Il futuro di una tradizione: l’umanesimo come sfida del Terzo Millennio

Abstract

The article starts from the thesis that the concept of humanity is one of the few capable of providing an overall orientation in contemporary reality. If this is true, then it is necessary to renew the humanism. To this aim, a brief reconstruction of modern humanism and its predominant anthropological model is proposed: a model of human ambiguity and finitude, which includes contradictory characters and is, therefore, far from triumphant or pacifying. On the basis of this model, the shortcomings of post-humanist positions are highlighted, which do not fully grasp human finitude. Finally, related to this finitude, the paper deploys a “methodological conservatism”, that is, the need to recognize the dark and archaic sides of human nature. It is precisely thanks to such uncomfortable recognition that the ideals of Enlightenment humanism can be realistically preserved.