The bestselling author of How to Live and At the Existentialist Café explores seven hundred years of writers, thinkers, scientists, and artists, all trying to understand what it means to be truly human extraordinary humanists across history. She explores their immense variety: somesought to promote scientific and rationalist ideas, others put more emphasis on moral living, and still others were concerned with the cultural and literary studies known as ''the humanities.''Humanly Possible asks not only what brings all these aspects of humanism together but why it has such enduring power, despite opposition from fanatics, mystics, and tyrants.A singular examination ofthis vital tradition as well as a dazzling contribution to its literature, this is an intoxicating, joyful celebration of the human spirit from one of our most beloved writers. And at a moment when we are all too conscious of the world's divisions, Humanly Possible--brimming with ideas, experiments in living, and respect for the deepest ethical values--serves as a recentering, a call to one another, and a reminder that we are all, together, only human.