The Little Red Blog

Saturday Lecture: Pouring Gasoline on a Runaway Train

{Lest we forget: before “Woke” and “Cancel Culture” there was “Political Correctness,” and before “Cultural Marxism” there was the frightening specter of “Secular Humanism”. American conservatives have felt under siege since FDR, if not before (Woodrow Wilson, income tax, the Federal Reserve, suffragism, etc.); to their credit, they have always come up with clever phrases to caricature and to demonize their opponents. Let us briefly revisit the great Secular Humanism Scare of the Reagan era.}

“Friend, either you're closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge, or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community.” (“Ya Got Trouble,” from The Music Man)

Homer Duncan, from Secular Humanism: The Most Dangerous Religion in America (1979):

The conditions that brought about the fall of the Roman Empire are being reenacted. The goals that the Communists have set for our destruction are being fulfilled. We witness in dismay the decline in moral values. Corruption in politics and business is the order of the day. People are making plans for the coming economic crash. It seems inevitable. We often wonder how much longer our country can hold together under present conditions. Mr. Harry Conn, a noted engineer, has written, “It would appear we are presently witnessing the dissolution of the West. This dissolution is political, but in even more basic terms, it’s moral deterioration.” Harvard law professor Harold J. Berman has written, “Our whole culture seems to be facing the possibility of a kind of nervous breakdown.”

Dr. Francis Schaeffer writes:

“We are on the verge of the largest revolution the world has ever seen—the control and shaping of men through genetic engineering and chemical and psychological conditioning. Will people accept it? I don’t think they would if they had not already been taught to accept the propositions that lead to it, and if they were not already in despair.”

Every thinking person knows that we are losing more and more of our freedom every day. The noose is being tightened around our neck. America is like a runaway train on a downhill grade, and now Secular Humanism is destroying the braking system. We are already on fire; Secular Humanism is pouring gasoline on it.

Humanism is the religion which deifies man and dethrones God. Its avowed aim is to replace theism with humanism. “Humanists do not believe in God and, of course, they do not believe in salvation or damnation. They believe in the theory of evolution, which is often taught as a fact in schools and textbooks. Humanists believe that everyone has a right to full sexual freedom, and a right to determine the values and goals that affect their lives. They do not live by or believe in absolute standards of morality. They believe everyone has a right to maximum individual autonomy, meaning the right of each to do his own thing, whatever it may be.”

Humanists believe in the supremacy of human reason and in the inevitability of progress. However, because man is not progressing as rapidly as the Secular Humanists would desire, many have opted for forced progress and manipulative environmental control. A logical conclusion of Secular Humanism is also the State’s domination of the education system. Totalitarianism, therefore, could very well be the result of Secular Humanism.

Another tenet of Secular Humanism is the belief in science as the guide to progress and the provider of an alternative to both religion and morals. Therefore, science itself assumes a religious character, which can pose an equally frightening threat of totalitarianism. Secular Humanism has developed a ‘scientific theology’ that has evolved from a description of concrete objects and events to a study of relationships observable in complex systems. State technology has become more closely aligned with science and its goals. Many scientists have even suggested that State technology and money be used to genetically manipulate the citizenry.

Secular Humanism promulgates the idea that Man’s future and salvation are in Man’s hands, and that Man, not God, controls the destiny of the human race. If Man is master of his own destiny, he can create his own system of absolutes. Therefore, the Humanist cannot logically criticize the monstrosities perpetrated upon mankind by Hitler and Stalin, because each individual is absolute and the judge of his own actions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

FYI, Duncan’s book included an introduction from Senator Jesse Helms:

When the U.S. Supreme Court prohibited children from participating in voluntary prayers in public schools, it also established a national religion in the United States—the religion of secular humanism. Since that time, our schools have been increasingly plagued with vandalism, crime, violence, drug abuse, and promiscuity; and academic standards and achievements have been falling sharply year by year. Sadly, our schools have reflected the disruption and discord of our society as a whole. As our nation faces the challenges of the 1980s, it is time to recognize the obvious: America has been ignoring its spiritual and moral heritage, and that is the road to disaster.

Existential Wednesday: The Renunciation of Grandeur

{Jacques Maritain was an influential 20^th-century Catholic theologian who helped spark a revival of interest in the works of Thomas Aquinas. Maritain developed a philosophy he called ‘integral humanism,’ which, in contrast with ‘secular humanism,’ included a spiritual dimension. His critique of atheistic existentialism resembled his critique of humanism; without God, Maritain claimed, existentialism, despite the protests of its proponents, was a nihilistic philosophy of despair.}    

“From the very beginning, we dwell in the unthinkable.” (Jacques Maritain, describing the atheistic existential perspective)

Jacques Maritain: 

There are two fundamentally different ways of interpreting existentialism. One way is to affirm the primacy of existence, but as implying or preserving essences or natures and as manifesting the supreme victory of the intellect and of intelligibility. This is what I consider to be authentic existentialism. The other way is to affirm the primacy of existence, but as destroying or abolishing essences or natures and as manifesting the supreme defeat of the intellect and of intelligibility. This is what I consider to be apocryphal existentialism, the current kind which, in Sartre’s words, ‘signifies nothing at all’. If you abolish essence, by that very act you abolish existence. Those two notions are correlative and inseparable. An existentialism of this sort is self-destroying.

Arguendo, rather than abolishing the idea of “essence” (or “human nature”), non-theistic existentialism merely brackets that idea as mere metaphysical speculation irrelevant to the concrete problems of human existence. Intellect is not defeated but repurposed to the subjective pursuit of personal authenticity; “intelligibility” becomes an individual project, synonymous with “integrity”. ¹     

Maritain’s quarrel was not with existentialism per se. He claimed, in fact, that existentialism could be traced to Thomas Aquinas, and he praised what he called “authentic existentialism, or existential realism, i.e., the confrontation of the act of existing by an intelligence determined never to disown itself.” ² Rather, Maritain’s quarrel was with atheism and with modern existentialism’s foundation in the 19^th-century “death of God” proclaimed first by Nietzsche.

But what Maritain considered a philosophical “bias” on the part of atheistic existentialists, those same existentialists saw simply as acceptance of the human condition:

Contemporary existentialism posits the finite existence of subjects devoid of essence whom a primordial natural process flings into the chaos of slimy and disaggregated appearances that make up a radically irrational world, and whom it summons to make or create, not of course their essence or their intelligible structure, since those do not exist, but images launched into time, projects which fail again and again to furnish them with something like an identity. This they are to do by making a series of absolute and irrevocable choices which involve them irretrievably in the face of ever-new given situations.

To secular existentialists, the above passage, minus Maritain’s pejorative language, accurately described the world, based on nothing more than straightforward empirical observation. To Maritain, such a view was an affront to human dignity and to God. He accused existentialists of using ambiguous phrasing to disguise the nihilism at the heart of their worldview:

An existence without essence; a subject without essence; from the very beginning we dwell in the unthinkable. Therefore, existentialism substitutes for the frank affirmation that existence is devoid of or excludes essence, the more elaborate and ambiguous affirmation that existence precedes essence. While that could signify something true (that my essence owes to my existence its very presence in the world), in reality it signifies something totally different: that existence actuates nothing, that I exist but I am nothing, that humans exist but there is no human nature. The aim of modern existentialism’s whole undertaking is to provide this nauseating human vibrio ³, which persists in increasing and multiplying, with the means to get along and to shift for itself in a world without God. Here we have the inviolable arcana, the initial decision, and the hygienic bias of existentialism: manage at all costs to make atheism livable.

Maritain felt duty-bound to warn the “hygienic” atheists:

But what if by chance that cannot be managed? What if by chance man cannot get along without God? Those questions do not even arise. They are deliberately suppressed and forbidden. M. Sartre declares himself firmly optimistic; he leaves the tragic sense to Christians—to Christians and to the great anti-Christians. In existentialism there is no one equal to the stature of a Nietzsche. This astounding renunciation of grandeur is the most original contribution that existentialism has made to our age.

Maritain was writing in the late 1940’s, not long after World War II. In the wake of a half-century of unprecedented global war and violence, including the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki—if there was ever a time when humanity needed a “renunciation of grandeur,” the postwar era would seem to have been it. “Grandeur” is closely related to “grandiosity,” of which mankind has never had a shortage and for which we need no encouragement; a serving of humble pie would be more helpful.

It may be only a matter of personal temperament and not of philosophical perspicacity, but I will settle for existentialism’s chastened optimism rather than Maritain’s tragic metaphysical grandeur. 

__________________________________   

The Maritain quotes are from his 1947 book Existence and the Existent.

Jacques Maritain - Wikipedia

¹ One might recall the proverbial statement “Call no man happy until he is dead,” attributed (by the ancient historian Herodotus) to the Greek sage, Solon. Existentialists might paraphrase the saying as “Call no man authentic until he is dead.”  

² From the existentialist standpoint, Maritain’s formulation is inadequate; “the act of existing” is not confronted by “an intelligence” but by a subject.

³ Credit where credit is due: “nauseating human vibrio” (a vibrio is a bacterium) is a well-turned phrase, especially as it plays off the Jean-Paul Sartre title, Nausea.

Vibrio parahaemolyticus: increasing and multiplying, as they are wont to do.

Look carefully at the nauseating image and you will see the face of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Of Interest

Two recent items of possible interest:

(1) At Psyche, Andrew Reiner, accredited expert in Men’s Studies, provides a guide for developing “a more nuanced and customized form of gender identity that meets men’s individual emotional needs. What is needed to be a man today,” he explains, “[is] the freedom to customize one’s gender identity and not be forced into what’s on the rack.” Given the confusing times in which we live, “If there was ever a time that we needed to think about, reassess, and reimagine what it means to be a man, it’s now.”

Has it not always been thus? Has manhood not always been a work in progress, and has progress not always been distressingly slow? Perhaps so; but, according to Reiner, today’s men are increasingly lonely, emotionally isolated, prone to disguising and repressing their feelings, and in the habit of acting out in ways harmful to themselves and others: e.g., driving too fast, drinking too much, running for office, starting wars, etc. Extensive research (conducted, no doubt, in a variety of sports bars around the nation) has shown that “many males stick to bonding with buddies over beer and sports or other activities that can prevent us from developing deeper emotional trust and intimacy. This is what we’ve learned that men are supposed to do – downplay our emotional lives, making sacrifices when it comes to our emotional needs. It seems that far too many of us would rather keep our Man Cards in good standing than meet those deeper needs.”

It is all too easy to mock Reiner’s plea that we men “embrace emotional honesty” and sit down with our buddies, chums, and bros to talk (over tea, perhaps) about things like “What qualities of traditional masculinity are worth keeping? Why? Which ones are worth letting go of? Why? What kinds of things should men be able to discuss openly without judgment? What kind of behaviors should men be allowed to engage in without judgment? What feelings should men be able to feel and show without judgment?”

Having urged men to bare their manly souls for all to see, Reiner then encourages them to think of “a time from your past when you felt sad, scared or lonely. Write about the event that led to this emotional state. It’s OK to keep the recollection general if it’s still painful to recall. Now imagine yourself at your present age, sitting next to your past self, at the time when these feelings arose. Write down what you would say to your past self as gentle advice or suggestions for sitting with and accepting these feelings. Let your younger self know that it’s okay and safe to have these feelings – that they are a normal, natural part of being a healthy human.”

With all due respect for Andrew Reiner and his Men’s Studies program: this sort of pabulum would make Iron John sick to his stomach. (Iron John - Wikipedia)

   

How to be a man | Psyche Guides 

(2) For anyone looking for something more suited to grownups, I recommend Samantha Rose Hill’s article (at Aeon) “When Hope Is a Hindrance,” in which Ms. Hill discusses Hannah Arendt’s beliefs regarding the inadequacy of hope and the necessity for action. “Hope” having been long established as a cardinal virtue, Arendt’s thoughts on the subject were distinctly unconventional, as Hill admits:

Many discussions of hope veer toward the saccharine and speak to a desire for catharsis. Even the most jaded observers of world affairs can find it difficult not to catch their breath at the moment of suspense, hoping for good to triumph over evil and deliver a happy ending. For some, discussions of hope are attached to notions of a radical political vision for the future, while for others hope is a political slogan used to motivate the masses. Some people uphold hope as a form of liberal faith in progress, while for others hope expresses faith in God and life after death.”

“Arendt breaks with these narratives,” writes Hill. “Throughout much of her work, she argues that hope is a dangerous barrier to acting courageously in dark times.” Of course, Arendt was known to be something of a buzzkill; “She rejects notions of progress, she is despairing of representative democracy, and she is not confident that freedom can be saved in the modern world. She does not even believe in the soul, as she writes in a letter to her husband.” Writing about the Holocaust (“The Destruction of Six Million”), Arendt singled out the insidious futility of hope in the face of evil; “It was holding on to hope, Arendt argued, that rendered so many helpless. It was hope that destroyed humanity by turning people away from the world in front of them. It was hope that prevented people from acting courageously in dark times.” 

Having dismissed hope, Arendt did not, says Hill, leave us empty-handed. Rather, she replaced hope with what she called “natality”:

Coining natality as a concept, Arendt found the principle of new beginnings, the root of political action, and the possibility of freedom. An uncommon word, and certainly more feminine and clunkier-sounding than hope, natality possesses the ability to save humanity. Whereas hope is a passive desire for some future outcome, the faculty of action is ontologically rooted in the fact of natality. Breaking with the tradition of Western political thought which centered death and mortality, Arendt turns towards new beginnings, not to make any metaphysical argument about the nature of being, but in order to save the principle of humanity itself. Natality is the condition for continued human existence, it is the miracle of birth, it is the new beginning inherent in each birth that makes action possible, it is spontaneous, and it is unpredictable. Natality means we always have the ability to break with the current situation and begin something new. But what that is cannot be said.

Hill quotes Arendt directly:

“The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, ‘natural’ ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action is ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born. Only the full experience of this capacity can bestow upon human affairs faith and hope, those two essential characteristics of human existence which Greek antiquity ignored altogether, discounting the keeping of faith as a very uncommon and not too important virtue and counting hope among the evils of illusion in Pandora’s box.”

One might say that, for Arendt, “hope” is a verb. As Hill puts it: “Hope in human affairs can come only from the fact that each new person born into the world has the ability to create something new, to act, and so to set in motion a chain of events, the outcome of which cannot be predicted.  Action is ‘the one miracle-working faculty of man’.” 

Hope, we are frequently reminded, is not a plan; but neither, to be fair, is action. “Make it new,” declared Ezra Pound; “You must change your life,” wrote Rilke; “In the beginning was the deed,” insisted Goethe’s Faust; yet not one of them provided a blueprint, any more than did Arendt with her invocation of “natality”. Circumstances, however, do not always allow the luxury of planning; and when our choices are reduced to action or inertia, then there is nothing for it but to do something. Hope, after all, is only the thing with feathers; in times of crisis, according to Hannah Arendt, what we need are wings.  

For Arendt, hope in dark times is no match for action | Aeon Essays

Sunday Sermon

Jacques Ellul (from THE NEW DEMONS, 1973):

All that is left of Christianity is morality, a bourgeois morality with which everyone is familiar, and a few conventional ideas (the clergy have a role to play in society; the cathedrals are an attractive element of the civic scene). Post-Christian society, therefore, is simply a society…which is no longer Christian, a society that has had the experience of Christianity, is the heir of the Christian past, and believes it has full knowledge of the Christian religion because it retains vague memories of it and sees remnants of it all around. Nothing new, surprising, or unexpected, above all nothing relevant to modern man can come from Christianity; the church and the faith are simply vestiges from the past.

[Accordingly, we may speak] of a change in the basic convictions of contemporary man, a change in the very context in which all their thinking takes place. We are speaking of an ideology that is unquestioningly adopted, a spontaneously accepted frame of reference, something that usually implicit and rarely is consciously adverted to. It is the basis for a vision of the world that all accept and for a common language and a norm by which behavior is judged. It shows through in the newspapers and advertising, in our approach to contemporary society, in the content of radio broadcasting, film, and political speeches, and in the platforms of all groups whether leftist or rightist.

The ideological content of this attitude can be summed up, I think, as follows. First of all, man is the measure of all things. Henceforth nothing is to be judged in relation to an absolute or a revelation or a transcendent reality. Everything is to be judged by its relation to man and is therefore as relative as man himself. He is both judge and criterion for judgment. In judging and making decisions he is thrown back on his own resources, and the basis on which he can build is his own accomplishments. He knows of no higher court of appeals and no source of pardon, for he is alone on earth and is alone responsible for all that happens.

Whatever happens, happens within earthly time, for man's existence stretches only from his birth to his death. His life bears no relation to anything higher than himself, since there is neither transcendent reality nor any other world. Consequently his life in this world becomes unconditionally important; to live is the supreme value, for at his death the game is over and lost. The adventures that make up the story of his life are the really serious matter, since in the short time he has he must accomplish whatever he is to accomplish. The greatest of crimes, therefore, is the attack on man's physical life. A man has to be given time to make a success of his life; if he doesn't succeed in that he is a total failure and there is no way of making up for the loss.

At the same time, however, man's life must contain its meaning. But man himself, being the measure of all things, cannot give meaning to his own life: that would be totally artificial. The only alternative, then, is for life to be lived to the full; in other words, happiness is what gives meaning to a man's life. There can be no other meaning, for happiness alone is something objective even though experienced subjectively.

A second principle follows from the first: man is autonomous. The law that is to govern him resides within himself, or rather, he determines that law for himself; he acknowledges no limitation, value, or law imposed from without. He is responsible only to himself and need not obey any objective, "eternal," or "natural" law or render an account of his life before any supreme tribunal. His decision is the only thing that counts. In the last analysis he decides what morality is to be, just as at an earlier time he determined the content of positive law.

Man himself, then, decides what is or is not to be allowed. Nothing obliges him to decide one way or another, and therefore what is not possible or permitted today may well be possible or permitted tomorrow. If that happens, we can only say that there has been an evolution in the manners and customs of men, but not that any absolute imperative has directed or inflected the development. All experiences and experiments will sooner or later be accepted as legitimate; morality could hardly take any other course in a constantly changing technological society. Even when man tries to look outside himself for something to relate to, or when he looks for some overarching meaning for his life, anything he finds and any frame of reference will have its origins in man himself (history, for example). The choice of such a source of meaning is an explicit choice. It must be so, since man's life has no meaning in itself: it goes nowhere but is simply carried along by the river of history; it is a dimensionless point in a line, and nothing more.

Autonomy is a burdensome dignity, for it means that man is entirely alone as he confronts reality. Wretchedness, suffering, anxiety, injustice, death: they are all around him and he must face them alone. He must take a position and act, without anything to fall back on, without any source of hope. In atheistic humanism, then, man adopts a very lofty conception of his own fate, but the price for it is high: his own existential anxiety. A high value is set on man. Man is the subject of all discourse, and this leads either to a lightheaded idealism that refuses to face facts, or to a bottomless anxiety and despair which those who experience it are constantly trying to escape. In short, the concern for man, the desire to emancipate him on all fronts, and the determination to make him the sole and final court of appeal-all these set him on a pinnacle, but they also put him in a very dangerous situation.

There is a third conviction in the ideology of atheistic humanism: man is a rational being. But here again people are caught between what ought to be and what really is. Everything should follow the dictates of reason. There is a tendency to reject what is not rationally proved: religion, morality, metaphysical laws, tradition, and even political convictions not based on rational principle (for example, monarchy). Men are therefore tempted to build a rational society and a rational political entity (democracy), and socialism is the usual result. In this area, however, atheistic humanism has been undermined during the past half century by the recognition of the irrational within man and by the resurgence of "obscure forces." Examples of these forces would be developments within communism, the phenomenon of Nazism, and the contemporary explosion of movements that exalt the irrational as such. All this has been a serious setback for atheistic humanism. The contradiction between his well-established and reassuring convictions and the actual behavior of twentieth-century men is a source of deep distress for contemporary Western man.

A final element in the ideology of atheistic humanism is that man is good or at least free to choose good or evil and that, barring error, ignorance, or passion (which resists rational analysis), he chooses the good. Man has to be regarded as good, since he is the measure of everything, is his own master, and takes it on himself to direct everything else (technology, for example). How could we live in a world in which man has such power, if he were himself evil? It would drive us to madness if he were the measure of all things and the measure were itself deceiving. Such a state of affairs is simply not possible. Even the theater of the absurd or existentialism…is but a dialectical counterpoint to this basic conviction. Tell Beckett or Genet that man is evil, and he will be horrified. It is precisely because man is presumed to be infallibly good that we can put up with all the grimness and all the shameful reality: all that is not man but the negation of man, and negation does not have its source in man!

This deeply rooted conviction of our contemporaries leads to two further principles. The first is that if evil exists—and obviously does—it is not the fault of man. Institutions, society, education, the economic system (capitalism), the division of society into classes, bureaucracy—any or all of these are to blame, but not man. Put man into a situation that is free and fosters liberty or that is just and fosters equality, and everything will be fine, because man is good. The second principle is that whatever is "normal" is also good and moral. "Normal" means whatever a majority of individuals or whatever a group accepts as a self-evident opinion or attitude. This means that in the last analysis everything can be permitted. We must add, of course, that atheistic humanism both rests on and legitimizes unlimited growth of power, technology, and economy. The higher the living standard and the greater the productivity, the more intelligent, artistic, cultivated, just, and good man will become.

On the basis of these convictions concerning man which are spontaneously held and taken for granted today and which everyone shares, a further doctrine has been developed: the doctrine that modern man has come of age…"come of age" means that modern man in concrete reality and in this society in which we live is in fact able to take charge of his own life; he has no further need of a guardian, a fatherly hand, or indeed any external guidance…he is now free and must exercise choice and authority. The disappearance of God and the Father [means that] now man does exist.

You Just Might Be a Humanist!

Robert M. Price, author of such books as DECONSTRUCTING JESUS and THE REASON DRIVEN LIFE, is (according to Wikipedia) a member of the "Jesus Seminar," a "secular skeptic," and a self-described "Christian atheist". He is therefore perfectly positioned to explain, for those who are interested, the distinction between "secular humanism" and "religious humanism" (the latter being in turn distinct from the specifically "Christian humanism" espoused by the likes of Jacques Maritain). 

Price begins his explanation by citing the ancient Gnostics who held that humanity itself was "divine". He sees this as crucial:

What distinguishes religious from secular humanism [is] a belief in the divinity of human nature. Such belief may not be a necessary condition for religious humanism, but it seems to me a sufficient one. That is, if you believe human nature deserves the epithet "divine," you qualify as other (or, if you prefer, more) than a secular humanist.  

According to Price, Ludwig Feuerbach's humanism also falls into the "religious" category: 

Feuerbach held that theologians are correct when they say we can discern the divine attributes. They are right to believe in such things as divine love, justice, mercy, sagacity—even in eternal life and omniscience. Theologians are merely wrong in ascribing these to some divine person beyond humanity. On this argument the grandeur of human nature, of the human race collectively, truly is divine. It is also a terrific burden to bear. Our problem is that we shirk the burden of our own divine greatness. We create the devil as the scapegoat for the evil that we do, both trivial and titanic; and we create God as a paradoxical scapegoat to take the burden of our righteousness—we don't want responsibility for either! 

In other words, there is no "God" and "Humanity" is his name. 

On the one hand, says Price, humanists are engaged in a secular reenactment of the medieval split between "realism" and "nominalism": 

Do you believe there is such a thing as capital D Divinity? Do you think calling human nature "divine" really adds anything to a description of it as "profound" or "impressive" or "venerable"? Or is "divine" just a metaphorical value judgment, as in "That dress looks divine"? If you're an Idealist and you believe there is an extra something beyond great impressiveness, a literal divinity, to human nature, you would certainly qualify as a religious humanist. But if to you "divine" is just a metaphor, then you are a secular humanist. 

On the other hand, religious humanists often privilege an "experience of the sacred" that transcends mundane existence: 

Scholars including Friedrich Schleiermacher, Rudolf Otto, and Mircea Eliade thought a unique form of religious experience exists. Schleiermacher called it "the feeling of absolute dependence." Otto called it the "numinous" experience. It is a creature-feeling of ontological humility before the overwhelming greatness of the Holy. A religious humanist might experience the numinous when contemplating the greatness of human nature in a choice piece of music or a painting or a sonnet. It is a deep chill that makes one feel one's own unworthiness—though also perhaps one's own potential. 

Not surprisingly, the ever-skeptical Robert Price is unconvinced: 

What if the feeling of reverence before the great and awesome is not singularly religious, but rather simply part of the aesthetic judgment? One might then feel less inclined to call an awe-experience triggered by a product of human art "religious." The core issue here is not whether one has or lacks aesthetic sensitivity. It is whether one regards the particular thrill of the numinous experience as containing something not encompassed by the idea of the aesthetic. If you think it's all just aesthetics, you are secular. If you think there is something unique in the numinous experience, even when called forth by products of human artistry, you are religious. 

Though Price makes clear that his own humanism is secular through and through, he recommends a "live and let live" attitude between the two camps: 

Is it better to be a religious humanist or a secular humanist? I don't know if that's even a proper question. These are coordinates, like "liberal" and "conservative." Which are you? I suspect you are liberal on some issues, conservative on others. This doesn't invalidate the two categories. They are helpful precisely in that they allow you to plot yourself on a chart, as it were, to understand yourself better. It's the same with religious and secular humanism: maybe you're a hybrid. Maybe you're an unstable mix, shifting and changing in your inclinations. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. 

It is clear to me, from all the above, that I am best described as a God-haunted atheist humanist with vaguely religious inclinations (in)formed by Christian upbringing and theological curiosity; infected with Original Sin, Gnostic despair and existential dis-ease; and plagued by an inability to stop asking unanswerable questions like What are people for? and What's it all about, Alfie?  ¹

Having resolved that, maybe now I can get a good night's sleep. 

http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/art_reli_secu_hum.htm

¹ Or, as Bob Dylan put it: "Little boy lost / he takes himself so seriously / he brags of his misery / he likes to live dangerously..."

Sunday Sermon

The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious beliefs throughout the modern world. The time is past for mere revision of traditional attitudes. Science and economic change have disrupted the old beliefs. Religions the world over are under the necessity of coming to terms with new conditions created by a vastly increased knowledge and experience. In every field of human activity, the vital movement is now in the direction of a candid and explicit humanism. In order that religious humanism may be better understood we, the undersigned, desire to make certain affirmations which we believe the facts of our contemporary life demonstrate.

There is great danger of a final, and we believe fatal, identification of the word religion with doctrines and methods which have lost their significance and which are powerless to solve the problem of human living in the Twentieth Century. Religions have always been means for realizing the highest values of life. Their end has been accomplished through the interpretation of the total environing situation (theology or world view), the sense of values resulting therefrom (goal or ideal), and the technique (cult), established for realizing the satisfactory life. A change in any of these factors results in alteration of the outward forms of religion. This fact explains the changefulness of religions through the centuries. But through all changes religion itself remains constant in its quest for abiding values, an inseparable feature of human life.

Today man's larger understanding of the universe, his scientific achievements, and deeper appreciation of brotherhood, have created a situation which requires a new statement of the means and purposes of religion. Such a vital, fearless, and frank religion capable of furnishing adequate social goals and personal satisfactions may appear to many people as a complete break with the past. While this age does owe a vast debt to the traditional religions, it is none the less obvious that any religion that can hope to be a synthesizing and dynamic force for today must be shaped for the needs of this age. To establish such a religion is a major necessity of the present. It is a responsibility which rests upon this generation. We therefore affirm the following:

FIRST: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

SECOND: Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process.

THIRD: Holding an organic view of life, humanists find that the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.

FOURTH: Humanism recognizes that man's religious culture and civilization, as clearly depicted by anthropology and history, are the product of a gradual development due to his interaction with his natural environment and with his social heritage. The individual born into a particular culture is largely molded by that culture.

FIFTH: Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. Obviously humanism does not deny the possibility of realities as yet undiscovered, but it does insist that the way to determine the existence and value of any and all realities is by means of intelligent inquiry and by the assessment of their relations to human needs. Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method.

SIXTH: We are convinced that the time has passed for theism, deism, modernism, and the several varieties of "new thought".

SEVENTH: Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious. It includes labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, recreation--all that is in its degree expressive of intelligently satisfying human living. The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.

EIGHTH: Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man's life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. This is the explanation of the humanist's social passion.

NINTH: In the place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being.

TENTH: It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural.

ELEVENTH: Man will learn to face the crises of life in terms of his knowledge of their naturalness and probability. Reasonable and manly attitudes will be fostered by education and supported by custom. We assume that humanism will take the path of social and mental hygiene and discourage sentimental and unreal hopes and wishful thinking.

TWELFTH: Believing that religion must work increasingly for joy in living, religious humanists aim to foster the creative in man and to encourage achievements that add to the satisfactions of life.

THIRTEENTH: Religious humanism maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life. The intelligent evaluation, transformation, control, and direction of such associations and institutions with a view to the enhancement of human life is the purpose and program of humanism. Certainly religious institutions, their ritualistic forms, ecclesiastical methods, and communal activities must be reconstituted as rapidly as experience allows, in order to function effectively in the modern world.

FOURTEENTH: The humanists are firmly convinced that existing acquisitive and profit-motivated society has shown itself to be inadequate and that a radical change in methods, controls, and motives must be instituted. A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible. The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good. Humanists demand a shared life in a shared world.

FIFTEENTH AND LAST: We assert that humanism will: (a) affirm life rather than deny it; (b) seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee from them; and (c) endeavor to establish the conditions of a satisfactory life for all, not merely for the few. By this positive morale and intention humanism will be guided, and from this perspective and alignment the techniques and efforts of humanism will flow.
So stand the theses of religious humanism. Though we consider the religious forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind. Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set intelligence and will to the task.

https://web.archive.org/web/20111107221355/http://www.americanhumanist.org/who_we_are/

{Humanist Manifesto, Raymond Bragg et al, 1933}

Is Pope Francis the New Erasmus?

"There is no man further from true religion than he who thinks himself to be very religious." (Desiderius Erasmus)

At First Things, Carl Trueman warns Catholics that comparing Pope Francis to Martin Luther simultaneously gets theology wrong and, more importantly, underestimates the real danger the current Pope poses to Catholicism. According to Trueman, Pope Francis much more resembles—horror of horrors!--none other than the leading Christian humanist of his day, Desiderius Erasmus: 

Though I do believe the current pope possesses a sixteenth-century analogue, it is not the good Doctor. It is someone much worse: Desiderius Erasmus. 

In their famous clash in 1525, Luther and Erasmus crossed swords on the matter of the bondage of the will. The conflict was not only between two different notions of human ability with regard to salvation, but also between two different styles of Christianity. Luther’s Christianity was above all assertive and dogmatic. The gospel was constituted for Luther by doctrinal claims about what God had done in Christ in history for his people. 

Such "dogmatic [and] doctrinal claims," made on the basis of scriptural interpretation, were precisely what Erasmus opposed:

The burden of Erasmus’s argument, by contrast, was that the Bible is not clear on key theological issues, and so an attitude of epistemological humility (to put it positively) or skepticism (to put it more negatively) was appropriate. The ambiguity of the Bible bolstered the importance of an infallible Church—since somebody had to be able to interpret Scripture authoritatively. 

While it would seem, at first glance, that Erasmus had thereby defended the Catholic Church and its authority, in fact (writes Trueman) he actually undermined the essentials of the Christian faith: 

Erasmus’s skepticism formed part of a very different approach to the Christian faith, one that prioritized practical action over dogmatic assertion. This is the vision of Christianity set forth in his Handbook of the Christian Soldier. Articulating an exemplary Christology (stressing Christ as a practical example to be followed), the Handbook scants dogmatic precision and emphasizes works of simple, practical piety. Impatient with the debates of the medieval schoolmen, Erasmus argued that the most powerful and persuasive Christianity was that which Christ pressed upon his followers: humble love of God and neighbor, expressed in simple, practical care for others. Dogma appears to Erasmus as somewhat irrelevant and frequently divisive. If Newman’s logic ran, “Christianity is in essence dogmatic; therefore we need an authority to define dogma for us,” Erasmus considered that “Dogma is of little relevance; so let’s trust the Church and get on with being kind to others.” 

The abandonment of dogma in favor of "humble love of God and neighbor" might seem very Jesus-like to you, but that is because you do not possess (nor, for that matter, does Pope Francis) Carl Trueman's understanding of Christianity: 

Erasmus’s vision seems consonant with that of Pope Francis. The pope has a clear bias in favor of the poor. He has expressed concern for the marginalized and the disenfranchised. His openness to those whom polite society regards as outsiders is evident. These attitudes are what make his papacy both intriguing and attractive. “Pray and do good” seems a good summary of his approach to the Christian faith. But on theological and dogmatic issues, Francis seems uninterested in the fine distinctions and forthright assertions that characterize traditional Catholic thinking. The vagueness of his approach to the Church’s teaching on divorce would seem a case in point. Dogma may be important for him, but probably not as important as love—and that is, of course, a somewhat nebulous concept when detached from dogma. 

Again, while it might seem relevant that Jesus himself talked a great deal about love (of God and of neighbor) and not at all about dogma, Carl Trueman relies instead on the wisdom of one J. Gresham Machen: 

To put it in the language of the Presbyterian theologian J. Gresham Machen: Christian orthodoxy and Christian liberalism are not two forms of the one religion. One is Christianity, and the other is not. Machen regarded orthodox Roman Catholicism as Christianity, albeit a very imperfect form thereof, whereas he regarded liberal Presbyterianism as paganism. One asserts the supernatural nature of the faith grounded in history and now manifested in doctrinal assertions; the other sees the faith as a psychological or practical thing. 

In theological circles, this bit of controversy is known as "orthodoxy" (correct belief) versus "orthopraxy" (correct conduct). Carl Trueman staunchly defends the importance of the former: 

This is why orthodox Roman Catholics should worry less about the current pope’s resemblance to Luther and more about his resemblance to Erasmus. To debate the content of particular dogmas is one thing; to debate the importance of dogma in general is quite another. In the former case, there is hope that the truth will prevail; in the latter, there is a danger that the truth will become irrelevant. And a Christianity to which dogmatic truth is irrelevant is not Christianity, not even in the weakest and most attenuated sense of the word.  

On the other hand, defending the primacy of "orthopraxy," here are the words of a well-known early Christian: 

What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him?  If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food,  and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?  Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.  But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.  You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!  But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? 

I realize that this is an old and unresolvable controversy. Still, atheist that I am and no expert on these matters, I'm willing to bet that Desiderius Erasmus would find the above passage perfectly consistent with his brand of Christian humanism; it's a shame, though, that it wouldn't be nearly Christian enough for the likes of Carl Trueman. 

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/05/if-only-francis-were-luther

Mere Humanism

The conclusion of Jacques Maritain's THE TWILIGHT OF CIVILIZATION (published in 1945) was a plea for a post-war "radical purification" of Western democracies. To the extent that Maritain meant that persons needed to be treated, not as cogs in an economic engine or as pawns of an all-powerful State, but as creatures yearning for "spirit, wisdom and love," his "integral humanism" was perfectly compatible with non-theistic humanism (or what I will call "mere humanism"):  

An integral humanism and an organic democracy respect human dignity in a real fashion, not in an abstract, intemporal and unexisting individual, not in ignoring all historical conditions and differences, and sacrificing the human substance to anarchic or state-despotic myths, but in each concrete living person, as he exists in his actual relationship to the community and in the historical context of his life. Their aim is freedom of expansion for the person and they know that they will need all of human history to achieve the conquest of this freedom. They know that in the hierarchy of values, it is the development of the life of the spirit, wisdom and love which hold first place. The principal thing for them in political work consists not in satisfying covetousness nor yet in external domination over material nature or over other peoples; but, rather, in the slow and difficult march toward an historic ideal of fraternal friendship among the wounded children of an unhappy species made for supreme happiness.* Finally, this democracy and this humanism, just as they recognize the rights of the political community and of the political common good, recognize as well, and first of all, the rights of the family and the rights of the human person. 

Despite a good deal of compatibility, there were, and are, points of divergence between Christian humanism and its secular counterpart. For instance, in explaining what "rights" in particular ought to be recognized, Maritain quoted Pope Pius XI: "The right to life, to the integrity of the body, to the necessary means of existence; the right to march towards one's ultimate end in the path traced by God; the right of association; the right to the use and possession of property..." 

Setting aside the loaded phrase "the right to life," the more significant part of this quote is "the path traced by God".  This was a way of saying that human freedom is only properly used when placed in service to the divine; both Maritain and Pope Pius being Catholics, the practical effect of the statement is that the Church, which alone knows God's will, decides what freedom is for and how lives are to be lived. That idea, of course, is a non-starter for non-theists (and for other non-Catholics as well); mere humanists are instead inclined to agree with Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's statement (derided by traditionalist Catholics) that "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." 

This is not to gainsay the power of Maritain's writing, but to acknowledge that, in the end, mere humanism has to part ways with his "integral humanism".  Maritain believed that the discovery of our truest humanity was inseparable from a "rediscovery of God," which was (and is) in its own way a revolutionary claim. Writing as he was at the end of World War II, Maritain insisted that the time was past for modest "democratic" reforms; instead, "It is a radical purification which is needed." That purification, he insisted, was already underway: 

In the realm of facts, and in the realm of historical sanctions, it is this purification which is taking place in atrocious forms under our eyes. We are witnessing the historical liquidation of the world of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and bourgeois democracy. Now a genuine, a real democracy must be built up... 

The fatality which worked against the modern democracies was that of the false philosophy of life which for a century altered their historic vital principle and which, paralyzing this principle from within, caused them to lose trust in themselves...If the Western democracies are not to be swept away, and a night of long centuries is not to come down upon civilization, it is on condition that they discover in its primitive purity their vital principle, which is justice and love, and which is of divine origin. It is on condition that they reconsider their political philosophy and thus rediscover the sense of justice and heroism in the rediscovery of God. 

Can Maritain's "integral humanism" be divorced from its foundation on the Christian God? Is it easily translatable, as I have previously suggested, to secular language and to non-theistic ideals? The short and sad answer is, probably not; at least the evidence of history is thus far against it. Atheist that I am, I am increasingly convinced that, while mere humanism is fully capable of saying to humanity "Thou shalt" in pursuit of all kinds of noble ideals, it has a much harder time finding an effective way to say "Thou shalt not"; and without some way to enforce limits on ourselves, we are likely—as the historical record shows—to inflict upon ourselves, often with the best of intentions, great and lasting damage. But if in fact there is no God to limit us either... 

W.H. Auden: We must love another or die. I don't know what else there is to say.  

_______________________________________________________   

 *A non-theist like myself would have to demur at Maritain's notion that humans are "made for supreme happiness," but could easily agree that we are all "wounded children of an unhappy species".  

Does Humanism Need God?

W.H. Auden: We must love one another or die. 

"Humanism" is—well, more precisely, "humanisms" are philosophies that (in Wikipedia's telling) "emphasize the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively." The dreaded and much maligned (by religious conservatives) "secular humanism" also emphasizes "critical thinking and evidence (rationalism and empiricism) over acceptance of dogma or superstition." Of course, both rationalism and empiricism can be applied dogmatically, and "superstition" is merely an argumentative term when applied to religious or spiritual beliefs. 

In any case, there also exists such a thing as "Christian humanism," also known sometimes as "personalism" or, in Jacque Maritain's terminology, "integral humanism"; the clear distinction between this and other humanisms is, obviously, its reliance upon Christian faith and doctrine, most fundamentally faith in the Christian God. On the other hand, and atheist that I am, it is my contention (or at least my hope) that a kind of "integral humanism" can be crafted that is not dependent on such faith, but on the notion of "transcendence" as itself "integral" to the human condition and to human flourishing. 

First, let me briefly sketch what Jacques Maritain (in his THE TWILIGHT OF CIVILIZATION) had to say about the Christian brand of humanism. Maritain began with a simple enough statement: 

"Humanism tends essentially to render man more truly human and to manifest his original greatness by enabling him to partake of everything in nature and in history capable of enriching him." 

Maritain then distinguished secular humanism from the Christian variety; the former, he said, replaced "an open human nature and an open reason, which are the only true nature and the only true reason, [with] a nature and a reason isolated in themselves and shut up in themselves, each of them exclusive of whatever is not itself." In a similar phrasing, he accused non-Christian humanism of "affirming human nature as closed in upon itself or absolutely self-sufficient." 

To what did Maritain believe human nature ought to be open? To the transcendent: that is, to God and to the Gospel of Christianity, to "supra-rational truths" and to "the whole universe of the infra-rational, of instincts, of obscure tendencies, and of the unconscious, with all its malicious and even demonic, as well as fertile, implications..." According to Maritain, leaving all that out, while attempting to reduce human nature to reason alone, would involve "real and very serious amputations." He insisted that humanism had to include "the life of the spirit" as well as "a deep concern for the masses [and] for their right to the necessary means to existence." 

Maritain was writing in the latter days of World War II. Communism, Fascism, Nazism, and the Great Depression had all highlighted, in various ways, "the problem of the masses," a problem which Maritain said had only two possible solutions: 

Either, counting on the natural misery of man, you will endeavor to transform that great human reality which is termed "the people" into robots, kept in good working order by means of collective techniques, and into immense throngs—illusioned, standardized, poisoned with hate and lies—of slaves who believe themselves happy: this is the totalitarian solution.  

Or taking into account the energies which man receives from regions superior to him as well as the strength of his spirit, you will seek to swing open for those masses a gateway to a life and a liberty truly worthy of the human person and its calling. This is Christian humanism's solution [and] it must assume the task of a profound transformation of the temporal order and must tend to substitute for a mercantile civilization, for an economy based upon the fertility of money, not a collectivist economy, but a "personalist" civilization and economy, through which there would pass a temporal refraction of the evangelic truths. 

Nothing in the above passage need raise the hackles of an atheist, though "regions superior to him" will have to be somehow translated.¹  Even the reference to "evangelic truths" can be accepted; though Maritain was clearly referring to the Christian gospel, humans by and large seek to "evangelize" about (or to bear witness to or to testify regarding) whatever they believe to be true, and in particular about "the truths that matter most".  If a non-theistic integral humanism can be developed, I for one will unapologetically evangelize it from the rooftops. 

Maritain then drew a line between the redemptive ideal of "love of neighbor" and the existing "sovereignty of hate": 

Modern civilization...today is paying the price of a very costly past [and] appears to be in the process of being shoved, by the self-contradictions and fatalities by which it is torn, towards contrasting forms of misery and aggravated materialism. In order to overcome this wretched destiny there is need for an awakening of liberty and its creative forces. There is need for the energies of a spiritual and social resurrection, and these cannot be given to man by the grace of the State nor of any party pedagogy, but only by a love which fixes the center of his life infinitely higher than the world and temporal history. In particular, the widespread paganizing of our civilization results in men placing their hopes in strength alone and in the efficacy of hatred, at the very moment when, in the eyes of an integral humanism, only a political ideal of brotherly friendship can direct the work of true social regeneration...in order to prepare a new age for the world, it is possible that at the outset martyrs be necessary to the cause of love of the neighbor. 

Maritain cited the theories of Carl Schmitt regarding the prevailing basis of political community:  

It consists essentially of the relationship "with the friend, against the enemy" [and] it is fundamental to the political community to come into existence against someone. It is the principle of ourselves "against the other," or of constitutive enmity. For [such] politics...hatred of the enemy, within and without, on the part of the community, flows concurrently and from the same impulse as love for the community itself. This hatred is inseparably joined to such a love. It is as old as the community itself. Only in constituting itself and on condition of its constituting itself against an enemy, does the political community know truly with whom it is constituting itself. It is in constituting itself and by constituting itself to crush the others that the State knows who are its faithful. It is the sovereignty of hate [under which] the summit of political intelligence lies in the ability to discern the foe. 

It was Maritain's belief that only Christianity could overcome "the sovereignty of hate," and that "integral humanism" depended on avoiding a descent into anthropocentrism—an ideology in which "man alone, and by himself alone, works out his salvation".  Opposed to that was Maritain's notion that true humanism means "the discovery of a more profound and real sense of the dignity of the human person. As a consequence, man would rediscover himself in God rediscovered, and would direct social work toward an heroic ideal of fraternal love conceived, not as a spontaneous return of sentiment to some illusory primitive state, but as a difficult and painful conquest of the spirit, as a work of grace and virtue." 

Rediscovering God, however, may not be a simple task—if there is no God to discover. If that were the case, who or what could then take the place of "God" in a humanist system? Or would any non-theistic (secular) humanism inevitably degenerate into anthropocentric self-deification and an ongoing "sovereignty of hate" and a war of all against all?  

I think the answer lies in the concept of "transcendence," understood properly. Over the centuries and in the Christian West, "transcendence" has been burdened with religious and theistic implications which do not come close to exhausting all the possibilities of the term, and which in fact limit and bias our understanding of those possibilities. "Transcendence" actually means "Existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level; surpassing or exceeding ordinary experience; transcending the universe or material existence". Nothing in those definitions presupposes God or belief in God, much less a personal God. 

By detaching "transcendence," then, from the idea of God or of a supposedly "supernatural" realm, we can use it instead as the foundation of an "integral" humanism: that is, a humanism that integrates and speaks to both material and non-material (call them "spiritual" if you like) needs, that satisfies our existential yearnings, our need for meaning and for belonging, and that inspires us to live not out of fear and hatred of the "other" but out of love, compassion, and generosity. 

What is it, after all, we are supposed to "transcend"? Is it the human condition, the material world, or mortality? Is it (as Christians traditionally have claimed) our sinful nature, inherited via Original Sin? Or is it our selfishness, our fears, and our insecurities? If the latter, then it is at least theoretically possible to transcend such failings without divine intervention—a good thing, certainly, in a world where divine intervention seems hard to come by and even harder to count upon. 

What we need to transcend is nothing less than our notion of the autonomous individual self, which is, despite our attachment to it, a self-serving and self-aggrandizing fiction. The reality is that we exist only through and with others; our very survival at birth and for months afterwards depends on others, and our identities are constantly shaped and reshaped by interactions with others. We are creatures of nurture as much as of nature, and human nurture includes culture, culture being a collective human achievement over centuries and millennia. All of which is to say, again, that the self is constituted by others and is never in any real sense "individual": every "I" is part of a "we". 

In transcending the fiction of an isolated, self-made self, we will also transcend notions of isolated self-interest; we belong to our families, our neighborhoods, our towns and cities, our nations, and the human race. We exist through them and for them; their interests are our interests and vice-versa. We must all flourish together or we cannot flourish separately: that, at least, is the attitude we must cultivate. 

What else can we possibly transcend? We can transcend the quotidian and the mundane in favor of the exquisite and the scintillating, thereby favoring quality over quantity, the intangible over the measurable. We can transcend the cash nexus in favor of the human nexus. We can transcend our petty rivalries, our jealousies, our chauvinisms, our xenophobia; we can transcend our short-term thinking in order to connect ourselves to the longer arc of human history and human possibility, to the past and the future alike. We can transcend greed in favor of generosity, revenge in favor of forgiveness, violence in favor of nonviolence.   

There is, in other words, no shortage of things for us to transcend. An "integral humanism" need not rely on "God" for a transcendent dimension; it need only aim at transcending our worst impulses in favor of the better angels of our nature. An atheist humanism can still invoke "an heroic ideal of fraternal love"; it can still call us to "a difficult and painful conquest of the spirit" and to "work[s] of grace and virtue." All of that would be more than enough to occupy us, and it should be more than enough to inspire us as well.  

_______________________________________________________ 

¹ Humanist translation: "energies man receives from regions superior to himself" simply becomes "energies individuals receive from outside themselves, from each other, from the past and from the dreams of a better future".