For the last years Humanism has been called upon by political and religious leaders. Intellectuals
and academics of varied stock and diverse sensibilities mourn the loss of humanist values
and call in earnest for their hasty reinstitution. When asked how to restore meaning to the term
“humanism”, Heidegger answered: “by providing man with a measure other than himself”.
Accordingly, if anything akin to humanism should still be justified, this can only be with the
question of the human measure not only as a historical legacy, but also a task and future perspective.
This paper aims at imagining a post-humanism that – having worked through the grief
for lost anthropocentrism: being “post” with regard to traditionally anthropocentric humanism
– has discovered that boundaries certainly constitute an obstacle for humans, but they also constitute
the symbolic space that allows for the manifestation of a surplus necessary to human life.
That would be a new and promising understanding of the human measure.
