For a Regenerated Humanism in the Anthropocene

In this chapter, we conduct a study of humanism, its foundations and its history from Antiquity starting from Homer to the present day, passing through the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. Reference is made to the surplus of humanism that the Frankfurt School’s critique of instrumental reason and the disasters of modernity accumulated since the twentieth century calls for. The analysis of anthropological capacities conducted by contemporary phenomenology in dialogue with the humanities and social sciences and also biology highlights how much the human subject has an ecological capacity. In the time of the Anthropocene, it is necessary to put humans back in their rightful place as a vulnerable living being in interdependence with the other components of the Earth’s ecosystem, while recognising in anthropos capacities that are quite singular compared to other species—of reflection and knowledge (anthropological plasticity), of responsible agent in the awareness of the finiteness of its existence. The chapter is organised into three parts: (1) Humanism at the source of educational thought; (2) A critique of humanist education in the Anthropocene; (3) From a critical analysis to a renewed humanism.