Negative Humanism

Our investigation of negative humanism is based on the idea, inspired by Masaryk, that it is needful to take the postmodern crisis of the subject to an extreme position. Negative humanism emerges from the extreme position of this crisis, which is the subjective act of absolute self-negation (suicidal thinking). We will examine Hegel's, Schopenhauer's, Heidegger's, Sarter's analyses of the relation between being and non-being (life and death) and attempt to show that the act of absolute self-negation becomes an act of subjective affirmation, that is, the will to self-negation becomes the will to active subjectivity. The aim however is not to present a new kind of subject or to return to the subject of modernity. Building on Adorno's and Žižek's negative conception of the subject, we wish to arrive, by way of the notion of negation of negation, at a non-a-priori active socratism, that is, at a critical, active humanism.

CONTACT PERSON:

Mgr. Michael Hauser, Ph.D.
phone: 221 183 318
e-mail: michaelh@site.cas.cz