The Crisis of Humanism and Emerging Post-Anthropocentric Epoch: A Personalistic View

Abstract

The present article is devoted to a discussion of the crisis of humanism and prospects for a post-anthropocentric society. The evolution of humanism is traced as a broad cultural phenomenon that affects all spheres of society. The author sets out to show that the crisis of humanism is associated not only with philosophical criticism from the perspectives of trans- and post-humanism, but also with the prospects for a society in which humanistic ideas about a person as a bodily- and mentally-autonomous being continue to predominate. In this regard, various ethical and philosophical concepts are considered that seemingly point to the inevitability of going beyond the limits of anthropocentrism. However, one particular problem that emerges is either ignored by many authors or remains to be properly resolved. This problem is associated with the prospect of losing the capability of “metamorphosis” due to the latest human technologies for universal communication (empathy and understanding) along with the destruction of the fragile global “lifeworld”. The destruction of this lifeworld is fraught with alienation and the multiplication of planetary risks. The author proposes that the problem of unpredictability and the danger of manmade interventions in human nature can best be approached by considering the hypothetical posthuman in close relationship with the social whole. This philosophical “optics” can be borrowed from the philosophy of personalism, understood here as the set of philosophical attitudes that affirm the highest value of a personality as a transcending being, involved in a timeless dialogue with other personalities.