The answer to this question must surely shape our vision of the task of the humanities, and of any future humanism, and probably does so surreptitiously even today. But the question remains difficult to ask, perhaps even embarrassing to ask, and for very good reasons. For some time now, at least since Heidegger's Letter on Humanism , if not since Swift's devastating satires, humanism of every variety has been critiqued not simply for its failure to humanize the world, but as an ideological cover for atrocities of all kinds. In fact, according to Heidegger, the destruction or deconstruction of humanism is not undertaken simply for the negative purpose of ridding us of the question, and casting suspicion on everything human. Humanism is opposed because it does not set the humanitas of man high enough.
Nothing seems less certain.
One way I have found to reopen this question, albeit one which remains oblique, exploratory and far from adequate, is to consider the fate of the concept of happiness, which like humanism itself, has fallen into disrepute since the eighteenth century. My analysis proceeds in at least three different directions. But at least two further questions are necessary. I believe that the latter question can be answered in the affirmative, if the judgment of happiness is understood not as a judgment about an affective state, but as a judgment about the totality of a biographical narrative. Such a reconceptualization of happiness places no a priori demands on the shape that biographical narratives must take, allowing for the multiplicity, heterogeneity and complexity of life trajectories, while still giving form and meaning to the judgment of happiness.