NIETZSCHE’S CHALLENGE TO HUMANISM

Authors

  • Brian Thomas Campbell University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v19i1.13

Keywords:

humanism, Nietzsche, human nature

Abstract

This essay reconsiders the question of humanism in Nietzsche’s philosophy. The author argues that established readings of Nietzsche’s critique of humanism fail to consider the conceptual history of humanism; a genealogy which Nietzsche, as a classical philologist, knew well. The result is a more nuanced, historically and anthropologically textured idea of the human in Nietzsche’s thought than has often been understood. This representation of human nature extends important rational and moral values about what it means to be human by re-calling Cicero, Petrarch, Erasmus, and other key-figures in the humanist tradition. In doing so Nietzsche’s thought doesn’t mark an end of humanism, or construct a sign-post towards a post-humanistic age, but expresses a radical, rhetorically-driven challenge to conceiving of the human being as a rational animal (animal rationale). Only after we have corrected in such an essential point the historical way of thinking that the Enlightenment brought with it, may we once again carry onward the banner of the Enlightenment, the banner with the three names: Petrarch, Erasmus, Voltaire.— Human, All Too Human, 26.

Author Biography

  • Brian Thomas, Campbell University

    Brian Thomas became a student of humanism while pursuing an MA at the University of Chicago and completing a Ph.D. at Duke University (2006). He currently teaches German, Latin, and a variety of Honors Program courses at Campbell University in North Carolina. His current book project, Humanism: Historical Origins and Anthropological Trajectories, argues that the concept of humanism is ransfigured from a largely rhetorical figure in classical and Renaissance thought into philosophical anthropology in the early modern period and beyond.

References

Bindé, Jérôme. “ ‘Human, Still Human’.” Diogenes 206 (2005). Blanchot, Maurice. “The Limits of Experience: Nihilism.” In The New Nietzsche. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.

Buck, August. Humanismus: Seine EuropäischeEntwicklung in Dokumenten und Darstellungen. München: Karl AlberVerlag, 1987.

Cicero, On Moral Ends, Edited by Julia Annas. Translated by Raphael Woolf. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Erasmus. The Praise of Folly and Other Writings. Edited by Robert M. Adams. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.

Goethe. Goethe: The Collected Works. New Jersey: Princeton University, 1994.

Heidegger, Martin. “Letter on Humanism.” In Basic Writings. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: The Play Element in Human Culture, 1938.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Kelley, Donald. “Humanism and History.” In Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy. Edited by Albert Rabil, Jr. 3 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.

Koselleck, Reinhart. Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society, trans. Berg Publishers, MIT Press, 1988.

Kramnick, Isaac, ed. Enlightenment Reader. New York: Penguin Books, 1995.

Kristeller, Paul Oskar. “Humanism and Moral Philosophy,”Renaissance Humanism, vol. 3, 1988.

Magnus, Bernd and Kathleen Higgens, editors.The Cambridge Companion to Nietzsche.Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1996.

Marcuse, Herbert. Eros and Civilization. Boston, Beacon Press, 1955.

-----.One-Dimensional Man, Beacon Press, 1964.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. KritischeStudienausgabe in 15.Bd. Herausgegeben von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988.

-----.Beyond Good and Evil.trans. by R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin, 1990.

-----. Birth of Tragedy. trans. Frances Golffing. Garden City: Doubleday, 1956.

-----. Dawn. trans. by R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

-----. Human, All Too Human. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

-----. On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life. trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983

-----. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. trans. Walter Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Penguin, 1976.

-----. Twilight of the Idols, trans. Walter Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche. New York: Penguin, 1976.

Rabil, Albert Jr., “Desiderius Erasmus,” Renaissance Humanism, 3 vols. 1988.

Saunders, Jason L., ed. Greek and Roman Philosophy after Aristotle, Free Press, 1966.

Schürmann, Reiner. “Anti-Humanism. Reflections Of The Turn Towards The Post-Modern Epoch,” Man and World, vol. 12, number 2, 1979.

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Sokel, Walter. The Dionysian in Nietzsche,” New Literary History, Autumn vol. 36, 2005.

Soper, Kate. Humanism and Anti-Humanism. Open Court, 1986.

Spitz, Lewis W. “Humanism and the Protestant Reformation,” Renaissance Humanism, v. 3, p. 394.

Trevor-Roper, H.R. Men and Events: Historical Essays. Hippocrene Books, 1977.

Wilson, S. J. The Thought of Cicero. London: G. Bell and Sons LTD, 1964.

Downloads

Published

2013-10-09

Issue

Vol. 19 No. 1 (2011)

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Thomas, B. (2013). NIETZSCHE’S CHALLENGE TO HUMANISM. Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, 19(1), 13-40. https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v19i1.13