Overview

Humanistic studies has been subjected to critiques from the inside of the university disciplines and shrinking support structures on the outside; moreover, recent technological developments have trapped humans in the maws of the information machine, where will, agency, and dialogue are constantly stunted and mediated, disclosing a nihilistic, dilated present. Against this panorama, Peter Carravetta argues that there is a need to recover the “human” in humanistic reflection, here described as a free social, creative, yet elusive being, caught between idealizations (utopias, concepts of society, autonomy of powers), the realities of survival (basic economics and geographies), and the dynamics of power (the languages and the praxis of actually running the society). The Humanist Project: Will, Judgment, and Society from Dante to Vico presents Dante as the first true humanist, with his stressing the preeminence of free will and individual responsibility in the life of the polis; Boccaccio’s later encyclopedic works as a philosophy of existence and history; Pico della Mirandola’s autopoiesis of the thinking and acting human in light of recent theories of interpretation, the self, and society; Machiavelli and the challenge of chance in determining sociohistorical patterns; Campanella as the last true utopic writer and first to conceive of a realist, world-scale political vision; and Vico as the thinker who identifies and describes the dialectic between historical recurrences and the free will of the individual.

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9781666920369

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Reviews

The Humanist Project proposes a humanism for today. Carravetta begins with anti-humanism, that is, attacks on humanism for its alleged faults and limitations by academic philosophers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Then he examines the works of authors from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment--the majority Italian Renaissance figures--in order to construct a humanism for today. These authors are Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Niccolò Machiavelli, Rudolph Agricola, Petrus Ramus, Tommaso Campanella, and Giambattista Vico. Certain qualities appear repeatedly. Humanism is what is human. It is individuals who possess free will, good judgment, and an understanding of the connection of the individual with society. In addition, Boccaccio was an acute social critic, Machiavelli explained how the will impacts his ideas of the proper way to organize society, Agricola and Ramus explained rhetoric and method, and Campanella realized that temporal and spiritual power cannot be separated. The bibliography on the figures of the past is adequate for Carravetta's purposes. The writing is always clear; Carravetta regularly puts his key ideas into italics. This reviewer sympathizes with the attempt to use history to create humanism for the present. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty. -- ""Choice Reviews"" In this lively volume, this adept and interesting philosopher employs a set of key texts in the Italian literary and philosophical tradition as a springboard to thinking about meaningful issues in our own day: What is the place of the humanities? How do we discuss and validate the human as a concept and category? Even when one might come to different conclusions, Peter Carravetta is always worth reading. --Chris Celenza, Johns Hopkins University Is the 21st Century the age when humanism is forced to give way to post- or trans-humanism? Not necessarily, according to Peter Carravetta. This book shows how a series of Italian Renaissance thinkers serve as beacons to guide us through thorny contemporary issues including the nature of responsibility, concepts of society, and the impact of science - and how these thinkers are bound to continue to guide us beyond the 21st century. Carravetta puts humanism, one might say, back in the human. --Robert P. Crease, Stony Brook University

Is the 21st Century the age when humanism is forced to give way to post- or trans-humanism? Not necessarily, according to Peter Carravetta. This book shows how a series of Italian Renaissance thinkers serve as beacons to guide us through thorny contemporary issues including the nature of responsibility, concepts of society, and the impact of science - and how these thinkers are bound to continue to guide us beyond the 21st century. Carravetta puts humanism, one might say, back in the human. --Robert P. Crease, Stony Brook University In this lively volume, this adept and interesting philosopher employs a set of key texts in the Italian literary and philosophical tradition as a springboard to thinking about meaningful issues in our own day: What is the place of the humanities? How do we discuss and validate the human as a concept and category? Even when one might come to different conclusions, Peter Carravetta is always worth reading. --Chris Celenza, Johns Hopkins University

In this lively volume, this adept and interesting philosopher employs a set of key texts in the Italian literary and philosophical tradition as a springboard to thinking about meaningful issues in our own day: What is the place of the humanities? How do we discuss and validate the human as a concept and category? Even when one might come to different conclusions, Peter Carravetta is always worth reading. --Chris Celenza, Johns Hopkins University

In this lively volume, this adept and interesting philosopher employs a set of key texts in the Italian literary and philosophical tradition as a springboard to thinking about meaningful issues in our own day: What is the place of the humanities? How do we discuss and validate the human as a concept and category? Even when one might come to different conclusions, Peter Carravetta is always worth reading. --Chris Celenza, Johns Hopkins University Is the 21st Century the age when humanism is forced to give way to post- or trans-humanism? Not necessarily, according to Peter Carravetta. This book shows how a series of Italian Renaissance thinkers serve as beacons to guide us through thorny contemporary issues including the nature of responsibility, concepts of society, and the impact of science - and how these thinkers are bound to continue to guide us beyond the 21st century. Carravetta puts humanism, one might say, back in the human. --Robert P. Crease, Stony Brook University In this lively volume, this adept and interesting philosopher employs a set of key texts in the Italian literary and philosophical tradition as a springboard to thinking about meaningful issues in our own day: What is the place of the humanities? How do we discuss and validate the human as a concept and category? Even when one might come to different conclusions, Peter Carravetta is always worth reading. Is the 21st Century the age when humanism is forced to give way to post- or trans-humanism? Not necessarily, according to Peter Carravetta. This book shows how a series of Italian Renaissance thinkers serve as beacons to guide us through thorny contemporary issues including the nature of responsibility, concepts of society, and the impact of science - and how these thinkers are bound to continue to guide us beyond the 21st century. Carravetta puts humanism, one might say, back in the human.

Author Information

Peter Carravetta is professor of philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook.

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