Paradoxical Humanism and Environmentalism

In the last few decades, reflection on humanism has come back into fashion: an intense debate has developed within which we come across perorations in favour of a revolutionary humanism after the death of man (Negri), proposals for a scientific humanism (Latour), reflections on the role of humanism in today’s globalisation (Kallweit) or the theses according to which a humanism aiming to ensure coherence and strength in its values (dignity, rights, equality) must build itself on metaphysical or religious foundations (Osborn). To these voices we may add appeals for a new humanism (appeals that legitimately lead one to question what Renaissance humanism was, as Ciliberto argues). If we quickly retrace the history of the idea of humanism –considering that the term was coined in 1808 by F. I. Niethammer and then applied to the humanistic-Renaissance era, which was familiar with those of ‘humanist’ and ‘humanitas’–, we see that calls for a renewed humanism return periodically: Herder’s project of education of humanity, Siegfried Marck’s new humanism (1938), critical theory as ‘active humanism’ (Horkheimer), nocturnal humanism (T. Mann). A ‘history of humanism’ has already been (partly) traced by A. Buck (1987) in a book reconstructing this idea from its Roman origins to the beginning of the 20th century and by Toussaint (2008), who problematises the history and uses of the concept of humanism. This project then –taking into consideration the critiques addressed to humanism by the different voices animating environmentalism–proposes to address the question of humanism from a more lateral and decentralised perspective, highlighting the internal tensions, the anti-humanist or anti-humanocentric tendencies emerging in humanism itself. With this in mind, it will be crucial to examine certain authors of early modernity who distance themselves from discourses on dignitas hominis and rhetoric on human excellence by emphasising the gifts of animals or repositioning man within the broader horizon of nature (Guy de Bruès, Palissy, Montaigne, Pasquier, Bruno, etc.) and to reconstruct the developments of this anti-humanocentric discourse within the humanist tradition; but also to rethink the way humanism calls into play, precisely through its internal tensions, human well-being in social and environmental relations. The project will then investigate the legacy and misunderstandings of the humanistic-Renaissance programme in certain ‘phases’ of the developments of European culture, in particular the period between the 18th and 19th centuries (Herder, W. Von Humboldt), the second half of the 19th century (Darwin and the crisis of ‘classical’ humanism in the light of Darwinism), and the first part of the 20th century, in order to ascertain what remains of the original ideas of ‘humanitas’ and ‘humanism’ in authors who, in various ways, rethink the place of man in the sphere of the living or seek answers in the Western cultural tradition to the barbarism of their time.