Critical Humanisms

This distinctive reappraisal of humanism argues that humanist thought is a diverse tradition which cannot be reduced to current conceptions of it. By considering humanism via the categories of Romantic, Existential, Dialogic, Civic, Spiritual, Pagan, Pragmatic and Technological Humanisms, Halliwell and Mousley propose that the critical edge of humanist thought can be rescued from its popular view as intellectually redundant. They also argue that because these humanisms contain within them anti-humanist perspectives, it is possible to counter the charge that humanism is based upon an unquestioned image of human nature. The book focuses on the thought of twenty-four mainly European and North American thinkers, ranging historically from the Renaissance to postmodernism. It discusses foundational writers (some of whom have been claimed as anti-humanists) such as Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Dewey and Sartre as well as the contemporary thinkers Habermas, Cixous, Rorty, Hall and Haraway, to construct a series of provocative dialogues which suggest the ongoing relevance of humanism to issues of ethics, art, science, selfhood, gender, citizenship and religion.Given the range and originality of the book's approach, Critical Humanisms will be an invaluable resource for students and researchers in the Humanities, particularly English, American studies, cultural studies, modern languages, philosophy and sociology.

An extensive and profitable study ! Critical Humanisms is an expansive and multifaceted consideration. An extensive and profitable study ! Critical Humanisms is an expansive and multifaceted consideration.

Martin Halliwell is Professor of American Studies at the University of Leicester. His most recent authored books include American Culture in the 1950s (EUP, 2007), Transatlantic Modernism: Moral Dilemmas in Modernist Fiction (EUP, 2005), The Constant Dialogue: Reinhold Niebuhr and American Intellectual Culture (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) and Images of Idiocy: The Idiot Figure in Modern Fiction and Film (Ashgate, 2004). Andrew Mousley is Senior Lecturer in English at De Montfort University, Leicester. He is the author of Critical Humanisms (2003, with Martin Halliwell), Renaissance Drama and Contemporary Literary Theory (2000) and the editor of New Casebooks: John Donne (1999). He is the co-editor of the Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature series.