Retrieving Humanism in Broken Times

Roy Chan, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Literature, East Asian Languages and Literatures

Most of us here agree that the humanities are worth saving, but not all of us agree that humanism as a philosophy should be. Myriad forms of inequity, including sexism, racism, colonialism, and environmental degradation have been laid at the door of a humanism faulted for its anthropocentrism (and not without reason). I hope to show that there is a humanism worth retrieving, but only if it is rooted in a dialectical and speculative vision of the human as an ever-evolving category rather than as an abstract and transcendental standard hovering over and above the world. I draw on renewed interest in the legacies of Marxist humanism (including figures as Gillian Rose, Evald Ilyenkov, Wang Ruoshui, György Lukács) for thinking through the relationships between labor, species-being, and universality. This talk is presented by Schnitzer School of Global Languages and Literature and sponsored by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art.