Intercultural Humanism Conference Series

HUMANITY AND INHUMANITYTopics, Theories and Discourses on Humankind and Humanism in

Humanities and Social SciencesInstitute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences

National Taiwan UniversityTaipei, March 8-9, 2012

The history of the humanities and of the social sciences is a vast repertoire of topics, visions, ideas, concepts, figures, theories and discourses related to the cardinal notions of humanity and inhumanity. In connection with the Taiwan launching of the new book series, Reflections on (In)Humanity, published jointly by V&R unipress and National Taiwan University Press, a conference is organized to explore these issues in an intercultural, interdisciplinary way.Participants are expected to speak for 25-30 minutes, and provide a critical synthesis of their topics, rooted in both the literature on the subject and in each participant’s reflection and self-reflection based on intellectual, academic, and existential experience. Starting from the proceedings of the conference, a collective book is planned for our book series.March 8

9:00-10:30 Panel 1: Humanity and Humanism: European Sources, Universal Meanings

Chair: Kwang-kuo Huang

Jörn Rüsen, “Humanity as a Historical Category”

Hubert Cancik, “Humanitas/Inhumanitas. A Basic Term of European Humanism and Its Roman Background”

11:00-12:30 Panel 2: Oriental Sources and Universal Forms of Humanism

Chair: Jin-tai Liu

Aziz Al-Azmeh, “Ex Oriente lux: Universal Pathways to Humanism”

Sorin Antohi, “Ahistorical Humanism: Eliade’s Oriental Model for the Occident and Its Contexts”

14:00-15:30 Panel 3: East ern Ambivalence and Vision

Chair: Chi-yi Shih

Jutta Scherrer, “A Forgotten Humanism? The Soviet Ambivalence”Kirill O. Thompson, “Humanity and Inhumanity: Confucian, Mohist, and Daoist

Reflections”

16:00-17:30Panel 4: Probing the Limits of Humanism: Eugenics and Human Perfectibility

Chair: Yun-hua Chu

Marius Turda, “Eugenics and the Grand Tradition of Humanism”

Stephen Byrne, “A ‘Modern’ Binary, or the Basis for Human Perfectibility? Defining the ‘Normal’ in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

17:45Public launching of the book series, “Reflections on (In)Humanity,” co-edited by Sorin Antohi, Huang Chun-chieh, and Jörn Rüsen, co-published by V&R unipress and National Taiwan University Press.

18:15The Sounds of Intercultural Humanism. Presentation of an Ottoman-era music performance (on DVD) based on a musical treatise by Romanian humanist prince Demetrius Cantemir (1673-1723). Comments by Sorin Antohi.

18:45 Reception.

March 9

9:00-10:30Panel 5: Humanism and Inhumanity: Creative Response of Tradition and Vision

Chair: Aziz Jiunn-rong Yeh

Huang Chun-chieh, “The Reception and Reinterpretation of Zhu Xi’s Discourse on Humanity in Tokugawa Japan”

Longxi Zhang (Hong Kong), “Inhumanity, Religion, Utopia, and the Vision of Humanism” 

11:00-12:30Panel 6: Intercultural Humanism: From Critiques to Lexicons

Chair: Jieh Hsiang

Oliver Kozlarek, “The Humanist Turn: Towards an Intercultural Critique of Dehumanization”

Stefan Jordan, “Making a Dictionary of Intercultural Humanism. Lexicographical Principles and Practices”

Participants:

Aziz Al-Azmeh (Budapest) Sorin Antohi (Bucharest/London) Stephen Byrne (Oxford) Hubert Cancik (Berlin) Yun-hua Chu (Taipei) Chun-chieh Huang (Taipei) Kuang Kuo Huang (Taipei) Stefan Jordan (Munich) Oliver Kozlarek (Morelia)

Jin-tan Liu (Taipei) Jörn Rüsen (Bochum) Jutta Scherrer (Paris/Berlin) Chi-yu Shih (Taipei) Kirill O. Thompson (Taipei) Marius Turda (Oxford) Jieh Xiang (Taipei) Jiunn-rong Yeh (Taipei) Longxi Zhang (Hong Kong)

Abstracts

Aziz Al-Azmeh, Ex Oriente lux: Universal Pathways of Humanism

This paper will propose that, among the various allowable definitions of humanism, one is related to the critique of religious representations and of organised religion, especially in situations, societies and milieus where religion is institutionalised, and where it and its personnel seek to exercise pressure and to achieve hegemony in fields social, cultural and cognitive.

In this context, and with knowledge available, it is possible to construct universal pathways of freethinking humanism in Europe and western Asia from antiquity until the present. Scepticism, Sophism, and Euhemerism are well known. Less well known, despite considerable research, is what I consider to be a crucial moment along this pathway, namely that of Freethinking in the Abbasid era.

This was a time when the cognitive, political and social critique of religion was very much in evidence. This paper will outline the main motifs and consider the social locations of this criticism. Highlighted will be the critique of prophecy, and the proposition that it is not only an unnecessary assumption and an irrational belief held by the multitude, and a motif according to which the multitude is manipulated by vested political and social interests, but that prophets were, ultimately, to be seen as charlatans. This idea eventually found its pathways to the Age of Antiquarianism and the Age of Reason, ultimately to the radical Enlightenment, emblematised by De tribus impostoribus, which has an interesting history of composition.

Also highlighted will be medieval Muslim Bible criticism which, according to recent scholarship, ultimately found its way to Spinoza’s Tractatus. Finally, like Deists and other critics of organised Christianity who saw Islam as a foil against the Church and its Mysteries, Arab Freethinkers used the figure of the Orient as a figure counter-posed to the irrationalism which they discerned in their own time with appeal to the Wisdom of the Brahmins, and medieval Arab ethnologists spoke with wonder about the Justice of the Chinese.

Sorin Antohi, “Ahistorical Humanism: Eliade's Oriental Model for the Occident and Its Contexts”

Mircea Eliade's time in India (mainly in Kolkata, 1928-1931), a polemical choice running counter to the overwhelming Eastern European Occidental tropism, and his lifelong interest in Oriental cultures (ironically, an Occidental influence itself, although the Romanian lands had had a deep connection to the Orient through the Hellenic/Hellenistic civilization, the Great Migrations, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Byzantium and later through the Ottoman Empire), especially in their symbolic and (perceived) ‘metahistorical’ dimensions, are indicative of a wider – (anti)modern and (anti)modernist -- European/Occidental crisis of self-identity and self-confidence. Under the circumstances, the ‘nostalgia of origins’ was seen as a way out of the crisis, and – in spite of some inevitable regressive undertones -- as a principle of renewal or rebirth. Thus, India/the Orient came to be construed by many Europeans as the pristine model for a decadent Occident, as a source of a new humanism.

Eliade's fiction, starting with his 1933 novel Maitreyi (translated into English as Bengal Nights. A Novel) and including a number of other books in his native Romanian; Eliade's journalism, especially travelogues and attempts at cultural mediation; Eliade's diaries and memoirs; Eliade's scholarship, starting with his 1936 Romanian book on Yoga (based on his doctoral dissertation, defended in 1933) – all bear the imprint of his encounter with India (as the epitome of the Orient) and of his quest for what I would call ahistorical humanism: an ideal(ized), immemorial, pre-metaphysical, ‘cosmic’, ‘metahistorical’ (going beyond and even ‘boycotting’ history), liberating, authentic, open Weltanschauung. According to Eliade, the contrast between Europe/Occident and India/Orient could not be more striking: European culture is all about 'conditioning' humans (as temporal and historical beings), while Indian culture is about 'de-conditioning' them.

This quest, both existential and intellectual, both rational and irrational (to the extent such distinctions make sense in this case), is perfectly captured by the August 27, 1951 entry in Eliade's Fragments d'un journal. The author reports a dream he had had the night before, in which he had seen himself as Narada, an Indian Yogi, incapable of speaking any language but Sanskrit. In the dream, Jung, Italian Indianist Tucci, and Surendranath Dasgupta (Maitreyi's father and Eliade's Indian mentor) were standing by. In reality (Eliade was attending at the time one of the Eranos meetings in Ascona), Jung was asked to provide an interpretation of the dream...

Starting from this episode and reflecting on Eliade's work in a wider Occidental context, the paper discusses Europe's (anti)modern (1870s-1900s) and (anti)modernist (1910s-1940s) turn towards its (mainly imaginary) Indian/Oriental roots, ranging from (mainly right-wing) interwar ideologies to more recent New Age 'spiritualities'. At the core of all these phenomena, the paper argues, one finds the fantasy of ahistorical humanism, which is seen in connection with concepts such as native humanism, non-Occidental humanism, and with the frequently problematic distinction between humanity and inhumanity.

Stephen Byrne, “A ‘Modern’ Binary, or the Basis for Human Perfectibility? Defining the ‘Normal’ in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

Derived from the Latin normalis, meaning ‘perpendicular to’, the normal, or norm, held, for many centuries, a distinct technical meaning in Geometry and Architecture, and, through metaphor, an equation with the rule of law. However, in much of Western Europe, over the course of the nineteenth century, this classical definition of the term was supplemented by a range of popular understandings, and a concurrent proliferation in technical applications, in subjects as varied as Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Meteorology, Mathematics and Biology. Most importantly, in terms of this paper, by the end of the century the term had become a signifier for a wealth of, often contradictory, statistical and qualitative judgements relating to, and indicative of, human populations.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when one considers the formative influence of his doctoral supervisor, Georges Canguilhem, in much of Michel Foucault’s work the development of ideas surrounding the “normal” is closely allied with the emergence of European modernity. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault suggests that, ‘like surveillance and with it, normalization becomes one of the great instruments of power at the end of the classical age’. Thus, unlike the juridical society of the Ancien Regime, which he contends was characterized by ‘the binary opposition of the forbidden and the permitted’, the modern disciplinary society is, for Foucault, exemplified in the self-referential hierarchy of the normal.

Foucault’s vision of the “normal”, as a unifying factor in the many different facets of modernity that he charted, is an alluring one. However, it does little to explain the complexity and confusion that still surrounded the use of the term at the end of the nineteenth century: especially in relation to the description of human populations. Indeed, when one looks at the British context, Foucault’s contention, that the “normal” supplanted the binaries of pre-modern society with a more complex self-referential hierarchy, becomes decidedly problematic. While this was almost undoubtedly the case in certain instances, and among certain groups – particularly for those involved in the Eugenics movement. Among the emergent “expert” professional groupings of the late-nineteenth century it is possible to elucidate many other examples where the “normal” itself became the basis for reified binary divisions; defined in opposition to the abnormal, the subnormal, or the pathological. Thus, in spite of its apparently unifying characteristics, the attempts to measure, define and

communicate the parameters of the “normal” became, in and of themselves, sites of contention.

Elaborating upon these issues, this paper will examine some of the debates which attended the multiple attempts to consolidate an image of the “normal” in relation to one particular sub-section of the British population; the “normal child”. Furthermore, it will ask how these, often incredibly specific, debates reflected upon, and related to, broader questions regarding the twin issues of variation and perfectibility in humans: issues which, in Europe at least, dominated much of the discourse surrounding the nature of humanity over the period in question.

Hubert Cancik, Humanitas/ inhumanitas. A Basic Term of European Humanism and its

Roman Background

1. European Humanism

European humanism is an open cultural system, centred upon education and philanthropy,

enlightenment and human rights. It is a pan-European tradition based on the achievements of

ancient Greece and Rome (800 BCE – 800 CE). Their weapons and arts conquered and

colonized by force and persuasion what now is Spain, France, Britain in the West, Germany,

Bohemia, and Romania in the East. The classical tradition and the humanistic movement are

embedded in a cultural field consisting of manifold national traditions, Jewish and Christian

religions, and the scientific and political innovations of modern times.

The basic term of this tradition (movement, system) is ‘humanity’.

2. The Background – Rome

The key-concept of European humanism is based on the Latin word humanitas. It means (a)

humankind, all human beings, the human family, (b) the nature (essence) of the human being,

what is common to all (reason; mortality), (c) philanthropy, helpfulness, compassion, (d)

civilized manners, gentleness, education, appropriate, elegant, urban behaviour.

The subject of all these features is called by a humble and sober name: homo, literally

“earthling”, belonging to humus – earth. The fundamental, pre-philosophical concept of man

in Roman culture sets homo against the beast, the wild, untamed, ferocious, cruel animal (lat.:

bestia, ferox, crudelis). Accordingly humanitas is set against inhumanitas meaning wildness,

cruelty, the uncivilized. Roman lawyers, philosophers, historians, poets, and artists tried hard

to shape and illustrate these concepts (Cicero, Seneca; Horace, Stace). For this endeavour the

Romans had to pick up the main tools from the Greeks.

3. Behind the Background – Athens

3.1 Greek philosophy, educational and political theory shaped the elementary Roman

concept. A human being is born helpless, weak and fragile, without shell and claws.

Therefore, by necessity, it needs society. Man, says the Stoic philosopher, is born in and for

society, he is sociable: homo socialis. He is born with reduced instincts; therefore, he needs

education, he can and he must learn and organize the transmission of experience and insight.

So the Greeks invented pedagogy, the gymnasium, the schools for grammar, poetry, rhetoric

and for philosophy (academy, lyceum): all these are Greek names of institutions meant to

educate and form the homo civilis (Quintilian, I). These institutions, as well as museums or

theatres, are the Greek heritage in Roman culture and, mediated by the latter, in the humanist

tradition of Europe.

3.2 Poets, philosophers, historians and political theory tackled from the very beginning of

Greek and Roman history with the problem of taming the beast in man. Tyrannical rule was

defined as dissolution of human society; consequently, the tyrant stood outside of the human

community and could be treated as a wild beast – a dangerous discourse. The Athenians

developed the rule of the poor and of the many, based on equality ( isótes) and liberty

(eleuthería), called democracy; nevertheless, they built an empire, thrusting in the right of the

stronger, an empire based on inequality, force and brutality (Thucydides, V). The treatment

of the enemy is a test case. From Homer (8th century BCE) to Sophocles’ Antigone (5th

century BCE) to Stace( 1st century CE) savaging against the dead foe and refusing an

elementary human right, the burial (humare), are described in detail and duly condemned by

“the unwritten law of Nature” (ágraphoinómoi), by the women at the altar of Mercy in

Athens, and in the name of humanity (Stace, Thebaid XII).

4. Conclusion

This rough and incomplete sketch of humanitas – inhumanitas as basic terms of European

humanism uncovers severe gaps and urgent tasks of research. Suffice it here to mention only

one: the task to collect other basic terms of European humanism, to constitute them by history

and theory in their semantic field, to compare them with analogous concepts in extra-

European traditions, beginning, for instance, with the concepts of history, tolerance, and

friendship.

Chun-chieh Huang, “The Reception and Reinterpretation of Zhu Xi’s Discourse on Humanity in Tokugawa Japan”

Ren”（仁 , humanity ,humaneness, benevolence） is the most important core value of Confucianism. This term is so important that there are 106 occurrences in 58 chapters of Confucius’(551-479 B.C.E.) Analects. The great Confucian master of the Southern Song dynasty, Zhu Xi (Huian, 1130-1200), compiled and wrote “Treatise on Ren.” In this essay, he conceived humanity against the backdrop of his metaphysics of li（principle）and qi (élan, cosmic vapor). On this basis, he gave a new account of the ethics and moral psychology of humanity, which greatly enriched the loftiness and depth of the philosophy of human life in his thought. Zhu Xi expressed this new account of humanity in his famous essay titles “Treatise on Humanity,” and in his Four Books in chapter and verse with collected commentaries (Sishuzhangjujizhu) as “the virtue of mind and the principle of love.”

Zhu Xi’s new account of humanity was highly innovative although it was constructed on earlier views. He followed the original path of self-cultivation laid down by Confucius and Mencius 1,500 years ago, and emulated the Cheng brothers’ metaphysical theory put forth just 50 years earlier in the Northern Song dynasty—“the person of humanity mixedly forms a single body with others.” Zhu thus formulated a paradigmatic account of humanity that would dominate the Confucianisms in East Asia from the 13th until the 20th century. However, Zhu Xi’s account of humanity in his “Treatise on Ren” and other works was based on his li （ principle ） -centered metaphysic, which at the same time provoked the Tokugawa (1603-1868) Japanese Confucians from the 17th century to forcefully dispute his view and to formulate new accounts of ren.

At the height of Tokugawa Confucianism, each school had many schisms and sects, and each sect had many voices. Despite this diversity of views, the main trend in Tokugawa Confucianism from the 17th century was in opposition to Zhu Xi’s thought. While the Tokagawa Japanese Confucians in their early age of the early phase had been stimulated by the paradigm of Zhu Xi’s thought, his “Treatise on Ren” stirred up a fierce response among Tokugawa Confucians. The Japanese Confucians, while commenting on the Four Books in their collected writings and commentaries, were provoked by the “Treatise on Ren” to reflect, draw inferences and bring new ideas into play about humanity. In the 17th century, Yamazaki Ansai (1618-1682） compiled Zhu Xi’s “Treatise on Ren” and “Dialogues of Masters Zhu Xi, Zhang Shi and Lu Zuqian”。ItōJinsai (1627-1705）essayed on “Treatise on Ren” Gomō Jigi (Words and Meanings in the Analects and Mencius) and Dōshimon (Inguries of A Child). And, in Dōshimon, Jinsai expressed some criticisms of “Treatise on Ren.” In the 18th century, Ogyū Sorai (1666-1728 ） redefined the term Ren following along Zhu Xi’s lines. At the end of the 18th century, Toshima Hōshū (1737-1814）compiled “Treatise on Ren” and “Further Records on Treatise on Ren” in which he offered some criticisms of Zhu Xi’s account.

The Tokugawa Japanese Confucian responses to Zhu Xi’s “Treatise on Ren” tended to fall into two intellectual tracks: the first track was the deconstruction of metaphysics which disavowed the metaphysics of principle that grounded Zhu Xi’s account of humanity. For example, Hayashi Razan (1583-1657) said：”It could be said that the virtue of the original mind is the substance while filial piety and fraternity are the function. Being of ren is the substance of filial piety and fraternity while treating the people with ren and others with love is the function.” Kaibara Ekken (1603-1714) said: “The way of being ren lies in being generous in ethical human relationships.” At the age of 32, when Itō Jinsai compiled his commentary on “Treatise on Ren”, he still followed Zhu Xi’s paradigm, but by the time he reached middle age and compiled Gomō Jigi and Doshimon he had completely shed Zhu Xi’s influence and taken the path of explaining “ren” directly as love and emphasizing that ren was a core value for concrete daily practice in actual human life. Ogyū Sorai interpreted ren as “the virtue of making the people secure” in his Benmei (Distinguishing terms). No matter whether they supported or opposed Zhu Xi’s account of ren, the Tokugawa Japanese Confucians could not accept the idea of grounding concrete virtuous practice on metaphysical principle. Thus, they all sought to deconstruct Zhu Xi’s metaphysical foundation. In traditional terms, we could say that the Tokugawa Confucians postulated a more concrete qi（élan） foundation in opposing Zhu Xi’s use of li (principle) in discoursing on humanity.

The second which the Japanese Confucians followed is to redefine humanity in term of political and social life. While opposing Zhu Xi’s use of principle in explaining humanity, the Japanese Confucians also opposed using “feeling” or “intuition” to interpret humanity. They advocated that humanity could be observed only in concrete expressions of love and caring. For example, Itō Jinsai said, “People of humanity are of the mind to carry out the rites as expressions of love.” He also said, “In the final analysis, humanity is nothing more than love. Love is the concretion of virtue. One who does not feel love will be unable to exhibit virtue […].”Humanity is thus to be exhibited concretely in interpersonal relations and interactions. Ogyū Sorai interpreted humanity in political context, saying that “humanity is the virtue of bringing peace to the people.”

In summary, in their new interpretations and criticisms of Zhu Xi’s “Treatise on Humanity,” the Tokugawa Confucians exhibited the concrete, practical trend of Japanese thought. However, when they deconstructed the metaphysical foundation of Zhu Xi’s account of humanity, they lost the lofty and deep philosophy of human in Zhu Xi’s thought. In this way, the Japanese Confucians really lost sight of the transcendental dimension of the Song-Ming Neo-Confucian “quest to verify the great self”(to use the expression coined by the late senior Confucian scholar Qian Mu).

Stefan Jordan, “Making a Dictionary of Intercultural Humanism. Lexicographical Principles and Practices”

The preparations for an encyclopaedia begin with considerations about its form or framework. That does not only mean that a list of entries must be arranged, which – taken as a whole – results in a summary definition of the topic the dictionary is dealing with. Also the form of publication (print or digital) has crucial influence on the contents of the dictionary: Producing a print version, for instance, one has to decide if the dictionary shall have an alphabetical order or a systematic one. In both cases, you have to have a complete list of entries before starting. You cannot add things later if you do not want to produce supplements. The correction of mistakes or the adding of missing ideas are not possible. This does not apply to digital publications: Here you can use different orders simultaneously, you can add and correct things, show the same thing under different key words etc.

For a dictionary of Intercultural Humanism, considerations about the framework are particularly important because it is a comparative dictionary. One idea that is central for one culture, might be less or not important for the other. If you have a print version with an alphabetical order, you must have an elaborated index for instance that visualizes intertextual relations and makes intertextual reading possible. Some of the aspects mentioned in the Western key word „individuality“ are possibly close to aspects that are mentioned in a key word dealing with specific Asian ideas. The crucial question we can discuss when reflecting on the form of our dictionary is: How can we bring together different ideas, different key words from different cultures in one dictionary, where they are a closely linked to each other on the one hand, but not forced into one leading, amalgamating ‚key word language’ on the other hand.

Oliver Kozlarek, “The Humanist Turn: Towards an Intercultural Critique of Dehumanization”

In the 1960s social movements all around the globe started to modify their agendas. Instead

of looking for universal solutions — which were increasingly identified with totalitarian

ambitions — they began to pay more attention to the recognition of cultural, ethnic and

sexual differences and identities. Simultaneously, intellectual and academic debates began to

be interested more in culture and initiated what today is widely recognized as a ‘cultural turn’

in the social sciences and humanities. The ‘cultural turn’ strengthened and propagated a

number of values, including cultural pluralism and an awareness that, in our modern world, it

is important to reflect upon the coexistence of distinct cultures and forms of life, while at the

same time resisting the temptation to reduce this plurality once more to an artificial, abstract

unity dominated by one set of interests. And this provides us with a glimpse of the critical

potential of the ‘cultural turn’. In contrast to the idea that all human cultures are being

propelled towards the same evolutional telos — an idea that was promulgated by the

influential 'modernization theories' in the first decades after World War II — the cultural turn

rescues the idea that processes of civilization and culture – and their results – do not follow a

logical, predetermined path.

But, however important the cultural turn may have been, there are signs that

culturalism has given rise to a climate of cultural relativism that is not only dangerous but

also incorrect. The errors in these positions, though evident, have been ignored for a long

time. One of the most obvious is that different cultures are incommensurable and cannot be

reconciled, while in fact they share many affinities and similarities. The question then is: with

what can we identify, as human beings, beyond the cultural and national differences that

separate us?

In response to this sort of questions in the academic discourse a new kind of

Humanism emerges. Its focus is not anymore on a supposingly unchangeable essensce of the

human condition, but rather on transcultural values that find their expression and realization

in thought and action and that are mediated through the different cultural traditions. Instead

of the logics of conceptual speculation this new Humanism champions a methodology of an

intercultural hermeneutics that enables an understanding of the 'other' in terms of his or her

own culture.

This new academic humanism seems to find a counterpart in breathtaking social

mobilizations around the globe (the Arab Spring, the Indignants Movement in Spain and

other parts of the Western World, the more recent mobilizations in Israel and in Chile). What

these new forms of social protest seem to share with the new academic Humanism is not so

much a clear definition of what it means to be human, but rather the conviction that our

contemporary societies for many different reasons corrupt the chances of living an humanely

dignified life.

In this paper I would like to propose a methodology in which the above mentioned

academic and non-academic manifestations of a new Humanism can be articulated. I will

suggest that this is possible in transdiciplinary and intercultural research programs in which

the multiple experiences of dehumanization are reconstructed and put into a comparative

perspective. A question that this paper wants to pay special attention to is on how different

experiences can be put into a dialogue. For this purpose I will explore escpecially the

possiblities of Maurico Beuchot´s proposal for an 'analogic hermeneutics'.

JörnRüsen,“Humanity as a Historical Category”The paper has three parts. In its first one it characterizes the structure and function of philosophy of history in historical thinking today. Three dimensions of this philosophy were distinguished: a material, a formal, and a functional one. In the second part the features of the material dimension will be presented. It starts from anthropological universals, and proceeds to the moving forces of history, and ends with its temporal dynamics as development, combining past, present and future. In the third part inhumanity is addressed as an integral part of this development. At the end history will be conceptualized as a universal process of humanizing man.

JuttaScherrer, “A Forgotten Humanism? The Soviet Ambivalence” Renaissance and Humanism did not characterize the evolution of autocratic Russia’s society and culture. The « New Man » whom the Communist leaders proclaimed after 1917 was opposed to values of the bourgeoisie such as humanism. The first labour camps had educational purposes which were praised by writers such as Gorky and educators such as Makarenko as breeding places of the new Soviet man. New « human material » (Bukharin) should be formed for the communist society wherever possible.

The paper will show how after the first decade of Soviet power and beginning with Stalin, references to a particular kind of proletarian or Soviet humanism begin to be used as instruments of propaganda against fascism and national-socialism, but also for the Stalinist constitution and Soviet socialist justice. Soviet humanism becomes by now synonymous with class struggle. After the official « discovery » of the economic-philosophical manuscripts of the young Marx (allowed only after Stalin’s death) « real humanism » becomes identical with Communism to be realised only in the Soviet Union. By now humanism gets integrated into the newly-established academic discipline of « ethics ». Humanism also becomes part of the vocabulary of the Russian Orthodox Church (whose tradition ignores this term) when its hierarchy has to present the Soviet state at international ecumenical meetings.

The semantic transformation of the term « humanism » until the last years of Brezhnev’s reign shows that in Soviet use humanism is not a concept, but a slogan and an indicator-topic which not only describes contents, but as a term undergoes a discursive restructuration. The history of the use and abuse of the term humanism proves once again that ideology is in a continuous process of adaptation.

The abundant post-Soviet references to the values of humanism--Putin declared 2006 as « year of humanism  in Russia» --are not free from the Soviet ambivalences of the term, an evolution which deserves to be followed.

Kirill O. Thompson, “Humanity and Inhumanity: Confucian, Mohist and Daoist Reflections”

• Early Chinese masters proposed, in turn, positions on “Humanity and Inhumanity” in response to the rising tide of forces and acts of Inhumanity in the land. Confucius (479-551 B.B.C.)witnessed the decline of civilized practices and breakdown of feudal relations in hand with the rise of self-assertive rulers and independent, competing, if not warring, states. Peering into this cauldron, Confucius sought to restore Humanity, not by positing rigid ideals and abstract principles, but by reminding people of their basic relationality and mutual dependence and leaders of their guiding and nurturing roles, then by reminding people of the concomitant virtues and ethics constitutive of the relational person. Noting that Confucius’ ideas did little to ameliorate the conflicts between states and between clans, which wreaked damage, harm and death, however, Mozi (fl. 479-438 B.C.E.) argued for treating others outside one’s relations as basically like oneself and deserving of impartial regard-- resulting in a life stance of openness to new relationships (and thus implicitly resulting in a life of tolerance and diversity). Moreover, condemning overt conflict and war, Mozi provided expertise on diplomacy and defensive war to states under threat. Though he identified and fended off roots of Inhumanity and advanced Humanity and the common good, Mozi’s devotion to utility and deafness to music, in particular, made his Humanity lack of charm and edification

• A limitation of both the Confucians and Mohists was their trading in narrowly human-centered ethics and approaches, which involved viewing humanity solely through humanity, thus making them rigid, artificial and alienated from the Way. The Daoists Laozi (5th century B.C.E.) and Zhuangzi (fl. 370-301 B.C.E.) argued that Humanity would be sustainable only through world (Way)-centered values and approaches, which involved viewing Humanity through the Way. To their way of thinking, when people had ceased imposing their ideals and paradigms and conceptions of how things should be on other, and had begun to 1) embrace world-centered values, 2) hold the attitude of letting be and 3) practice non-interference (non-intentional action), every one, every creature, every being, would begin to have free scope to unfold and be itself, releasing a vibrant, peaceful, fruitful diversity in society-- and the world.

• Ultimately, Daoist world-centered values involved one’s gradually achieving oneness with others, the environment, the world, so as to achieve wholeness and peace; for

only then could one genuinely resonate with the pulse of events-- and be attuned to the humanity in the nonhuman (Other) and the inhuman in the human (Self). In this manner, Humanity would realized in what Zhuangzi called “the great Self,” as the utmost person, the authentic person, the spiritual person, who forms, “a universe hidden in a universe.” The forces of Inhumanity would subside in such a universe, since the emotional, psychological, familial, etc., roots of inhumane drives and impulses would no longer be in play and everyone would develop freely together.

• As Albert Camus intimated in The Plague, rising forces and acts of Inhumanity reappear at odd times; and the old absolutist political, religious and ideological panaceas at best have failed-- and at worst have spawned ever new horrors. However, the dialectic of these and other early East Asian positions offers a palate of diagnoses and prescriptions for responding to the forces of Inhumanity in curative, ameliorative ways, rather than foist absolutist, zero-sum solutions. These positions all recognize the shades of gray in the pulse of world and human affairs, and seek to cleanse and reclaim the darker areas without inflicting equal Inhumanity and horrors in the process. Indeed, this is the only way to avoid being caught in the rotor of Humanity and Humanity and fully realize the potential of Humanity/World/Way.

 

Marius Turda, “Eugenics and the Grand Tradition of Humanism”

It was Kant who explicitly introduced the anthropological question, 'what is man?', into Western philosophy thus echoing other Enlightened attempts to build a new humanism. During the nineteenth century, the metaphysical privilege that the Enlightenment philosophers gave to man -- seen as the expression of a 'universal essence’ -- was corroborated with the belief that science progresses, that there was a cumulative growth of knowledge; in other words, there was a belief both in humanity's epistemological and social-historical progress. Earlier in the twentieth century, eugenic theories of human improvement were formulated, wedded to positivist and empiricist theories aiming at a reduction of all human and social understanding to a model of explanation drawn from the natural sciences. At the heart of eugenics lies the conviction that there is a human subject in history and that there must be accordingly a valid philosophical anthropology that can identify a coherent and constant human condition or 'nature'. 

Zhang Longxi, “Inhumanity, Religion, Utopia, and the Vision of Humanism”  In the modern times with devastating World Wars, genocide, and countless other atrocities, we have witnessed the monstrous capabilities of “man’s inhumanity to man.” Traditionally, religion and moral philosophy proposed ways to control or reduce inhumanity, while secularized social ideals put forward a different set of moral principles, but neither religion nor the utopian ideal of a good society have proved effective in preventing cruelties and

tyrannies in the world. What would be an alternative to these attempts? Can there be a new and realistic vision of humanism? Is it possible to recuperate anything useful from both religious and secular visions? What is the likelihood of such a humanistic vision to be accepted in humanity’s future? These are important and hard questions to be explored if as human beings we want to build a better future for ourselves and for the future of humankind.