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The climate within the discipline of psychology has changed considerably since the middle of the twentieth century. More specifically, what it means to be a human has changed. In Expanding the Category “Human”: Nonhumanism, Posthumanism, and Humanistic Psychology, Patrick M. Whitehead argues that the metaphysical problems that psychologists faced sixty years ago are not the same ones they face today. Humanistic psychologists could once choose to protect the integrity of human beings as well as to engage in open inquiry and accept all human beings, but Whitehead contends that a choice between the two must now be made. This book is recommended for scholars and practitioners of psychology and philosophy.

Today, anti-humanism is a dominant, even definitive, feature of contemporary theory. Setting out to challenge this tendency, editors David Alderson and Kevin Anderson argue that the political moment demands a reappraisal of the humanist tradition. Humanism, in all its diversity and complexity, may facilitate the renewal of progressive theory through the championing of human subjectivity, agency and freedom. Across four extended essays, David Alderson, Kevin Anderson, Barbara Epstein and Robert Spencer engage critically with the Marxist tradition, recent developments in poststructuralism, postcolonialism and queer theory. Incorporating an overview of the historical context that resulted in socialist humanism's eclipse in the 1950s and'60s, and a strident critique of anti-humanism, For Humanism offers a coherent and compelling argument for the rehabilitation of a much maligned tradition.