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from Part I - Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2020
Nineteen Eighty-Four, Dwan argues, is an embattled response to a broader crisis of humanism. Throughout the 1940s the merits and demerits of humanism were hotly debated, as Europeans began to reassess their moral heritage in the light of another disastrous global conflict. Humanism was repeatedly condemned as a metaphysically extravagant, morally complacent, and politically conservative attitude to the world, but it would also have its defenders. Orwell was one of humanism’s champions, remaining wedded to key ideals of human dignity, reason, and freedom, and the rights that these entail. But, as Nineteen Eighty-Four reveals, Orwell’s humanism was also a highly embattled one. The novel emphasizes the radical contingency of the human – and related ethical concepts like autonomy and dignity – while also staging various defences of these principles. This chapter explores the structure of this ambivalence.
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