Humanic?

Abstract

The author's coinage 'Humanic' is made in analogy to 'Titanic' and is meant to suggest the possibility and probability of the self-destruction (auto-apocalypse) of a good part of humanity if not of the entire humanity. The section titles indicate the whole range and depth of the problematic centered around this basic diagnosis: Modernity, post-modernity or auto-apocalypse? Post-postmodernism; Alienation of techno-science Inadequacy of human and society; Image-istic turn and image-istic world What philosophy, religion and art literature do not tell us? (Anti)apocalyptic moral decisions. Here are some of author's main theses Our auto-apocalyptic power has to be taken out of the conceptual and epochal framework modernity vs. post-modernity and given theoretical as well as practical priority. Critical reflections on it should be called post-postmodernism and its normative aspect anti-apocalypsism. Our main preoccupation has to be the possibility and probability of the absolute alienation of human creativity, i.e. the struggle for humanity's survival rather than 'the struggle for recognition between master and servant', (Hegel). Our basic views, practices and institutions are inadequate to wrestle with the apocalyptic danger: politics as struggle for power; power as a competitive, asymmetric, and violent 'zero-sum game'; state, its sovereignty and security; democracy as a procedure for electing leaders and rulers; market place as a system of transactions based on short-term preferences; and even the best existing morals and religions. All morals and moral philosophies thus far, all our concepts of good and right, both secular and religious ones, have evolved in communities incapable of putting in jeopardy the survival of human species and consequently even of imagining themselves in such a situation. But now we have to plead for a supercategorical imperative whereby the concern for humanity's survival is prescribed as a duty above all other duties or for religious people as the first God's commandment. In an (anti)apocalyptic situation where a part of humanity would have to be sacrificed in order for humanity to survive, it is not helpful to adopt a humanism saying 'Fiat justitia, pereat mundus.' A consequentialist moral philosophy, in my mind, would be less inappropriate for the imagined apocalyptic dilemma than a principle-ist ethics. Of course this consequentialism would have to be phrased in radically negative and not positive terms: rather than producing the greatest good for the greatest number of people, its criterion would be preventing absolute evil (destruction of entire humanity) at the price of inevitable colossal evil (destruction of a portion of humanity). With humanity existing under the shadow of self-inflicted apocalypse, in my opinion the difficulties of theodicy, already formidable, become totally unbearable. Auto-apocalypse (literal 'Death of Human') would have to mean for religious humanists a triumph of absolute: temptation, hubris and sin. Having imagined the 'Death of God' and having deified themselves instead, humans have dared to take the 'Final Judgement' into their hands. André Malraux used to warn that 21st century must either be a century of religion or it would not be at all? The meaning of his warning is not quite clear but he was right if he wanted to say that without universal religious ecumenicalism there is no chance for the survival of humankind.