The Politics of Difference vs the Ethics of Essentializing

Abstract

Now that the intensity of the Culture Wars has abated, a humanities discourse about human nature that has been practically impossible to conduct in nonpartisan terms for the last 25 years or so can be revisited and reconstructed. In an attempt to revive that discourse, the following argument critiques the extreme postmodern position of ‘constructed humanity’ and offers an argument about the necessity and usefulness of a modest version of essentialism based on the ethical claim that respect for the Other can only be made with authority when it is based on an appeal to common humanity, not when it is based on an appeal to some ad hoc, abstract principle of Difference. Yet postmodern claims about the shaping pressures of language, history, culture, gender, race, ethnicity, and class play important roles in helping us understand how a common human nature gets mediated by cultural contexts. In the end the Humanities need the perspectives of both humanists and postmodernists to keep humanistic discourse about human nature rich and productive.