"humanism"

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

Jim D.:

>what if we refuse to use the word "humanism" without some qualifier? so we
>can talk about "bourgeois humanism" (bad!) and "socialist humanism"
>(potentially good) but not humanism _per se_.

I don't necessarily object to it, if, say, you think you are "socialist
humanist."  There are lots of good people who might think they are
"socialist humanist": Norman Geras, Sean Sayers, etc.

>The rejection of all humanism reminds me of those followers of Althusser
>who saw people's consciousness as simply results of social structures,
>emphasizing the way in which society makes people at the expense of the way
>in which people create society.

Althusser: We are effects of structures.

Carrol & Me: We are our histories (and history is contingent, not the
"essence" of "human nature" unfolding in a teleological fashion).  (Society
doesn't stand outside people to make us.  Maybe the word "society" is a tad
misleading, too.  The word tends to lead us to posit "individuals versus
society" understood as an external relation.  Then we are back to
liberalism of some kind.)  In a possible future world in which no one is
oppressed, "humanism" (like religion) will become irrelevant in practice,
not just in theory (but we may never get there).

Yoshie