopsychology etc. re. Darwinism, instincts in Humans and so on.

Weaklings, you two, trying to be much more than you are!

 

[articul8]

If one would take these ideas away from our History all one would
get is a pile of rubble and very little in terms of civilisation
and culture.

But as Walter Benjamin said every document of civilization is at one and the same time a document of barbarism - a properly critical (dialectical) approach to humanism would be an immanent critique. It would show how the construction of the concept of the "human" is won at the expense of the repression of the kernel of inhumanity (matter in itself, animal pleasure etc.) without which humanity is itself unthinkable.

There can be no simple recourse to "human nature", the "essentially" human etc. - but that doesn't mean that the whole enlightenment project was a great waste of time.

 

[gorski]

But as Walter Benjamin said every document of civilization is at one and the same time a document of barbarism

Potentially, depending on many a thing! But if anyone thinks that, say, Nazis or Fascists or Bolsheviks or Maoists were doing things in the spirit of Humanism I would take issue with that! That would be selling it quickly and cheaply - and utterly wrongly!!! And I don't care what any of them claimed as their "inspiration"...

...a properly critical (dialectical) approach to humanism would be an immanent critique.

Indeed, agreed, that's what I argued earlier, as well. No shortcuts - too dangerous, not to mention lazy and disrespectful, easy to misunderstand, misinterpret, even produce some serious forgeries [see above]...

It would show how the construction of the concept of the "human" is won at the expense of the repression of the kernel of inhumanity (matter in itself, animal pleasure etc.) without which humanity is itself unthinkable.

We don't know that for sure: if I understood properly what you stated, Bloch already warned that it reifies to put things in that "absolute", maybe even somewhat "petrified" manner... Or did I misunderstand what you stated?

There can be no simple recourse to "human nature", the "essentially" human etc. - but that doesn't mean that the whole enlightenment project was a great waste of time.

Indeed, there can not be a simple recourse to "human nature", as it seems we have both those "malleable" features, as well as some residual ones which are not so malleable. What we can distinguish, methodologically speaking, since at least Aristotle onwards, is that some of our "features" are those "between animals and Gods", so we can indeed say a few things on the subject, without risking a great deal of either "petrification" or "plasticity" of "human nature"...

 

[articul8]

Potentially, depending on many a thing!

No EVERY document - how is it possible for people to live as artists, musicians, philosophers etc.etc.? Because of the division of labour, with the majority of the population doing all the work that needs doing for a society - and society - to reproduce itself (producing food, bearing children, generating wealth etc. etc.)
This doesn't mean they are NOT documents of immense signficance that improve our condition. But tradition is also the ruling class carrying its spoils over the back of prostrate workers.

For Adorno, as for Freud, we become who we (inviduated "human") by repressing what we are (social animal). This isn't to say that our history could or should have see us done otherwise, or that possibilities for alternative becomings have been exhausted.

 

[Kaka Tim]

My auntie had a humanist funeral service a couple of years ago at her request - despite her sisters trying to pressure into having a catholic service. But she stuck to her secular guns from her death bed.

Its was the most meaningful, moving and - well - spiritual funeral Ive been to. Far better then some twat in a frock banging on about jesus in a cermemony that useually has nothing to do with the person whose died.

So a brownie points to the humanists from me on that score and sign me up for a humanist funeral when I cash my chips.

 

[gorski]

1) But as Walter Benjamin said every document of civilization is at one and the same time a document of barbarism

2) No EVERY document - how is it possible for people to live as artists, musicians, philosophers etc.etc.? Because of the division of labour, with the majority of the population doing all the work that needs doing for a society - and society - to reproduce itself (producing food, bearing children, generating wealth etc. etc.)

This doesn't mean they are NOT documents of immense signficance that improve our condition. But tradition is also the ruling class carrying its spoils over the back of prostrate workers.

That would not be the same point debated though, I fear...

Firstly, those in power/owners/capitalist have no - or very little - time for culture, as they are consumed with "wealth creation", i.e. exploitation and then debauchery...

The working class has neither time nor energy, as they have to be exploited, not to mention that most would not have the tools with which to understand/enjoy/create it...

So, it remains mostly down to [a very small parts of] "middle" class[es] to carry on the culture as we know it... In the middle ages it was a few thousands, maybe tens of thous of people, largely in the monasteries, who kept up the best we had from the previous eras...

And if we're finickity: there are/were philosophers/arists/etc. who also worked all their lives or some of their lives as common labourers etc. [I know I did and quite a bit... ]

For Adorno, as for Freud, we become who we (inviduated "human") by repressing what we are (social animal). This isn't to say that our history could or should have see us done otherwise, or that possibilities for alternative becomings have been exhausted.

Moreover, we do not have to agree with that assumption or their "assessment" [that "we are" allegedly "social animals"] etc. Just as they "invented" their view - we can invent ours...

The possibilities are not only two [we are not exactly obliged in any way to "traditional" models]. There are also more than 3 or 4! Indeed, we [as humans] can keep making new ones... Anything less would be seriously conservative, don't you think?

Now, keeping those options open and in one's mind at all times, during any and all analysis, plus working on them through an immanent critique of Modernity/"merely existing" should keep pessimism away!!!