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particular culture but rather with the practices of cul- tural world creation found at the basis of all human societies. That which makes humanism critical is pre- cisely the historical focus on the different practices by which different possibilities encoded in human organic social nature are repressed or developed in different institutional forms.
Hegel and Marx
Of course, Pico did not develop this insight with any sophistication. Its subsequent development traces a line through Giambattista Vico and Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel to Karl Marx, arguably the most important contributor to the development of critical humanism (although he never used the term). Marx took up and developed the core insight of Hegelian philosophy that human self-consciousness is the real- ization of universal rationality. Hegel meant that human history is a complex and contradictory series of struggles for self-understanding. He did not reduce human nature to a single exclusive property but rather claimed that it is variously expressed in the general practices of world building and world transformation.
Each shape of human social life is a real expression of one aspect of human being. The whole truth of humanity is found not in some particular set of insti- tutions but rather in the understanding of the general truth made manifest in human history—that humans are not the object of external determining forces but rather the collective subject, the active creators, of their own reality.
Hegel, it is true, did not always remain true to this core principle, especially when discussing the contri- butions of non-European peoples to the expression of essential human capabilities. The same objection could be leveled at Marx. However, the failure of Marx’s political project (communism) does not negate the insights of his understanding of human being. His early philosophical work can be read as a systematic elaboration on the critical humanist principle that human nature or human identity is self-creation. The value of this principle for research is that it concen- trates attention on the general capabilities that enable people to build and rebuild their social worlds. Thus, critical humanism not only can aid in generating cross-cultural understanding (by explicating cultural differences as the result of shared needs and capabili- ties) but also can aid in effecting social change by revealing that societies are not given and unalterable
facts but rather the results of collective human action subject to change through changed actions. If human being is essentially self-creating being, then it follows that every human, no matter what culture, class, gen- der, or ethnicity he or she belongs to, is considered an individual member of this species who is essentially capable, as Marx said in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, of free and conscious creative activity. A society that systematically impedes the full and free development of this capability for conscious activity is, according to this reasoning, coercive (i.e., in contradiction to the essential value of human life).
Critical Humanism and Contemporary Social Critique The critical impetus of this form of humanism need not be read in strictly Marxist terms. The essential value of the critical humanist perspective is that it enables philosophy and social science to avoid the opposed dead ends of cultural imperialism and cultural relativism. Because the conception of human identity is derived from a contrasting reflection between human world-building activity in general and the more limited forms of activity of other species, it cannot be accused of falsely generalizing its concep- tion of human nature from some particular historical or cultural tradition. Although some forms of social life permit wider or narrower expressions of human being, all depend on this world-making power. Thus, the essential human capability is neither absent nor fully realized in any particular cultural form. Despite this truth, critical humanism does not remain agnostic about the social implications of conceiving human identity in terms of free self-creation. Precisely because it is critical, it must refuse a merely empirical attitude toward history that is incapable of judging or evaluating different social forms. Its aim, as its name suggests, is to criticize any and all social, cultural, political, and economic impediments to the full and free development in each individual of his or her creative capabilities. For example, a critical humanist researcher investigating race in a given society would look to see how racialized minorities are “con- structed” by that society so that they appear to lack the
“essential” capabilities according to which that soci- ety defines humanity. The critical humanist would then demonstrate the way in which that society essen- tially tries to block the realization of the subaltern’s self-creative power. In other words, the critical 156———Critical Humanism
humanist would assert the humanity of the subaltern (their capability to express and realize their concrete differences) against the oppressive structures that impede the realization of the capability.
Critical humanism does not judge values as good or bad relative to their coherence with some particular assumption about human being (e.g., that the good for humans is the maximal accumulation of wealth, altru- ism, love of Jesus, or ascetic self-denial). Rather, val- ues and modes of activity are judged according to whether they are coerced by others/coercive to others or whether they are freely determined by the individ- ual and enabling of the free activity of others. In prin- ciple, this approach leaves open the question of what sorts of societies are consistent with human nature. If the realization of the essence of human being can be impeded in different ways (by class structure, sexism, racism, etc.), then it follows that it can be realized in different ways as well. Properly understood critical humanism does not impose some definite form of his- torical development on different peoples, although it does argue against any sort of institution that relies on preventing the full and free development of human potentiality for everyone. Its essential aim, however, is not to demonize this or that culture but rather to uncover the different forms of institutional blockage standing in the way of all-around development of indi- vidually meaningful and socially valuable modes of activity. In keeping with its principle about the self- creative nature of humans, critical humanism must leave the solutions to definite social problems in the hands of those most concretely affected by them.
At the same time, critical humanism does have something to say in general terms about what a human society, as opposed to an inhuman society, must look like. First, critical humanism maintains that a free or human society must satisfy the life interests of all humans equally. Critical humanism, regardless of its different forms of development, must demonstrate that humans share a general organic nature as well as cer- tain fundamental social needs linked to the develop- ment of their conscious creative capabilities. If it cannot or does not demonstrate these shared needs, then its claims about human identity are mere asser- tions lacking any objective grounds. In line with this contention, it follows that no society that systemati- cally denies basic life resources to designated groups of humans on the basis of their supposed “inferiority”
can be legitimate. Indeed, the essential value of critical humanist modes of research lies in their ability to
expose and diagnose these pathological forms of ideo- logical and institutional exclusion. Second, it also fol- lows from a critical humanist perspective that human life is essentially social and interdependent. What this principle means is that because every human relies on the work of many other humans for the satisfaction of his or her basic life interests, the realization of every- one’s capabilities, in a truly human way, must be socially valuable as well as individually meaningful.
That is, a purely egoistic focus on self is incompatible with the principles of critical humanism. This claim does not entail the necessity of self-denying altruism;
rather, it entails a principle of social reciprocity according to which the full value of individual activity is determined by the degree to which the activity one finds individually meaningful at the same time con- tributes to the satisfaction of other people’s life inter- ests and, therefore, is socially valuable as well.
Critical humanist approaches to the problem of human identity can play a vitally important role in the contemporary period. Regardless of how globalization is evaluated, one undeniable result is that it has brought different human cultures into more extensive and intensive interaction than ever before. These new forms of interaction have generated a great deal of anxiety about the incompatibility of different value systems. Alarmists from all quarters have been quick to warn of impending clashes of civilizations gener- ated by contradictory value systems struggling against each other. Because a critical humanist approach focuses on the dynamic nature of human cultures and, therefore, accepts the fact that cultures are products of human activity that are always changing, it does not immediately draw alarmist conclusions from the fact that intensifying global dynamics are causing people to reshape their cultures. The key question from the critical humanist perspective is not “Is change as such good or bad” but rather “What values are shaping the changes?” From this perspective, the important con- flict is not necessarily between culturally specific value sets but rather between more basic socioeco- nomic and political interests. If change is being coerced by social and economic dynamics that do not affirm human self-creative freedom as the most basic value, then globalization appears to be problematic.
By refocusing attention on the underlying clash between prevailing socioeconomic interests and the common life interests in institutions that satisfy fun- damental needs and, thus, enable people to realize their self-creative potential, a basis of solidarity Critical Humanism———157
between cultures is established. In that way, critical humanism can engender dialogue about new institu- tions and practices that gradually transcend exclusion- ary forms of power to make way for a different world in which the expression of different cultural practices is not threatening to nonmembers because it takes place in a global context of solidarity and the equal satisfaction of shared life interests. Such a world would be based neither on indifference toward the practices of others nor on the imperialist imposition of the same practices on everyone by a group power- ful enough to do so. It would be a new constellation of different practices equally committed to the princi- ple of equal satisfaction of life interests for the sake of equal freedom in the active expression of human capabilities.
Jeff Noonan
See alsoEssence; Essentialism; Historical Research;
Multicultural Research
Further Readings
Fanon, F. (1963).The wretched of the earth.New York: Grove.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1987).The phenomenology of spirit.Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Hofmann Nemiroff, G. (1992).Reconstructing education:
Towards a pedagogy of critical humanism.Westport, CT:
Bergin & Garvey.
Marx, K. (1977).Economic and philosophical manuscripts of 1844.New York: International Publishers.
McMurtry, J. (1998).Unequal freedoms.Toronto, Canada:
Garamond.
Noonan, J. (2003).Critical humanism and the politics of difference.Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Nussbaum, M. (2000).Sex and social justice.New York:
Oxford University Press.
Pico della Mirandola, G. (1948). Oration of the dignity of man. In E. Cassirer, P. O. Kristeller, & J. H. Randall Jr.
(Eds.),The Renaissance philosophy of man.Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.