| Publication |
2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
It is a minor embarrassment that the words humanist and humanism are regularly found on the same page of big dictionaries. I should say at once, therefore, that the contributors to this issue of Dædalus are humanists because they work on the humanities and teach them, often under conditions that seem unpropitious, in colleges and universities. What they are otherwise, in their personal and social lives, is none of my business. Humanism raises a different issue. The Oxford English Dictionary gives ½ve meanings of it, in notably awkward phrasing. The predominant one refers to a tenet, an axiom, or a prejudice-depending on one's viewpoint-in the history of philosophy: A pragmatic system of thought introduced by F. C. S. Schiller and William James which emphasizes that man can only comprehend and investigate what is with the resources of the human mind, and discounts abstract theorizing; so, more generally, implying that technological advance must be guided by awareness of widely understood human needs. In some contexts, humanism has taken on
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