Existentialism and Humanism: Humanity—Know Thyself!

Studies in Philosophy and Education 32 (5):477-490 (2013)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

At times, an individual in modernity can feel dehumanised by work, by administration, by technology, and by political power. This experience of being dehumanised can take the individual to an existential awareness of the priority of existence over essence. But what does this existential experience mean? Are there ways in which this experience can reconnect the individual to her being human, or to her being part of humanity? Any such reconnection is further complicated by the suspicion that universal presuppositions concerning ‘humanity’ or ‘human being’ or ‘humanism’ carry pretensions of imperialist grandeur that must be challenged. How, then, might one proceed to connect existential vertigo with a culture of humanism that, while resisting such pretensions, nevertheless can find meaning for the dehumanised individual? In what follows I argue that a concept of modern metaphysics, with an aporetic logic of subjective experience, can carry this reconnection of the I and the We, offering meaning not in the resolution of their opposition, but in learning that the meaning of their opposition, and the meaning of humanity, is learning, is our education. I argue that it is only within modern educational metaphysics that humanity and the individual Know Thyself.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,388

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The existential and the spiritual in the existential anthropology of G. Marcel and E. Minkowski.A. S. Zinevych - 2018 - Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research 14:142-157.
Meaningful Lives and Meaningful Futures.Michal Masny - forthcoming - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy.
Spinoza's Anti-Humanism.Yitzhak Y. Melamed - 2011 - In Smith Justin & Fraenkel Carlos, The Rationalists. Springer/Synthese. pp. 147--166.
The Human Being: Understanding Humanity through God and Reason.Robert J. Rovetto - 2012 - In Dominique Bertrand, A. J. Gottschalk, Erin McDonald & Britta Spaulding, Convergence: Being Human – The 2nd Annual Anthropology Graduate Student Association Interdisciplinary Symposium. Anthropology Graduate Student Association, Univ. at Buffalo. pp. 49-60.
Humanism of the Other.Emmanuel Levinas & Nidra Poller - 2003 - University of Illinois Press.
Zugehörigkeit als Menschenrecht.Niels Weidtmann - 2021 - Zeitschrift für Kulturphilosophie 2021 (2):96-107.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-01-06

Downloads
92 (#235,632)

6 months
11 (#246,005)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Critique of Pure Reason.I. Kant - 1787/1998 - Philosophy 59 (230):555-557.
Totality and infinity.Emmanuel Levinas - 1961/1969 - Pittsburgh,: Duquesne University Press.
Critique of pure reason.Immanuel Kant - 2007 - In Elizabeth Schmidt Radcliffe, Richard McCarty, Fritz Allhoff & Anand Vaidya, Late modern philosophy: essential readings with commentary. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 449-451.
Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology.Jean-Paul Sartre - 1956 - New York: Routledge. Edited by Sarah Richmond & Richard Moran.
The Complete Works: The Rev. Oxford Translation.Jonathan Barnes (ed.) - 1984 - Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

View all 17 references / Add more references