On Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: Optimism For Realists, Or, Neither Hobbes Nor Rousseau

نوع مقاله : مقاله پژوهشی

نویسنده
Robert Hanna
Independent Philosopher, Canada
10.30470/phm.2025.726584
چکیده
This essay is a critical study of Rutger Bregman’s 2020 book, Humankind: A Hopeful History, from a broadly Kantian point of view. I present and defend the main points and arguments of the book, and on that basis, articulate a doctrine in social and political philosophy, which I call realistic-optimist dignitarian humanism, aka RODH, that I think captures the essence of what Bregman is driving at. Among its various theoretical and practical virtues, RODH gets constructively and creatively between Hobbes’s excessive pessimism about human nature on the one hand, and Rousseau’s unrealistic optimism about human nature on the other.

کلیدواژه‌ها

عنوان مقاله English

On Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: Optimism For Realists, Or, Neither Hobbes Nor Rousseau

نویسنده English

Robert Hanna
Independent Philosopher, Canada
چکیده English

This essay is a critical study of Rutger Bregman’s 2020 book, Humankind: A Hopeful History, from a broadly Kantian point of view. I present and defend the main points and arguments of the book, and on that basis, articulate a doctrine in social and political philosophy, which I call realistic-optimist dignitarian humanism, aka RODH, that I think captures the essence of what Bregman is driving at. Among its various theoretical and practical virtues, RODH gets constructively and creatively between Hobbes’s excessive pessimism about human nature on the one hand, and Rousseau’s unrealistic optimism about human nature on the other.

کلیدواژه‌ها English

Rutger Bregman
Hobbes
Kant
Rousseau
human nature
dignitarianism
humanism