In history as well as in the philosophical tradition, an anthropological ideal stands out: there is no single way of defining human life and its purpose. This essay seeks to demonstrate the thesis that humanity is a disputed concept in the history of modern and contemporary philosophy. This history shows that thinking about the idea of humanity is a promethean attempt to recognize the plurality of humanization projects, which from the social, religious, metaphysical, cultural, systemic and ethical fields show a complex and always enriched diversity of processes of subjectivation and de-subjectivation, which face the challenges posed by the chaotic history of the twentieth century and that of the twenty-first century.