Humanism and Democratic Critique

Author: Edward Said (USA)
Translator: Zhu Shengjian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: Due to his immense political courage, due to his ambitions repeatedly shattered in the pursuit of Palestinian freedom, due to his numerous well-known and deeply influential works intellectually continuing those political themes and struggles, and due to all this typically expressed in articles brimming with the high passion of political drama, Said's intellectual legacy is primarily political—in both the popular imagination and even in the eyes of those who study him in a familial sense. This is inevitable, or perhaps fitting. However, this work, his last complete book, allows us to place this legacy within a broader philosophical context: his humanism—perhaps the only "ism" he has consistently and openly acknowledged with unwavering ideals. Although in recent decades, it has been somewhat made to appear dignified yet sentimental by the developments of avant-garde literary theory.