Why am I somewhat uneasy with the idea of an "International Center for Humanistic Discourses" and with its convincing initial questions: "What is to be understood by 'humanistic' or is this still a usable term? How can we determine whether there is a humanistic discourse or humanistic discourses?" And why am I at the same time convinced of the urgency of these questions? The discrepancy stems from my own background and a sense of déjà vu: brought up in East Germany, I first encountered the concept of humanism in such combinations as "socialist humanism" and "socialism's humanistic image of man." In 1968 "humanistic values" advanced to a firm place in the language of the Constitution of the German Democratic Republic.22

Article 18, paragraph 1: "Socialist national culture is fundamental to socialist society. The German Democratic Republic promotes and protects socialist culture, which serves peace, humanism and the development of a socialist community. It opposes imperialist anti-culture [Unkultur], which serves psychological warmongering and the devaluation of man. Socialist society promotes a culturally rich life for the productively engaged, cultivates all humanistic values of the national cultural heritage and of world culture and developes socialist national culture as an endowment belonging to the people as a whole." (My italics.)

The very first text of Heidegger's which I happened to read after my escape to the West — his Letter on 'Humanism' (1946)44

I quote here and below from: Martin Heidegger, Wegmarken (Gesamtausgabe I, Vol. 9), ed. by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1976, 313-64 (figures in parentheses indicate page numbers).

Here Heidegger simply follows classical philologists like Werner Jaeger,55

Cf. Werner Jaeger, "Die geistige Gegenwart der Antike," in: Die Antike 5 (1929), 167-186, here p. 178; August Buck still held this opinion in: Humanismus. Seine europäische Entwicklung in Dokumenten und Darstellungen, Freiburg, München: Alber 1987, 13-34, and quotes parallel passages from Otto Regenbogen and Karl Büchner in: ibid., 479.

As Heidegger concedes, however, "humanism" can also be understood more broadly as an "endeavor to render man free for — and to find dignity in — his humanity [Menschlichkeit]." In this sense, "Marxian humanism" has no more need of taking its clue from antiquity than do Christian humanism or the "humanism with which Sartre identifies existentialism" (321). But to whatever degree all these humanisms may differ, for Heidegger they have one common denominator:

In its first, i.e. Roman, form, and in all its other forms up to the present, humanism presupposes that there is a /pp. 7-8/ general essence of man. Man appears always as animal rationale. This definition [Bestimmung] is not simply the Latin translation of the Greek zöon logon exon, but rather a metaphysical interpretation. This is not an incorrect definition of man's essence. It is determined, however, by metaphysics. (322)

The young Marx's "positive humanism"88

Karl Marx, "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts," in: Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, transl. and ed. by Loyd D. Easton and Kurt H. Guddat, Garden City, New York: Doubleday 1967 (= Anchor Books 583), 283-337, here 331.

This communism as completed naturalism is humanism, as completed humanism it is naturalism. It is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as this solution. [...] Only here has the natural existence of man become his human existence and nature become human. Thus society is the completed, essential unity of man with nature, the true resurrection of nature, the fulfilled naturalism of man and humanism of nature.99

Ibid., 304 and 306.

By transcending this "ontology of man,"1010

The apt formulation is Herbert Marcuse's in his early article "Über die philosophischen Grundlagen des wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Arbeitsbegriffs," in: H. Marcuse, Kultur und Gesellschaft II, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1965 (= edition suhrkamp 135), 7-48, here 27.

Heidegger does come to this conclusion in his Letter on 'Humanism' when he considers "destabilizing the term 'humanism' in a way that would render the humanitas of the homo humanus and the grounding of this humanitas suspect" (346). Indeed, he is convinced that all such "designations are immediately and inevitably misleading" (357). Hence his cautious answer to Jean Beaufret's question, how to restore meaning to the word humanism: "Inherent in this question is the intention to retain the word humanism. I wonder whether this is necessary" (315). And even more fundamentally: "Your question on the one hand presumes that you want to retain the word humanism, and on the other hand admits that this word has lost its meaning" (344f.). Not that the word "humanism" is "entirely without meaning and simply a flatus vocis":

Verbally humanum refers to humanitas, man's essence. The suffix -ism indicates that man's essence wants to be understood as essential. This is the meaning of the word humanism as a word. To restore meaning to the concept is equivalent to redefining [wiederbestimmen] the meaning of the word. (345)

/pp. 9-10/

If we forego such etymological speculations and instead seriously investigate the possibility, opened up by Heidegger himself, of "restoring a historical meaning to the word humanism" (ibid.), we arrive at an astonishing result. A study of the word's usage through history does not lead to the Renaissance, let alone to the Romans or even earlier times.1313

Cf. the articles 'Humaniora' (D. Klemenz), 'Humanismus, Humanität' (I. Pape) and 'Humanitas' (R. Rieks) in: Joachim Ritter (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 3, Stuttgart: Schwabe 1974, col. 1216f., 1217-1230 and 1231f., and 'Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus' (Hans Erich Bödeker), in: Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck (eds.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, vol. 3, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1982, 1063-1128. The articles 'Humanism,' 'Humanist,' and 'Humanistic' in the Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 5, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1933 (repr. 1961), 444, confirm — with some delay — the following reconstruction of the history of these concepts. On the other hand, Nicola Abbagnano's article 'Humanism' (transl. by Nino Langiulli) in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Paul Edwards, vol. 4, New York, London: Macmillan and Collier Macmillan 1967 (repr. 1972), 69-72, is a summary of all traditional prejudices about this topic.

the depths and heights of the human heart as such, mankind in its joys and sorrows, its strivings, deeds, and fates [...] [It is] the human spirit [...] selfdetermining and considering, meditating, and expressing the infinity of its feelings and situations: nothing that can be living in the human breast is alien to that spirit any more.1919

G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, transl. by T. M. Knox, 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975, vol. 1, p. 607; Hegel writes elsewhere: "the hero of such an epic would be the spirit of man, Humanus, which educates and lifts itself out of a dullness of consciousness into world history" (ibid., vol. 2, 1064 — translation slightly altered).

/pp. 11-12/

With Hegel we have come very close to the first appearance of the term "humanism," in a work entitled The Dispute between Philanthropinism and Humanism in the Educational Theory of our Time2020

Der Streit des Philanthropinismus und Humanismus in der Theorie des Erziehungsunterrichts unserer Zeit, Jena: Frommann 1808; repr. in: Friedrich Immanuel Niethammer, Philanthropinismus — Humanismus. Texte zur Schulreform, ed. by Werner Hillebrecht, Weinheim, Berlin, Basel: Beltz 1968 (= Kleine Pädagogische Texte, Bd. 29), 79-445 (quoted after the original pagination). The word humanism in a colloquial sense can be found as early as: Johann Friedrich Abegg, Reisetagebuch von 1798, ed. by Walter and Jolanda Abegg in collaboration with Zwi Batscha, Frankfurt a.M.: Insel 1976, 236 (cf. Bödeker's. "Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus," loc. cit., 1121).

Humanism demands "that only man's mind be educated and trained; that no time be wasted on bodily exercise; and that mental exercise concentrate entirely on spiritual matters, on the sacred ideas that are alone of enduring, eternal value; that no consideration be given to material objects of the visible, transitory world, etc." Thus, Humanism renders itself [...] undeniably guilty of a one-sidedness that results necessarily from a fundamental imbalance; and it should /pp. 12-13/ come as no surprise if, in the judgment of judicious men of the world, it proves vulnerable to all those accusations that we have shown above [...]: the accusations of exaggeration, enthusiasm and a lack of reality [Weltkenntniß] etc. (44)

It is no wonder then that, while Niethammer clearly prefers "humanism" to "philanthropinism," he nonetheless demands "that the two opposed educational systems be united"(66). In his use of the appellation "humanism" — which he occasionally goes so far as to term a "sectarian designation" (90) — Niethammer stresses above all the relation "to all of earlier pedagogy, whose fundamental quality was to nurture the humanity rather than the animality of the pupil" (8).2121

Animality here is explicitly used as a negative foil for "humanism" und thus could serve as evidence for Heidegger's thesis: "Metaphysics thinks of man from the perspective of animalitas even when one doesn't equal man and animal, but allows for a specific difference between them" (Brief über den 'Humanismus', a.a.O., 323).

The origin of the designations humanist and humanistic lay in the context of these studia humanitatis, which had developed since the end of the 14th century into a canon of scholarly disciplines: grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy; "and the study of each of these subjects also encompassed the reading and interpretation of standard ancient writers in Latin and, to a lesser extent, in Greek."2222

Paul Oskar Kristeller, "The Humanist Movement," in: Kristeller, Renaissance Thought [I]: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanist Strains. A revised and enlarged edition of "The Classics and Renaissance Thought," New York, Hagerstown, San Francisco, London: Harper & Row 1961, 3-23, here 9f.; cf. also August Buck, "Die 'studia humanitatis' im italienischen Humanismus," in: Studien zu Humanismus und Renaissance. Gesammelte Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1981-1990, ed. by Bodo Guthmüller, Karl Kohut and Oskar Roth, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz 1991 (= Wolfenbütteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung, vol. 11), 103-119.

The primary sense of the word clearly connected it [...] not with humanitas in general, but with humanitas — umanità in the strict and technical application to Renaissance schools. [...] The links are not found in the realm of abstract ideas, but only in the humbler field of school life and terminology; they lead through the restricted, practical, workmanlike region in which the word stands as a name for a tutorial chair or a certain phase in the classical syllabus of Renaissance schools. Reduced to the precise and concrete limits of a linguistic analysis, the etymological link between umanista and humanitas loses its vagueness and gains solid reality in the social framework of the period.2424

Campana, "The Origin of the Word 'Humanism'," loc. cit., 67 and 69; cf. also Paul Oskar Kristeller, "Humanism and Scholasticism in the Italian Renaissance," in: Kristeller, Renaissance Thought [I], loc. cit., 92-119, here 111, and "The Moral Thought of Renaissance Humanism," in: Kristeller, Renaissance Thought II: Papers on Humanism and the Arts, New York, Evanston, London: Harper & Row 1965, 20-68, here 24f.

And now Kristeller on the same subject:

It is true that many Renaissance humanists cherished the ideal of a universally educated person, and the humanist Vives designed an encyclopedia of learning on humanist rather than scholastic principles. It is also true that many humanists, or scholars with a humanist training, had strong interests in other subjects besides the humanities, and made significant contributions to these subjects. Yet it is important to realize that the professional home territory of the humanists was a well-defined and limited cycle of studies, which included a certain group of disciplines and excluded others.2525

Paul Oskar Kristeller, "The Medieval Antecedents of Renaissance Humanism,", in: Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1964 (repr. 1966), 147-165, here 150.

Yet already in the Epistolae obscurorum virorum (1515) — to be sure, expressed in medieval "kitchen Latin" and therefore not unambiguously — the designation humanista was subject to a revalorization.2626

Cf. Campana, "The Origin of the Word 'Humanist'," loc. cit., 69f.

ethical and intellectual education, human noble-mindedness, dignity and nobility of the human spirit, honor, wit, taste, humor, grace, elegance, subtlety, spirit, culture, /pp. 15-16/ education, urbanity, inner equilibrium, friendliness, kindness, leniency, philanthropy, hospitality, generosity, liberality.2828

Rieks, "Humanitas," loc cit., col. 1231 ; cf. Rieks, Homo, Humanus, Humanitas. Zur Humanität in der lateinischen Literatur des ersten nachchristlichen Jahrhunderts, München: Fink 1967.

Above all: "appellari ceteros homines, esse solos eos, qui essent politi propriis humanitatis artibus" (De re publica I, xvii, 28).2929

[...]though others may be called men, only those are men who are perfected in the arts appropriate to humanity" (Cicero, De Re Publica. De Legibus, transl. by Clinton Walter Keyes, Cambridge, Mass., London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann 1928, repr. 1966).

Humanitas, then, had been used in medieval Christianity mainly to mean "frail, mortal human nature," as opposed to the divinitas of God. By contrast, shortly after 1400, Coluccio /pp. 16-17/ Salutati and Leonardo Bruni Aretino once again referred directly to Cicero, adopting his term studia humanitatis (Pro Murena xxix, 61; and Pro Caelio x, 24) as the code word for their own endeavors: "humanitatis studia nuncupantur, quod homines perficiant atque exornent."3232

Leonardo Bruni Aretino to Leonardo Nicolao, in: Aretini Epistolarum Libri VI, ed. Laurentio Mehus, Florence 1741, vol. 2, 49; cf. Bödeker, "Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus," loc. cit., 1069f.

By their nature, the studia humanitatis presuppose a high degree of education with elitist characteristics and thus compromise their popular effectiveness. The European intellectual becomes a philologist. The intellectual and moral self-righteousness of the bourgeois exponents of the studia humanitatis — whatever their personal social classification may be — leads them increasingly away from /pp. 17-18/ the uneducated and creates in them a quasi-aristocratic sense of self and power. Their claim that a nobilitas litteraria and the traditional nobility are peers ultimately leads to an equation of humanitas and nobilitas.3636

Bödeker, "Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus," loc. cit., 1070.

"What is to be understood by 'humanistic' or is this still a usable term? How can we determine whether there is a humanistic discourse or humanistic discourses?"

/p. 18/