Humanism, Evolved

Humanism Evolved: The Search for Meaning

The postmodern rationalist faces a dilemma of his own making: for several centuries secular humanists have argued against irrational religiosity, claiming that social, psychological, and sociobiological teleology invalidate theism at its core. But humanists have thus far failed the central challenge of filling the resultant void of meaning implied by values-free science, as skeptic Paul Kurtz notes in Science and Religion: “Can secular and naturalistic substitutes or moral equivalents be developed for the passionate longing for meaning … In other words, can naturalistic humanism offer a message as potent as theistic mythology?” (288) Ethical humanism is characterized by an overriding confidence that humanity can for itself discover and define truth, meaning and moral good without attribution or reference to God or divine will. But, as Kurtz points out, despite this confidence and the “religion is doomed” prognostications of rationalists at the end of the 19th century, only 6-8% of modern Americans (arguably extreme beneficiaries of rational modernity) are religious unbelievers. (287) The answer to Kurtz is yet to be determined, but requirements his substitutes might need to satisfy are indicated by prevailing naturalistic analyses of religion in psychology and sociology.

The psychological analysis of religion generally characterizes religion as a way to satisfy or revere positive and negative elements of the psyche; in short, to explore human fears, hopes and potential. In Feuerbach, for instance, the key psychic elements of reason, will and love are objectified in religion as a form of self-exploration. James Thrower describes Feuerbach’s views: “Religion is thus a form of self-knowledge in which men and women contemplate their own nature as though it were extrinsic to themselves.” (130) Thrower points out that Feuerbach was “at heart a humanist concerned to enhance the quality of life for men and women in this world and who believed that religion, and the Christian religion in particular, worked against that objective.” (130) This ideal of embracing happiness in this world and this life, and rejecting false hopes of a future salvation, are central to the humanist agenda, and will help define the response to Kurtz’s inquiry.

Friedrich Nietzsche provides the most compelling psychological account of the task ahead of the humanist. In fact, his arguments are so forceful that no answer to Kurtz can be formulated without first answering Nietzsche, here presented by Thrower:

The Enlightenment dream of a rational world founded on science and natural law will, Nietzsche believed, turn into a nightmare … [and the coming naturalism] is not the joy of intellectual and existential liberation, but a sense of deprivation and loss, as in the famous passage, to which we shall be referring shortly, in which Nietzsche proclaims the death of God, the question which Nietzsche raises, and never wholly resolves, is the question of the future of mankind in a godless world. Is it to be the serene life of men and women who are freed from ancient illusions and false comforts, or a world empty of all purpose and meaning? … Nietzsche diagnosed the coming crisis. (138)

Nietzsche’s deep-seated sense of agony – prescient, foreboding and intellectually severe – correctly identified that the humanist agenda rang hollow and meaningless in its contemporary iteration. He recognized the evolution toward meaning that would be required of the secular humanists, laying the foundation for its later expression in the meaning of free will and authenticity of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialism.

But for Nietzsche nihilism is inevitable and indeed serves his desire to shatter the afterlife illusions propagated by Christian dogma and reinforces the natural and revolutionary “will to power” of free thinking men. David Cooper describes Nietzsche’s conception of this decisive wrong-turn in primitive development:

The revolutionary result was that ‘pre-moral’ conceptions of good, right and duty were hijacked and transformed by the ‘weak’ in accordance with an ‘ascetic ideal’ successfully promoted by those friends and exploiters of the weak, the ‘ascetic priests’ … The genius of … the ascetic priest is to convert this corrosive, inner resentment into something ‘joyful.’ He does so by inventing and successfully marketing two related dualisms: between the mundane world and the ‘true world’ of God, and between material existence and that of the immortal soul. (837)

Nietzsche argues that this Earth-Heaven/Body-Soul dualism upholds false notions of equality, helping the weak against the strong and distracting humanity from having to face the difficult task of defining for itself a Godless meaning of existence. Because of his focus on man’s natural and internal will to power, Nietzsche confronts humanists trying to create a non-relativistic ethical framework.

On the opposite end of the political spectrum, Marx and Engels interpreted humanity’s search for meaning as a product of social catastrophe. In particular, in their view the weaknesses of social and economic mechanisms to provide for the material needs of humanity created a deep sense of alienation, to which religion offered solace, recognition, and comfort. As Thrower states: “Alienated in this world, men and women come to believe in another world in which they will be truly at home. Religion, for Marx, is thus a fantasy of alienated men and women.” (172)

And for Weber, religion becomes a system of meaning, imposing “intellectual order and moral order on the chaos of existence … [and] sought both to reconcile men and women to their fate and to offer them salvation from that fate.” (191) Like Nietzsche, Weber recognized the emerging naturalist dilemma:

The fate of our age, with its characteristic rationalization and intellectualization, and above all the disenchantment of the world, is that the ultimate, most sublime values have withdrawn from public life, either into the transcendental realm of mystical life or into the brotherhood of immediate personal relationships between individuals. (189)

The problem, then, for the naturalists, becomes obvious: How to create a substitute for the theistic “longing for meaning” when all meaning is so easily scared away by the very epistemological process that defines naturalism? Thus we return full circle to Kurtz, whose own views mirror many of the issues raised by the classical humanists. He describes that religious accounts “arouse awe and entice the passionate imagination,” what he calls the transcendental temptation. (282) He describes that this temptation in primitive times was “drawn upon by humans in order to assuage the dread of death – by postulating another dimension to existence, the hope for an afterlife in which the evils and injustices of this world are overcome.” (283) He also describes religion as powerfully “emotive” and a source of comfort and consolation. Key themes for Kurtz, like the analytical naturalists that come before him, are the search during the human life for passion, meaning, comfort, peace and reconciliation to impermanence.

From this brief analysis some generalizations about the task ahead for secular humanism may be stated. Specifically, it seems the naturalistic substitute that Kurtz seeks must display the following characteristics (and perhaps others):

1. Evocative: An epistemological narrative that inspires passion and commitment.

2. Meaningful: A self-reflective narrative that confirms a sense of meaning and rescues humanity from alienation.

3. Pacifying: A charitable path from the despair of death to a sense of peace that overcomes the need for final redemption.

4. Ethical: A credible behavioral moral code that can be substantiated in absolutes, and not the relativism of strong versus weak (e.g., Nietzsche, Darwin) or that which might arise in the absence of a priori metaphysical truth claims.

5. Didactic: Real injunctions that instruct and acculturate in achievement of the first four qualities.

It is upon the last two requirements that ethical humanism meet its internal contradictions. In the case of ethics, naturalism cannot assign to itself any absolute authority as long as its own authority is predicated on paradigmatic and materialistic methodology. Martin Hollis notes this limitation in his discussion of Thomas Kuhn’s work on the structure of scientific revolutions:

Kuhn put a strong case for believing that reason cannot do everything asked of it, because all systems of thought rely on ‘paradigms’ which govern what counts as reasonable … Explanation is a vital part of the game of science, or even the purpose of that game, but it cannot be a device for doing the impossible, namely stepping out of the game altogether in order to reveal the nature of reality … If practices, in turn, are relative to particular groups and societies, then truth too becomes unattainable or, if you prefer, a matter of conformity to local custom. (395)

And in the case of whether humanism can be didactic: If the role of religion, as Ian Barbour notes in Religion and Science, is to “recommend a way of life, elicit a set of attitudes, encourage allegiance to particular moral principles” and involves activities and experiences that liberate guilt through forgiveness, that create wholeness from brokenness, and create “peace, unity and enlightenment,” then only by creating a set of practical injunctions can humanism ever to hope elicit the pragmatic, daily outcomes that are a primary bounty of religious practice. (87) However, as ethical humanism gets closer to this worthy goal – for it is precisely through actual daily injunction that religion (and also humanism) achieves its aims – the more clearly it can be defined as a religion in its own right. Indeed, this becomes the performative paradox of ethical humanism. It seems the task for Kurtz has become considerably more complicated.

Finally, although it is outside the scope of this essay to suggest a path forward for humanism, let us briefly consider Buddhism, arguably a successful example of atheistic humanism that might meet the requirements outlined above. First, Buddhism is evocative and inspires commitment, with some estimates of nearly 500 million followers worldwide. Second, Buddhism provides meaning through an existential prescription of living fully in the present moment, which it claims denies the process of alienation and pacifies the dread of impermanence. (Naturalists have recognized this strategy. As psychiatrist Victor Frankl suggests in Man’s Search for Meaning: “For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. (113)) By cultivating this deep presence (which transmutes into a feeling of atemporality altogether), Buddhists attempt to disidentify with egoic thought forms and cultivate emptiness (shunyata), which becomes nirvana, the highest subjective state possible. (Renard, 49) Buddhism also instructs its followers with specific ethical guidelines concerning violence, compassion, murder (including all sentient life), etc., and provides specific injunctions regarding meditation, speech, action and livelihood. It accomplishes all of this without belief in God. There are important elements of Buddhism that likely would not appeal to a pure naturalist – karmic rebirth, mythic ritual, symbology, etc. – but while certainly they end the analogy, it is possible that important lessons can be drawn from Buddhism’s success where so far ethical humanism has failed.

In conclusion, since the Enlightenment naturalism has only warily given credence to the interactions and truth claims of subjective interiority, and has instead focused on the robust powers of what Ken Wilber has called its “monological” (i.e., based on monologue, or observer-object) toolset. We’ve seen that based on the naturalists’ own conclusions about the various causes and purposes of religion – it is evocative, pacifying, meaningful, ethical, and didactic – that it is a deeply functional and subjective domain for both individuals and society. The task ahead for humanism, which believes itself to be based solidly in objective-orientations and suffers from its own paradigmatic and injunctive limitations, will undoubtedly involve a credible translation to subjectivity and meaningful injunction. The task is daunting, perhaps impossible. But the reward – a meaningful integration between rational humanism and the great outcomes of religion: meaning, hope, forgiveness, belonging, self-love, reverence – is one whose worth we hope will far exceed the cost of its attainment.

Barbour, Ian. Religion and Science. Harper Collins, San Francisco, CA.

Bunnin, Nicholas. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy. Blackwell, Oxford, UK.

Frankl, Victor. Man’s Search for Meaning. Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.

Kurtz, Paul. Science and Religion. Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY.

Renard, John. Responses to 101 Questions on Buddhism. Paulist Press, Mahwah, NJ. Thrower, James. Religion: The Classical Theories. Georgetown, Georgetown, Washington, DC.