Reappraising Humanism in the 21st Century

Humanism since the Enlightenment has emphasized several interrelated ideas which form its core. For purposes of this post I break these ideas down into 2 philosophical principles and 3 social and political guidelines for action. The 2 underlying principles of post-Enlightenment humanism are:

1) All human beings have intrinsic moral worth or dignity. (Historically speaking this can be seen as a secular codification--by Kant and others-- of the idea that all human beings have a "divine spark" or a soul which gives them inherent value).

2) Intellectual, moral and epistemological frameworks can only be judged and compared in terms of human perspectives. There is no God's eye view of the world which can be legitimately claimed in the public sphere. ( Edit: In Kantian terms, we do not have experiential access to the noumenal but only the phenomenal world-- although this will lead to some tension when Kant and others attempt to establish Universal Ethics.)

The 3 related guidelines for action in Humanism are:

a) Human beings alone are responsible for moral reasoning and the legislative policies that derive from such reasoning.

b) Religion/s (which had caused much war in early modern Europe) should, ideally, be tolerated but not viewed as a basis for the legitimacy of norms, values, political systems or laws. Politics and the public sphere are to be secular (i.e. Religion cannot be a coercive force in politics and law).

c) Faith should be placed in the (theoretically) unique rational capacity of human agents to continually learn from experience, thus improving both scientific and ethical knowledge. Such ethically informed Rationalism should result in progress. Though there may be temporary set-backs and lapses into "backward" or "barbaric" behavior (such as excessive nationalism, chauvinism, war, and oppression) the overall trend moves in one direction towards the moral improvement of humanity, as envisioned by the philosophes of the Enlightenment, and upheld in some form by most humanists to date.

This ideal picture, or Ideal Type of post-Enlightenment humanism is roughly equivalent to what one of its most subtle critics, Charles Taylor, in The Secular Age, calls "Exclusive Humanism." It is the moral underpinning of Modern Western Liberal Democracies and the International Human Rights Movement. Writing in the 21st century, Taylor is sympathetic to much of the above. He certainly would like to see liberal democracy (or Social Democracy), social justice and toleration of diverse cultures and lifeways flourish as with the humanist ethos. However, he holds that by making the human being the ONLY possible source of morality humanism runs the risk of lapsing into arbitrariness, lacking universal, or at least transcultural foundations while continuing to use the language of "Universal Rights and Obligations." Along with Vaclav Havel and others, Taylor notes that the substantive ethics which Humanism prizes derive originally from religious sources. An obvious, and oft-discussed example is the concept of "Natural Rights." These are the basis for what has become the secular and international concept of Universal Human Rights, as encoded in the UN Charter of these Rights. Taylor and others note that many foreign countries have resisted compliance to these rights because they attempt to regulate and prescribe some of the deepest moral issues from an Enlightenment perspective without respect for alternative traditions-- often religiously informed ones. He is equally concerned about Western intellectuals who either a) reject humanism (e.g. postmodernists) or b) give lip-service to humanism without believing it has any underlying moral foundations, but is just a preference or matter of their own self-interest in remaining part of the modern West. He believes that Humanism cannot sustain its own values without acknowledging a "Transcendent" source or object of reverence and value. However, this inspirational transcendent element, he warns, must not "ossify into metaphysical or religious dogma" since dogmatic religion and metaphysics are polar opposites of the humanistic ethos.

His concerns are not entirely unwarranted. In academia, Humanism is often mocked by professors trading in Critical Theory, Post-Colonial Studies, Gender Studies and a whole swathe of fields influenced by the anti-humanism of Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and others across the humanities departments in North America and Europe. As much as I respect Foucault and the others, I have always thought their dismissal of a coherent notion of individual and social agency has only had the (unintended) effect of making humanities less relevant to social and political action in the actual (as opposed to theorized) world. Postmodernist and similar approaches are, at bottom, antihumanist . Still, it is hard to imagine what kind of "transcendent" value, free of dogma and doctrine, Taylor has in mind. He stipulates that it could not be a religion and does little to characterize it with specificity. It's hard to see something so ill-defined as this convincing skeptical members of our own and other cultures that humanist ethics really are universal after all! Perhaps it would be better to say that secular ethics can include traditionally religious attributes such as reverence and faith. But the
reverence can be for nature and future generations, for example, rather than a deity. Faith can be placed in our creative and intelligent capacities and potentials, however often they go unfulfilled. It is by focusing on and having faith in such capacities that we are more likely to realize them in multiple ways ranging from the creation of art and music to the intelligent and fair-minded social reforms and
policies that have improved life for many (though not enough) human beings (egs. abolitionism, women's rights and suffrage, civil rights, welfare entitlements for the poor, LGBTQ rights, international human rights and justice, et al.)

Putting Taylor's concerns aside, in the 21st century, there are even greater pressures on humanism coming not from anti-humanism in philosophy, but Posthumanism and Transhumanism which are immanent technological and ideological forces ensconced in various institutions including biotechnology, the strong AI community, R&D in the military, genetically modified children (designer babies) now sanctioned by gov't in "limited cases" when feasible in the future to cure disease and some of the more (for now) fringe groups like "HumanityPlus"advocating for human hybridization, chimeras, cloning, cyborg citizens and ultimately the "Singularity" or advent of Superintelligence that will subsume and eventually replace homo sapiens as the pinnacle of intelligent life on Earth.

Humanists have not done much to prepare for or respond to such trends. There are some "digital humanists" like Jared Lanier ( see You Are Not A Gadget) who are concerned with the direction of technologies they helped to create. But the posthuman and weakly transhuman revolution is here. Human enhancements are now widely touted as goods, even when their value is not curative but transformative of what is traditionally considered "innate" to the human condition (e.g. powers of memory, concentration, strength, cosmetic issues of "beauty," sexual drive, hormone levels, genitalia, ability to favorably influence future children via the editing of genes, etc.) If Humanism's first two principles (above) state that we are limited to the "human perspective" morally and epistemically, we might do well to ask just what the boundaries of the "human perspective" are in the coming age of human enhancements and augmentations.

Finally, there is the critique from so-called Biocentrists, who claim that the 2nd principle of humanism (we can only evaluate moral claims from a human perspective) is flawed. Human empathy with other members of the biosphere, they say, is thus thwarted leading to the exploitation and abuse of other species, and ecological systems characteristic of the first 2 waves of the Industrial Revolution. Climate Change can't be addressed, they claim, until we "dethrone" human beings from their privileged status of being most valued. Some speak of the intrinsic rights of animals, trees and perhaps the planet itself conceived as the biosphere. Humanism makes us too self-important to notice we are but fragile transients who depend much more on the ecosphere than it does on us. We can't "save the planet" because the planet will be fine with or without us just as it was fine before we existed. Slogans like "save the planet" really just express our desire to save or retain certain optimal conditions for human life. That's fine, but we state it as though we're actually in charge of the planet-- a case of terminal hubris for those who emphasize the biosphere as the ultimate transcendent object of reverence. The non-anthropocentric environmentalists argue that since we're part of the biosphere and, along with untold species, depend on it it for our very survival, it has as greater value than the human race which ought to revere it and value it as intrinsically i.e. as a good-in-itself. It is the hubris of placing ourselves above nature that continues to result in the undermining of our own civilization by emitting greenhouse gasses and depleting finite resources as though with impunity. In a state of blindness we imagine we run the show on this planet, and the earth itself is a possession or set of resources to be used to gratify our wants. Even when the science is in, we stumble on polluting and damaging the world with only a faint understanding of the consequences. We are drunk with conceit.

Contemporary Humanists can retort that, for all the truth in that, in the end it is human action or inaction that will determine our fate. We may be prone to hubris, and that's not good. We may fail this ultimate test of morality and pay the ultimate price of Anthropogenic Global Warming run amok. But whatever happens does not depend on the value we place on the planet for its own sake (since the planet will be fine come what may, just as it was 'fine' before humans existed). In any case, the planet or biosphere does not and cannot set policies or make moral judgments, while we do and must. In this sense, at least, the moral burden falls flatly on humanity, willy nilly-- and what we do or fail to do reflects what we value. In this sense, at least, the humanistic insistence that we alone are responsible for our own conduct and fate seems to fit the situation we face. Yet there is something about the critique both from Taylor and the post-humanist environmentalists that strikes a chord. We may be the responsible agents in terms of Global Warming, but that does not mean that a proper appreciation of our fragility and dependence on nature would not contribute greater depth and understanding to humanism itself.

The more deeply we have reverence for and reflect on humanity, the more likely it is that we will realize that humanity already includes nature, ecosystems and the cosmos. Surely great humanist thinkers like John Dewey and Albert Einstein did not value human beings in a vacuum but rather it is the human world which they cherished. That world is part of nature/ the ecosphere. From cosmos to solar system to biosphere, nature literally constitutes our necessary condition for being-- our source and home. What is humanity without a natural habitat consistent with our own survival and flourishing as well as that of innumerable lifeforms with which we are entwined in complex, dynamic interdependencies we still barely understand? The first environmentalists and conservationists emphasized this (though their scientific understanding of it was less impressive than their practical and poetic understanding). From Emerson, Thoreau and Muir to Dewey's Experience & Nature, to Aldo Leopold and his famous "Land Ethic," something like this has been urged by American environmentalists, originally as an extension of humanism.

But alas such reverence and valuation as this cannot be dialed into the nearest pharmacy. It arises spontaneously as all genuinely reverent states (including religious ones if they are not based on fear or expected rewards) always have. There is no point in Taylor or the Biocentrists arguing for faith and reverence in something greater than human beings when such an appreciation cannot be the result of any ideology or program. It is also hubris to attempt to engineer such rarefied states as reverence, wonderment and appreciation whether for the arts, the natural world, or the cosmos. After all, we're not talking about cold, unemotional beliefs here but about attitudes and sympathies that enliven our relationship to others and the world, but which cannot be feigned.

Related links:

Modern Humanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Antihumanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Posthumanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Transhumanism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Biocentrism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

In light of the problems and challenges outlined some questions are left unanswered at this time.
What do you think?

1) Is there still a need and viable basis for articulating Humanism in the 21st century (e.g. to protect the values of liberal democracies and human rights)?

2) Does Humanism need to acknowledge a source of value greater than human beings alone in order to thrive (e.g. The Biosphere, "Gaia,"  or a vague concept of Transcendence ala Charles Taylor above)?