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The first half of the 20th century witnessed the complete destruction of traditional humanistic ideals such as rationality, progress, or individual liberties. After such devastating experience, philosophers of the second half of the 20th century became gradually more and more outspoken about the idea, that the tradition of humanism as such should be abandoned. What comes next? One strong answer to this question is post-humanism. Dissatisfied with the prospect of promoting the humanistic ideals, many authors have proposed to envision a point of view not focused on humanity, not focused on the universality of the human, but rather on nature (the "more-than-human"), on otherness, on diversity rather than universality.
In this class, we will be exploring this silent revolution of the past 50 years, a revolution of thinking but also relating to ourselves, the world, and others. Much of today's struggle, dissatisfaction, but also conflicts can be linked to this revolution. The dominant position of humankind as the crowning pinnacle of creation, as the actualisation of rationality, freedom, and morality, is lost. Humankind sees itself differently. It is the purpose of this class to understand the fundamental aspects of this silent revolution and to link them to contemporary phenomena. We will be doing so in various exercises, presentations, discussions, media screenings, etc.
The class will have the form of a workshop where the students will be expected to contribute by active participation (presentations, small scale research, reading, discussions). The students will get the opportunity to develop their academic skills: we will focus on research methods, on various source-material for philosophical research, but we will also specifically discuss the use of AI tools in academic research.
Poslední úprava: Marek Jakub, Mgr., Ph.D. (30.01.2026)
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Note on AI tools: this class will specifically discuss the use of AI in research. We will be following basic rules for ethical AI in SSH (social sciences and humanities) research. Our guiding principles will be transparency, bias mitigation, and responsibility. Poslední úprava: Marek Jakub, Mgr., Ph.D. (30.01.2026)
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As a workshop, the class will not have a strict weekly syllabus. Rather, we will spend as much time as necessary on the topics such as: (1) What is humanism? (2) The downfall of humanism and its historical background. (3) New avenues of thinking: post-humanism, trans-humanism, new ontology (and ontological turn in anthropology) (4) Otherness, Plurality, and Decolonial Thought (5) Planetary and Ecological Futures (6) A new humanism? It is important to come to the first class meeting: we will discuss which topics to prioritise and distribute individual and group assignments. Poslední úprava: Marek Jakub, Mgr., Ph.D. (30.01.2026)
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