Embodied Humanism: Performative Argument for Natural Rights in “the Solitude of Self”

This essay argues that Stanton's 7892 masterwork, “The Solitude of Self.” is a performative argument for embodied humanism. It grounds rights in the material paradox of chance life events and the corporeal permanence of human isolation by enacting human solitude through what Campbell calls lyric tragedy. As philosophical rhetoric, Stanton reverses the ground for humanism from the disembodied rationalism of the Enlightenment to an embodied materialism that anchors individuality in lived, isolated mortality.