Che cosa c’è (se c’è) di umanesimo nell’accezione analitico-pragmatista di Humanism

Abstract

The aim of this contribution is to trace the presence of some instances of humanism in contemporary analytical philosophy and evaluate their relevance. Given the ambiguities of the term “humanism” in the Anglophone tradition, I propose to give a definition on the basis of Werner Jaeger’s neo-humanism. The urgency of keeping in mind the centrality of the human being was an instance of the pragmatists at the beginning of the twentieth century who, with F.C.S. Schiller and William James, used the term humanism. In different forms, some echoes of their thought are found in the writings of Bernard Williams, Hilary Putnam, and Michael Dummett, especially reflecting on the role that philosophy will be called upon to have in the near future. I will conclude by underlining how, through the notion of “humanism”, these authors 
intend to recover the historical dimension of philosophizing and, through it, 
the centrality of the human being.