Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope

by Sarah Bakewell

Confinement to a limited sphere is what happens every time people are assigned to a particular range of activities from birth, especially for any reason to do with social class, caste, ethnic group, or other factors. If, like Plato, you believe in reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, well, at least you can console yourself with the hope of getting better status in the next life. But if, like most humanists, you think that this is the life that matters, then it is unacceptable to lose the “largest and highest” options in that life because of typecasting. To refuse such limitation is implicitly to make a philosophical claim: that universal humanity belongs to each of us. This was what Montaigne had said—we each bear the entire form of the human condition—although his readiness to apply that principle to the situation of women was variable. (Everything in Montaigne is variable.)