New Humanism for the 21st Century

Abstract

This proposal of a new humanism for the 21 Century is based in two influential traditions of modern humanism: the Scottish (Adam Smith) and the German (Kant). The first one is characterized by the incorporation of feelings ”“ especially sympathy ”“ in the configuration of modern reasoning, associated to the study of the emerging economic activity in the context of social ethics anchored in the idea of individual; and the second one represents the point of view of moral universalism, which considers: human being as an end itself; good will as moral foundation of authentic humanity; and human dignity as an unconditional value. Since then, emerges hermeneutic humanism, connected to the ethics of responsibility and inserted in a post-conventional communitarism, capable of surpassing contextualisms that, themselves, do not do more than producing several forms of exclusion.