Presenting pragmatist humanism as a form of anti-authoritarianism, this book sheds light on the contemporary significance of pragmatist aesthetics and the revival of humanism.

This interdisciplinary study shows that a mediation between pragmatist aesthetics - which emphasizes the significance of creating, making, and inventing - and Marxist materialist aesthetics - which values form - promises interesting results and that the former can learn from the latter.

In doing so, Ulf Schulenberg discusses 3 layers of the multi-layered phenomenon that is the revival of humanism: He first explains the potential of a pragmatist humanism, clarifying the contemporary significance of humanism. He then argues that pragmatist humanism is a form of anti-authoritarianism. Finally, he shows the possibility of bringing together the resurgence of humanism and a renewed interest in the work of aesthetic form by arguing that pragmatist aesthetics needs a more complex conception of form.

Establishing a transatlantic theoretical dialogue, Humanism, Anti-Authoritarianism, and Literary Aesthetics brings together literary and aesthetic theory, philosophy, and intellectual history. It discusses a broad range of authors - from Emerson, Whitman, James, Nietzsche, Proust, and Dewey to Wittgenstein, Lukács, Adorno, Jameson, Latour, and Rorty - to illuminate how humanism, pragmatism, and anti-authoritarianism are interlinked.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
1. Humanism, Anti-Authoritarianism, and Form
2. "We have no duties to anything nonhuman": Richard Rorty's Anti-Authoritarianism
3. Pragmatism, Humanism, and Form
4. ". and the practice has to speak for itself": Wittgenstein, Pragmatism, and Anti-Authoritarianism
5. Marxism, Form, and the Negation of Aesthetic Synthesis
6. "Nothing is known - only realized": Postcritique, Bruno Latour, and the Idea of a Positive Aesthetics
7. "I turned to the poets": Humanist Stories of Progress
Conclusion

Bibliography
Index