Farewell to humanism? Considerations for nursing philosophy and research in posthuman times

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that critical posthumanism is a crucial tool in nursing philosophy and scholarship. Posthumanism entails a reconsideration of what 'human' is and a rejection of the whole tradition founding Western life in the 2500 years of our civilization as narrated in founding texts and embodied in governments, economic formations and everyday life. Through an overview of historical periods, texts and philosophy movements, I problematize humanism, showing how it centres white, heterosexual, able-bodied Man at the top of a hierarchy of beings, and runs counter to many current aspirations in nursing and other disciplines: decolonization, antiracism, anti-sexism and Indigenous resurgence. In nursing, the term humanism is often used colloquially to mean kind and humane; yet philosophically, humanism denotes a Western philosophical tradition whose tenets underpin much of nursing scholarship. These underpinnings of Western humanism have increasingly become problematic, especially since the 1960s motivating nurse scholars to engage with antihumanist and, recently, posthumanist theory. However, even current antihumanist nursing arguments manifest deep embeddedness in humanistic methodologies. I show both the problematic underside of humanism and critical posthumanism's usefulness as a tool to fight injustice and examine the materiality of nursing practice. In doing so, I hope to persuade readers not to be afraid of understanding and employing this critical tool in nursing research and scholarship.

Full text

Received: 21 April 2023
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Revised: 23 May 2023
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Accepted: 25 May 2023
DOI: 10.1111/nup.12448
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Farewell to humanism? Considerations for nursing philosophy
and research in posthuman times
Olga Petrovskaya PhD, RN, Assistant Professor
School of Nursing, University of Victoria,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Correspondence
Olga Petrovskaya, PhD, RN, Assistant
Professor, School of Nursing, University of
Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.
Email: olgap@uvic.ca
Funding information
University of Victoria School of Nursing
Research Establishment Grant
Abstract
In this paper, I argue that critical posthumanism is a crucial tool in nursing philosophy and
scholarship. Posthumanism entails a reconsideration of what ‘human’is and a rejection of
the whole tradition founding Western life in the 2500 years of our civilization as narrated
in founding texts and embodied in governments, economic formations and everyday life.
Through an overview of historical periods, texts and philosophy movements, I
problematize humanism, showing how it centres white, heterosexual, able‐bodied Man
at the top of a hierarchy of beings, and runs counter to many current aspirations in
nursing and other disciplines: decolonization, antiracism, anti‐sexism and Indigenous
resurgence. In nursing, the term humanism is often used colloquially to mean kind and
humane; yet philosophically, humanism denotes a Western philosophical tradition whose
tenets underpin much of nursing scholarship. These underpinnings of Western humanism
have increasingly become problematic, especially since the 1960s motivating nurse
scholars to engage with antihumanist and, recently, posthumanist theory. However, even
current antihumanist nursing arguments manifest deep embeddedness in humanistic
methodologies. I show both the problematic underside of humanism and critical
posthumanism's usefulness as a tool to fight injustice and examine the materiality of
nursing practice. In doing so, I hope to persuade readers not to be afraid of understanding
and employing this critical tool in nursing research and scholarship.
KEYWORDS
antihumanism, Continental philosophy, Foucault, humanism, materiality, posthumanism
1|INTRODUCTION
This paper arises from a keynote presentation I delivered in August 2022
at the 25th nursing philosophy conference organized by the University of
California Irvine Centre of Nursing Philosophy and the International
Philosophy of Nursing Society (IPONS). In this paper, I discuss humanism,
theoretical antihumanism and posthumanism. Specifically, I survey
philosophical and theoretical movements and ideas advocating or
exemplifying these contrasting perspectives. I use the terms philosophy
and theory interchangeably and mostly follow conventions for how
specific thinkers or movements are classified in the literature.
My aim is neither a comprehensive overview of these move-
ments, nor an outright rejection of humanism from a position of
critical anti and posthumanities. Rather, I sketch the typical narrative,
a story of Western humanism and how it has been told within the
Western philosophical canon. As the reader will see, this is a
problematic story of white hegemony. Why focus on the way the
Western humanistic tradition has been told? Dozens of philosophers
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and philosophical movements mentioned in this paper have informed
nursing scholarship since the 1970s–1980s. More subterraneously
and powerfully, Western humanism has formed many of us and our
lives on a fundamental level, in good ways and problematic ways. My
aim is to help us understand those Western humanistic foundations
that the current posthumanist theorists find deeply problematic.
As a starting point, I will review a small sampling of selected
nursing posthumanist scholarship. Then I will sketch the key historic
and cultural moments and figures of the Western humanistic
tradition. One of my goals is to show that the humanist legacy has
a much wider reach than perhaps nurse scholars acknowledge. When
I turn to a French post‐structural theorist well‐known in nursing,
Michel Foucault, and discuss his antihumanism, my goal will be to
tease out lessons for nursing philosophy and research generated from
these earlier, post‐structural criticisms of humanism.
2|HUMANISM AND POSTHUMANISM
2.1 |Defining humanism
In the 1980s, Soper (1986) noted that the term humanism was
synonymous with atheism, denoting the secular ethics of national
Humanist Associations such as the American Humanist Association and
Humanists UK (https://americanhumanist.org/;https://humanists.uk). In
nursing, especially until the 2010th, the term humanism has been widely
used colloquially in place of other adjectives like kind, caring, humane or
person‐centred.Thetermhumanismisstilloftenusedwithoutany
sense of the history of this concept. And yet, in Continental philosophy,
this concept has an interesting history including a shift from its
centuries‐long positive connotation to its more recent problematic
status. Western humanistic philosophy has been criticized since at least
the 19th century. Twentieth‐century criticisms, most notably in French
structural and post‐structural theory in the 1960s–1970s, contrasted
humanism not with theism but with theoretical antihumanism.
More recently, humanism has been criticized from a posthuma-
nist perspective. To understand these criticisms, let us review key
assumptions of humanism. In the Western humanistic tradition, the
human is understood as a free autonomous individual who is the
author of (typically) his experiences. From the stance of humanism,
Man's superior faculty of Reason positions him above all other
entities, at the top of the hierarchy of life, and endows him with rights
that Man's Other (e.g., women and people of colour) and other‐than‐
humans do not have. The human is a subject in a world of objects
with concomitant beliefs in a separation of Culture from Nature, of
the social from the material. These assumptions have been evident
throughout history.
A note is warranted here about my capitalization of the word
man/Man. As much as possible, I use the inclusive word, human.I
capitalize Man in two overlapping but non‐identical instances: (1)
when denoting a generic being at the top of the hierarchy of life, a
white, able‐bodied, heteronormative, middle‐class male standing for
‘the human’and in relation to whom others were positioned as
inferior; and (2) when denoting the collective Anthropos or
humankind (mostly in the sections Humanism in Continental
Philosophy and Foucault's Antihumanism). Finally, I occasionally use
man or (hu)man with a small mwhen this more accurately represents
historical periods when ‘the human’meant—explicitly or implicitly—
free males. I am acutely aware that any capitalization of ‘man’and of
‘Western’and using ‘Man/man’as short for all of humankind remains
problematic, even when unpacked.
2.2 |Posthumanism in nursing literature
In the 21st century, global challenges are overwhelming: Climate
change. Extraction capitalism leading to the extermination of the
planet. Ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples. Corporate greed.
Profit‐driven health systems where people are handled as numbers or
as disposable resources. Breathtaking technological advances in
healthcare hand in hand with widening and appalling health
inequities. Police and State brutality borne disproportionately by
people of colour and other marginalized communities.
This list is generated not from dystopian apocalyptic movies or
even the news headlines but from publications in Nursing Philosophy
journal. Nurses' concern about these injustices is often expressed with
the concurrent realization that familiar conceptual tools and philo-
sophical perspectives (both nursing and non‐nursing) thus far ground-
ing the nursing discipline and the profession is inadequate to
comprehend and change these—ours—frightening and unjust realities.
Increasingly, in the context of these discussions, nurse authors turn to
philosophical and theoretical perspectives contrasting, and severing
ties with, traditional humanist beliefs. Preparing for this presentation, I
reviewed a small sample of (mostly) Nursing Philosophy articles
published since 2020 and discussing or citing posthumanism (Adam
et al., 2021;Dillard‐Wright, 2022; Foth & Leibing, 2021;Kalogirou
et al., 2020;Smithetal.,2022; Tanioka et al., 2021). This selection by
no means represents all posthumanist nursing discourse; however, as
the reader will glean from these publications, posthumanism is not a
single or unified perspective but rather a constellation of theoretical
positions with variations and subtleties specific to the sources cited in
nursing articles. It must be noted that here I am focusing on nursing
articles exemplifying the so‐called critical posthumanities. While in the
broader literature posthumanisms span from an acritical position on
AI‐enabled futures and enhancement of human species via biotechnol-
ogies (e.g., transhumanism) to a cautionary note about the ‘vanishing’
human body and its implications for nursing practice at the era of
human genome projects and virtual care (Sandelowski, 2002), my focus
here is on nursing literature that critically examines and recalls (i.e.,
remembers to argue against, to use Latour's word, 1999)the
assumptions of Western humanism.
An important posthumanities scholar cited in nursing literature is
Rosi Braidotti (e.g., Braidotti, 2019), a feminist neo‐materialist
philosopher from Utrecht University. She is widely known for
advocating posthumanism as a radical criticism of white, patriarchal,
cis‐gendered capitalism. Both Braidotti and nurse authors cite the
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20th‐century French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.
Two concepts from Deleuze and Guattari that influenced nursing
scholarship starting as early as 2002 are rhizomes (Drummond, 2002;
Holmes & Gastaldo, 2004) and more recently assemblages. These
words conjure up the image of networks, entanglements, tentacles,
and formations without starting points or endpoints. Assemblages
and rhizomes are said to offer a potential for reimagining life where
humans (however, who are humans in the age of cyborgs?;
Petrovskaya, 2023), nonhumans, and more‐than‐human species can
thrive on Earth reimagined away from the corporate extractive
economy. In relation to nursing, more specifically, these posthuman
potentialities help envision and enact equitable nursing practice
(Adam et al., 2021; Dillard‐Wright, 2022; Smith et al., 2022) where
humans/more‐than‐humans, be those nurses or patients, of all
genders and sexualities, abilities, races, and ethnicities, are afforded
livable lives, to use Judith Butler's phrase.
Above, I mentioned cyborgs, cybernetic organisms. This is a
famous notion from ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’written in 1985 by
the American feminist philosopher Donna Haraway (1991) promi-
nently cited in nursing writings on posthumanism. Haraway's (2016)
recent work continues to develop the notion of companion species
and forming kinships in the ecosystem she calls the Chthulucene. This
ecosystem is in contrast to, and a criticism of, the Anthropocene
dominated by human action, or what Haraway prefers to call the
Capitalocene. Besides Deleuze, Braidotti, and Haraway, the nursing
posthumanist literature also cites Bruno Latour and Annemarie Mol—
two of the principal scholars within the actor–network theory (ANT)
and its offshoot known as ‘after ANT’. While Latour and Mol do not
use the term posthumanism, one of the key ANT notions is flat
ontology that puts humans and non‐humans on equal footing.
Further, Mol's (e.g. Mol, 2002) project of ontological politics helps
unpack the supposedly single ‘reality’, a view that accepts multiple
inequities and injustices as given in the nature of things.
So far, I have been circling around posthumanism's most obvious
meaning captured in the word itself: post‐humanism.Post can be
certainly read as coming after, as temporally succeeding humanism.
But this is not the most important sense of the term—at least in
nurses' or critical theorists' usage. What is most important is a robust,
and often radical, criticism of the Western philosophical humanist
tradition. Perhaps this is not even criticism understood as close
engagement with, examination of, or a soft version of interrogation.
Rather, posthumanism entails a rejection of the whole tradition
founding Western life in the 2500 years of our civilization as narrated
in founding texts and embodied in governments, economic formations,
and everyday life.
Nursing articles discussing the advantages of posthumanism and/
or challenges arising from anthropocentrism vary in the degree of
their ‘radicality’. There is a range, from critiquing humanist American
nursing theory for its narrow conception of environment (Kalogirou
et al., 2020), to a radical disruption of the concept of human. For
example, Foth and Leibing (2021) dispute nurses’most basic
assumptions about what it means to be human when they theorize
dementia as a queer way of life:
dementia can be conceptualised as a radical break not
only with gendered roles and embodiments, but with
many of the norms that make us recognisable subjects.
Conceptualising dementia in this way turns it into …an
‘emancipatory space’and not merely a pathol-
ogy. (p. 1)
Foth and Leibing's (2021) view of cognitive impairment as
something with emancipatory potential is an example of how
unfamiliar, radical, and even frightening (as one conference attendee
described her reaction when Foth presented similar ideas at the 2021
IPONS conference) nursing posthumanist discourse can be. I have
reviewed a few examples from a growing body of nursing
posthumanist scholarship as a starting point. Below, I turn to
sketching the key historic and cultural points in the Western
humanistic tradition to show a much wider reach of the humanist
legacy than is often recognized.
3|THE WESTERN HUMANISTIC
TRADITION FROM CICERO TO KANT
In this part of the paper, I initially follow an accepted historical
periodization from Antiquity to the Enlightenment and Romanticism
in Europe. Once the figure of Kant is introduced, I discuss the
Western tradition focusing on the best‐known Continental philo-
sophical movements. For the most part, this presentation intention-
ally foregrounds the Western‐centric story how it has been told for
many decades, in many places, and through many authoritative texts.
This approach helps make visible ‘the negative spaces’, that is, the
many omissions, silences, oppressions, and prohibitions in the
Western humanistic tradition. This approach, I believe, can help
nurse readers unfamiliar with critical posthumanism to appreciate and
situate this relatively new and radical field of nursing scholarship.
Over the last decade or so, strong counter‐stories to the Western‐
centric humanist narrative have been growing in nursing with the
goal of decolonization, antiracism, anti‐sexism, and Indigenous
resurgence.
I recognize that peoples who have been positioned on the
margins, inhabit those silenced locations, do not need to be reminded
about these injustices (see also Smith et al., 2022,p.9)—the precarity
of their lives attests to humanism's oppression and ‘negative spaces’.
And yet, how can the calls for radical transformation be responded to
in the larger nursing community, if the problematic assumptions of
Western humanism persist unbeknownst to many? In other words,
humanism, based on a predominant model of the white male, has
erased the lives of women and people of colour, and posthumanism—
seen in this light—is actually a positive tool for people who have been
marginalized because it dismantles this marginalization. People might
be scared of the idea of posthumanism because they only know
about the positive side of humanism and do not realize that
humanism holds many problematic assumptions. However, if one
was never admitted into the category of ‘human’, can posthumanism
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still be of use? Smith et al. (2022) ask this question and respond with
an affirmation.
And what do we do about this philosophical humanism—throw
away the canon of ‘dead white men’as some conference attendees
suggested or stay in critical tension with it as other conference
attendees suggested? Can centring the margins and writing alterna-
tive histories (e.g., drawing on the work of scholars historically
excluded from the canon) proceed in partial connection (to use
Marilyn Strathern's phrase) to the canon or is a full break with ‘the old
world’required? This paper, which uses the tools of philosophical
analysis (and not all agree with the use of the ‘master's tools’to
dismantle the ‘master's discourse’—so there is another tension here),
is the attempt to surface less recognized and much entrenched
humanistic ideas. This, then, can help interested nurses make sense of
the much‐feared prefix ‘post’threatening the comfort of ‘humanism’.
3.1 |The Roman Republic: Cicero (106–43 BCE)
The concept of humanism, or a view of life that has the individual as
its central focus, is attributed to Cicero, a statesman and orator of the
late Roman Republic and one of the earliest humanists (Gaarder,
2007). He was convinced that philosophy can make society better.
His main works in political philosophy discuss the preferred state (i.e.,
the traditional structures of the Roman Republic) and laws that will
best maintain such a state. In Cicero's work, the influence of Stoics is
manifest in the idea that ‘humans share with gods dominion not just
of the place in which they happen to live, but of the Earth and indeed
the whole universe’(Woolf, 2022, 5.2, para 1).
What Cicero means is that human nature determines that
humans are ‘born for justice’:
We all belong to the same species, and to that extent
are all alike…, in particular in our possession of reason,
which distinguishes us from other creatures…. This
explains the sense of mutual fellowship and union
between human beings …and means that we are
formed by nature to share justice and impart it to all
(Cicero, cited in Woolf, 2022, 5.3, para 4)
Cicero's view of human beings as citizens of the world, who
possess reason and whose common nature is to ‘share justice’,
illustrates Cicero's philosophical humanism. This version of humanism
and citizenship excluded women and slaves. Slaves were considered
property and had no legal personhood. Citizenship was only possible
for free men, not women (Chatelard & Stevens, 2016.)
3.2 |The Middle Ages (400 CE to circa mid‐15th
century)
By 313, during the rule of the Emperor Constantine, Christianity was
an accepted religion in the Roman Empire, and from the year 380, it
was the official religion throughout the entire Roman Empire
(Gaarder, 2007). In the fourth century, the Roman Empire crumbled,
and in 395, it was divided into the Western and Eastern Empires. The
Western Empire had Rome as its centre and existed for a mere
80 years. The Eastern Empire, or Byzantium, had Constantinople as
its capital (currently Istanbul) and existed up to the mid‐15th century
when it was conquered by the Turks.
The 1000‐year‐long period known as Middle Ages was charac-
terized by Christian theism rather than humanism. In 529, ‘the
Christian church put the lid on Greek philosophy’(Gaarder, 2007,
p. 168), and all philosophy was effectively limited to theology. God
rather than the human was at the centre of reflection. Every aspect of
man's nature and life was seen through divine light. During the
Renaissance, the Middle Ages were referred to as the Dark Ages to
convey the inflexibility and gloom of Europe at the time (Gaarder,
2007). However, during the Middle Ages, the school system, the first
universities, and nation‐states were established.
3.3 |The Renaissance (mid‐14th to mid‐17th
centuries)
Although in the early Middle Ages, Greco‐Roman culture was divided,
it survived through three cultures—Roman Catholic in the west,
Byzantine in the east, and Arabic in the south—which all influenced
the rebirth of antique culture at the end of the Middle Ages.
The Renaissance, the rebirth of the art and culture of antiquity,
started in the late 14th century in Northern Italy. Once again, cultural
developments revolved around man, the turn known as Renaissance
humanism (Gaarder, 2007). In the 15th and 16th centuries,
philosophy and science split off from the theology of the Church.
The Renaissance was a time of unrivalled development of art,
architecture, literature, music, philosophy, and science. One manifes-
tation was an interest in human anatomy. An iconic drawing from this
period is Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (da Vinci, 1490)—the
study of the proportions of the (hu)man body. Thus, the ‘human’was
epitomized in a male figure, visibly fair‐skinned and able‐bodied.
The Renaissance was also characterized by a new form of
religiosity, the development known as the Reformation. The
individual's personal relationship with God was now more important
than his relationship with the church as an organization. The Bible
was translated from Hebrew and Greek into national languages
(Gaarder, 2007).
Renaissance humanism viewed mankind in a new way. In
contrast to the medieval period, when God was seen as the apex
and humankind was seen as sinful, the Renaissance infused new
beliefs about man's worth. ‘Man was now considered great and
valuable’(Gaarder, 2007, p. 196). Even paintings of religious scenes,
like Michelangelo's Creation of Adam from a fresco on the ceiling of
the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican (Michelangelo, 1512), prominently
featured a man, often nude, with the focus on anatomical details.
Italian Renaissance humanist scholars delighted in learning
Greek. They discovered the work of Aristotle and other ancient
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Greeks through Arabic translations from Africa and Spain (Mann,
1996). For example, a famous fresco, The School of Athens in the
Stanza della Segnatura, Apostolic Palace, in the Vatican by the Italian
painter Rafael (Sanzio, 1510–11) illustrates the rebirth of interest in
ancient Greek philosophy, science, and art. Renaissance humanism
was characterized by individualism, a belief that humans are unique
individuals. Mankind (and these indeed were mostly men), feeling
reawakened, was free to develop in all spheres of life, without
limitations. This approach to life was different from the humanists of
antiquity, who ‘emphasized the importance of tranquillity, modera-
tion, and restraint’(Gaarder, 2007, p. 197).
The invention of the printing press around 1436 (or rather
Gutenberg's adaptation of the older techniques and a groundbreaking
use of a screw‐type press; Roos, 2023, March 27) facilitated the
spread of humanist ideas and further undermined the Church's
authority as the sole disseminator of knowledge (Gaarder, 2007).
Importantly, already in the 15th century, the study of humanistic
subjects was identified as serving a pedagogical goal (Monfasani,
2020): One becomes human by reading humanistic texts (Gaarder,
2007;Sherratt,2005). This study of texts of antiquity, it was claimed,
separates the human from the beast and a civilized human from a
barbarian. The importance of classical education, of reading the
Western philosophical canon starting from ancient Greeks, has been
believed (up to very recently and arguably still important according to
some commentators) to develop human qualities, humanitas (Sloterdijk,
2009). Classical literature, humanists claimed, provides intellectual
discipline, moral values, and a civilized taste (Kristeller, 2008).
A new scientific method with systematic experiments was
gaining popularity. It was believed that (hu)mankind has started to
break away from his natural condition and to intervene in and
control nature (Gaarder, 2007). New inventions—the compass and
firearms—enabled navigation, European expeditions, and discovery
of new lands including the brutal conquest of America (Gaarder,
2007). As we are now acutely aware, Europe's establishment of
colonies in other countries launched the era of colonialism and
imperialism.
3.4 |French rationalism of Descartes (1596–1650)
Rene Descartes was a mathematician, natural philosopher (i.e.,
scientist), and metaphysician (Hatfield, 2018). He is also classified
as a French rationalist whose systematic philosophy influenced the
subsequent history of ideas. The conception of man as a thinking
subject is encapsulated in Descartes’famous expression, Cogito, ergo
sum; I think, therefore I am. He formulated a dualistic view of the
human being as consisting of two separate and radically divided
although interacting substances: the material mechanistic body and
the immaterial soul or mind (Gaarder, 2007). For Descartes, the
thinking mind, cogito, takes precedence over the material body (Mol,
2022). Similarly, the subject is radically different from the object.
These dichotomies implicitly or explicitly inform our understanding of
a human being to this day. However, for critical posthumanists and
others, Descartes' conception of the human is highly problematic.
The pairings of mind/body, spirit/matter and subject/object are not
neutral but rather represent sites of power and injustice. One
pervasive example is the outsourcing of low‐wage physical labour
(especially care of the ailing bodies in long‐term care facilities) to
(immigrant) women of colour in Western countries.
Descartes' work (e.g., his view of the mind–body relation), while
being hugely influential in philosophy, has been criticized. What has
been taken as Descartes' view of the human being as a rational
subject standing over and above the world has been rejected in much
of subsequent philosophy and in nursing literature (in particular
nursing phenomenology). Whether this criticism of the ‘over‐rational’
Cartesian subject represents a misinterpretation of Descartes (e.g.,
Hatfield, 2018), this criticism has a prominent place in the 19th to
20th century Continental philosophy.
3.5 |The Enlightenment (18th century)
The core of the Enlightenment period was ‘the aspiration for
intellectual progress and the belief in the power of such progress
to improve human society and individual lives’(Bristow, 2017, para
2). The 18th‐century French philosophers (e.g., de Montesquieu,
Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot) were inspired by a more liberal
political system in England and its progress in empirical philosophy
and science (especially Newton's physics). One manifestation of the
French Enlightenment was discontent with the authority of the clergy
and the king (Bristow, 2017). This discontent later gave rise to the
French Revolution of 1789 that had a motto Liberte, egalite, fraternite
and led to the formulation of the Declaration of Human Rights
(Gaarder, 2007). As too often happened in the history of humanity,
what was meant by ‘human’had only man as a point of reference.
When French woman activist and playwright Olympe de Gouges
wrote a declaration on the rights of women, she was beheaded
(Gaarder, 2007).
The Enlightenment is called the Age of Reason because of the
great hopes and optimism attached to man's rationality and his
proclaimed ability to acquire knowledge of the world and to use this
knowledge for the advancement of mankind. Enlightenment philoso-
phers sought to establish rational foundations for ethics, morality,
and religion (Gaarder, 2007). The science of pedagogy was founded
during the Enlightenment. Education of people was considered
important to lift humankind from poverty and oppression by fighting
ignorance and superstition. It was optimistically believed that once
reason and knowledge were widespread, humanity would make great
progress (Gaarder, 2007).
The 18th‐century German philosopher Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804) is known for his systematic works in epistemology,
ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics. In his essay ‘An Answer to the
Question: What is Enlightenment?’Kant defines enlightenment as
humankind's liberation from its immaturity, that is, from ‘the inability
to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another'
(Kant, 1784, as cited in Bristow, 2017). Every person has to think for
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oneself, to rely on one's intellect when deciding what to believe and
how to act. Humanity is able to build systematic knowledge of nature.
On the other hand, Enlightenment rejects other forms of authority
(e.g., tradition, superstition, prejudice or myth) and is in tension with
religion. Enlightenment's belief is that the process of ‘becoming
progressively self‐directed in thought and action through the
awakening of one's intellectual powers [as opposed to obedience
to God] leads ultimately to a better, more fulfilled human existence’
(Bristow, 2017, para 4).
Several of the threads outlined above—the emphasis on reading
the Greeks and classics as well as education as an emancipatory
tool—reach into our contemporary era. Many of us brought up in the
latter half of the 20th century are heirs to these ideas. Yet, as
wonderful as these ideas seem, most of us are oblivious to
‘humanistic’education's entanglement with the problematic concept
of human exceptionalism and instrumentalism that posthumanists
reject. At the same time, education is a powerful tool, and there will
continue to be tension between calls to throw out traditional canons
(including Greek and classical literature and Western philosophy) and
calls to critically engage with those canons.
3.6 |Romanticism (end of 18th to mid‐19th
centuries)
Romanticism is a European cultural epoch comprising poetry,
philosophy, art, science and music (Gaarder, 2007). It started in
Germany as a reaction to the Enlightenment's rigid emphasis on
reason and a mechanistic view of universe. In contrast, Romantics
praised the individual's feelings, imagination, and experience, which
sometimes amounted to ‘unrestrained “ego‐worship”’ (Gaarder, 2007,
p. 342). Typically, Romantics were young urban men, often university
students with a relaxed approach to their studies who expressed anti‐
middle‐class sentiment. The works of art produced during Romanti-
cism, for example, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Friedrich
(1818), convey the yearning for something distant, for ‘Night, …
Twilight, …old ruins and the supernatural’(Gaarder, 2007, p. 343).
Romantics posited the values of human autonomy, Buildung (or
self‐formation), and free expression of unique personalities
(Gorodeisky, 2016). The work of art and aesthetic judgement were
seen as paradigmatic expressions of autonomy and, as such, as
splendid models for the cultivation of individual human autonomy.
Romantics believed that art and beauty, and our engagement with
them, should shape human life (Gorodeisky, 2016).
Let me revisit the discussion thus far. I started tracing Western
humanism from ancient Rome. A shift occurred during the Middle
Ages, which were characterized by theism rather than humanism.
Next, the 15th and 16th centuries saw a rebirth of the culture of
antiquity. Renaissance humanism boldly praised (hu)man as an
individual with unlimited possibilities. The sciences and philosophy
developed rapidly during that time, with notable examples of French
rationalism (Descartes) and British empiricism (not discussed). During
this period, (hu)mankind asserted its independence from, and control
over, nature. The 18th century was the optimistic time of the
Enlightenment. However, its sole emphasis on reason was challenged
by the Romantics, who instead praised the individual's feelings and
experiences. My story has reached the 19th century. Kant died at the
dawn on the 19th century. His contemporary, another famous
German philosopher critical of the Romantic movement, Hegel, lived
until 1831.
Woven into the grand story of Western humanism are
problematic assumptions about the ‘human’implicated in coloniza-
tion, devastation of the planet, the oppression of women, people of
colour, and other groups contrasted—whether explicitly or implicitly—
with the normative image of Man. Critical posthumanism is a fight
against these injustices.
4|KEY DIRECTIONS IN CONTINENTAL
THOUGHT
Kant's work marks the beginning of the Continental philosophical
movement (Critchley, 2001). Publication of Kant's critical philosophy
in the 1780s set in motion debates on the relationship between the
subject and object (or the human being and the world), the extent of
human autonomy, the role of the human in history, and the nature of
history. These debates continue today.
Below is a snapshot of the key schools and figures of Continental
philosophy represented in many textbooks read across academic
disciplines in the last decades of the 20th century and into the 2000s.
•German dialectical idealism (Hegel 1770–1831)
•Dialectical materialism (Marx 1818–1883)
•German phenomenology (Husserl 1859–1938, Heidegger
1889–1976)
•French phenomenology (Sartre 1905–1980, Simone de Beauvoir
1908–1986, Levinas 1906–1995, Merleau‐Ponty 1908–1961)
•Hermeneutics (Gadamer 1900–2002, Ricoeur 1913–2005)
•The Frankfurt School (Horkheimer 1895–1973, Adorno
1903–1969, Habermas 1929–)
Not all of the work produced by these philosophers is considered
humanistic in the sense described in the following section—as placing
human subjectivity and essentialized human characteristics at the
centre. For example, Marx's late work, Heidegger's oeuvre, as well as
Nietzsche and Bergson (not listed above) are not considered
humanist philosophers. However, a critical glance at this dominant
philosophical canon of (overwhelmingly) ‘dead white men’provided
urgency to feminist, posthumanist, and others' insistence on the
decentring of this very canon of men claiming to speak on behalf of
the ‘human’for much of Western history.
From the 1960s, much of Continental philosophy (e.g., French
structuralism, post‐structuralism, post‐modernism, postcolonial
scholarship, and post‐structural, new‐material, and Black feminisms)
notably departed from, and critiqued, the assumptions of Western
humanism.
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5|HUMANISM IN CONTINENTAL
PHILOSOPHY
In this section, I rely on an excellent book to discuss humanism in
Continental philosophy: Humanism and Antihumanism by a contem-
porary British scholar and activist, Kate Soper (1986). It might be
important to acknowledge Soper's leanings: She is sympathetic to
Marxism and Sartre's and Simon de Beauvoir's existentialism. In
contrast, Soper is highly critical of post‐structuralism. While Soper
and I do not see eye to eye on post‐structural theory, her analysis is
very interesting and helps us understand Western humanism.
Humanist thought is commonly described as anthropocentric: It
places ‘Man’at the centre. But, according to Soper (1986), there are
different ways of doing so.
One form of anthropocentrism views Man as standing outside
the objective reality given to him in consciousness. A problem with
this conception of the human–world relation is its instrumentalism:
Man dominates Nature by acquiring objective knowledge about it
and making it serve human ends (Soper, 1986).
The second form of anthropocentrism, idealist humanism,
assumes that the world exists only because it is reflected upon in
thought, that is, conceptualized by Man. Speaking about Man, various
thinkers (e.g., Kant and Hegel) attributed the world's existence either
to the thought of particular individuals or to a collective ‘transcen-
dent’mind. Besides, Kant and Hegel exemplify humanistic philosophy
because their concern is with the ‘truth’or ‘end’of Man: It is human
purpose and self‐realization that is fulfilled in the realization of the
Absolute Idea (Soper, 1986).
A third form of anthropocentrism, dialectical humanism (e.g.,
notably Hegel, and also Marx, Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre), views
the human–world relationship as totality: ‘The world is what it is as a
result of its being lived in and transformed by humanity, while
humanity in turn acquires its character through its existence and
situation in the world’(Soper, 1986, p. 25). While the world exists
independently, humans play an active role in its making. The
creativity of human subjects is seen through production and labour
(i.e., early Marx) or through the meaning (and thus Being, e.g., in
Heidegger) that ‘human beings bring to their world and reveal it to
contain’(Soper, 1986, p. 25). This totality of subject–object is a
historical product, and knowledge of it can only be historical and
relative. Although dialectical thought does not presuppose an
essentialized, ahistoric, transcendental humanity, Soper (1986) argues
that it is still concerned with the ‘truly human’(e.g., responsibility that
derives from total human freedom in Sartre).
Further, according to Soper (1986), humanism presupposes a
core humanity or common essential features in humans. For different
thinkers, these features include consciousness, agency, choice,
responsibility, or human value. Perversion of the human core (e.g.,
alienation, reification and inauthenticity) is a negative and dangerous
process. Another key idea of humanism is that history is a product of
human thought and action and can only be understood in terms of
the categories of essential human features (as opposed to being the
result of God's will, nonhuman forces, or pure chance).
Other characteristics of humanism became apparent throughout
my discussion: Throughout much of history, the category of human
was reserved for men. All humanistic thought is based on the human/
nature, subject/object dichotomies whereby the human is radically
different from the nonhuman and superior to it. Soper (1986)
comments on the imperialism of much classical humanism which sees
Man's other and nature as aliens in need of civilization.
6|CRITICAL POSTHUMANISM:
RE‐ENVISIONING THE HUMAN
Critical posthumanism takes issue with the humanist ideal of ‘Man’
and re‐envisions the human. I refer the reader to a forthcoming (2023
or 202) special issue of Nursing Inquiry that elaborates on this topic.
Very briefly, critical posthumanism denounces anthropocentrism as
the species hierarchy that culminates in human exceptionalism.
However, human responsibility for addressing damages arising from
human activity is upheld.
Two central thinkers in the field of critical posthumanism, Rosi
Braidotti and Donna Haraway, offer complex descriptions of the
posthuman. Braidotti (e.g., Yale University, 2017,March2)
describes the posthuman as our historical condition; as a
materially embedded, multi‐layered, nomadic entity; as relating
to human and nonhuman agents; and a technological mediation.
Haraway (2016) conceives of the (post)human as one of compan-
ion species. From Latin, companion, com panis, means together
with, sharing bread. A (post)human then is becoming‐with other‐
than‐humans and more‐than‐humans (Haraway, 2016). Notably,
posthumanism draws attention to the materiality of existence and
practices.Thehumanisnotintheworldbutoftheworld
(Haraway, 2016). Experiences of ‘being human’are not universal,
and attention to specific materialities is necessary (Bignall &
Braidotti, 2019).
7|THEORETICAL ANTIHUMANISM OF
FOUCAULT: LESSONS FOR NURSING
POSTHUMANIST SCHOLARSHIP
In this section, I shift gears and turn to the post‐structuralism of
Michel Foucault. Although some scholars (e.g., Sherratt, 2005)
consider Genealogy, the method of historiography used by Nietzsche
and Foucault, as continuing the Western humanistic tradition based
on these authors' ongoing engagement with the Ancient Greeks,
others squarely position Foucault's work as theoretical antihumanism.
By revisiting Foucault's antihumanism and nursing scholarship that
claimed to ‘decentre the Man’(not dissimilar to critical posthuman-
ism's agenda), I draw attention to the unacknowledged pitfalls in
these attempts. I argue that nursing scholarship's deep embedded-
ness in humanistic methodologies manifests in ways that are not
readily overcome even in the current posthumanist nursing
arguments.
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Foucault's theoretical antihumanism is demonstrated through his
conceptions of history, knowledge, and subjectivity. Following
Nietzsche, Foucault believed that history unfolds without human
agency (Downing, 2008). The individual does not possess discourse
or make discursive meaning. Rather, discursive formations create
subject positions that must be occupied by speaking individuals.
Foucault's view of the subject and subjectivity is that one only
becomes a subject (i.e., subjectivation) by virtue of subjection: a
double‐edged sword. There is no true ‘Self’we can appeal to, only
individuals occupying subject positions (Downing, 2008).
Further, he disagreed with the Enlightenment philosophers that
knowledge is progressive. The knowledge/power nexus is an
important concept within Foucault's work. When he talks about
knowledge, he refers not to the structures of human consciousness
or to reason, but to what he calls regimes of truth (or what each
society makes function as true), to the conditions of possibility that
govern what is possible to say and think in each moment in history
(Downing, 2008). Similarly, operations of power are detached from
human intent; power is not possessed by individuals. Foucault is
interested not in human intentions or decision‐making but in the
effects of their actions. To paraphrase his famous expression, People
know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do;
but what they do not know is what their doing does.
Is it easy to grasp the theoretical and methodological precepts of
Foucault's antihumanism and currently, of posthumanism? Are nurses
ready to decentre humanism? To address these questions, I wish to
refer to a case study of nursing Foucauldian scholarship in the first
two decades of its existence, from the late1980s to approximately
2010 (Petrovskaya, 2022). In my book, Nursing Theory, Post-
modernism, Post‐Structuralism, and Foucault, I observe the tendency
in nursing research to interpret Foucault in a humanistic vein,
presupposing the essentialized human subject as the author of its
experiences and discourse. Typically, a related feature of this human‐
centredness is the inattention to the materiality of practices,
specifically to the empirical particularities of nurses' materially
embedded (embodied, technology‐and artefact‐rich) work. Yet, as
we have seen above, materiality is one of the important tenets of
critical posthumanism. (In my book, I provide examples of Foucaul-
dian nursing scholarship that in my view offer interesting socio‐
material analyses of nursing practice.)
How can we cultivate nurse philosophers' and researchers' ability
to attend to the socio‐materiality of healthcare practice (the situated
activity in its empirical richness) as constitutive of nurses' and patients'
subjectivities and as specific sites of power where the version of ‘the
human’admissible in those spaces is being formed and contested?
One of my personal strategies to understand the non‐humanist
methodological approaches (e.g., ANT‐informed) is to study published
research that has been successful in shifting attention from human
subjectivity toward connections among human and nonhuman
elements within practices. Although Braidotti (2019, p. 42) is critical
of ANT's dismissal of the need to theorize subjectivity, which, she
says, undermines political projects, this scholarship is not apolitical
despite the absence of explicit political slogans. This research, in
synergy with critical posthumanism, surfaces and critiques inequali-
ties and helps create the worlds‐in‐becoming. Below is the beginning
list of social science texts offering robust theoretical analyses of
empirical material:
•Annemarie Mol, The Body Multiple: Ontology in Medical Practice
(Mol, 2002) and Eating in Theory (Mol, 2022)
•Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the
Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Tsing, 2015)
•Sara Ahmed, What's the Use? On the Uses of Use (Ahmed, 2019)
•Tess Lea, Wild Policy: Indigeneity and the Unruly Logics of
Intervention (Lea, 2020)
I turn to you, the reader, to continue building this list, enhancing
it with diverse authors not yet represented. It is my hope that our lists
can be shared at the nursing philosophy conferences and that these
books will help the nursing audiences make posthumanism and
related perspectives that do not essentialize ‘the human’less
threatening.
8|CONCLUSION
This paper opens up a contested and not well‐understood field of
critical posthumanism's rejection of Western humanist tradition. In
this tradition, Man's superior faculty of Reason is said to position him
above other entities and endow him with special rights. This
anthropocentrism and a universalist conception of Man have been
exposed for their colonial, racist, sexist, and other oppressive
tendencies and for environmental degradation. On the other hand,
posthumanism posits an unfamiliar (and perhaps frightening) version
of the human and invites novel methodologies to study the
assemblages. It decentres human subjectivity and turns to material
practices comprised of human and nonhuman elements to examine
their effects including production of subjectivities.
This paper invites reflections: In what way do you feel we are
living in posthuman times? How does posthumanism manifest in
nursing practice? How can we notice and analyse it? What theoretical
tools will help nurse researchers? How are we going to engage with
Indigenous and ecological perspectives not predicated on humanism
when nursing is commonly positioned as a humanistic endeavour in
the sense described throughout the paper? (cf Petrovskaya, 2022, pp.
131–132).
In this paper, I have shown that nursing benefits from a
philosophical posthumanist scholarship focused on political agendas,
for example, Dillard‐Wright (2022) and Smith et al. (2022). As has
been correctly pointed out by an anonymous reviewer of this
manuscript, much of alternative philosophy generated by women and
people of colour had little chance of entering the volumes of Western
philosophy. Nurse scholars may do well to engage with the works of
Mary Wollstonecraft, an 18th‐century British advocate for women's
rights; Olympe de Gouges, an 18th‐century French political activist;
Zera Yacob, a 17th‐century Ethiopian philosopher; and Anton Amo,
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an 18th‐century African philosopher. Additionally, Baruch Spinoza,
one of the seminal thinkers of Dutch Enlightenment rarely cited in
nursing, might generate interest nowadays considering the centrality
of his work for Braidotti's and others' writings on critical
posthumanism.
We can also envision posthumanism's potential for empirically
analysing nursing practice as material assemblages of humans and
non‐humans. We can view the effects of nursing practice through the
lens of posthumanism, seeing practice as not predetermined, but as
sites where various versions of the human are formed and contested,
as worlds in the making.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author sincerely thanks Dr Madeline Walker for her excellent
editorial assistance.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The author declares no conflict of interest.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no data sets were
generated or analysed during the current study.
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How to cite this article: Petrovskaya, O. (2023). Farewell to
humanism? Considerations for nursing philosophy and
research in posthuman times. Nursing Philosophy, e12448.
https://doi.org/10.1111/nup.12448
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