Towards a Nonmodern Nonhumanism
Mark M. Freed
Summary

This paper sketches a genealogy of thinking about the integration of the sciences and humanities in order to raise some questions about what a methodology of crossed views might look like. The three theorists discussed (Jürgen Habermas, Jean-François Lyotard, and Bruno Latour) offer critical accounts of Modernity, which alert us to important considerations in carrying out such an integration. Habermas argues that Modernity has meant the imposition of «instrumental reason», originally associated with the natural sciences, as the dominant paradigm of knowledge and the consequent marginalization of moral and aesthetic reason. He insists that the antidote to the domination occasioned by instrumental reason entails putting all three modes of rationality back in communication with one another. Jean-François Lyotard is equally suspicious that some versions of rationality have displaced others, but remains skeptical that the kind of reunification Habermas has in mind will result in any real synthesis, insisting that such attempts at integration will necessarily eliminate voices from the conversation. Bruno Latour contends that the division of the natural sciences and the humanities is itself a consequence of the intellectual constitution of Modernity which can only be rectified by abandoning the sharp ontological distinction between humans and nonhumans. While these observations do not add up to a single methodology of crossed views, they do point to considerations which ought to be factored into attempts to reconfigure the relations between the sciences and the humanities.