Bloomsbury Humanism and the Anthropocene: Recovering the Ethical Value of Humanity in the 21st Century

In response to the rise of anti-humanist thought, Tom Whyman proposes a new defence of humanism for the Anthropocene and the age of AI. We live in an age where humanity has taken on an importance to nature so central that we have become, as a species, the primary driver of geological change. But this recognition hardly fills us with a sense of pride at our achievements. Instead we are increasingly ambivalent about our own humanity: an ambivalence manifested from the academic humanities to cutting-edge AI research that seeks to remove the human altogether. But what does it mean to be ‘human’ in the first place? And how do we regain a sense of the ethical value of our humanity? Answering these questions, this book advances a new theory of ‘minimal humanism’. This involves the examination and acceptance of the human as a concept of meaningful, practical, ethical, and theoretical importance. Whyman argues that humanity cannot help but matter to us, as reason is essentially a human act, and criticises philosophers’ attempts to separate our animal nature from our rationality, arguing instead that they are dynamically intertwined with an ever-changing nature. And yet, Whyman emphasises, the humanism he presents is ‘minimal’, because, in agreement with anti-, trans-, and post-humanist critiques, he wishes to remind readers of humanism’s importance without enshrining our species as the absolute pinnacle of Being. In lively dialogue with neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism, Adorno, Marx, Midgley, Kant, and others, this is essential reading for anyone grappling with the ethical value of the ‘human’ in the 21st century.