Beyond Humanism

By: Bart Nooteboom

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Synopsis: Beyond Humanism seeks to set humanism on a new footing. Enlightenment ideals of an autonomous, disconnected, and rational self are unrealistic. Together with Romantic dreams of authenticity and expression of the self it has had adverse effects, contributing to egotism and narcissism. Instead, this book employs a philosophy oriented towards the relationship between self and other. The book gives a critical discussion of religion, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. It seeks a way between Nietzsche's philosophy of the flourishing of life and Levinas's philosophy of the other. It argues that the self requires the other for its flourishing. The other is needed for the development of the self, for freedom also from the delusions and prejudices of the self, for transcendence of the self, for learning and innovation, for making sense in language, and for a life that aims not at a hereafter for the self but a hereafter that benefits others after one's death.