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

Recorded May 2, 2023
In conversation with Eric Banks
Acclaimed for “wonderfully readable” fusions of “biography, philosophy, history, cultural analysis and personal reflection” (The Independent), Sarah Bakewell is the author of At the Existentialist Café, a rousing and comprehensive account of the 20th century intellectual movement, which was named one of 2016’s best books by The New York Times. She is also the author of How to Live: A Life of Montaigne, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning biography of the 16th century essayist. She formerly worked as a curator of early printed books at the esteemed Wellcome Library for the History of Medicine, earned a postgraduate degree in artificial intelligence, and taught creative writing at London’s City University. In her latest book, she delves into the vast history of humanist thought in order to illuminate its contributions to art, scientific inquiry, and the very nature of our individual spirits.
Eric Banks is a writer and editor based in New York. He is director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at the New York Public Library and consulting editor of the forthcoming Robert Rauschenberg Catalogue Raisonné, the first volume of which is scheduled to appear in 2025. Banks is a former senior editor of Artforum, and from 2003 to 2008 he served as editor in chief of Bookforum.
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[@joea363]

The key to humanist progress is that the dark times are increasingly less less dark than in the past. That is, the bad times of today are less bad than the bad times of the past. This is the basis of optimism.

[@fineartist7710]

Good interview, yes, the development of humanism is I believe the beginning of the modern world as we know it. The very idea of progress, that the human life can be better than what it was is one of the key elements of humanism, which is what Sarah Bakewell alluded to...Thanks for sharing this interview.

[@yomilalgro]

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