Humanism and Anti-Humanism

Abstract

Professor Soper traces the development of humanism as well as its demise. She resurrects its authentic meaning by situating its roots in the philosophical tradition beginning with Hegel and followed by Marx, Husserl, Heidegger, and Existentialism. Treatment of the Marxist turn in Existentialism and its penchant to relate its own thinking to the political realities and contexts in which it was born, viz., the Cold War and the crisis for Marxism presented by Stalinism, leads her to the practical and political arena of the humanist and anti-humanist debate. She then reconstructs the growth of the anti-humanistic tradition beginning with the French structuralist L6viStrauss and continuing with the work of Althusser, Foucault, Lacan, and Derrida. This historical and philosophical setting frames the debate between humanists and anti-humanists in terms of the status of history itself and the question of who, if anyone, 'makes' it. At the end of her work she recasts the issues permeating the text by reformulating the essential question: In what sense, if any, is it valid for persons to conceive of themselves as conscious political agents whose decisions and actions have decisive effect on the course of history? (p. 146). The author identifies three lines of response. The structuralist, antihumanist, reply is that the question is not valid since the meaning of our conscious life is inaccessible to us. The existentialist reply is that we are entirely responsible for what we make of our situation. Finally, the socialist response is that people are conscious agents whose political options could be other than they are and whose actions have real impact upon their conditions of existence. Yet these conditions are not themselves freely chosen. The consequences of our actions are often unforeseen and unintended.

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