Liberal Humanism

1
Liberal Humanism

• And the Liberal Humanist Subject

2
Liberal Humanisms Philosophical Roots

• Liberal-humanist philosophical thought
  contributes to modern beliefs in a reality that
  can be known directly through the senses and
  through the employment of rational thought.
• Liberal humanism inspired a scientific, rational
  world view that placed the knowing individual at
  the center of history, and viewed that history
  as the progress of Western thought.
• It served as the catalyst for the modern worlds
  reliance on individualism and belief in a common
  human nature, scientific rationality, and the
  search for truth as universal knowledge and
  certainty in the world.
• Of the many schools of thought inspired by
  liberal humanism, two directly inform modern
  reading practices empiricism and rationalism.
• Though Western empiricism finds its earliest
  inspiration in Aristotle, it took its modern
  form following the great 17th- and early
  18th-century British thinkers Locke, Berkeley,
  and Hume.
• Empiricism posits that all factual knowledge is
  based on our sensual experience and inner
  reflection -- that is, there is a reality
  independent of the mind that can be experienced
  by the senses.

3
Liberal Humanisms Philosophical Roots

• And while different schools of empiricist thought
  interpret key terms such as experience, fact,
  and world differently, they generally hold that
  the mind comes to acquire knowledge about the
  world by systematic means including induction
  and the scientific method.
• Rationalism, a school of thought with its early
  Western roots in the dialogues of Plato, claims
  as its modern proponents the 17th- and
  18th-century philosophers Descartes, Spinoza, and
  Leibniz.
• Rationalism is characterized by the belief that
  knowledge of the world can be attained through
  reason, that this knowledge is universal and
  deductive in character, and that everything is
  fundamentally explainable by this universal
  system.
• This view of the world, while at odds with
  certain fundamental tenets of empiricism, finds
  its greatest expression in the fields of logic
  and mathematics.

4
The Modern Self

• Before the Renaissance, Western society defined
  the self by its location within both a "secular
  and divine order."
• The center of pre-modern epistemology was "the
  great chain of being," in which all members of
  society had a proper place.
• With the rise of Renaissance humanism and the
  Enlightenment, however, the individual began to
  be conceived as sovereign and epistemologically
  central
• This reconfiguration of the self, spurred by
  historical events such as the Protestant
  Reformation and the scientific revolution,
  ultimately led to the systematic examination of
  the modern self. Although many participated,
  four of the more influential theorists were
  Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, and John Locke

5
The Modern Self

• Kant asserted that the definitive characteristic
  of the human self was its capacity for reason.
• Reason allowed the self to understand and order
  the world with certainty. According to Kant,
  "Reason is the faculty which supplies the
  principles of a priori knowledge," and "pure a
  priori principles are indispensable for the
  possibility of experience, . . . for whence
  could experience derive its certainty, if all
  the rules, according to which it proceeds,
  werealways themselves empirical, and therefore
  contingent?"
• Defining humans by their capacity for a priori
  reasoning reveals that the essence of the Kantian
  self is individual and imperviousness to
  experience (i.e., static).
• Kant deduced further that this self he envisioned
  was unitary
• Proceeding from the notion of a unitary self or
  self-consciousness governed by a capacity for
  reason that is unaffected by the particularities
  of experience, Kant felt that "pure reason" both
  enabled and compelled humans to construct a
  "transcendental philosophy" that articulated the
  structure and order of the experiential world.
• Locke shared with Kant the belief that humans
  were essentially individualistic and defined by
  their capacity for reason.

6
Beliefs of Liberal Humanism

• General
• Absolute Truth
• The world can be controlled and ordered
• We can picture and represent the world
• Belief in linear progress
• Universal
• Universality means text must be studied in
  isolation (context, personal ideologies)
• Human nature is unchanging
• People's individuality (personality) is
  transcendent
• Purpose humanist enhancement of life

7
Liberal Humanist Subject

• the notion that we have a more or less stable
  self-concept.
• The idea that we have a more or less stable and
  coherent Self (often referred to as the
  'Cartesian self' - after the 17th century French
  philosopher, Descartes)
• This Cartesian, liberated and autonomous subject
  is in charge of him/herself and engages (or at
  least is capable of engaging) in rational debate
  with other subjects to arrive at a consensus.
• This conception of the self or subject is
  fundamental to humanism and underlies, for
  example, the typical understanding of liberal
  democracy.

8
Liberal Humanist Subject

• understanding of the self as somehow having a
  uniquely individual core, somehow sheltered from
  cultural forces.
• the modernist notion of the individual self, with
  individual rights, including the right to
  self-fulfilment, self-realization, 'the pursuit
  of happiness', the right to property, the right
  to self-expression, to the 'free and full
  development of his personality

9
Individualism

• a political and social philosophy that emphasizes
  
• individual liberty
• belief in the primary importance of the
  individual and in the virtues of self-reliance
  and personal independence
• embraces opposition to authority and to all
  manner of controls over the individual,
  especially when exercised by the state or
  society
• Is directly opposed to collectivism, but it can
  exist in a community where individuals respect
  other individuals
• may derive from a belief in solipsism and is
  often confused with egoism.

10
Three conceptions of the self

• as suggested by Stuart Hall
• the Enlightenment subject, the highly
  individualist Cartesian subject, with some kind
  of essential, stable centre or core.
• the sociological subject, this conception of the
  self, while still adhering to the notion of an
  inner or core self, examined how the self was
  shaped and developed by significant others,
  reference groups and so on, and is of course
  central to any understanding of the notion of
  socialization.
• the post-modern subject, which is often referred
  to as the decentered subject, in which there is
  no stable 'core' identity if there appears to be
  then that is only because of the 'narrative of
  the self' which we have constructed and such
  narratives are themselves the product of social
  intercourse.