A MANIFESTO FOR A CRITICAL HUMANISM
IN
SOCIOLOGY
ON QUESTIONING THE HUMAN SOCIAL WORLD
Ken Plummer
(Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Essex, U.K.)
This was First Presented at the VI Congreso Andaluz de Sociologiá, University of Cadiz, November 2012
In June it was published in
Daniel Nehring: Sociology: A Text and Reader ( Pearson, 2013).
This is the first edition; it is now under revision for a 2nd version. Comments are welcome
Contact Ken Plummer at plumk@essex.ac.uk
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Thou shalt not answer questionnaires
Or quizzes upon World-Affairs,
Nor with compliance
Take any test. Thou shalt not sit
With statisticians nor commit
A social science
– W.H. Auden ‘Under Which Lyre’. 1946
We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom. Leo Tolstoy War and Peace, 1869
These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact. William James: The Will to Believe. 1896
SUMMARY
- Prologue: A very human animal in an all too human world
- On the Human Search for Meaning
- On Sociology
- The Challenge of Humanism
- Righting the Troubles with Humanism
- On Critical Humanism
- The Human Condition: Obdurate Features of the Human World
- On Human Potentials, Capabilities and Rights
- The Challenge of Plural Worlds, Ethnocentrism and Cosmopolitanism
- On Becoming Human: The Process of Humanization
- A Sociology of the People: Being Practical and Pursuing the Wise Society
- We are the Story Telling Animals
- The Politics and ethics of Humanism: Living a Better Life and Making a Better World
- Dark Hope and Dreaming Ahead in Perpetually Troubled Timers: Key Directions For a Future Humanistic Agenda
- Further Reading