The Future of Humanism. Or: Toward a Future Worth Wanting

Consultation from March 23 - 26, 2023, Kloster Einsiedeln

The consultation “The Future of Humanism, or: Toward a Future Worth Wanting” is hosted by the Center for Faith & Society (CFS) at Fribourg University as a part of the center’s research focus “Contesting Computer-Anthropologies: The Human in the Digital Age” (CCA). It aims to foster a critical interdisciplinary dialogue, and also a growing network of scholars researching in this broad area of interest.

Thematic outline
Considering the societal, ecological and spiritual challenges of the 21st century, we believe it is time to inquire about the future of humanism – a humanism adequate to animate the deepest energies of human beings as we face a challenging future.

Humanism today is fundamentally called into question. We are witnessing a technogenic reshaping of our anthropology. The digital increasingly converges with ‘life’ and ‘intelligence’ in pervasive, intimate and largely invisible ways. In these convergences, our understanding of the human is changed. Novel technologies implicitly create and sustain a vision of the human which cuts across traditional anthropologies and the humanism built upon them. Posthumanists suggest that a better future is only possible if we do away with any notion of human nature, and so leave behind humanism. They even anticipate the ultimate replacement of the human by artificial intelligences and forms of life.

In this context, our colloquium explores a set of fundamental questions. Is there a human nature? If yes, is this human nature knowable by all? That is: Is it knowable by reason, or only by faith, revelation, or arbitrary speculation? If no, can we still have a humanism? Perhaps we can never find consensus on these questions; can we have a humanism anyway, without agreeing on what human nature is? In short, how can we build a truly human future, in the cultural and intellectual circumstances of late modernity? These questions are rarely posed, even as we rush towards a future in which the human is threatened by both technological and planetary change. It is hard to galvanise societal questions to fight for a future worth wanting if we do not frame such questions. This colloquium will explore the contours of an anthropology fit for the digital age, so that we can articulate and envision a future worth wanting.