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{"id":5476,"date":"2010-03-15T11:25:42","date_gmt":"2010-03-15T11:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2476"},"modified":"2017-09-06T23:44:03","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:44:03","slug":"humanism-to-holocaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2010\/03\/humanism-to-holocaust\/","title":{"rendered":"Humanism to Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

<\/p>

In his The Opening of Vision: Nihilism and the Postmodern Situation <\/a> $\"\"$ , David Levin briefly traces the line from humanism to 20th-century terror. \u00a0Early moderns developed a vision \u201cderived from an egological and essentially anthropocentric vision of reason: reason as instrumental, pragmatic, practical. \u00a0And people slowly began to lose sight of the difference between reason and power: reason, increasingly asserting itself in self-destructive ways, began to think of itself as the will to truth.\u201d <\/p>\n

Essentially, subjectivity inverted into objectivity, and objectivity meant the destruction of subjectivity: <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen subjectivity triumphed, it imposed its will on things and brought into being a world ruled by objectivity. \u00a0But in a world of objectivity, there is no place, no home, for the subject, whose subjectivity \u2013 that is to say, experience \u2013 is denied value, meaning, and ultimately any truth or reality. \u00a0This triumph of subjectivity has been self-destructive; we can now see how the subject falls under the spell of its objects; how it becomes subject to the objectivity it set in power. \u00a0The subject is in danger of losing touch with itself. \u00a0When reason turned totally instrumental, a function solely of power, it legitimated the construction of a totalitarian state and engineered a Holocaust. \u00a0The legacy of humanism is terror.\u201d <\/p>\n

To gloss that: Modernity opens up a gap between subjects and objects, subjects standing above and surveying passive objects before them (the philosophy of vision implicit there is the subject of Levin\u2019s book). \u00a0But if we\u2019re going to have a comprehensive gaze, then we have to be included in that comprehensive gaze. \u00a0Subjects have to be objectivized in order to fit into the picture. \u00a0Once objectivized, subjects can be treated as objects, manipulated and controlled for supposedly rational purposes. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"