Teleological conceptions of reality reminiscent of Hellenistic education, as
well as socialism and communism, were the utopian systems arising from this
attitude. In the later twentieth century, the postmodern criticism of rational-
ism and scientific objectivism gave rise to what Baab calls‘soft humanisms’.^4
Heeding Jean-Francois Lyotard’s and Foucault’s critiques of modernist
‘grand-récits’and the‘whore’of totalizing rationality,^5 soft humanists reject
any transcendent human nature or meta-narratives concerning a common
human telos, and postulate a transitory human being, bereft of transcendence,
and conditioned solely by natural and social environments.^6 The rejection of
any dogmatic claims about what constitutes human being or purpose explains
the many different conceptions‘soft humanisms’display regarding human
freedom, dignity, and nature, resulting in a broad spectrum that includes
evolutionary-naturalistic schemes and some forms of anti-humanism.^7 For
most such postmodern humanisms, the pursuit of systemic social change is
illusory, leaving only the option of temporary, particular coping strategies.
More astute critics of traditional humanism seek a path between hard or
soft humanism by criticizing the subjective starting point of both options.
Martin Heidegger, for example, criticizes traditional humanism for the an-
thropocentrism that marks modernity as a whole. If man is the creator of his
own values, then no objective moral laws exist, and we may as well give over
talk about human dignity, because we are never absolutely bound by moral
precepts that we invent ourselves.^8 Heidegger insists that‘the assignment of
those directions that must become law and rule for human beings’must come
‘from Being itself’.^9 As Emmanuel Levinas pointed out, this Heideggerian
alternative to humanism may not offer very fertile soil for ethics, because by
becoming defined through their relation to the impersonal‘neuter’of Being,
human beings lose their intrinsic dignity.^10 Heidegger does, however, depart
decisively from the Cartesian starting point of traditional secular atheism and
the rationalist and idealist philosophies on which it depends. From very differ-
ent perspectives, the philosophers Helmuth Plessner and Peter Sloterdijk have also
criticized man-made visions of humanity.^11 In their criticism of anthropocentrism,
(^4) Baab,Was ist Humanismus?, 275.
(^5) Michel Foucault and Jeremy R. Carrette,Religion and Culture(New York: Routledge, 1999), 99.
(^6) Foucault and Carrette,Religion and Culture, 275.
(^7) Baab,Was ist Humanismus?, 276.
(^8) Martin Heidegger,‘Letter on Humanism’,inMartin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David
Ferrell Krell (New York: HarperCollins, 1977; repr. 1993), 239.
(^9) Heidegger,‘Letter on Humanism’, 238.
(^10) Emanuel Levinas,Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority(Dordrecht, Boston, and
London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1961), 88.
(^11) Helmuth Plessner,Grenzen der Gemeinschaft: Eine Kritik des sozialen Radikalismus(Franfkurt
a.M: Suhrkamp, 2002), 17; Peter Sloterdijk,Regeln für den Menschenpark: Ein Antwortschreiben zu
Heideggers Brief über den Humanismus(Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1999), 17.
Introduction 3