Current Affair Comment by Owl As is implied by the title of this collection of essays, humanism is seen by humanists as a position constantly open to discussion, revision, amendment and exchange of viewpoint. In the words of the collection’s editor, Dolan Cummings, ‘Without continuing debate and reflection, humanism cannot survive as a way of understanding and engaging with the world.’ Hence humanism cannot be dogmatic, as Frank Furedi emphasises in ‘The Legacy of Humanism’, but should be, as Furedi adds, ‘an open-ended perspective that seeks to grasp the truth through human experience.’ Such a perspective clearly couples humanism with genuine scientific procedure. This is stressed by A.C.
Grayling in ‘Humanism, Religion and Ethics’; he defines the humanist world-view as one which ‘proportions theory to evidence, waits on experiment, and is undogmatic and professionally ready to be refuted by countervailing evidence’. Similarly, Daphne Patai, in ‘The Fading Face of Humanism’, numbers among the defining characteristics of humanism ‘reasoned discourse, evidence instead of dogma, and self-correction in place of doctrinal rigidity’.
However, this book provides much more than affirmations of humanism’s rational and scientific temper.
Given the emphasis on debate, it openly explores issues and problems which confront the present-day humanist. One of these problems is the general loss of confidence in mankind, evident in a good deal of recent thought. Once more, Furedi is a main commentator, noting the growth of misanthropy, of deep misgivings about where society is going, and of a preoccupation with human weakness and perversity. Furedi’s response is to call for a re-assertion of humanity’s great achievements of both past and present, and for a general accentuation of the positive, which includes constructively learning from mistakes.
The issue of lack of confidence is also taken up by Dennis Hayes in ‘Re-humanising Education,’ where he discusses the waning faith, in Britain, in the efficacy of education, and in relation to all social classes. This attitude, he argues, has led to a narrowing of educational methods, in line with a reduction in educational expectations. As a remedy, he advocates a capacious liberal education for all.
A closely related problem – mankind’s wholesale alienation from itself – is examined by Josie Appleton in ‘Recentring Humanity’. This alienation has again been manifest in recent thought, especially in ethical, environmental and ecological studies, with the downplaying of human concerns in favour of those for other animals and the non-human world in general. Appleton urges a return to focussing on human standpoints, values and aspirations, in all their complexity and poignancy.
Yet another issue, discussed by Daphne Patai (q.v.), and by Kenan Malik in ‘Multiculturalism and the Politics of Identity,’ is the growth of identity politics. The latter, it is argued, seeks to subsume personhood under a group definition of some kind: religious, racial, ethnic, national. Such thinking threatens the intellectual integrity and autonomy of the individual, which have always been pivotal components in humanist thinking. Also, because it is separatist, it undermines the universalist and integrative values on which humanism is traditionally based. A further objection, made by Malik, is that it impedes political progress, since its conception of social solidarity is unconnected with goals for changing the existing political system.
Partly in response to the above problems, a number of political recommendations are made. Appleton sees the task of politics as that of combating mankind’s feeling of selfestrangement; while Malik hopes that political commitment to ending poverty and injustice will prevail over separatist forms of cultural attachment. Also, Bob Brecher in ‘The Politics of Humanism,’ argues that an effective humanism cannot escape being political and that the political outlook most appropriate to it is socialism.
Aside from politics, there are references to religion.
Grayling is largely negative in his comments, seeing religious doctrines as intellectually misleading. But Dylan Evans, in ‘Secular Fundamentalism’ is more accommodating, claiming that religions have value as works of art, as ‘human creations that give wonderful testimony to the remarkable creativity and inventiveness of their creator’. Simon Blackburn, in ‘Humanism and the Transcendental,’ makes virtually the same point: one, incidentally, that is actually quite traditional in atheistic philosophy expressed by Schopenhauer in the 19th century and Santayana in the early 20th.
All in all, the collection is an impressively wide-ranging treatment of its subject. Despite the various pressures it is under, humanism emerges as basically stalwart and steadfast. It is, avers Grayling, the project of ‘trying to understand human nature and the human condition, and on that basis to identify the good for the human being, and to act to bring it about for himself and others.’ Tom Rubens teaches English at Havering College in Essex.
Reviewed: Debating Humanism edited by Dolan Cummings, Imprint Academic (Exeter), 2006, 124 pp., £8.95, ISBN:1845400690.