Humanism: In Command or In Crisis?

** from the Preface **

This book-length study represents the culmination of my philosophical and spiritual journey from the early years studying for the Unitarian Universalist ministry in Berkeley, through three pastorates, decades of dedicated interdisciplinary investigation and a spiritual practice derived from Buddhist and Taoist teachings. While I still would loosely classify myself as a humanist – a position consonant with my contemplative practices - I’ve gradually shifted away from the positions its more doctrinaire proponents have staked out.  My own outlook has been affected by an assortment of both fiction and non-fiction writers whose observations and arguments have convincingly challenged certain staples of humanist thought.  Given the current tortured condition of the world and the evolving state of our understanding, humanism’s critics have often made more sense to me than its learned apologists. 

The impetus for this book comes from several sources.  In the first place, it brings me full circle from the time in the early 1980’s when I was dissertating on humanism and its impact on American culture.  Over the decades, my interest in the topic has never flagged and as my own perspective shifted I became convinced that a reconsideration was in order.  To a limited degree, the present work reintroduces ideas (the delineations of “doctrinal” and “popular” humanism, for instance),that figured in my 1982 doctoral thesis, Religious Humanism in 20th Century American Thought. Otherwise, Humanism: In Command or In Crisis? is a book of a very different character. 

I was also motivated to undertake this project by the felt need to clarify and refine my own posture vis-à-vis humanism.  In recent years, and as the culture at large has become increasingly materialistic, captive to technology, and environmentally ruinous, I came to believe that widely held humanist beliefs bore some responsibility for our predicament.   Was I alone in this suspicion, or did others harbor the same concerns?   My research revealed a growing, and increasingly influential, chorus of protest.  

The present work reflects a general, rather than a specialized, approach to its subject, with the hope that it will attract a non-expert readership that includes those interested in the history of ideas, environmentalism, thoughtful fiction, advanced technology, and even humanism itself and its fraught relationship with conventional religion.    

The humanists and anti-humanists referenced herein include philosophers, technologists, life-scientists, environmentalists, culture critics, earth scientists, psychologists, novelists, poets and, of course, religious and spiritual writers.  Some argue that humanism has been a positive, animating force in the rise of Western civilization while others disagree, accusing it of spawning problems that now threaten to consume the planet. Its more doctrinaire advocates insist that if there was a more general application of humanist principles we could all look forward to a brighter future.  Humanism’s severest critics maintain that without significant modification, this ideology may make a dystopian outcome, if not an apocalyptic one, more likely.  But on those ultimate questions, the reader is encouraged to make up their own mind.  

** From the Introduction **   

On June 8, 1978, the Nobel Prize winner and Russian exile Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn delivered the commencement address at Harvard University, having previously received an honorary degree from that illustrious institution.  His discourse, however, may have struck many listeners as somewhat inappropriate, as it resembled an old-fashioned jeremiad more than an encomium to these well-endowed Ivy League graduates.  The theme Solzhenitsyn selected for the occasion was the ideological bankruptcy and spiritual decline of Western civilization.  The insidious agent responsible for this unfortunate and unnecessary state of affairs was, he insisted, an intellectual current bearing the innocent-sounding appellation: “Humanism.”

The expatriate had arrived in the West four years earlier, having forfeited his Soviet citizenship.  But Solzhenitsyn soon experienced a sense of profound disillusionment with the secular, hedonistic culture that had clasped him to its bosom.  Like a stern physician chastising a patient for his or her unhealthy lifestyle, Solzhenitsyn warned of “. . .a disaster which is already very much with us. . .the calamity of an autonomous, irreligious humanistic consciousness.” [1] The problem, he asserted, was that in the humanist West, the overriding and perhaps sole ambition in life for far too many people was the attainment of personal happiness.  This hyper-individualistic “anthropocentrism” had taken possession of Americans’ souls.

Some notable technological achievements notwithstanding, the embrace of rationalistic humanism, Solzhenitsyn argued, had led to a steady weakening of the Western spirit and an expectation of entitlements without any accompanying sense of obligation either to one’s fellow citizens or to any “higher” authority.  While the source of this malaise could be traced back to a troupe of misguided Renaissance and Enlightenment writers, it had come to dominate and define contemporary Western culture.  Ultimately, Solzhenitsyn warned, an enfeebled humanistic West would be unable to compete with the more robust and battle-tested spiritual forces rising up in the East:

This outspoken exile and staunch defender of Russian Orthodoxy was by no means the first to sound the alarm over this bland and inoffensive sounding ideology.  As Solzhenitsyn was settling into his snug new home in Cavendish, Vermont, a ten-part television show conceived and narrated by one Francis Schaeffer was awakening evangelical Christians throughout America to this rising menace. 

At the time, Schaeffer was perhaps the most respected thinker in evangelical circles, and many conservative Christians regarded “How Then Shall We Live” as a tour de force of historical analysis.  Beginning with Aristotle, Schaeffer described the progression of humanism through the worlds of Aquinas, Leonardo da Vinci, Rousseau, and Kant until the beast emerged complete and fully empowered in the modern era.  The evidence is there for all to see in the iniquitous song lyrics of artists like Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, he observed. For Schaeffer, what made humanism most problematic was its “relativism” – its refusal to grant the possibility that any final and immutable truths could be discovered and vouchsafed though human reason. As journalist and historian Frances Fitzgerald writes in The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America:  “Schaeffer called secular humanism a ‘total entity’ and a total “worldview” that had forced its way of thinking onto the entire population and that would inevitably lead to a state of tyranny.”

Following Francis Schaeffer’s lead, a number of prominent evangelical leaders quickly composed their own briefs against humanism.  In Save America H. Edward Rowe described the enemy as a “. . . godless, groundless, secular religion which underlies the warped and dangerous thinking behind much of the social activism of our time.  It is satanic in origin. . . .”

This screed was followed in short order by Jerry Falwell’s Listen, America and Tim LaHaye’s The Battle for Your Mind.  Both writers described humanism as a totalistic, pervasive force in American life, dominating the news media, entertainment industry, government, public education, and even worming its way into the National Council of Churches.  Such abominations as abortion, homosexuality, socialism, euthanasia, and world federalism, Falwell insisted, are all the infernal offspring of an unbridled humanism.  Lahaye describes it as “the most dangerous religion in America. . .the world’s greatest evil. . .the most deceptive of religious philosophies.”

 In seeking to explain this rather startling reaction to a movement that heretofore had received scant attention from religious conservatives, historian Leigh Eric Schmidt draws our attention to a footnote in Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black’s concurring opinion in the 1961 case Torcaso v. Watkins.  Here the Court unanimously struck down a Maryland law requiring state officials to profess a belief in God as a condition for holding office.   In his footnote, Black pointed to the great diversity among religions, noting that not all of them (Secular Humanism included) require a belief in God.   But this obscure reference, Schmidt explains, turned out to be “a figment, a misattribution, a misnaming,” because a movement (religious or otherwise) calling itself Secular Humanism simply didn’t exist at the time.  Nevertheless, “. . . over the next quarter of a century it would permeate national debates over church-state relations, public school curricula, and much else besides.”

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the humanist bogeyman, in unholy alliance with socialism and communism, was often depicted as a degenerative force.  At Harvard, Solzhenitsyn invoked Karl Marx, who in 1844 observed that, “communism is naturalized humanism.”But then, in the early 1990’s, with the Soviet empire fragmenting and orthodox Communism losing credibility, conservative Christianity was forced to trim its sails.  Although evangelicals and fundamentalists still took swipes at their favorite adversary from time to time, the rest of the culture had begun to move past the humanist “menace.”

However, while the evangelical fear-mongering may have abated, humanism was hardly home free.  If anything, the critical chorus has expanded.  New — and some older, forgotten voices — have entered the picture, offering their own skeptical assessments of the humanistic enterprise, often as not from a strictly secular standpoint.  When I completed my own 1982 doctoral dissertation — Religious Humanism in 20th Century American Thought — evangelical voices were the loudest and most vociferous among humanism’s opponents (although even then some of a more secular bent were expressing doubts of their own).  But apart from religious commentary, humanistic thought was rarely contested in a public way, and certainly not by anyone in a position of significant political or social influence.

But that has now changed.  In a lecture delivered at the Notre Dame University Law School in October 2019, U.S. Attorney General William Barr (a member of the arch-conservative Roman Catholic order Opus Dei), offered a critique of contemporary American culture reminiscent of Solzhenitsyn’s.  Barr’s comments weren’t directed at humanism specifically, but his claim that “Secularism” and “Moral Relativism” were responsible for a wide variety of social pathologies had a familiar ring to it. The Attorney General’s comments echoed concerns raised by an earlier generation of conservative Christians, and served notice that the humanist controversy was alive and well in the second decade of the twenty-first century.  Still, many of its more recent antagonists have rejected humanism’s claims for reasons that have little to do with the moral and religious sensibilities of someone like former Attorney General Barr.    

In this study I lift up the work of a select group of poets, novelists, life scientists, environmentalists, historians, and philosophers, all of who have expressed misgivings —— some profound, some mild –– about humanism.  As a way of apprehending and thinking about the world and our relationship to it, humanism can boast a long, albeit parochial lineage: it is almost exclusively a product of the Euro-American thought tradition.  It has also had, for much of its history, a decidedly androcentric flavor; among its major contributors, feminine voices are in a distinct minority.  The same cannot be said for humanism’s critics and detractors.  

Although relatively few people routinely identify as humanists, a strong case can be made for the outsized influence this outlook has exerted on the culture at large and in the typical Westerner’s habits of thought.  Indeed, it has stealthily risen to a position of ideological primacy and plays an essential supporting role in a civilization that measures progress in largely mechanistic and material terms.  Those who openly subscribe to humanism credit it with raising humankind to unprecedented levels of peace, prosperity and technological proficiency.  Without completely dismissing such bold assertions, skeptics point out that there have been losses — some very significant — as well as gains, and that without some modification of humanism’s premises, the trajectory we are on isn’t sustainable and may well be pushing our planet close to the brink.  Can humanism now be counted upon to serve the human species’ best interests, or has it exhausted its ideological potential?  That is the key question both humanism’s advocates and its opponents must wrestle with.

I doubt that many of its detractors would disagree with Steven Pinker’s pithy definition of humanism as an eminently practical philosophy that seeks to “maximize human flourishing.” That is surely an end to which proponents and naysayers alike might well aspire. The question is whether humanism, as generally conceived and practiced, has lived up to its promise.  Is a philosophy grounded in the following premises still our best bet for securing a livable future:

1.)   The evolutionary superiority of Homo sapiens and the centrality of human needs and interests, a position succinctly described as anthropocentrism.

2.)   A naturalistic outlook that finds no empirical or logical basis for the existence of supernatural agents of any kind, or for the revealed “truths” they proffer.

3.) The unique and unparalleled primacy of reason as a means for understanding the world and negotiating its terrain.

4.) The unrivaled capacity of science and technology to create and maintain a successful, advanced civilization.

5.) The prospect of unlimited material and social progress, under the suzerainty of reason, science, and technology.

** From the Conclusion **

During the COVID-19 pandemic, as my wife, Trina, and I spent our evenings at home rather than enjoying restaurants, theater productions, and sporting events, we fired up the DVD player and binge watched twelve seasons of “Bones,” a popular television series from 2005-2017.  Trina had been a fan of the show when it first aired, which prompted our son, Kyle, to give her the entire set as a gift one Christmas.

The show’s main character, a forensic anthropologist named Temperance Brennan (nicknamed “Bones” by her colleagues because she specializes in the human skeletal system), is a quintessential humanist.  She’s the embodiment of reason, bringing the same critical eye to both her professional pursuits and personal affairs.  Brennan would undoubtedly second Albert Schweitzer’s comment that, “All real progress in the world is in the last analysis produced by rationalism.”  But in her dismissal of emotionality, sentimentality, metaphysical faith, and even the maternal instinct, she leads an intellectually engaging but otherwise unfulfilled life.  As the series progresses, Brennan’s friends slowly but surely help her to find herself as a feeling, and not just a thinking, being.

“Bones” presents Temperance Brennan as a serious and very successful practitioner, and at times her statements are extreme enough that she seems a parody of the humanistic scientist.  But I, for one, don’t find her any less believable than a Richard Dawkins or a Christopher Hitchens, whose acid criticisms of religion and other forms of “irrationality” have bordered on the bombastic at times.  Carl Sagan, I think, was right when he counseled his fellow humanists to turn down the volume, and show some sympathy for religious folk who, like them, are just trying to figure out how things work and how they fit into the larger scheme of things.  At the very least, we can make an extra effort to respect life’s “mysteries,” and not simply reduce them to problems begging for rational solution.

It will be interesting to see what fate lies in store for doctrinal humanism and its more populist counterpart in light of our rapid transition to a multi-cultural society.  As a product of the Enlightenment, humanism shares all the characteristics and biases that come with a Euro-American thought tradition.  In their writings, a feminist like Ursula Le Guin, an African American scholar like Ibram X. Kendi, a primatologist like Franz De Wall, and a student of indigenous cultures like Robin Wall Kimmerer, help us become aware of humanism’s deficiencies and how its claims to universality are just a bit pretentious.     

After all the cards have been dealt, which side holds the stronger hand?  An expanding chorus of anti-humanists, many of whom associate humanism with a technological society spun out of control and an environment on the brink of collapse, have made the case for a “post-humanist” future that’s worth entertaining.  Conversely, its apologists insist that the emergencies we currently face have resulted from transgressions of humanism’s values and norms.  It’s possible that both have grasped part of the truth.  After nearly a lifetime of mulling the matter over, I find myself with a foot firmly planted in both camps – as does Sarah Bakewell who, in her 2023 treatment of humanist thought (Humanly Possible), admits to harboring both humanist and anti-humanist sentiments (“I do think humanism waves the better flag,” she writes).

While I often find myself nodding in agreement with those who question the criteria our humanistic society uses for measuring progress, I think it would be better to amend the criteria rather than forsake the idea altogether.