Humanism and Well-being

The British Journal of Sociology, 2019

With growing inequality, the American dream is becoming less effective as a collective myth. With its focus on material success, competition and self-reliance, the intensified diffusion of neoliberal scripts of the self is leading the upper-middle class toward a mental health crisis while the working class and low-income groups do not have the resources needed to live the dream. African Americans, Latinos and undocumented immigrants, who are presumed to lack self-reliance, face more rigid boundaries. One possible way forward is broadening cultural membership by promoting new narratives of hope centered on a plu-rality of criteria of worth, 'ordinary universalism' and destigmatizing stigmatized groups.

Political Theology, 2020

Anthony Pinn's book delivers a powerful critique of humanism by uncovering its role in the American history of race, racism, and racial injustices. Pinn alerts us to the racialized assumptions of the classical humanist thought; he debunks the disembedded humanists' approach to race and racism in the American context. What Pinn ultimately produces, however, is more than just a critique of humanism. Pointing to humanism as it has been embodied and enacted in relation to race and racial injustice in the United States, he calls for the historicization and particularization of this notion and, in so doing, expands the meaning of humanism beyond its usual Eurocentric, Enlightenment configurations. In the American context, Pinn argues, with a complicated story of the relations between race, religion, and humanism, humanists most often question "[w]hy … so-called racial minorities" are "still theists," and why they continue to be the members of organizations "that have … perverted justices, and supported status quo?" (book, pgs. 31; 30). Pinn, who sees humanism as his "professional and personal commitment" (in this issue), turns the question around and asks: "Why hasn't humanism proven a more compelling alternative to theism for African Americans, American Indians, Latinos/as … ?" (book, pg. 31; italics are mine). At the heart of Pinn's inquiry, this question reveals, is a demand for reflexivity on the part of humanists themselves-for soul-searching as well as for the enactment of humanist ideals of justice against the specific and systemic legacies of racism. On my reading, then, one of the most powerful Pinn's critiques of humanism's shortcomings in relation to race is directed at humanists' self-understanding. Many in this group, he writes, think that humanism, "by its very nature, doesn't contribute to the maintenance of social injustice" and that the documents foundational for American democracy grounded, as they are, in the pursuit of happiness in the here and now-"speak to humanist sensibilities and concerns" (book, pg. 40). The problem with these perspectives on humanism and on the American project as expressing the best of the humanist vision is that they are ahistorical. They are the backdrop for the ways in which contemporary humanists, knowingly and unknowingly, support racial injustice, including with their assumption that humanism somehow escapes "the social construction of race" and is above racial prejudice as an "illogical thinking and behaving" (book; pg. 47). In their comments, three respondents to Pinn's book-Carol Wayne White, Jason A. Springs, and William D. Hartaddress different dimensions of his project. Wayne White explores Pinn's view of humanists' self-understanding to underscore how his critique reveals "the enduring legacy of white supremacy in an Euro-American lineage of

2018

In the last decades, our understanding of human well-being and development has shifted from a traditional focus on income and consumption toward a richer multidimensional approach. This shift has been strongly influenced by a body of research in subjective well-being (SWB) and the capabilities’ approach, which emphasizes the role of freedom, opportunities, and social inclusion on well-being. Using a novel nationally representative survey of Chilean households, this paper explores the relationship between life satisfaction and two ‘‘hidden dimensions” of development, agency, and human dignity. Human agency refers to the capability of an individual to control her destiny and make choices to fulfill goals set autonomously. Human dignity is associated with the absence of feelings of shame and humiliation, and is ultimately related to social inclusion. We use a method that allows to isolate the impact of personality traits affecting both SWB and capabilities’ perceptions. Our results sho...

Chicana/o Latina/o Law Review, 2006

African American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis. I am grateful for the thoughtful comments and reactions I received from participants at the Latina/o Critical Theory ("LatCrit X") Conference where I first presented these ideas, especially those from Paul Butler, Devon Carbado, and Pedro Malavet. In addition, I wish to thank my colleagues at Washington University School of Law, especially Sam Bagenstos and Tomiko Brown-Nagin, for their assistance in thinking about the basic set of ideas presented in these pages. Finally, I thank my colleagues in the African & African American Studies program at Washington University for their unrelenting scholarly encouragement and support.

2013

Index have invented it through Marshal McLuhan's theory. The author mentions that the ancient Greek civilization invented terms such as philanthropia, which meant "goodwill toward all men," and promoted a moral obligation owed by every human being to every other one. The Roman equivalent of the Greek philanthropia was the concept of humanitas Romana. Despite the adverse impact that Rome must have had on other ethnic groups, it remained to posterity as the great exponent of multiculturalism. Other Roman notions analyzed by the author are civitas, anticivitas, transcivitas, and imperium. Hruşcă suggests that a deeper analysis of the Roman civilization could be helpful for a better understanding of today's process of globalization. Chapter 7, "Was the Modern Cosmopolis Transformed into a Post-Modern Global Village?," by Constantin Stoenescu, develops, in a different way, the concept of global village. The author argues that the shift from Modernity to Post-Modernity was accompanied by a deep change of some presuppositions. He reveals that post-modernity replaces the so-called project of Cosmopolis with that of a global village. Stoenescu thinks that globalization should be considered the end of modernity, but not of history itself. This means in the author's opinion, that the old Kantian ideal about a common peaceful world was already fulfilled. This historical project was the basis of the modern society with the national state as a unit of global order. But the technological evolution and the market economy changed the society and the national state became something old-fashioned. The new aim is a global order based on transnational processes, and the brave new world looks like a village, a global village in which every person can know almost everything, if she or he wants, about everybody and everything. The author remarks that post-modernism, in its first phase, was a particular movement and had the main purpose of stopping and overcoming the modernism in architecture; it wasn't its aim to replace modernity with something like post-modernity. Later on, post-modernism undermined the authority of modern tradition and institutions. The idea of universality was under attack, as the new preferred approaches were deconstruction and the analysis of little fragments. All the strong modern claims for objectivity and universalism were put into question by post-modernism. The author remarks that surprisingly, a difference between what we wanted to build and what we have in fact built began to manifest itself. The main reason for this surprising result is the invasion of a new kind of subjectivity in all areas of social life, thinks Stoenescu. And he mentions that there is a new agenda in which some trends, philosophically supported, could be seen as a revival of culture, such as the return to the oral tradition or to the particular and to the local community. In the author's opinion, there is a way to unify and save all these revivals: to rediscover nature and to overcome the modern theological movement theorized by Gregory Palamas during the fourteenth century is one of the ways to reach this desired condition. Christ, Buddha, and Plato managed to understand the spiritual essence of a person in the world and to express it in symbols and concepts. As spiritual knowledge concerns what the person is in his essence, spiritual truth is he himself. When this essence of a person is completely developed, the spiritual archetype of humankind reveals itself in an individual appearance, says the author. Chapter 11, "The Ends of Philosophy in the Context of Contemporary Biopolitics," by Cristian Iftode, points out the role of philosophical thinking as extremely necessary in our contemporary society. Today, philosophy tends to revive the ancient formula of philosophy as "a way of life" or "care the human person needs to be remembered in the midst of our tendency to think in terms of globalizing powers. Chapter 27, "The Acting Person and the Vertical Experience of Transcendence in Karol Wojtyla's Writings," by Wilhelm Dancă, intends to undertake a critical consideration of the merits and limitations of the phenomenological analysis of the acting person, based on philosopher Karol Wojtyla's chef-d'oeuvre, The Acting Person. In a short introduction, Dancă articulates Wojtyla's methodology and anthropology, and points out the peculiarity of his philosophical endeavor which starts not from the ontological structure of person, but from human action as such. The deep basic idea consists in the intuition that the person is revealed in and through action. Wojtyla had the conviction that the phenomenology of experience can shed light on the divine roots of man's mystery and the fact that he can find fulfillment only in the transformation resulting from the interpersonal love of communion with God as Person. By adopting this interpretation, Wojtyla saw humans as persons, that is, beings created in the image and likeness of God, intelligent beings endowed with spirituality, freedom, and subjective feelings-an "imago Dei." In his analysis, the author shows that the phenomenology of the experience of human acts requires a perspective capable of taking it beyond simple morphological description. Such perspective becomes manifest at the level of conscience. Dancă examines only the free acts of man, his decisions, and choices, as related to the analysis of the fundamental experience of the I can, but am not constrained to do this and to the presentation of the person as the effective cause of its own actions. Following Wojtyla's example, the author attempts to bring together phenomenology and metaphysics and, to this end, he mentions the experience of the vertical transcendence of person, with a focus on the spiritual nature of person. As a conclusion, the unity of the person's being relies on the spiritual being. The spirit constitutes the person's wealth and that of its acts. Chapter 28, "Defining Human Dignity: Landmarks in the Thought of Pope Benedict XVI," by Şerban Tarciziu, tries to point out his contribution PART I FUNDAMENTAL HUMAN VALUES CHALLENGING CONTEMPORARY GLOBALIZATION CHAPTER I

Judgments about how well things are going for people during particular periods of time, and about how well people’s entire lives have gone or will go, are ubiquitous in ordinary life. Those judgments are about well-being—or, equivalently, welfare or quality of life. This article examines the concept of well-being and the related concepts of prudential value and disvalue (i.e., goodness or badness for someone). It distinguishes these concepts from ones with which they might be conflated, exhibits some of the roles they play in ethical thought, and examines some attempts to analyze or define them.

Una respuesta desde la teoría critica literaria afroamericana al posthumanismo. La autora indica que el posthumanismo esta muy bien si eres blanquitx, pero no esta tan cool cuando tu pueblo le ha sido impuesto por analogía una "animalidad" o "bestialidad" dentro de los criterios antropocéntricos del grupo hegemónico dominador y esclavista.

American Anthropologist, 2015

2012

Rather than treating them as discrete and incommensurable ideas, we sketch some connections between human flourishing and human dignity, and link them to human rights. We contend that the metaphor of flourishing provides an illuminating aspirational framework for thinking about human development and obligations, and that the idea of human dignity is a critical element within that discussion. We conclude with some suggestions as to how these conceptions of human dignity and human flourishing might underpin and inform appeals to human rights.

2010

In this essay, we notice that the priority of persons, the unbridgeable political gap between persons and mere things, corresponds to a special sort of moral and legal treatment for persons, namely, as irreplaceable individuals. Normative language that confl ates the category of person with fungible kinds of being can thus appear to justify destroying and replacing human beings, just as we do with things. Lethal consequences may result, for example, from a common but improper extension of the word "value" to persons. The attitude and act called "respect" brings forth much more adequately than "value" the distinctively individual priority of persons, allowing our common humanity to be a reason for each person's separate signifi cance. Unless we focus on the respect-worthiness of human life rather than on its value, we will not be able to argue coherently against those who think its destruction permissible.