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“It’s a philosophy that rejects supernaturalism, regards man as a natural object and asserts the essential dignity and worth of man and his capacity to achieve self-realisation through the use of reason and the scientific method.”
Kurt Vonnegut: “I am a humanist,” he said, “which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without any expectation of rewards or punishments after I’m dead.”
By introducing students to literary and cultural experiences, and to the tools of critical analysis, they hope to help them to acquire extra sensitivity to the perspectives of others, a subtler grasp of how political and historical events unfold, and a more judicious and thoughtful approach to life generally.
“Only connect!” This is the epigraph and recurring refrain of his 1910 novel Howards End, and Forster meant a range of things by it.
He meant that we should look to the bonds that connect us, rather than to divisions; that we should try to appreciate other people’s angles on the world as well as our own; and that we should avoid the inward splintering of ourselves that is caused by self-deception or hypocrisy.
No; in fact, it offers cheering and comforting consequences for our lives. If nothing of me will survive into any afterlife, there is no point in my living in fear, worrying about what the gods may do to me or what torments or adventures may await me in future.
freed from cosmic dread, he was able to chuckle at human foibles rather than weep over them as others did.
Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. And Ingersoll ends with the all-important final line: The way to be happy is to make others so. That last part takes us to a second big humanist idea: the meaning of our lives is to be found in our connections and bonds with each other.
We are sociable beings by nature, and we can all recognize something of ourselves in each other’s experiences, even those of people who seem very different from us.
“That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation; go and learn.”
Do do unto others as you would be done by—although, as George Bernard Shaw perkily pointed out, this version is less reliable because “their tastes may not be the same.”
These are all ways of saying that our moral lives should be rooted in the mutual connection between people. It is fellow feeling, not being watched and judged according to divine standards, that grounds our ethics.
While humanists count out the elements of human happiness and excellence, anti-humanists sit beside them just as eagerly counting our miseries and failings. They point out the many ways in which we fall short, and the inadequacy of our talents and abilities for either dealing with problems or finding meaning in life. Anti-humanists often dislike the thought of taking delight in earthly pleasures. Instead, they argue for altering our existence in some radical way, either by turning away from the material world or by dramatically restructuring our politics—or ourselves. In ethics, they consider
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Augustine of Hippo formulated the concept of original sin, which states that we are all born fundamentally wrong (thanks to Adam and Eve), and that even newborn babies start out in a flawed condition from which they had better spend their lives seeking redemption.
William James analyzed how this two-step move in religion works: first we are made uneasy, feeling “that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.” Then religion provides the solution: “a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.”
humanism warns us against neglecting the tasks of our current world in favor of dreams of paradise, whether on this earth or elsewhere.
three principles in particular: Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope.
Freethinking: because humanists of many kinds prefer to guide their lives by their own moral conscience, or by evidence, or by their social or political responsibilities to others, rather than by dogmas justified solely by reference to authority. Inquiry: because humanists believe in study and education, and try to practice critical reasoning, which they apply to sacred texts and to any other sources set up as being beyond question. And Hope: because humanists feel that, failings notwithstanding, it is humanly possible for us to achieve worthwhile things during our brief existence on Earth,
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For Petrarch, books are sociable: “They speak with us, advise us and join us together with a certain living and penetrating intimacy.”
when monastic copyists came across Greek words within a Latin text, they tended to write, Graecum est, non legitur—“It is Greek, and cannot be read.” The phrase took on a life of its own as “It’s all Greek to me,” via Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar
