Two Cheers for Humanism

Title

Two Cheers for Humanism

Author

Sanjay SETH

Page

37-57

DOI

Abstract

One of the most common justifications for colonial rule was the claim that liberty, equality, the dignity and rights of man, and institutions that were premised on these values and functioned to enshrine them- more generally, many of the values we associate with humanism, loosely defined- were to be the gift of the coloniser to the colonised. Anti-colonial movements in India and elsewhere invariably pointed out that in fact colonial rule rested upon the systematic violation of humanism; in doing so, they implicitly or explicitly accepted humanist values, arguing that only with an end to colonial rule would it be possible for these to be consistently applied. Briefly tracing these arguments, this paper goes on to consider a more "radical" position, one to be found in the writings of some Francophone anti-colonial thinkers. Fanon, Cesaire and others suggested, not just that Europe had not lived up to its humanism, or even that its humanism was necessarily and inescapably compromised by colonialism, but rather that exclusion of the "native" was constitutive of European humanism; that it was not accidentally and remediably racist, but inherently and constitutively so. Evaluating this argument, this paper concludes by asking what value, if any, humanism has today.

Keyword

humanism, colonialism, imperialism, Fanon, Cesaire, Sartre

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