Actualities and Potentialities of Barthe's Mythologies, II

This myth of the human "condition" relies on a very old mystification, which consists in always placing Nature at the bottom of History.  Any classical humanism postulates that if we scratch the surface of human history, the relativity of men's institutions, or the superficial diversity of their skins (but why not ask the parents of Emmett Till, the young black murdered by white men, what they think of the great family of men?), we soon reach the bedrock of universal human nature.  A progressive humanism , to the contrary must always consider inverting the terms of this old imposture, constantly scouring nature, its "laws" and its "limits," to discover History there and finally to posit Nature as itself historical.