The Human and the Humane：Humanity as Argument from Cicero to Erasmus

　　In times of conflicts and crises, an argument insisting on the humane is commonly heard. In wars, voices demanding a humane treatment of prisoners – as decreed by the Geneva Convention – will be raised. Opposition to social injustice may be framed in a collected call for a humane society. Even educational systems may insist on having a humane perspective among its leading causes. Words referring to man – humane, but also humanistic, humanitarian, even humanity – thus take on status of ideals for mankind. Man, in common and legal speech, thus becomes the conceptual marker of his own perfection. The subject of this book is the early history of this linguistic feature and in particular its argumentative use, from its starting point till early modern times.

作者簡介

Christian Høgel

　　Christian Høgel is professor at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense. He is co-director of the Centre for Medieval Literature (Odense & York) and has written on Classical and Byzantine literature.

Foreword
Introduction
 
Chapter 1:
The Humane as Argument
Beginnings
 
Chapter 2:
The Humanitas of Cicero
Laws and diplomacy
The empire: provincials, barbarians, and slaves
The dynamic turn
Subject or object or both: cultural education or the law?
 
Chapter 3:
Implementing Humanitas
Imperial responses
Humanitas as ‘humanitarian’
Seneca
 
Chapter 4:
Christianizing Humanitas
Lactantius
Other medieval usages
 
Chapter 5:
Humanitas as Argument Against War
The Italian humanists
First beginnings in the Renaissance
Erasmus and later humanists
 
Epilogue: Ancient Humanitas after Erasmus
 
Bibliography
Abbreviations of ancient, Greek-Roman sources
Index