Author: Jan Olof Bengtsson

What Is Humanism? (My introduction)  1

The first step in our quest would seem to be to go back to the Latin words (humanus, humanitas) from which all the words of our group are derived. Most of the material we need will be found in a recent and excellent study by M. Gaston Boissier of the ancient meanings of humanitas. From M. Boissier’s paper it would appear that humanitas was from the start a fairly elastic virtue with the Romans, and that the word came to be used rather loosely, so that in a late Latin writer, Aulus Gellius, we find a complaint that it had been turned aside from its true meaning. Humanitas, says Gellius, is incorrectly used to denote a “promiscuous benevolence, what the Greeks call philanthropy”, whereas the word really implies doctrine and discipline, and is applicable not to men in general but only to a select few, – it is, in short, aristocratic and not democratic in its implication. [See Noctes Atticae, xiii, 17.]

The confusion that Gellius complains of is not only interesting in itself, but closely akin to one that we need to be on guard against to-day. If we are to believe Gellius, the Roman decadence was like our own age in that it tended to make love for one’s fellow men, or altruism, as we call it, do duty for most of the other virtues. It confused humanism with philanthropy. Only our philanthropy has been profoundly modified, as we shall see more fully later, by becoming associated with an idea of which only the barest beginnings can be found in antiquity – the idea of progress.

It was some inkling of the difference between a universal philanthropy and the indoctrinating and disciplining of the individual that led Aulus Gellius to make his protest. Two words were probably needed in his time; they are certainly needed today. A person who has sympathy for mankind in the lump, faith in its future progress, and desire to serve the great cause of this progress, should be called not a humanist, but a humanitarian, and his creed may be designated as humanitarianism. From the present tendency to regard humanism as an abbreviated and convenient form for humanitarianism there must arise every manner of confusion. The humanitarian lays stress almost solely upon breadth of knowledge and sympathy. The poet Schiller, for instance, speaks as a humanitarian and not as a humanist when he would “clasp the millions to his bosom”, and bestow “a kiss upon the whole world”. The humanist is more selective in his caresses. Aulus Gellius, who was a man of somewhat crabbed and pedantic temper, would apparently exclude sympathy almost entirely from his conception of humanitas and confine the meaning to what he calls cura et disciplina; and he cites the authority of Cicero. Cicero, however, seems to have avoided any such one-sided view. Like the admirable humanist that he was, he no doubt knew that what is wanted is not sympathy alone, nor again discipline and selection alone, but a disciplined and selective sympathy. Sympathy without selection becomes flabby, and a selection which is unsympathetic tends to grow disdainful.

The humanist, then, as opposed to the humanitarian, is interested in the perfecting of the individual rather than in schemes for the elevation of mankind as a whole; and although he allows largely for sympathy, he insists that it be disciplined and tempered by judgment. One of the most recent attempts to define humanism, that of Brunetière, [Histoire de la littérature française classique, t. 1, p. 28.] who was supposed to be out of touch with his own time, suffers, nevertheless, from our present failure to see in the term anything more than the fullness of knowledge and sympathy. Brunetière thinks he has discovered a complete definition of humanism in the celebrated line of Terence: “Humani nihil a me alienum puto.” This line expresses very well a universal concern for one’s fellow creatures, but fails to define the humanist because of the entire absence of the idea of selection. It is spoken in the play as an excuse for meddling; and might serve appropriately enough as a motto for the humanitarian busybody with whom we are all so familiar nowadays, who goes around with schemes for reforming almost everything – except himself. As applied to literature, the line might be cited as a justification for reading anything, from Plato to the Sunday supplement. Cosmopolitan breadth of knowledge and sympathy do not by themselves suffice; to be humanized these qualities need to be tempered by discipline and selection. From this point of view the Latin literae humaniores is a happier phrase than our English “humane letters,” because of the greater emphasis the Latin comparative puts on the need of selection.

The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection. We moderns, even a champion of the past like Brunetière, tend to lay an undue stress on the element of sympathy. On the other hand, the ancients in general, both Greek and Roman, inclined to sacrifice sympathy to selection. Gellius’s protest against confusing humanitas with a promiscuous philanthropy instead of reserving it for doctrine and discipline would by itself be entirely misleading. Ancient humanism is as a whole intensely aristocratic in temper; its sympathies run in what would seem to us narrow channels; it is naturally disdainful of the humble and lowly who have not been indoctrinated and disciplined. Indeed, an unselective and universal sympathy, the sense of the brotherhood of man, as we term it, is usually supposed to have come into the world only with Christianity. We may go farther and say that the exaltation of love and sympathy as supreme and all-sufficing principles that do not need to be supplemented by doctrine and discipline is largely peculiar to our modern and humanitarian era. Historically, Christians have always inclined to reserve their sympathies for those who had the same doctrine and discipline as themselves, and only too often have joined to a sympathy for their own kind a fanatical hatred for everybody else. One whole side of Christianity has put a tremendous emphasis on selection – even to the point of conceiving of God Himself as selective rather than sympathetic (“Many are called, few are chosen”, etc.). We may be sure that stalwart believers like St. Paul or St. Augustine or Pascal would look upon our modern humanitarians with their talk of social problems and their tendency to reduce religion to a phase of the tenement-house question as weaklings and degenerates. Humanitarianism, however, and the place it accords to sympathy is so important for our subject that we shall have to revert to it later. For the present, it is enough to oppose the democratic inclusiveness of our modern sympathies to the aristocratic aloofness of the ancient humanist and his disdain of the profane vulgar (Odi profanum vulgus et arceo). This aloofness and disdain are reflected and in some ways intensified in the humanism of the Renaissance. The man of the Renaissance felt himself doubly set above the “raskall many”, first by his doctrine and discipline and then by the learned medium through which the doctrine and discipline were conveyed. The echo of this haughty humanism is heard in the lines of Milton:

“Nor do I name of men the common rout,

That wandering loose about,

Grow up and perish as the summer fly,

Heads without name, no more remembered.”

Later on this humanistic ideal became more and more conventionalized and associated with a hierarchy of rank and privilege. The sense of intellectual superiority was reinforced by the sense of social superiority. The consequent narrowing of sympathy is what Amiel objects to in the English gentleman: “Between gentlemen, courtesy, equality, social proprieties; below that level, haughtiness, disdain, coldness, indifference…The politeness of a gentleman is not human and general, but quite individual and personal.” It is a pity, no doubt, that the Englishman is thus narrow in his sympathies; but it will be a greater pity, if, in enlarging his sympathies, he allows his traditional disciplines, humanistic and religious, to be relaxed and enervated. The English humanist is not entirely untrue to his ancient prototype even in the faults of which Amiel complains. There is a real relation, as Professor Butcher points out, between the English idea of the gentleman and scholar and the view of the cultivated man that was once held in the intensely aristocratic democracy of Athens.

What Is Humanism? (My introduction)

Babbitt’s essay is divided into three parts. This post contains three introductory paragraphs; the three parts following them will be published in three separate posts.

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One of our federal judges said, not long ago, that what the American people need is ten per cent of thought and ninety per cent of action. In that case we ought all to be happy, for that is about what we have already. One is reminded by contrast of an accusation brought by a recent historian of Greek philosophy against Socrates, who, according to this historian, exaggerates the reasonableness of human nature. Only think rightly, Socrates seems to say, and right acting may be counted on to follow. The English and American temper is in this respect almost the reverse of Socratic. Act strenuously, would appear to be our faith, and right thinking will take care of itself. We feel that we can afford to “muddle along” in theory if only we attain to practical efficiency.

This comparative indifference to clearness and consistency of thought is visible even in that chief object of our national concern, education. The firmness of the American’s faith in the blessings of education is equaled only by the vagueness of his ideas as to the kind of education to which these blessings are annexed. One can scarcely consider the tremendous stir we have been making for the past thirty years or more about education, the time and energy and enthusiasm we are ready to lavish on educational undertakings, the libraries and laboratories and endowments, without being reminded of the words of Sir Joshua Reynolds: “A provision of endless apparatus, a bustle of infinite inquiry and research, may be employed to evade and shuffle off real labor – the real labor of thinking.” We live so fast, as the saying is, that we have no time to think. The task of organizing and operating a huge and complex educational machinery has left us scant leisure for calm reflection. Evidently a little less eagerness for action and a little more of the Socratic spirit would do no harm. We are likely, however, to be arrested at the very outset of any attempt to clarify our notions about education, as Socrates was in dealing with the problems of his own time, by the need of accurate definition. The Socratic method is, indeed, in its very essence a process of right defining. It divides and subdivides and distinguishes between the diverse and sometimes contradictory concepts that lurk beneath one word; it is a perpetual protest, in short, against the confusion that arises from the careless use of general terms, especially when they have become popular catchwords. If Socrates were here to-day, we can picture to ourselves how he would go around “cross-examining” those of us (there are some college presidents in the number) who repeat so glibly the current platitudes about liberty and progress, democracy, service, and the like; and he would no doubt get himself set down as a public nuisance for his pains, as he was by his fellow Athenians.

A good example of the confusion rising from general terms is the term that is more important than any other, perhaps, for our present argument. To make a plea for humanism without explaining the word would give rise to endless misunderstanding. It is equally on the lips of the socialistic dreamer and the exponent of the latest philosophical fad. In an age of happy liberty like the present, when any one can employ almost any general term very much as he pleases, it is perhaps inevitable that the term humanism, which still has certain gracious associations lingering about it, should be appropriated by various theorists, in the hope, apparently, that the benefit of the associations may accrue to an entirely different order of ideas. Thus the Oxford philosopher, Mr. F. C. S. Schiller, claims to be a humanist, and in the name of humanism threatens to “do strange deeds upon the clouds“. Renan says that the religion of the future will be a “true humanism”. The utopists who have described their vision of the future as “humanism” or the “new humanism” are too numerous to mention. Gladstone speaks of the humanism of Auguste Comte, Professor Herford of the humanism of Rousseau, and the Germans in general of the humanism of Herder; whereas Comte, Rousseau, and Herder were all three not humanists, but humanitarian enthusiasts. A prominent periodical, on the other hand, laments the decay of the “humanitarian spirit” at Harvard, meaning no doubt humanistic. We evidently need a working definition not only of humanism, but of the words with which it is related or confused – humane, humanistic, humanitarian, humanitarianism. And these words, if successfully defined, will help us to a further necessary definition, – that of the college. For any discussion of the place of literature in the college is conditioned by a previous question: whether there will be any college for literature to have a place in. The college has been brought to this predicament not so much perhaps by its avowed enemies as by those who profess to be its friends. Under these circumstances our prayer, like that of Ajax, should be to fight in the light.

There are two reasons why it is important today to answer this question with a sufficient degree of precision.

The first is that humanism is often conceived today exclusively in terms of secular humanism, as an affirmation of the dignity of man, or humanity, understood in naturalistic terms, and as a negation of theism and sometimes of any real spiritual dimension.

The second is that humanism has long been confused with or in substance identified with what Irving Babbitt called humanitarianism, the sentimental, romantic view of humanity that underlies the modern ideologies, not least underpinning (in the distinctly modern dialectic and synthesis of romanticism and rationalism) the abstractly universalist notion of human rights. Hence it has become a central part of the polemic arsenal deployed against the truths of traditional views of human nature. Increasingly, humanism is attacked and rejected by critics of today’s dominant political correctness as simply part of the latter’s propagandistic terminology.

These partly related developments are most unfortunate. In order to clarify and specify at least much of what I mean by humanism, I will now publish Babbitt’s essay ‘What Is Humanism?’ from his first book, Literature and the American College, published in 1908.

Babbitt was critical of some of the dogmatic positions of orthodox Christianity, although defending other, ethical aspects of it as essential elements of true humanism. But he explicitly and repeatedly affirmed the existence of a higher level of “meditation”, above the humanistic level of ethical “mediation”. Thus not only the less dogmatic tradition of Christian humanism, but Babbitt’s own New Humanism, which was also influenced by his own contribution to the introduction of Eastern thought – primarily Buddhism and Confucianism – in the West, is reconcilable with spirituality and religion as I understand and defend them.

In my texts not least in the category Value-Centered Historicism I have devoted much space to his criticism of humanitarianism, and, more generally, of the modern dynamic of combined rationalism and romanticism. Sometimes, in this criticism, he includes modern philosophical idealism among his targets; Babbitt seems to have kept a significant distance to his philosophical colleagues – Royce and others – at Harvard in the Golden Age of American philosophy.

Partly following Folke Leander and Claes Ryn, but going much further than they, I have tried to show why and how idealism needs to be defended against, or rather, is in fact not invalidated by this criticism; why and how idealism must rather be reformulated in a way which assimilates the New Humanist criticism.

Although dubious and weakened forms of idealism have certainly supported and been part of the distorted humanism that is humanitarianism, the modified and adjusted idealism that would result from the incorporation of the Babbittian analysis is of course likewise harmonizable with the superior spiritual level of “meditation”. I submit, in accordance with my extensive argumentation in my various articles and shorter texts in the Philosophy category (with all its three sub-categories) and other publications, that such idealism is an essential part of true humanism.

Readers familiar with these texts will also, when reading Babbitt’s essay, see more clearly the reasons for my suggested personalistic supplementation and modification of Babbitt’s humanism.