at25.htm

ON DEFINING HUMANISM

July 27th 1998

The next issue, Number 26, will appear on August 15th 1998.

The use of the word humanism goes back a very long time and the meanings attributed to it have been very varied. For an interesting and detailed account of the history of the word, see HUMANISM - What's in the Word by Nicolas Walter, published by the Rationalist Press Association (ISBN 0 301 97001 7).

This AT 25 is concerned with describing the contemporary use of the term and is prompted by an introductory article by Paul Kurtz in Volume 1 Number 1 of a new journal (called PHILO - after the sceptical participant in David Hume's Dialogues). This journal is the official organ of the Society of Humanist Philosophers. In the article Kurtz offers at some length a definition of contemporary secular humanism. I propose here a far shorter definition.

In particular, the formulation that I propose is fully in accord with the sufficient general specification that Kurtz lays down. He writes : "The test of any normative definition (of a given term) is that it should be broad enough so as to include any person or thing that is signified by the term but limiting enough so that it is able to exclude those not qualified."

My claim is that the formulation I give below - even including the accompanying explanatory matter - is in far fewer words than the several thousand in Kurtz's article and that nothing essential is lost by my relative brevity.

The definition I suggest is that contemporary secular humanists believe that

1) we human beings, individually and democratically-collectively, can sufficiently identify, and sufficiently solve, empirically and logically, the problems facing us in this life, lived in this world, without any inescapable need to postulate anything that can properly be termed supernatural.

2) the human species is by its very nature a social species rather than a socially contracting species. We are social as surely as we are vertebrate; we have no choice in the matter.

3) the two essential things about a human being are that each of us is individually unique and each of us is inescapably part of common humanity. Distinctions - such as those of race, creed, nationality, colour, sexuality ... which preoccupy so many people so much ... ought to be regarded as unimportant compared with the supreme human attributes of unique individuality and common humanity.

4) the flourishing of the global society, in which each of us is necessarily a participant, depends upon the normal adherence to certain forms of behaviour and the normal avoidance of other forms of behaviour BUT it is the case that our untutored instincts do not match, with sufficient precision, what is required for society to function satisfactorily. Thus there is a natural 'discipline deficit' and it is the function of moral teaching and example to try to make good that deficit. Humanists think that the morality that is actually needed can be identified sufficiently within human life precisely because that need arises sufficiently from what we are - unique individuals in a necessary collective.

(This definition is based upon a form of words that I included in a lecture on 'One Humanist's Faith' given to the Aberdeen (UK) Inter-Faith Group in 1997).

What does this formulation exclude?

It excludes all autocratic, totalitarian attitudes (in that these diminish, to the point of precluding, individual autonomy, democratic institutions and democratic practice) :

It excludes all discriminatory attitudes against people who may be perceived to be 'different' in ways that are beyond the individual's control :

It excludes any dependence upon alleged revelation and allegedly privileged writings and it denies the right of priesthoods, or their secular equivalents, authoritatively to prescribe and to proscribe (in accordance with such sources of alleged authority) how individuals might act and what acts society might permit and encourage :

It exclides, by the use of the word "sufficiently", all forms of perfectionism - notions of past or future 'golden ages' either in this life or, hypothetically, in some other level of existence.

What does this formulation include?

It includes, so long as respect is paid to the requirements of 1) 2) and 3) above, the following varied opinions on matters associated with religion:

a) dogmatic atheism - 'there is no god'.

b) default atheism (my own position, ES) - 'the case for the belief that there is a god is so unconvincing as to make it practically necessary to discard that belief.'

c) non-realist theism - 'the acceptance that there is really no god as ordinarily understood but an assertion that a god-model is a valuable concept for human beings to adopt even though it is not, in the simplest sense of the word, true'. This view is associated with Don Cupitt and the Sea of Faith network.

d) agnosticism - 'we cannot know that there is, or that there is not, a god so we must do what we can on the basis of what data we have. This view is practically indistinguishable from b)

e) deism - 'there is, extant, God the Creator and we know Him through His creation and we can well do without the apparatus of conventional religion - priests, scriptures etc. - but indeed such apparatus is actually harmful in that it stands, deists believe, between us and our Creator. This view is that, crudely speaking, God has given us what it takes to be properly and fully human and that it is up to us 'to get on with it'. A deist might well say 'It is the will of god that I be a humanist'.

In the area of general philosophy the definition I have suggested indicates that modern secular humanism is essentially realist, empiricist, materialist, naturalist and - in that it is, epistemologically speaking, compatible with notions of coherence, correspondence and economy of hypothesis - based upon science and, especially, is indebted to the lasting knowhow that science gives us.

I suggest that the above gives a fair general account of what modern secular humanism is all about.

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