Humanism

Definition

Humanism is the philosophical orientation that places the human subject at the centre of value, meaning, and agency — the inheritance of the Renaissance and Enlightenment that treats human rationality, dignity, and autonomy as foundational. In architecture, humanism underwrites both the Vitruvian "man" (the measure of all things) and the modernist belief that architecture should serve human needs and emancipation. But humanism is contested in this wiki: posthumanism (Peirce's pansemiotics, Latour's actor-network theory) challenges its anthropocentrism, Foucault's archaeology shows the "human" itself to be a historically recent, discursively-produced figure, and Benjamin's critique of bourgeois dwelling exposes the class-bound limits of humanist domesticity. Kant's "cosmic" and holistic understanding, by contrast, extends humanism toward a cosmopolitan, planetary responsibility.

Key Thinkers

• Immanuel Kant — the Enlightenment humanism of autonomy, dignity, and cosmopolitanism.
• Michel Foucault — "man" as a discursive figure with a recent "date of birth"; the critique of humanism.
• Bruno Latour — the nonmodern critique of the humanist separation of nature and culture.

Related Concepts

• Enlightenment — the historical home of humanism.
• Posthumanism — the critique of humanism's anthropocentrism.
• Ethics — humanism's ethical core (human dignity, autonomy).

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Kant for Architects — Kant's humanist and cosmopolitan vision.
• Latour for Architects — the nonmodern critique of humanist purification.