| Summary: |
"A vibrantly written, irresistibly timely intellectual adventure--from ancient Greece through the Renaissance to the present-day and even beyond--by the bestselling author of At the Existentialist Café. "This is a book about humanists, but even humanists cannot agree on what a humanist is," declares Sarah Bakewell. Indeed, for centuries thinkers, writers, scholars, politicians, activists, artists, and countless others have been searching for and refining a philosophy of the human spirit. Humanism can be found in writings of Plato and Protagoras and in the thoughts of Confucius. It is ever-present in the work of Michel de Montaigne, and guided the thinking and activism of Harriet Taylor Mill. When Zora Neale Hurston writes, "Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels. The springing of the yellow line of morning out of the misty deep of dawn, is glory enough for me," that is humanism par excellence. In Humanly Possible, Bakewell declares that all the different meanings of "humanism" are worth looking at together because they are all concerned with humanitas, or "our culture and learning, our words and art, our good manners and sociable desire to say hello to the universe." What unites humanists, religious or not, scholarly or not, philosophical or not, is that they all put the human world of culture and morality at the center of their concerns. What could be more human than that? Embracing and celebrating humanism's swirling, kaleidoscopic, rich ambiguity, Bakewell sets out not just to trace this vital philosophical lineage through the lives of its major protagonists but to make her own dazzling contribution to its expansive literature. The result is an intoxicating, joyful celebration of the human spirit from one of our most beloved and charming writers. It is also a startlingly timely work that comes exactly when we most need its influence in a world gripped by the anti-humanist forces of authoritarianism."-- |
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