Thinking and Rethinking Humanism, an Ongoing Task

Authors

  • Freddy Varona-Domínguez *

    Center of Studies for the Improvement of Higher Education, University of Havana, Havana 10100, Cuba

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55121/prr.v2i2.602

Keywords:

Human Being , Humanism , Alienation , Estrangement, Human Enhancement

Abstract

Humanism is often associated with the Renaissance and Greco-Roman culture, primarily to highlight the central role assigned to human beings, but it is more than this. Various interpretations have been developed about it. The 20th century is notable for the number and variety of theoretical positions called humanism, many of them with great philosophical significance. Among the types of humanism that can be found in a vast bibliography are fideist, existentialist, and the middle way, whose common feature is the central role assigned to human beings. This article is developed from this variety of criteria, which defends the idea, followed by some authors, that humanism is not only ideas and purposes where the human being is the center of attention, based on a conception of the human being, but that, along with these aspects, it is the opposition to the ever-changing forms of alienation, and the continuous work for human improvement. Thus, some considerations are presented regarding alienation, understood as the oppression of human beings in any of its manifestations and the limitation of their capacities and possibilities, as well as regarding human enhancement, understood not only on the moral or physical level, but also in the conditions in which human life develops. For this reason, some considerations are presented regarding transhumanism, posthumanism, and the role that technologies play today.

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