“In a society rife with theories and practices that flatten and shrink and chill the human subject, the humanist is the dissenter”

…a complacent humanist is a humanist who has not read his books closely, since they teach disquiet and difficulty. In a society rife with theories and practices that flatten and shrink and chill the human subject, the humanist is the dissenter. Never mind the platforms. Our solemn responsibility is for the substance.

Leon Wieseltier, “Among the Disrupted”, The New York Times Book Review (18 January 2015), 15.