Humanist Project Research Articles

A People’s History of Iran: Between Empire, Capital and Class

ABSTRACT For centuries, Western imperialism has established a set of strict hierarchical, exploitative, and repressive relations with Iran through capitalist apparatuses such as unequal trade, military domination, and structures of accumulation, thereby ensured and perpetuated the country’s underdevelopment. Underpinning these apparatuses is a set of Eurocentric-Orientalist discourses, which reify Iranian society as an amorphous blob of backward, apolitical, stagnant, and archaic peoples, who have historically subjected themselves to totalitarian, “Oriental despots.” The corollary of this doxa is that the working masses are unable to mobilise and conduct a rational, egalitarian, secular, and humanist project that addresses their needs. Against this ideological and epistemological fallacy, this article conducts a dialectical and materialist analysis which examines Iranian history and politics through a multi-layered framework: internal class dynamics (meso-level) and their relations as a single geo-political site and circuit of the global capitalist system. Following the three waves of industrialisation, from 1848 to the present, the article demonstrates that Iran politics is shaped by a complex interplay of three social antagonistic forces: nationalist bourgeois, comprador bourgeois, and their antithesis, the working class. Moreover, the article argues that this internal interplay is an understudied site of conflict influenced and determined by global capitalist dynamics.

The Prospects and Perils of Humanist Discourse

The correspondence of Erasmus and Guillaume Budé represents an exemplary performance of the kind of intellectual exchange prized in humanistic circles of their day, though its sudden collapse has continued to puzzle interpreters. The design of this essay is to examine the prospects and perils of this epistolary venture set against the cultural, political, and religious circumstances of the time, and thus to show that this humanist project floundered not so much because of differences in personal character as due to fissures concealed in the rhetorical landscape over which these correspondents wished to travel. This rich and intricate theatre of humanist letters thereby illustrates both the noble aspirations and the inherent fragility of humanist discourse.

Humanism: A Reconsideration

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.

How Have We Always Been Posthuman?

This paper problematises the justification of ‘postist’ revisions of humanism. In the first part of the paper, a line of thought that persistently marks the self-perception of man is presented. It stretches from Plato, through Pico della Mirandola and Kant, all the way to existentialism and philosophical anthropology in the twentieth century. In it, man is understood as chronically deficient in their own ‘nature’ or ‘essence’, and his privileged status is built from this rootlessness. The second part of the paper is dedicated to the relationship of transhumanism and critical posthumanism to humanism. Transhumanism is found to harmoniously continue and/or radicalise the humanist project of self-creating and self-transcending man, while critical posthumanism advocates a rethinking and redescription of man in view of what are considered to have been the disastrous consequences of humanism: a transgression in relation to everything different from man by anthropomorphising it and anthropocentrically measuring it against himself. The concluding part of the paper detects a certain arbitrariness in the understanding of humanism by its critics, reminds that even within such a broadly understood humanism, critical moments have been inherited as its own content and corrective, and that announcements of radical cuts and ruptures with the humanistic tradition are perhaps redundant. It is also noted that something non-negligible has changed with the contemporary challenges of technoscience – artificial intelligence, informatics, robotics –but it is contested that this change in social history requires a cardinal rejection, change or neglect of the intellectual heritage that enables responses to it and/or a rational dispute about it. A synoptic overview of humanist landmarks and their post-humanist condemnations is suggested, which would respect the heritage of humanist thought and the right or even the obligation built into it of its critical review.

Transnational Dominican Activism

Dominican-descended people in the United States are one of the most dynamic Spanish-speaking, Caribbean, and Latin American ethnic and cultural communities in the United States. Whether in the Dominican Republic or as members of a transnational community, the Dominican population is one with a long and rich history of challenging the powers that be, unjust acts, and oppressive laws within the communities they inhabit through their civic engagement. This essay aims to address one question: as Dominican society and the world have largely evolved, what has been the role of U.S.-based online media in sustaining, disseminating and rescuing the long tradition of civic involvement and struggle exemplified by Dominicans at home and abroad? To answer that question, we explore the role of the ongoing online Dominican-centric magazine ESENDOM to demonstrate how online journalism documents activism within the Dominican community. ESENDOM and similar media have filled gaps that the mainstream media has failed to fulfill as there is a media blackout on the Dominican Republic and its people. This project is one about activism. This humanistic project documents some of the most important social movements to take place in the Dominican Republic and the United States in the past thirteen years (2009-2022), coinciding with the founding of ESENDOM in 2009. This project will present a timeline and an attempt to chart a chronology of political dissent and social struggles within Dominican communities in the United States and the Dominican Republic.

Наука как человеческий капитал и ресурс

Social philosophy of science views science as a public good in cognitive, political-economic and moral terms, and as a humanistic project. The author attempts to combine the economics of science and the social philosophy of science into a single exchange zone. The article discusses this problem in relation to technoscience with an emphasis on pragmatically oriented resource-efficient issues. The author transfers the experience of economics, management, engineering and industry to the level of philosophical reflections of science and technology. Innovative activity in technoscience can be imagined using Aristotle's universal scheme of underlying causes. Science as a cognitive resource is involved in socio-cultural construction using material and cultural resources. The author poses the problem of resource efficiency, which means a balanced interconnected set of resources of social practices. The installation of resource efficiency in the engineering environment is thought as the basis of material culture. Economists identify five main types of resources – material, financial, labor, temporary, information. Information and communication resources play a key role in the digital society. Analyzing the problems of technoscience as a public good leads to the allocation of cognitive resources and moral resources. Cognitive resources in science are associated with the intellectual potential of teams of researchers, individual scientists and engineers. The author poses the problem of moral resources in the aspect of the ethics of science, the role of responsibility for the formation of ideas and projects, research and their consequences. The problem of material, financial, labor, temporary, information and communication, cognitive and moral resources in the field of science has a socio-philosophical dimension. The article discusses the criteria for effectively engaging the potential of a cognitive resource in science in social practices. The author considers the problem of cognitive resources using examples of cooperation between scientists and representatives of the tradition, the movement of scientific volunteers.

O ISTINI, DUŠI, HUMANITETU I OSTALIM MAGLINAMA: „ANTROPOLOŠKA TRILOGIJA“ BORISLAVA PEKIĆA

The paper examines the principal ideological, thematic, and semiotic layers of the novels comprising Anthropological Trilogy by Borislav Pekić: ontological and epistemological status of literary texts and subjects, considering the literary mechanisms of deconstructing the con- cepts upon which the logocentric logic that informs the identity of Western civilization has grounded the human principle. By postulating that Pekić interprets the human as a function of ontological and ideological discourses, and, accordingly, understands it as a highly disper- sive and ambiguous semiotic structure, we have attempted to elucidate the central blank of the novels as the confluence of radical postmodern skepticism towards sustainability of the humanist project and deeply human belief in the epistemological potential of literature.

Discursive displacement and semantic diffusion of sense of place: revisiting Tuan

ABSTRACT Sense of place is a key concept in geography, which resonates with an audience outside of disciplinary geography. And yet, sense of place no longer has the prominence in geography that it once held. We argue that this is due in part to ‘discursive displacement' or shifts in meaning that have occurred as the concept circulated amongst different disciplines (e.g. geography and environmental psychology) and competing paradigms within geography (e.g. humanistic and critical human geography). Within this process of circulation, geographers and other scholars have overlooked Yi-Fu Tuan's distinction between rootedness and sense of place. This ‘semantic diffusion' contributes to the profusion of competing terms in the literature. It also contributes to the displacement of a practical concern with place-making and enhancing place experience, by academic debates over basic definitions and underlying philosophical commitments. In this paper, we pursue two related goals: First, we present a selective history of sense of place as a concept. Second, we argue that the time has come for a reassessment of a ‘Tuanian' sense of place. This offers both a path through the discursive field of ‘sense of place', and an opportunity to revitalize the attentive geography at the heart of Tuan’s humanistic project.

Critical Posthumanism, The Chrysalids, and Educational Change

ABSTRACT This paper comprises a re-reading of the 1955 novel by John Wyndham, The Chrysalids, in conversation with philosopher Rosi Braidotti’s formation of critical posthumanism. The author argues that such re-readings of curricular fixtures within secondary English classrooms constitutes a necessary pragmatic intervention in a school system often reluctant to re-examine its canonical texts. The author highlights the way The Chrysalids illustrates the transition from theocracy to liberal humanism but also invites the possibility of a posthumanism through its ending. Finally, the author considers the democratic and emancipatory foundations of education and their de facto humanist projects in conversation with posthumanist theory. The author concludes by suggesting that changes in texts, ways of reading, and the foundations of education are urgent amid the current socio-environmental moment.

Cultural Representations of Other-than-Human Nature

Cultural Representations of Other-than-Human Nature

Sociohumanistic Knowledge and the Future of Science.

The author’s understanding of the role of the social sciences and humanities in preserving and developing science as a sociocultural phenomenon is substantiated. This justification is built as an explication and critical analysis of the program of philosophical research in science and technology, the main content and results of which are presented in the monograph by I.T. Kasavin Science As a Humanistic Project (2020). This article describes how the search for new strategies for the study of science is carried out within the framework of Russian philosophy. The historicity of science is analyzed, and the complex topology of its genesis is shown, which does not fit into the linear scheme of historical continuity, reflecting the synchronous coexistence of different variations of science as a cultural phenomenon. The historicity of science makes us turn to the question of its cultural and historical agency; it is substantiated that this agency acquires a political character in the current activity. How can the political agency of science be perceived and consistently combined with the ethos of the expert community? According to the author, political agency and the range of interests that scientists defend in public are determined by understanding the essence of science as a cultural phenomenon. The existential and cultural-creative functions of science are emphasized; on this basis the author’s interpretation of the humanistic project suggested by Kasavin is proposed as a program for the humanization of technoscience.

Достойна ли наука гуманистического проекта? Ответ моим оппонентам

Достойна ли наука гуманистического проекта? Ответ моим оппонентам

Thinking with Julio Carrizosa’s Complex Environmental Perspective

In Latin America, the humanistic thought has seen a diversity of formations seeking to account for current socio-ecological transformations. These kinds of reflections —better known in the region as Latin/South American Environmental Thinking — have focused on critiquing the structural dualisms of modern thought, such as: civilized-savage, mind-body, society-nature. Through this critique, Latin American thinkers have sought to consolidate the project of environmentalizing knowledge, integrating both scientific and non-scientific practices to face the environmental crisis. However, there are very few analyses of the different theoretical contributions that have emerged from the Latin American humanist project, particularly from Colombia. Therefore, this article analyzes the contribution of Julio Carrizosa, focusing on his conceptualization of the Complex Environmental Perspective. Ultimately, the intention is to contribute to the consolidation of a Latin American perspective on environmental humanities.

Spaces for People: Technology, improvisation and social interaction in the music of Pauline Oliveros

The composer Pauline Oliveros emphasised that her music was a by-product of a larger humanistic project aimed at raising awareness and sensitivity through social interaction and community-building. In this article, I highlight the role of technology in facilitating social interaction in improvisatory contexts by considering three examples that span Oliveros’s career: the composition In Memoriam: Nikola Tesla, Cosmic Engineer; her telematic performances; and the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument (AUMI) project. In each of these examples, technological mediation transforms musical and social interaction in unpredictable ways, presenting obstacles that require participants to work cooperatively to resolve them. This intensification of Oliveros’s larger project is considered through several complementary theoretical frameworks, including Don Ihde’s theory of technological mediation, Daniel Belgrad’s concept of deutero-learning in improvisation and Georgina Born’s orders of social mediation in music. By deploying technology in visible – rather than invisible – ways, and by inviting participants to adapt to and even embrace unexpected elements that might otherwise be regarded as limitations, Oliveros’s work reveals how technology can simultaneously be understood as an affordance for music-making and an extension of a deeply social and community-oriented endeavour.

The Gift of Death as the Grand Narrative of Humanism: Towards an Inclusive Ethos for Co-realization

The celebrated western humanist tradition has its source in its early philosophical texts. In The Gift of Death, Derrida analyses the history of the emergence of ethical responsibility in the so-called Religions of the Book such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. While the humanist project helped itself through its conquest of the human sphere, it has served to upset the ecological balance and jeopardize sustainability. While searching for an inclusive vision for a sustainable, ethical perspective, Dōgen’s philosophy gains relevance in the contemporary context.

Frankenstein Redux

Frankenstein Redux

A vida humana como narrativa e a pesquisa em Direito e literatura

The purpose of this article is to articulate the philosophical perspective of human life as narrative with the humanist project of law and literature research. For that, an approximation is made between the novel The House of the Dead and the writings about the APAC Method; then, the narrative perspective of human life in its relationship with literature is discussed. After that, possible objections to the humanist project are analyzed. The conclusion is the possibility of a dialogue between law and literature, as long as the autonomy of both areas is recognized.

Machiavelli, Humanism, and the Limits of Historical Knowledge

ABSTRACT Machiavelli’s historical writings, notably the Discourses on Livy (1531) and the Florentine Histories (1532), continued the tradition of the humanist historical enterprise. They were informed by the humanist conviction that historical learning provided guidance for public activity and was therefore an important means of political education. However, a close examination of these works reveals internal strains and an undercurrent of skepticism concerning the value of historical knowledge. The article argues that these tensions and doubts are symptoms of a paradox inherent in humanist discourse: the paradox of historical distance. The humanist project of reviving classical antiquity was based on the premise that the past is different yet relevant to the present. But the very historical consciousness implied by this project threatened to reveal the opposite: that the past was alien and therefore irrelevant to the present.

Эрих Фромм: критика и апология гуманизма

The purpose of the study is to determine the humanistic potential of E. Fromm's philosophy in the context of the modern humanistic crisis. The article examines two sides of E. Fromm's humanism. The first side is the criticism of modern society from point of view of ideals of classical humanism. The second side is an apology for humanistic ideals in the context of a complex of dehumanistic phenomena and tendencies of the 20th century and the search for ways to revive and establish humanism in social practice. Criticism of the limitations of humanism by E. Fromm is associated with the disclosure of the main aspects of alienation of the individual in modern society. Fromm's humanistic ideal, an alternative to the contradictory and limited capitalist humanism, is described by the thinker using concepts such as "healthy personality", "positive freedom", "fruitful orientation", "love", "healthy society". Fromm's ideal of a healthy society is presented in his model of "humanistic socialism". Scientific novelty lies in the establishment of internal contradictions and limitations of the "radical humanism" of the thinker. As a result, it is proved that E. Fromm fails to find effective ways to overcome the dehumanistic processes generated by the development of capitalist society. The concept of the humanistic transformation of capitalist society, developed by the thinker, is a form of an abstract, utopian humanistic project. Therefore, the "radical humanism" of the thinker has only historical and cultural value, but did not become the program of actions and struggle of modern humanists. The practical sterility of abstract humanism does not mean its complete rejection, but stimulates the need to reach a qualitatively new historical form of humanism through constructive overcoming of its limitations.

Susanne Langer, Marshall McLuhan and media ecology: Feminist principles in humanist projects

In current scholarship, Susanne Langer and her theories of art, perception and connectivity are less well known than McLuhan’s. Comparison brings to the fore that both were concerned with the dulling effects of heavy-handed science and technology unregulated by human hand and heart, and both understood the expressive and liberatory possibilities of language as media and metaphor. By reading ‘diffractively’ – finding new connections and honouring patterns over polemics – this article brings Langer back into the scholarly conversation and reinvigorates our understanding of McLuhan. Langer did not consider her thought as principled by feminism. Yet according to recent critical biographer Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, her work was rooted in feminist ontology for espousing principles of relationality and embodiment. My article argues that McLuhan, too, eschewed dichotomies and linearities of traditional thought for the principle of relationality. Extending this claim further, my article also submits that media ecology – with its emphasis on interconnectivities, on feeling and thinking, on non-linearity – has features in common with feminist thinking.