Critical Humanism


Book Description

We live in a mutilated world and our humanity seems irrevocably damaged. Many critics suggest we have reached the end of humanity. In this challenging book, Ken Plummer suggests that such claims may be premature; instead, what we need is a new transformative understanding of humanity. Critical Humanism critically reflects upon and reimagines humanism for the twenty-first century. What is now required is a fresh, wide-ranging imaginary of an open, worldly, plural and caring humanity. It needs to take a critical stance towards older, often divisive ideas of what it means to be human, while reconnecting to a wider understanding of the rich diversity of life in the pluriverse. In an age of post- and transhumanist turns, Plummer provides a personal, political and passionate call for thinkers, researchers and activists to not turn their backs on humanism. We need instead to create a vital new political imaginary of being human in a connected planet. We simply cannot afford to be anti-human or posthuman. Restoring our belief in humanity has never been more important for edging towards a better world for all.




Humanism


Book Description

Humanism offers students a clear and lucid introductory guide to the complexities of Humanism, one of the most contentious and divisive of artistic or literary concepts. Showing how the concept has evolved since the Renaissance period, Davies discusses humanism in the context of the rise of Fascism, the onset of World War II, the Holocaust, and their aftermath. Humanism provides basic definitions and concepts, a critique of the religion of humanity, and necessary background on religious, sexual and political themes of modern life and thought, while enlightening the debate between humanism, modernism and antihumanism through the writings and works of such key figures as Pico Erasmus, Milton, Nietzsche, and Foucault.




Intellectuals in Power


Book Description




Documents of Life 2


Book Description

Documents of Life was originally published in 1983 and became a classic text, providing both a persuasive argument for a particular approach and a manifesto for social research. As a critique of anti-humanist methodology in the social sciences, it championed the use of life stories and other personal documents in research which are now widely used today. This book is a substantially revised and expanded version which takes on recent developments. Providing numerous illustrations from a range of life documents, the book traces the history of the method, examines ways of 'doing life story' research, and discusses the many political and ethical issues raised by such research. The whole book has been substantially re-written and




Humanism and Democratic Criticism


Book Description

brought on by advances in technological communication, intellectual specialization, and cultural sensitivity -- has eroded the former primacy of the humanities, Edward Said argues that a more democratic form of humanism -- one that aims to incorporate, emancipate, and enlighten --




The Critical Humanism of the Frankfurt School as Social Critique


Book Description

This book aims to extract a kind of Critical Humanism from the works of prominent members of the Frankfurt School. Oliver Kozlarek argues that what is compelling about this kind of restitution of humanism is the fact that it sought to be understood not as a conceptual-theoretical construction, but as a practice of critical social and cultural research. This means that it does not orient itself to an ideal image of the human being, but to making inhuman conditions of our current societies visible. It is above all in this sense that humanism is no longer understood in a Humboldtian, educational sense. Rather, it is about using critical social research as a political practice.




Doctors Serving People


Book Description

Today's physicians are medical scientists, drilled in the basics of physiology, anatomy, genetics, and chemistry. They learn how to crunch data, interpret scans, and see the human form as a set of separate organs and systems in some stage of disease. Missing from their training is a holistic portrait of the patient as a person and as a member of a community. Yet a humanistic passion and desire to help people often are the attributes that compel a student toward a career in medicine. So what happens along the way to tarnish that idealism? Can a new approach to medical education make a difference? Doctors Serving People is just such a prescriptive. While a professor at Rush Medical College in Chicago, Edward J. Eckenfels helped initiate and direct a student-driven program in which student doctors worked in the poor, urban communities during medical school, voluntarily and without academic credit. In addition to their core curriculum and clinical rotations, students served the social and health needs of diverse and disadvantaged populations. Now more than ten years old, the program serves as an example for other medical schools throughout the country. Its story provides a working model of how to reform medical education in America.




The Radical Humanism of Erich Fromm


Book Description

This book, shortlisted for the British Sociological Association's Philip Abrams Memorial Prize (2015), argues that Fromm is a vital and largely overlooked contribution to twentieth-century intellectual history, and one who offers a refreshingly reconfigured form of humanism that is capable of reintegrating explicitly humanist analytical categories and schemas back into social theoretical (and scientific) considerations.




Posthumanism


Book Description

What does it mean to be human today? The answer to this question, which is as old as the human species itself, is becoming less and less certain. Current technological developments increasingly erode our traditional humanist reflexes: consciousness, emotion, language, intelligence, morality, humour, mortality - all these no longer demonstrate the unique character and value of human existence. Instead, the spectre of the 'posthuman' is now being widely invoked as the 'inevitable' next evolutionary stage that humans are facing. Who comes after the human? This is the question that posthumanists are taking as their starting point. This critical introduction understands posthumanism as a discourse, which, in principle, includes everything that has been and is being said about the figure of the 'posthuman'. It outlines the genealogy of the various posthuman 'scenarios' in circulation and engages with their theoretical and philosophical assumptions and social and political implications. It does so by connecting the philosophical debate about the future of humanity with a range of texts, including examples from new media, popular culture, science and the media.




Reconstructing Education


Book Description

Drawing on elements of progressive education, existential theory, feminist pedagogy, and values education, critical humanism combines the holistic-psychological concerns of humanistic education with the sociopolitical contextualization of critical pedagogy. Developed over the past seventeen years in one of North America's most experimental postsecondary programs, The New School of Dawson College, this theory and practice responds to both the personal and the political needs of students. Reconstructing Education is at once a review of this century's educational theories, an account of the work at the school, and an empowering illustration of the way in which schools can incite the motivation of students and encourage them to become active members in a truly democratic society. The case study chapters on The New School give concrete examples of how this philosophy is manifested in the school's methodology, structure, and pedagogy and draws heavily on the written work of teachers and students. To formulate a similar approach for a specific school, it is essential to combine a rigorous analysis of existing educational models with the dialectical process of creating and recreating a new model defined by the articulation of both learners' and teachers' affective, cognitive, and socially constructed needs. This is a valuable book for anyone concerned with alternative approaches to education and for courses on educational theory or the philosophy of education.