Project Details
Abstract
The Edward Said’s intellectual legacy will be primarily political—not just in the popular imagination, but
also perhaps in the eyes of academic research. But the last completed book Humanism and Democratic
Criticism he wrote, allow us to situate this legacy in the larger philosophical setting of his humanism. One is
the discourses of epistemology, Said believed that self-knowledge is unattainable without an equal degree of
self-criticism and the awareness that comes from studying and experiencing other peoples, traditions, and
ideas. The other is an ethical argument. Ever since the ascendancy of critical theory and multicultural studies
in the 1960s and 1970s, a more democratic form of humanism—one that aims to incorporate, emancipate,
and enlighten—is attainable. The traditional humanistic education has been under assault. Once-sacred
literary canon that associated with Euro-centralism and even imperialism is now more likely to be ridiculed
than revered. There are other learned traditions in the world, there are other cultures, and there are other
geniuses. Proposing a return to philology is the Said’s supplement about aesthetics. Throughout the Eric
Auerbach’s critical masterpiece, Mimesis, Said contends that words are not merely passive reception figures
but vital resistance agents in historical and political change. Intellectuals must reclaim an active role in public
life, but at the same time, insularity and parochialism, as well as the academic trend toward needless jargon
and obscurantism, must be combated. The “humanities crisis,” according to Said, is based on the
misperception that there is an inexorable conflict between established traditions and our increasingly
complex and diversified world. Yet this position fails to recognize that the canonized thinkers of today were
the revolutionaries of yesterday and that the nature of human progress is to question, upset, and reform. In
this time of heightened contradiction between globalization and exclusiveness, is it possible and still
effective the critical and democratic, even philological humanism? This project tries to demonstrate the
Said’s last work in 2003 that provides a persuasive case for humanistic education on our shared intellectual
heritage.
Project IDs
Project ID:PF10607-0656
External Project ID:MOST106-2410-H182-011
External Project ID:MOST106-2410-H182-011
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 01/08/17 → 31/07/18 |
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