The perpetual becoming of humanity

Introduction

The first decade of the 21st century saw an increasing interest in humanism and the future prospects of humanity. ¹ This interest came from technological advances and a proliferation of writing to wrestle with its implications – post- and transhumanism. Post- and transhumanist theorists have framed the question concerning the outlook and possibilities of being human anew and breathed new life into a topic that many thought had lost its relevance. In particular, their daring futurism added to humanism an element of utopianism that humanism could similarly claim in the era of the Enlightenment. Drawing on thinkers like Kant and Newton, transhumanism originates from rational humanism characterized by an emphasis on empirical science and critical reason (Bostrom, 2005). Posthumanism, on the other hand, is strongly influenced by cybernetics, by the critical theories of Derrida and Foucault and by Luhmann's systems theory – all of which undermine anthropocentrism (Wolfe, 2010: xii–xxii). Lorenzo Simpson’s The Unfinished Project: Toward a Postmetaphysical Humanism (2001) focuses on multiculturalism and metaphysics but shares the view that humanism is an ‘unfinished project’. ² John Gray’s Straw Dogs (2003) continues the critique of humanism by disclosing its Christian origin, which, according to Gray, undermines it. Such a critique, however, demonstrates the prominence of humanism; why engage in a critique otherwise? By the end of the 1990s, humanism had been all but abandoned after sustained attacks from postmodern, feminist and postcolonial quarters. ³

A decade later, new possibilities emerged that reinvigorated humanist discourse. There are both methodological and critical-transformative explanations given by contemporary sociologists and philosophers for the continuing importance of humanism. Plummer (2006) notes that humanism can provide a fuller account of the people it engages with. According to him, sociology has prematurely written off the ‘living and breathing, embodied human being’. Simonsen (2013) echoes Plummer in that she also believes that a certain conception of humanism is illuminating for research. She provides a phenomenologically grounded reading of ‘new’ as well as of critical humanism. Following Merleau-Ponty, she focuses on agency and corporeality as notions that help her to probe deeper into the experience of people, accounting for accumulated meanings and intersubjectivity. However, she also says that ‘[m]ore generally, humanism can be seen as a practice, an interrogative orientation which is integral to the modes of both co-existence and critical intellectual engagement’ (Simonsen, 2013: 24). Todorov (2002: 236) complements Simonsen by arguing that ‘humanism is about human beings able to surpass themselves’. Agreeing with Simonsen and Todorov, I intend to further theorize these critical-transformative views of humanism.

Looking to engage constructively with humanism, this article will consider it from the perspective of two relevant social thinkers: Ernst Bloch and Zygmunt Bauman. The writings of both contain vital themes of critical humanism, such as the critique of capitalism and a concern with overcoming the existing alienated status quo. Critical humanism in the form of discerning what is perceived as self-evident has been seen as the persistent trademark of Bauman’s thought over many decades (Jacobsen, 2017). It is the rejection of inevitability regarding questions of social life as well as an emphasis on the possibility of (utopian) change that make Bauman and Bloch important for critical humanism. Social orders, they argue, are not fixed for good, but open to change; and they can be remade. Bloch’s utopian thought takes aim at ameliorating the vicissitudes of human being-in-the-world (suffering and anxiety, for instance) under capitalist conditions (Bloch, 1986[1954]: 18). His decidedly historical take on utopia, which relates utopia to socio-historical contradictions and possibilities, and his emphasis on transcending ‘matter of factness’ provide a source of inspiration for thinking about humanism in relation to utopia and a better society. The polarizing nature of neo-liberalism, which has restored the worst excesses of capitalism, adds to Bloch’s relevance; it has made Marxist thought timely. In addition to an analysis of capitalism that is associated with Marxism, Bloch offers a positive and affirmative dimension in terms of utopia. Bloch’s reflections on Europe after the First World War – a time of crisis that he terms Mischzeit [mixed time], where the old social order is decaying but the new one is not yet present – form an interesting parallel to Bauman’s explorations of the contemporary era.

Bauman’s sociology is known both for its humanism and its critical analysis of the human condition (Jacobsen, 2004; Davis, 2011). Both these themes have returned with new urgency in Bauman’s liquid modern writings that persistently focus on the human costs of the globalized social order. He polemicizes against the proponents of the view that ours is a society of ‘endings’ – Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’ being the most well-known version of these (Fukuyama, 1992). Instead of speaking of endings, according to Bauman, we should be speaking about beginnings and not imitating the TINA (‘there is no alternative’) position of the Washington Consensus and its apologists (Jacobsen, 2003). His work stands out because of its concern for alternatives to current market societies that neglect responsibility and the public good. The task, according to Bauman, remains to rebuild modernity despite the many failures of modernization and utopian aspirations of the 20th century (Beilharz, 2006).

Through a reading of Bauman and Bloch, I look to re-establish the link between humanism and social organization. It is the concern for a better society that has become marginalized with the rise of post- and transhumanism, which approach ‘the human’ primarily through the prism of technology and nature. While I agree that both of these are significant for humanism, the question of social organization, central to the Marxist humanist tradition, should not be diminished as a consequence. The social should remain on the agenda of thinking about the human in the crisis-ridden state of globalized societies. It is the social that serves as a point of departure for reconstruction. The ‘post-historical’ liberal capitalist constellation of Fukuyama has lost much of its previous credibility and needs an alternative. Ruth Levitas argues in her recent book Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society that ‘what really is impossible is to carry on as we are, with social and economic systems that enrich a few but destroy the environment and impoverish most of the world’s population. Our very survival depends on finding another way of living’ (Levitas, 2013: xii). Or, as Davis says:

First, there are the various challenges to the established models of representative democracy, most recently established by the seemingly universal call for a ‘new politics’, including the proposition of different models of ‘deliberative democracy’ favoured at the European level. Second, there is the (perhaps not so) sudden uncertainty surrounding those neoliberal principles that have underpinned the free market system of global capitalism at least since the 1980s and that are now thrown into sharp relief by the worldwide global recession. Amidst calls for a new ‘age of austerity’, such as that being vividly acted out at the time of writing by the new century’s own Greek tragedy, some are starting to think through the idea of a life ‘after the markets’, or are at least prompted to try to invest with a greater sense of social responsibility than was apparent during the ‘happy globalization’ period of the 1990s. (Davis, 2011: 185)

The argument will be framed in terms of two epochs, looking at Bauman’s thoughts on the current state of interregnum and Bloch’s reflections on the post-First World War Mischzeit. The problem at stake for both of them is social disintegration. The article will agree with Lorenzo Simpson (2001) that humanism could be seen as an unfinished project. It will, however, argue that the meaning of this unfinishedness should be understood in terms of achieving a better society and in the spirit of Ernst Bloch’s (1986[1954]) The Principle of Hope and his (2000[1918]) The Spirit of Utopia, meaning that the current form of social life does not exhaust what could and should exist. The article will draw together contemporary sociology and revisit Bloch’s philosophy to readdress humanism and provide a new insight into understanding the human condition in the contemporary era. Bloch’s well-known engagement with utopia and utopianism will inform the article because, as we shall see, utopia for him and for Bauman is closely related to humanism and the human condition. The article begins with a brief outline of posthumanism/transhumanism. They will be introduced in order to give an insight into the recent transformations of and reactions against humanist thought. In addition, an outline of these two branches of thought serves as a background for further discussion that shifts the focus from nature and technology to the societal dimension. Following this, humanism will be considered in the light of the contemporary critical sociology of Bauman and the philosophy of Bloch. Both epochal considerations of the crises of modernity (termed interregnum in the case of Bauman and Mischzeit in the case of Bloch) and philosophical anthropology will be discussed in order to understand their humanism. Lastly, Bauman’s and Bloch’s understandings of post- and transhumanist concerns with technology and nature will be taken up in order to discern the convergences and disagreements between Bauman’s and Bloch’s humanism and post- and transhumanist thought.

Trans-/posthumanism

The fact that humanism has enjoyed renewed engagement in the 21st century owes much to posthumanism and transhumanism. These two branches of contemporary theory have also restored thinking about the human in terms of future possibilities, albeit, especially in the case of transhumanism, most often through the singular lens of science and technology. Holding fast to the idea of human emancipation from the natural order of things, transhumanism continues what could be called ‘the project of modernity’, but in a distinctly different way from earlier modern concerns with the good or rational society. According to the transhumanist discourse, the human being is turned into a design object via technology. Transhumanism concerns the development of nanotechnology, biotechnology, robotics, information and communication technology and applied cognitive science. Tirosh-Samuelson and Mossmann (2012) claim that the core themes of transhumanism include developing human nature, the focus on biotechnological means that further our biological and cognitive capacities, radical life extension and the realization of a human–machine techno-utopia. The bold transhumanist vision sees humans living longer, possessing new physical and cognitive abilities and no longer suffering from aging and (in their wildest, eschatological musings) even death. Technology decouples life from biology and allows humans to overtake its natural course.

From an evolutionist standpoint, transhumanist techno-utopia can be seen as a chapter in the history of human evolution and purposeful adaptation. The direction of this history thus far has been towards humans gaining the upper hand in their relation with nature. Having had to adapt for thousands of years for their survival, humans have gradually emerged from this process with a greater capacity for transformative action. The rise of modern science in particular has made an undeniable contribution to the self-enhancement of our species. As we negotiate the transition from an adaptive to a self-directed species, we are engaged in scientific activities and technological advances that can transform who we are (Crow, 2012). Because of this notion, science has been a pillar of public policy since the post Second World War era. Similarly, investments in nanotechnology, synthetic biology and other areas will lead to the modification of natural systems or our own self-modification in order not to be subject to natural forces (ibid.). Transhumanism builds on the prospect that nano- and biotechnology can transform humans internally, altering their life prospects and abilities.

Posthumanism is also characterized by the demand to abandon a fixed conception of human nature, which it rather sees as in a process of becoming. It is about disclosing the mechanical and animalistic dimension of being human (Quick, 2012). Unlike transhumanism, posthumanism can also be seen within the context of animal rights movements and ecological movements that problematize the position of humans among other beings. A prominent posthumanist theorist, Rosi Braidotti, has coined the phrase ‘becoming animal’ to suggest the overcoming of anthropocentrism for a bio-centred understanding of life (Braidotti, 2006: 262). Humans for Braidotti are not distinct from other forms of life; they are rather part and parcel of bio-centred life. The challenge, according to Braidotti, is ‘to think again and think harder about the status of the human’ (Braidotti, 2013: 186). Posthumanism, then, interrogates the boundaries between the human and the non-human. In doing so, it attempts to move beyond them towards an egalitarian conception of life and nature that rejects the exploitation of non-human forms of life and nature for human purposes.

In addition, the posthumanist writings of Donna Haraway represent a significant contribution to the deconstruction of anthropocentrism and the boundaries that sustain it. Writing in the 1980s, Haraway playfully undermines the cultural-technological status quo, arguing that the cyborg is a ‘myth about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed political work’ (Haraway, 2004: 12–13). Her posthumanism embraces technology as a part of socialist-feminist thinking. The ‘impurity’ of technology subverts the origin myths of psychoanalysis and Marxism, namely unalienated labour and pre-Oedipal symbiosis which depend on the plot of original unity that gives way to difference as a result of domination of women/nature (ibid.: 9). Technology does not oppose nature but can rather liberate us from western and masculine paradigms, where the idea of the unity of nature conceals differences of race and gender. The cyborg, then, is a destabilizing or deconstructive figure for interrogating identities, categories, relationships and stories.

Like Braidotti’s, Haraway’s work is characterized by a concern for other species and for nature. And, similarly to Braidotti, Haraway rejects the view that nature and culture can be understood as separate realms. Instead, for Haraway, nature and culture should be understood as co-constituted and co-evolving; hence her term ‘natureculture’ (2000: 105). This also has implications for conceiving of human being-in-the-world. Human being-in-the-world is also biological for Haraway, not unlike organic nature. Humans are not self-identical or unique because the natural (molecular structures, for instance) is a part of the human. Different species are symbiogenetically related (Haraway, 2008: xvii). Reciprocity and species companionship, where the human species is not privileged, are at the heart of her post-anthropocentric theory.

This outline of post- and transhumanism has aimed at explicating their main ideas in order to map contemporary debates on humanism in which the imaginary has shifted from the social to a concern with embeddedness in technology and nature. I now turn to Bauman, whose sociology contains strong and persistent humanist sensibilities in theorizing globalized societies. Unlike in post- and transhumanism, where the social dimension of possibilities of change and critique remains underdeveloped, Bauman’s work stands out for its focus on the issues of social change and making the world more hospitable – less individualistic, less insecure and less indifferent to the plight of others (see, for example, Davis, 2013; Jacobsen, 2004). Combining sociology, philosophy and literature, Bauman, as Eliot argues, ‘tracks cultural pressures, emotional torments and political dilemmas with a uniquely agile understanding, helping us to glimpse if not the solutions then at least the complexities of global transformations’ (Eliot, 2007: 4). Instead of theoretical straitjackets or methodological hair-splitting, Bauman’s work centres on understanding social life and human experiences with interpretative tools that include dialectic and the sociological imagination. Understanding individual biography and wider social tendencies as dialectically interrelated, Bauman’s sociology seeks to turn individual troubles into matters of social deliberation. His sociological imagination historicizes the present by setting it in a historical perspective and inquiring into its contradictions. His work is underpinned by the conviction that no immutable states of affairs exist in society and that choices exist for us individually and collectively even when they appear to be absent.

Zygmunt Bauman and humanism

Bauman first appeared on the scene of English sociology in the 1970s as a critical and humanistic Marxist (Beilharz, 2000; Kilminster and Varcoe, 1992). Bauman’s (Gramscian) Marxism meant a philosophy of praxis with a critique of alienation and of the ‘naturalization’ of social affairs at its core. For Bauman, Gramsci points to questions of power and culture in sociological understanding. Culture is the domain for Gramsci where consensus is achieved and common sense fostered, hence culture is also the site where beliefs about social reality can be contested. Gramsci showed Bauman that there is no inevitability in history and that culture is decisive in historical processes (see Bauman, 2002). Humans, not economic developments, make history and ultimately bear responsibility for it (Tester, 2002). Important themes in Bauman’s oeuvre – such as intellectuals, culture and the critique of common sense – contain a distinct Gramscian influence. So too does the fact that there is more culture, which is seen as the primary realm for renegotiating the present, than political economy in Bauman’s critical-emancipatory sociology. Bauman was one of the few to embrace the humanism and utopianism of Marxism, setting these against common sense and different kinds of positivism in sociology. As Jacobsen (2012: 92) argues, the humanistic or utopian strand of Marxism has looked at how meaning may be created and carved out in a world of impersonal, solid economic and political structures. The task of utopia in Socialism: The Active Utopia (1976), Bauman’s most extensive work on utopia and the ‘good society’, was to challenge both actually existing socialism and capitalism, as each of them had given rise to alienation, curtailing freedom and creativity. The book argued that socialism should become utopian again if it is to tackle alienation and what Bauman (1976: 122) called ‘surplus repression’ – meaning conflict absorbing features of consumer society that perpetuate the status quo (ibid.: 34). Hence for Bauman’s humanistic Marxism, which returned to the young Marx’s concern with overcoming alienation, meaning could be found in social life through critical engagement with the obvious and self-evident in society.

Starting from the year 2000, the question concerning social organization acquired new urgency in Bauman’s writings. His ‘liquid modern’ period marks a return to modernist themes, such as emancipation, rationality, work and individuality, no doubt because they matter once again. Modernity has failed to deliver on many of its promises so far and yet the promises (especially emancipation) deserve a new, albeit different, treatment in the 21st century. Postmodernity meant a step back from the inner proceedings of modernity – of progress and rationalization – thus containing the possibility to assess the credibility of the means chosen for them. Liquid modernity is a state of interregnum between old structures of modernity and a new, yet-to-exist socio-political order (Bauman, 2012a). Bauman elaborates on this idea with reference to Gramsci. Gramsci’s own famous articulation is the following: ‘The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’ (Gramsci, 1971: 276). Bauman and Gramsci both use the concept of interregnum in order to capture sociologically the decaying of the entire social system (Davis, 2011: 185). These are times in which the old and familiar ways of doing things have ceased to work and the new that is supposed to replace the old has not yet emerged or has not yet been recognized (Bauman in Bauman and Donskis, 2013: 83). There are two points I would like to identify in relation to this topic. The first of these is the separation between power and politics (Bauman, 2012b). Power, once exercised by nation-states, has become extra-territorial, while for nation-states politics has remained territorial. The disjuncture incapacitates nation-states and removes the accountability from power. Second: territory, state and nation as the ‘triune’ principles for nation-state politics rooted in the 1648 ‘Westphalian Sovereignty’ agreement are coming to an end. The agreement was a foundational act of nation-state sovereignty over territory and people. It referred to the nation-state’s ability to impose ‘positive’ laws over its subjects and to design the overarching order of the country. However, nation-states can no longer claim the sovereignty they could before the interregnum. The current political reality is ‘post-Westphalian’. The sovereignty of nation-states cannot keep up with global markets and international companies (Bauman, 2012a, 2012b).

Bauman (2003a: 127) has said that ‘“humanism” is a philosophical gloss on the politics of humanity’. In other words, the meaning of the term shifts within different political circumstances. The fact that humanism re-emerges at various junctures implies changed political realities and new ‘topical relevances’. The concern with politics and with pressing issues of the contemporary world captures Bauman’s own attitude towards humanism. Its meaning is to be found in redeeming the state of contemporary globalization rather than in philosophical debates:

It is in the virgin space between the increasingly coordinated global capital and market forces and blatantly under-coordinated political (by and large) localized forces that the major contest of the present-day stage of globalization is being conducted. Between these two kinds of voids extends an institutional void – a vast expanse of trial and error initiatives and partially successful or failed experiments in collaboration and resistance. It is in the same space that the renegotiation and recasting of the meaning of ‘humanity’ would need to be undertaken. (Bauman, 2003a: 130)

Bauman scrutinizes the current individualized and globalized era with particular attentiveness to its contradictions and vicissitudes. In his view, the totality of early-21st- century transformations amounts to a sharp deterioration in their life-conditions (Bauman, 2000, 2005; Bauman and Donskis, 2013). According to Bauman, social cohesion and collective responsibility are increasingly off the agenda in this phase of modernity. As society casts its members as individuals, modes of collective engagement are undervalued and seen as superfluous. Echoing Guy Standing, the plight of many for Bauman is that of the ‘precariat’ (Bauman in Bauman and Donskis, 2013; Bauman in Bauman and Obirek, 2015). The term is apt because across segments of society, insecurity and precariousness are increasingly the reality. In other words, in the contemporary era ‘men and women are increasingly solely responsible for micromanaging every aspect of their lives, and this situation leads to feelings of isolation and exclusion, and so also fear, anxiety and uncertainty’ (Davis, 2013: 2). The difference here compared with earlier periods is that material and social struggles tend not to accumulate and result in political mobilization. Hence Bauman speaks of the precariat as a social category and not as a class. The issue is whether the precariat can constitute itself as a class and, struggling for its socio-economic interests, act as a ‘class for itself’ (Bauman in Bauman and Obirek, 2015).

Liquid modernity, then, does have a clear agent for social change. There is an idea about how things could be different than they are, yet it is anything but clear how to achieve a better and more hospitable society. Bauman’s career as a sociologist, which began in 1950s Poland, bears witness to this disappearance of the working class as an agent for social change. Reflecting on the history of modernity, Bauman (2007a: 306) recalls that it was the gradual decomposition of the working class – the quintessential modern social agent ever since Marx – that his generation experienced. His own retrospective view on the working class seems to question whether the working class was ever the revolutionary historical agent that Marxists hoped it would be. The revolutionaries were rather the intellectuals such as Gramsci and Lukács who envisioned a free and classless society. The workers on their part wanted a fairer share and greater security, rather than going ahead with the Marxist programme. The history of industrial modernity was one of accommodation between labour and capital. The mutual dependence of both sides gave the relation a semblance of permanence (Bauman, 2007a).

Despite the fact that possibilities for emancipation are not immediately present, Bauman’s work is characterized by an unwavering support for public sociology that seeks to bring about social change. Bauman has been characterized as a ‘sociologist of possibility’ (Tester, 2002). The persistent Gramscian influence in his work means that social orders are for Bauman contingent and can hence be remade. According to Dawson (2012), Bauman’s different claims concerning unfreedom, the uses of fear and the lack of autonomous society can all be traced back to the idea that humanity is inherently creative. Bauman’s liquid modern writings, written primarily for non-academic readers, focus greatly on this capacity. His morally committed sociology offers a constantly critical commentary on the present, pointing to the hardships that the marginalized have to endure in globalized societies. Bauman decidedly eschews what Steve Fuller (2006) in his The New Sociological Imagination has described as contemporary sociology’s tendency to abandon its emancipatory aspirations and increasingly respond to the demands of the status quo. ⁴ The concept of a ‘good society’ that is important for much of Bauman’s work has since gone out of favour. According to Winner:

…[t]he recent shift in social theory away from concerns about justice and the retailoring of human institutions toward narcissistic concerns about achieving a revolution in the body points to a definite weariness about the strategies for change advocated in earlier decades – organizing unions and resistance movements, for example. (2005: 404)

‘The spirit of Utopia’

A collection of essays on the work of Bloch was published in 2013 under the title The Privatization of Hope: Ernst Bloch and the Future of Utopia. As the book’s title suggests, our society has turned hope into a private affair. Its aspiration is no longer a different kind of world but achieving individual ends and escaping the hardships that we are confronted with. This is a new terrain for the work of Bloch, but its significance persists. Žižek (2013) says in the book’s preface that Bloch is more our contemporary than he is a figure in the history of philosophy. The reason for this being so, it can be argued, is that in a time of interregnum, Bloch’s anti-capitalist take on utopia, which has overcoming alienation at its core, has gained in significance. Indeed, Bloch’s philosophy is as if tailor-made to reinvigorate the theory and praxis of the austere and privatized interregnum.

Notions like ‘borderline existence’ [Grenzexistenz] and ‘mixed time’ [Mischzeit] in Bloch’s philosophy strongly resemble the interregnum that we find in Bauman’s writings. Bloch belonged to ‘the Generation of 1914’ whose formative experience was the First World War (Goldstein, 2005). Invoking the postwar West, Bloch argues that the epoch after 1918 is marked by complete insecurity. There is no happiness in the world, at least none with any chance of survival. Everyone lives a borderline existence between the old that we no longer possess, and the new that is not yet real (Bloch, 1976). Despite the existential connotations, Bloch’s borderline existence denotes a historical era in crisis. The crisis, in Blochian terms, is experienced as the darkness of the lived moment, ‘whose darkness is ultimately our own darkness, being-unfamiliar-to ourselves, being enfolded, being missing’ (Bloch, 2000[1918]: 200). In an important sense, what is missing in the crisis is a sense of a ‘We’ or of society as a collective. Mischzeit is a time of darkness and debris. In Mischzeit, what has ceased to exist and what is yet to exist meet. Bloch asks if uncertainty and anxiety are not the plight of the many living through this historical crisis. The old society contains immanently the new, yet-to-exist society. The transition to the new society should be understood as a dialectical transition, not a sudden replacement of the old with the new. The era between two world wars bears some resemblance to the transitional epoch from the medieval to the modern era. The post-capitalist society is on the horizon. Social and economic exodus is in the air. What lies beyond the Mischzeit is humanity’s unrealized prospect – a radical democracy (Bloch, 1976: 261–3). It is in these reflections that historical experience comes to the fore in Bloch’s work. Bloch’s utopianism is in an important sense a response to the predicament of the Mischzeit (and the later cold war period). Bloch thinks beyond the era, thinking with and against it. He shows that within existence there are possibilities for the new and utopia is what opens up history, taking us beyond the darkness of the lived moment (Bloch, 1986[1954]). Bloch rejects the idea of linear temporalization and of being as a closed category. Both of these notions overlook that change and incompleteness are essential in human existence. The darkness of the lived moment indicates that something is missing and the search for it propels us. In addition to the ‘darkness of the lived moment’ [Dunkel des gelebten Augenblicks], Bloch’s categories for this imagined reality are ‘nonsynchronicity’ [Ungleichzeitigkeit] and the ‘not yet’ [Noch Nicht] (Thompson, 2015: 51–2).

Nonsynchronicity, to expand on this concept, has for Bloch both an objective and a subjective dimension. As he argues:

…[t]he objectively nonsynchronous is that which is far and alien to the present; it includes both declining remnants, and, above all, an uncompleted past, which has not yet been ‘sublated’ by capitalism. The subjectively nonsynchronous contradiction activates this objectively nonsynchronous one, the rebelliously distorted one of pent up anger and the objectively alien one of left-over being and consciousness. (Bloch, 1977[1935]: 31; original emphases)

Bloch and Bauman seek to recover the ‘ought to exist’ from the existing and thus share the view that humanity is in the process of becoming – the ‘in becoming’ is approximately what Bloch’s key concept das Noch-Nicht-Gewordene means. It conveys the openness of the future. Utopia is that which aims at what is presently not the case and informs consciousness and action, providing it with a sense of ‘where to’ in a normative rather than a futurological sense (Hudson, 2013). Utopia, negating the given and factual, is based on the possibility of transcendence (Bloch, 1986[1954]). Utopia, therefore, is not an end point, but a ‘never-ending journey that does not imply a communist society or a racially homogeneous polity’ (Jacobsen and Tester, 2012); nor is it any other historically known social formation that has claimed or been given this name. It is quintessentially a utopia that is about alternatives and socio-historical possibilities.

Returning to the idea of humanism as an ‘unfinished project’, Simpson (2001) argues for a humanism that is post-metaphysical, focusing on multiculturalism and difference, and apparently following the direction that Habermas’ (1992) theorizing has taken on this issue. Humanism has been strongly linked with the project of Enlightenment – a project that is marked by its foundationalism and epitomized by the critical philosophy of Kant. Kant’s foundationalism meant above all progressive self-emancipation of reason which subjected everything, including itself, to critique. Kant installed reason in the supreme seat of judgement in terms of all validity claims (Habermas, 1987). The late 20th-century critiques of humanism subsequently coincided with the critique of reason and the loss of faith in reason. Even a theorist like Habermas, who is clearly sympathetic to the aspirations of the Enlightenment, agreed that metaphysics was unsalvageable, and proceeded with studies on law and communication. Habermas, in his Future of Human Nature (2003), approaches the issue of being human post-metaphysically – stating that philosophy engages with the ‘good society’ only formally (in terms of procedures) and refrains from ontological speculation.

I want to contest the idea that critical social thought in our time should be post-metaphysical; and that it is in this form that we can complete the unfinished project of humanism. The reason for this is that ‘to give up utopian thinking on grounds of its metaphysical character would be disastrous for critical social theory, compromising its context-transcending, emancipatory perspective’ (Cooke, 2004: 419). Post-metaphysical thinking is contextual to the degree of relinquishing context transcendence and emancipation. History is reclaimed in post-metaphysical thought from the ahistorical metaphysics of substance and of certainty by abandoning that which can find its fulfilment in history. Post-metaphysical thought is contemporary at the cost of aspirations that ignited the critical theory of the past. The continuing of the unfinished project of humanism is dependent upon certain elements of modern metaphysics. In particular, the Blochian notion of transcendence of the existing, and the related idea of the state of existence as the not yet, seem to be important for this project, as critical theory aspires to overcome the socially produced forms of imperfection and shares a commitment to the ‘good society’. The commitment to the good society enables critical theory to justify and motivate transformative action and retain its utopian dimension (ibid.: 424–5).

In The Principle of Hope, Bloch argues that ‘a desire to move forward out of necessity and into freedom was an essential characteristic, the “invariant of direction”, as he called it, underlying the various material expressions in human history’ (Thompson, 2013: 82). In times of interregnum, humanism needs to reclaim the idea that societies and their institutional arrangements will be hospitable to human needs. Olin Wright explains this strand of emancipatory thought in the following way: the idea that social institutions can be rationally transformed in ways that enhance human well-being and happiness has a long and controversial history. On the one hand, radicals of diverse stripes have argued that social arrangements inherited from the past are not immutable facts of nature, but transformable human creations. Social institutions can be designed in ways that eliminate forms of oppression that thwart human aspirations towards living fulfilling and meaningful lives (Olin Wright, 2010: 6). Cooke (2004) goes on to argue that another aspiration central to critical theory that does not sit well with post-metaphysical thinking is ‘redemption’. It means overcoming the deficiencies that stand in the way of human flourishing (Cooke, 2004: 418). Both theorists under discussion affirm rather than reject redemption in the form of ameliorating what blocks human flourishing (Bauman, 1987, 2005, 2013; Bloch, 1986[1954], 2000[1918]).

A recurring use of Christian imagery and language is among the most important things that make Bloch stand out among 20th-century Marxists alongside the first generation of the Frankfurt School theorists. Bloch affirms the religious undercurrent in secular utopias and engages with Christianity and its currents in many of his works. It was his conviction that proper understanding of ideology, theology and culture had more to say about us and our future than static socio-economic analysis, not least because of their hope and desire for a better world (Thompson, 2013: 84–6). The hope for the future of humanity that resonates in Bauman’s work has clear affinities with this view (Jacobsen, 2003). Both Bauman and Bloch affirm redemption by thinking beyond conventional Marxist socio-economic analysis (into different realms dubbed ‘ideology’), but on the other hand understand redemption to have socio-economic implications, meaning being able to walk tall and live without scarcity.

Socialism is for Bauman and Bloch the branch of political thought that best redeems the aforementioned shortcomings of societies. Socialism adds concreteness to Bloch’s utopia. Bloch’s understanding of socialism is distinctly Marxian (Levitas, 2011). It envisions a post-capitalist society, where both social objectivity and our subjectivities are transformed and liberated. Socialism overcomes alienation and gives rise to a collective form of life characterized by meaningful work and human relations:

Everyone producing according to his abilities, everyone consuming according to his needs, everyone openly ‘comprehended’ according to the degree of his assistance, his moral-spiritual lay ministry and humanity’s homeward journey through the world’s darkness. (Bloch, 2000[1918]: 246)

Bauman shares the aspirations of Blochian socialism yet articulates them in social-democratic terms that are incompatible with neo-liberal capitalism – but not necessarily incompatible with capitalism per se. Bauman has stated that the 21st-century ‘world needs socialism more than ever’ (Bauman, 2003b). The need for socialism persists as long as unfulfillment, burnt-out human dreams and charred hopes exist (Bauman in Bauman and Tester, 2001). For Bauman, socialism exists in the form of states that can secure the well-being of their citizens, hence a Welfare State, or as Bauman calls it – a ‘social state’ (Bauman, 2007b; Bauman and Donskis, 2013). The Welfare State is the ultimate modern embodiment of the idea of community, without which ‘society’ is an abstract order of individuals (Bauman, 2007b: 6). The non-negotiable features of socialism are first ‘the duty of the community to ensure its individual members against individual misfortune’ and second the idea that ‘the quality of society should be judged by the quality of life of its weakest members’ (Bauman, 2007a, 2011). Socialism in Bauman’s work appears as an ethical form of life that can generate alternative visions of society, and take us beyond the current morally bankrupt free market fundamentalism.

Theorizing ‘the human’

Having discussed Bauman’s and Bloch’s epochal diagnoses and reflections, let us now turn to the issue of ‘the human’ to get a fuller account of their humanism.

In accordance with Bloch’s leitmotif of hope and the ontology of the not-yet, Bloch views humans as still having much ahead of them. What is human, dawns in becoming. To be able to become oneself and actualize oneself is a possibility or a potentiality to be actualized (Bloch, 1994: 650). Bloch understands humans as part of an intertwined process of becoming within the world. Humans and their labour are decisive in the process of world history; labour is a mediation of becoming human and reshaping the world (ibid.: 651; see also Siebers, 2013). In this way, Bloch combines Hegelian-Marxist dialectic with the Aristotelian notions of potentiality and actualization.

Moreover, ‘dialectic itself in the human world is a subject–object relation, nothing else; a developing subjectivity that overtakes its objectification and aspires to demolish objectivity’ (Bloch, 1970: 512). Humans for Bloch are thus inherently utopian beings that push against consolidated socio-historical realities and overhaul the given states of affairs. The persistence of alienation and the suppression of human potential in false objectification indicate that humans remain not-yet.

Hitherto existing societies have been distorted by hierarchies and exploitative relations. Hence humans have been alienated from themselves in ancient, feudal and capitalist societies as they are not inherently slaves, serfs, proletarians or capitalists. Ancient, feudal and capitalist societies have all had an alienating impact on humans. The division of labour in all these societies has meant unfreedom in the form of heteronomy and hierarchies. What humans are has been blocked by the division of labour which is a constant in class societies (Bloch, 1970: 514). Importantly, the incompleteness of humans for Bloch means the incompleteness of the past and its aspirations. These aspirations matter for the present, as they remain yet-to-be-achieved possibilities. In this sense, humanity reaches across time and history, and ‘we are all in the same boat’ (ibid.: 517). If, however, the possibilities were to be actualized at once, then history would be linear and the past less significant. The reason this is not the case is because humans have the conspicuous tendency to make detours, to err and to let awaiting possibilities slip away (ibid.: 511). Human becoming for Bloch does have the direction of freedom and overcoming of alienation, but not with the certainty of linear development. Instead, ‘the building blocks of history can appear at seemingly random points, or ungleichzeitig (non-synchronously), as Bloch puts it’ (Thompson, 2015: 51).

Bauman has been called a ‘sociologist of possibility’ (Tester, 2002). As in the case of Bloch, this emphasis on the concept of possibility is fundamental for Bauman’s understanding of ‘the human’. ‘Possibility’, for Bauman, exists only ideally; as an end of human effort or an ideal pattern. The significance of possibility as a category is that it allows for the creation of new life-forms and the development of inner potentialities. The exclusion of this category, which Bauman articulates with explicit reference to Bloch, makes it impossible to adequately understand human being-in-the-world, as possibility is indispensable for it (Bauman, 1976: 34–5). Implicit in the notion of possibility is the critique of ‘closed’ or static views of the human condition. This implies the future as a key element of the human condition. In Baumann’s discussion of the influence that Blochian philosophical anthropology has had upon him, Bauman states that ‘I remember being deeply impressed by his definition of human being as “intention pointing ahead”, and of human nature as “something which still must be found”’ (Bauman in Bauman and Tester, 2001: 49). The human condition (and human nature) is thus dynamic and pointing ahead, explaining once more the importance of possibilities. In addition, and related to the notion of possibility, humans have free will, which for Bauman means, quintessentially, the ability to defy prediction and existing patterns of behaviour. Social formations that pattern human behaviour and choices never entirely obliterate free will and the lack of determination that comes with human being-in-the-world (Bauman, 2008: 100–1). The ability to choose and to act otherwise is inalienable. This freedom cannot be done away with despite all the historical detours to unfreedom (Bauman in Bauman and Tester, 2001: 50). The idea of inalienable freedom explains why rising above unfreedom or necessity via culture, morality or utopia is a persistent theme in Bauman’s sociology (see, for example, Bauman, 1976, 1993).

Just as for Camus, who is an important influence on Bauman, acting otherwise and refusing to ‘go with the flow’ for Bauman suggests an alternative or, again, suggests the possibility of a better world (see Jacobsen, 2004). Rebellion against common sense does not mean monadic individualism; on the contrary, rebellion is the practice of the ‘we’ or the common humanity that otherwise would be eclipsed. Hence Bauman in one of his more recent books quotes Camus’s statement: ‘I rebel – therefore we exist’ (Bauman, 2010: 182). Refusing and militating against unfreedom is a necessary practice of freedom that is ineluctably a part of being human for Bauman.

In sum, then, to be human means to be incomplete, to point to the future, to the better that still lies ahead. Rising above the unfreedom of alienating social structures and routines is the leitmotif in Bauman’s and Bloch’s philosophical anthropologies. Despite struggling against the odds, through hope and not bowing to the status quo, humans have the capacity to recreate themselves and reconstruct society. This suggests for both thinkers the presence of alternatives where there are seemingly none and a refusal to resign to the fate of the times.

Trans- and posthumanist themes in Bauman and Bloch

It can be argued that the social dimension of humanism is significant for post- and transhumanism as well. The exploitation of nature has been one of the focal points of the critique of capitalist modernity, and one that the critical humanism of Bauman and Bloch has in common with posthumanism. However, as the exploitation of nature and the domination of nature as a resource are outcomes of socio-economic practices, the issue of social organization remains. The reconciliation of socio-economic practices and nature entails a different, more sustainable society than consumer capitalism. Hence the humanistic concern with societal alternatives does not contradict the posthumanist concern with nature. In particular, global capitalism exhausts natural resources, creates waste and simultaneously wastes human lives. The imperative of economic progress that drives globalization devalues forms of making a living and produces ‘surplus’ populations (or human waste) that have no place in society. Globalization has created a planetary frontier land of natural and human waste that vehemently resists regulation and taming efforts (Bauman, 2004b).

Bloch argues that without socialization, the most highly developed means of production brings crisis after crisis, promoting imperialist war or capitalist enslavement. The fights for markets and competition are written into capital. Hence, progress should not be understood in a linear fashion as a technological improvement under fixed socio-economic relations, but as a change of direction towards collectivist economy and use of technology (Bloch, 1986[1954]: 894, 899 [indirect citation from these 2 pp.]). Capitalism restricts and deforms the use of technology; emancipation from capitalist production would mean that ‘in place of the technologist as a mere outwitter or exploiter there stands in concrete terms the subject socially mediated with itself, which increasingly mediates itself with the problem of the natural subject’ (ibid.: 674; original emphases). The problem of reconstituting nature as a subject in socio-technological relations (even if with a different, more humanistic emphasis) is a horizon that Bauman and Bloch share with posthumanism. What should be opposed, however, is an uncritical attitude towards (the utopia of) de-socialized, consumer market technology. The ever more unlimited market-mediated technological choices augur a different, more sinister era of private choices and experiments. In the absence of public and shared commitments,

…you will have to buy yourself the gene of your choice that will make you (without the detested need for the ‘sweat of your brow’ or ‘labour to bear children’!) enjoy the happiness of your choice. Whatever is left of the old human dreams of a society in which to feel at home and which to enjoy has been recycled into another vast ‘virgin land’ of capitalist exploitation. This time, the newly discovered/manufactured virgin land looks well nigh infinitely vast, as there is no ‘natural limit’ to its expansion. There is no pre-determined level to which the dreams and desires of successive generations of humans cannot be lifted when it comes to tinkering with their own bodies and looks – and the borderline between the ‘healthy’ and the ‘pathological’ has already been all but washed away. (Bauman in Bauman and Roviroza-Madrazo, 2010: 145)

Conclusion

Bauman and Bloch both affirm the distinctiveness of humans, the capacity to collectively transform our social world being at the centre of their humanism. This underlies Bauman’s rejection of the claim that there are no alternatives to the existing social order and Bloch’s ontology of the ‘Not Yet’. The idea of transcending necessity and being proactive instead of reactive corresponds with the faith in human potential that can be found in all of their writings. The question concerning alternative and better human cohabitation emerges from a sense of crisis: Mischzeit in the case of Bloch and interregnum in the case of Bauman. Insecurity and fragmentation prevail in both epochs; in Bloch’s Europe, tormented by the First World War, and in contemporary globalized societies. It is this casualization of the human condition that is behind their humanistic (and utopian) concern for a good society that would redeem the hopes of the past and transform the present.

The writings of Bauman and Bloch exemplify what Simonsen (2013) calls ‘interrogative orientation and critical intellectual engagement’, illuminating the burden of the interregnum. In doing this, they take a normative standpoint and add what Hirst (2014) calls a ‘dynamics of history’ in the form of de-naturalizing modernity and history and exposing its presuppositions. Just as there are alternative possibilities built into modernity, when looking at the 20th century, the current (liquid) modernity contains its own modalities of change (Beilharz, 2006). This amounts to thinking against the increasingly real dystopia (or darkness of the lived moment) of the thoroughly individualized and de-politicized Lebenswelt (Bauman in Bauman and Donskis, 2013: 206). Both Bloch and Bauman think beyond the historically existing to what ought to exist.

The central idea of this article is well captured by Thompson (2013: 3) who claims that for Bloch human being-in-the-world is autopoietically constructed and in historical becoming. Bauman echoes this because he is concerned with how a society could pursue specifically collective ends that would go beyond individual interests and seemingly immutable states of affairs. As Bauman says:

We can just settle for ‘what is’ because we cannot grasp what it ‘is’ without reaching beyond it. We ask the ‘is’ awkward questions that demand explanation and apology. We expect things to change – and we resolve to change them. Small things and big things alike. (Bauman, 2005: 151)