Humanism

The humanism–anti-humanism debate must be understood as a primarily political debate about the subject of this humanism. In this sense we must attempt to articulate the collective dimensions of this subject, whether they be universalist, social, or anthropological. The role of critical theory is to clarify the terms upon which history can then intervene. This chapter examines the period following G. W. Hegel in the 1840s where debates around humanism and politics were at their most prominent. It focuses in particular on the relationship between Ludwig Feuerbach and Karl Marx over the question of “political humanism.” It also examines the revival of the debate over humanism that took place in the work of Heidegger in the twentieth century, and in French thought in the 1950s and 1960s.