N.1/2025 Confini in discussione.  L’essere umano di fronte alle sfide contemporanee

The universality of humanism has been challenged from many different standpoints, yet unanimous in their dismissal of human agency. But the neo-humanist longing for some sort of rescued agency has challenged agency-adverse post-humanisms. This paper sets out from Max Weber’s query on the core problem of modern humanism: is agency possible despite unfavourable conditions? Can agency survive amid forces aiming at its suppression? Other texts, committed likewise to saving some kind of agency, disclose the manifold restrictions that a preserving impulse like Weber’s must cope with. Above all, a recovered agency ought to comply with both occasionalism (exclusive reliance on suitable occasions) and misrecognition (impaired assessment of objective opportunities). The agent would benefit from appropriate occasions, which nearly always elicit faulty expectations. The salvaged «agency» appears thus opportunist yet sightless (grounded on misguided intentionality), and above all attenuated and unpredictable.

Agency, Humanism, Max Weber, E.P. Thompson, Pierre Bourdieu, 
Giovanni Levi.