What is Humanism For? is a new book by humanist philosopher Professor Richard Norman. Clear and accessible, the book introduces the humanist worldview not as an abstract theory but as a lived, down to earth philosophy – a way of life shared by millions today.
Hi Richard! Let us get straight to it: What is humanism for?
[Humanism is] what the American humanist Erich Fromm called ‘a frame of orientation and devotion’. He says, rightly, that it’s distinctive of human beings that they cannot just live on the basis of instincts. Humans can’t escape having to think, to reflect on our beliefs about the world, and the goals we live for. The word ‘frame’ is a good one. We don’t all need a detailed structure of beliefs and values, or an elaborate creed in the manner of the world’s religions. But all human beings need a way of making sense of the world and of their lives. That’s what humanism is for.
Why do you think so many people live by humanist values without necessarily identifying with the word itself?
That is very relevant to the question ‘What is humanism for?’ Many people who live by humanist values react against being labelled. People who have consciously rejected religious beliefs, or who have never held any, will want to emphasise that they have, and live by, values which do not need any religious basis. Those values are grounded in what makes us human, and the non-religious who think about their values will naturally gravitate towards humanist values. But having rejected religious labels, and being anxious to think for themselves, they may react against being labelled with another ‘ism’ and feel that they are being put back into a pigeon-hole. Of my four adult kids, one is prepared to describe himself as a humanist but the other three, though they accept humanist values, don’t want to say ‘I’m a humanist’ and don’t see any need to do so.
That’s understandable. But labels, though they can be limiting, can also be useful. They serve as signposts which help to orientate people in their thinking, even if they don’t want to accept the label. I also believe that we need organisations which support and speak for the non-religious, which strengthen them in their views, and which work to have those ideas recognised and understood in the wider society. And ‘humanist’ is the right label for those organisations. So that’s why I think that we need humanism and why we need to call it ‘humanism’.
‘All human beings need a way of making sense of the world and of their lives. That’s what humanism is for.’
Where do humanist values come from?
Humans are social beings. That’s essential to our biological nature. We are born and nurtured in communities and can only flourish in communities. As social beings who cooperate with one another and share our lives together, we have naturally evolved a propensity to share one another’s feelings, to empathise with one another and be motivated by the joys and sufferings of others. That finds expression in fundamental values such as care and kindness and compassion, justice, honesty, loyalty, and so on. Those are humanist values because they are human values.
They are what I want to call ‘core values’. However, partly because of the complexity of human life but also because of the influence of religious and other ideologies and systems of belief, people disagree in the practical application of those core values. To take an obvious topical example, where does compassion sit in the debates about assisted dying? Some will say that if we are motivated by compassion we must attach a supreme value to the lives of all of our fellow humans and should not intentionally end the life of another. Others will say that if someone is dying in extreme agony, and begs for help in hastening the end of their life in order to end their suffering, compassion should lead us to help them. That then emerges as a radical moral disagreement, but it does so precisely because we share the underlying core value. And if we recognise that, and are prepared to think carefully about what we really mean by these values, that can help us to navigate the disagreements.
What is the connection between humanism and politics?
I don’t think that there is a distinctively humanist politics, but in the book I try to answer the question by looking at how the history of the humanist tradition, at least in Europe, has been closely intertwined with the struggle for democratic institutions – the struggle for freedom of speech and freedom of the press, for human rights, for representative government and for social justice. Until recently I would have said that we tend to take those political values for granted but need to remember the important part that humanists have played in working for them (alongside many religious believers, of course). Now we find those values under threat, as they have never previously been in my lifetime. I strongly believe that as humanists we must be active in defending them, and again it is essential to cooperate with like-minded religious believers, especially in combatting the disturbing rise of Christian Nationalism.
I also think that a humanist perspective on politics leaves it open where humanists place themselves on the left-right spectrum. It is a familiar point of disagreement within democratic politics how far the commitment to social justice should involve redistributive measures to try to remove the huge inequalities between rich and poor, and how far this can be done without encroaching on individual liberties. (I have my own answers!)
‘The humanist tradition, at least in Europe, has been closely intertwined with the struggle for democratic institutions – the struggle for freedom of speech and freedom of the press, for human rights, for representative government and for social justice.’
Were there particular books, thinkers, or experiences in your life that most shaped your own humanist outlook?
Perhaps inevitably, my answer begins with my parents. I would describe them as agnostics. Like most of their generation they had both been brought up as Christians, but they were people of great integrity, and they had decided that they could no longer believe what they had been raised to believe. I think that my mother especially felt it as a loss. ‘It must be wonderful to have faith’, she used to say. They wanted me to make up my own mind, and to do so they also wanted me to experience Christianity for myself, so I went to Sunday school and in my youth I was a very committed Christian. That meant that I thought about it a lot, I read a lot, and in my late teens I was excited by some of the radical thinking going on within the Christian churches, in books such as Bishop John Robinson’s Honest to God. I was keen to work out how I could rationally justify my Christian beliefs, and in the end I decided that I couldn’t! My rejection of religion coincided with my discovery of politics, so it wasn’t just a negative thing, it led to a very positive attempt to decide what I believed. And it also led me into philosophy.
Looking back over your career in moral philosophy, how has your own understanding of humanism evolved, and what do you hope readers will take away from this book?
In my professional career there has, I think, been an interplay between my work in academic philosophy and my humanism. But it’s not straightforward. Academic philosophy can be very ‘academic’ andremote from people’s lives; it can sometimes look like a self-indulgent intellectual game. When I began studying philosophy it did tend to be that way. It changed over time, and my impression is that it has changed back again and become narrowly intellectual once more. I was involved in trying to promote what was sometimes referred to as ‘applied philosophy’, but that’s the wrong way of putting it. It’s not that you first develop a philosophical theory and then ‘apply’ it to practical problems. Rather, the impetus to philosophical inquiry has to be, and historically has been, prompted and stimulated by the urgent need to understand our world and think about how to live. I am attracted by the phrase which is the title of a book by the French philosopher Pierre Hadot: Philosophy as a Way of Life. For the ancient philosophers, for Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureans, ‘philosophia’, the love of wisdom, was not a purely intellectual exercise, it was at the heart of the attempt to live a good life – the search for fulfillment, the aspiration for justice, the coming to terms with our mortality.
By the same token, I would say that humanism is a lived philosophy. That doesn’t mean that to be a humanist you have to be an abstruse intellectual thinker. It does mean that to be a humanist you have to think, and to do so as honestly and clearly as possible. In all my work I have tried to write clearly and accessibly. My fear is that readers of this book will find it too intellectual. My hope is that, whether or not they are humanists, they will find it relevant and be stimulated to think about what they agree with, what they disagree with, and why.
‘Philosophia’, the love of wisdom, was not a purely intellectual exercise, it was at the heart of the attempt to live a good life – the search for fulfillment, the aspiration for justice, the coming to terms with our mortality. By the same token, I would say that humanism is a lived philosophy.’