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Humanism: A Reconsideration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2023

ALEKSY TARASENKO-STRUC
ALEKSY TARASENKO-STRUC*
Affiliation:
ALBANY MEDICAL COLLEGE [email protected]
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Abstract

Humanism is the view that people treat others inhumanely when we fail to see them as human beings, so that our treatment of them will tend to be more humane when we (fully) see their humanity. Recently, humanist views have been criticized on the grounds that the perpetrators of inhumanity regard their victims as human and treat them inhumanely partly for this reason. I argue that the two most common objections to humanist views (and their relatives) are unpersuasive: not only does the evidence marshaled against these views fail to disprove them, it could threaten them only if some questionable assumptions were granted. By providing necessary conceptual ground clearing and routing common lines of attack, I hope to determine what it would take for a humanist project to succeed, thereby paving the way for a full defense of humanism that fulfills its explanatory ambitions.

Keywords

dehumanizationhumanismrecognition
Type
Article
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , September 2024 , pp. 542 - 561
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Philosophical Association

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Footnotes

I presented versions of this essay at numerous venues, including the European Philosophical Society for the Study of the Emotions Annual Conference, the Human Dignity and Human Rights Workshop, the Kentucky Philosophical Association Scholars’ Workshop, the Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress, and a MANCEPT workshop on the Ideal of Recognition in Contemporary Normative Theory. I am grateful to audiences at these events for their challenging objections and helpful suggestions. Thanks to Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Sally Haslanger, Elizabeth Hupfer, Kate Manne, Harriet Over, Andrea Sangiovanni, Robert Tierney, and the participants of the 2021 Governors Scholars Program for discussion. Special thanks to Christine Korsgaard, David Livingstone Smith, Jonathyn Zapf, and two anonymous referees who provided generous—and often incisive—written comments.

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