Exploring Humanity Intercultural Perspectives on Humanism

The old humanistic model, aiming at universalism, ecumenism, and the globalization of various Western system of values and beliefs, is no longer adequate – even if it pleads for an ever-wider inclusion of other cultural perspectives and for intercultural dialogue. In contrast, it would be wise to retain a number of its assumptions and practices – which it incidentally shares with humanistic models outside the Western world. We must mow reconsider and remap it terms of a larger, global reference frame. This anthropology does just that, thus contributing to a new field of study and practice that could be called “intercultural humanism”

Jörn Rüsen

Jörn Rüsen is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen and Professor Emeritus at the University of Witten / Herdecke. Between 1974 and 1989 Professor Rüsen taught History at the University of Bochum, following which he moved to the University of Bielefeld. For a decade starting in 1997, Dr. Rüsen was the President / Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Science National Taiwan University on 2008 and 2009.

Dr. Rüsen works on the theory and methodology of history, history of historiography, strategies of intercultural comparison in modern societies, and humanism in a globalizing world. Between 2006 and 2009 he headed the research project on ”Humanism in the era of globalization – an intercultural dialogue on humanity, culture, and values” at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen, and has published widely on the topic.

Mihai I. Spariosu

Mihai I. Spariosu is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Georgia, Athens, in the United States. He holds an M.A. from Tulane University and a Ph.D. form Stanford University. He is the founder and leading theoretician of a new field of study and practice, Intercultural Knowledge Management, which he proposed and developed in two internationally acclaimed books: Global Intelligence and Human Development: Towards an Ecology of Global Learning (MIT Press, 2005) and Remapping Knowledge : Intercultural Studies for a Global Age (Berghahn Publishers,2006) In 2010, he published his first novel, a fictional exploration of Plato’s life, ideas, and milieu.

Introdution (Mihai I. Spariosu)

Part One: Reopening the Door on Humanism
Temporalizing Humanity: Towards a Universal History of Humanism (Jörn Rüsen)
Homo Humanistus? Towards an Inventory of Transcultural Humanism (Roger Griffin)
Lessons from Early Chinese Humanist Impulses (Kirill Thompson)
Islam, Secular Modernity and Intercultural Humanism (Sayyed Moshen Fatemi)
Intercultural Humanism and Global Intelligence: Definition, Principles, Practice (Mihai I. Spariosu)

Part Two: The Treasures of Humankind
The Awareness of Cultural Diversity in Ancient Greece and Rome (Hubert Cancik)
European Humanism: East and West (Robert Evans)
Human Being as Species Being: A Reconsideration on Xunzi’s Humanism (Chen Chao-ying 陳昭瑛)
Buddhism and Intercultural Humanism: An Exploration in Context (M. Satish Kumar)
Harmony in Difference: Tension and Complementarity (Ming Xie)

Part Three: Challenging Humanity: The Multiple Dimensions
Humanology : The Fate of the Human in the “Posthuman” Age (Mikhail Epstein)
Integral Humanism and Its Challenges (Gheorghe M. Ştefan)
Otherness? Towards an Intercultural Literary Anthropology (Erhard Reckwitz)
Ubuntu/ Botho: Ideology or Promise? (Michael Onyebuchi Eze)
Tradition, the Beautiful, and the Uncertainties of Global Humanism (Virgil Nemoianu)

List of Contributors
Biography
Index of Names