ABSTRACT - NICHOLAS WALTER –
HUMANISM – WHAT’S IN THE
WORD The Rationalist Press association RPA. This is a scholarly linguistic
history of the changing
usage (and occasional abusage) of the words ‘Humanism’ and ‘
Humanist’ throughout history and in the present day, written by someone with a clear love of language, and of Humanism. Cicero’s academy of the ‘Studia Humanitas’ was established to show The art of living well and blessedly through learning and instruction in the fine arts. The Humanities were a specialised study field, along with Studia Divinitatis, (Divinity studies). The two were not opposed to one another or mutually exclusive. Most Humanities students were deists. The Renaisance saw a revival of interest in Classical studies. Walter traces the first French use of the word ‘Humaniste’ in the works of Montaigne in 1552. Gradually the word Humanist came to mean ‘philosopher, philogist, scholar, academic, a person interested in Human nature and history in general. There was no hint of challenge to religion in any of this. In fact, the earliest recorded magazine in English called The Humanist was edited by a clergyman, Patrick Delaney, in 1757. Walter continues with many examples, including Goethe, and Rousseau. Anyone studying or specialising in subjects other than science or mathematics could be regarded as a Humanist until the late 18th century. In England Coleridge used the word humanist perjeratively in a scathing critique of the Unitarian Church heresy known as Socinianism. Unitarians proclaimed that there was no
trinity o God,, Jesus and the Holy Ghost, so Jesus could only have been human, not divine. Coleridge denounced them by writing that a Socinian ‘is a man who has passed from orthodoxy to the loosest Arminianism, and thense to Arianism, and then to direct Humanism, and is likely to fall off into the hopeless abyss of atheism’. Steadily, Humanism and disbelief were becoming synonymous though Karl Marx disapproved of it for not going far enough towards revolution. In Britain, Walter argues, the fledgling freethought movement, lead by G. J. Holyoake, adopted his new word, secularism rather than use deist, theist or atheist, but made surprisingly little use of the word ‘humanist’. The history of the Humanist tradition is a fragmented one; and many organizations using the word do not fit into a linear continuous history. The word Humanism slides in and out of usage constantly, making the book read like the layers of an onion, and something of a maze, but each fragment and strand is deeply fascinating in its own right, and that owes much to the skills of the author. It is not his fault that humanism as a word has a wild and mixed pedigree. For modern Humanists, the key strands are those of Unitarianism and Darwinian science. The Ethical societies founded in Europe and America in the late 19th century to promote Kantian moral
philosophy of objective goodness existing independently of religion and divinity, also played a crucial role. The British South Place Ethical Society has its root in Unitarian ministries, which became increasingly secular and more overtly Humanistic. The dismissal of Jesus and the Holy Ghost from the Christian trinity lead to a very logical step for many; to dump the first leg of the tripod too. Even today Unitarians are very close in spirit to the thinking of Humanists as we understand the term. (We had an excellent talk by a Unitarian minister in March 1994). Some Unitarian Churches have predominantly humanistic congregations. The abuses that the word humanism has received are startling; Hitler, Mussolini, Castro and Scientology used the word in their propaganda at various times Walter criticises other lexicographers, including those of the Oxford Dictionary for being so lazy about their definition of Humanism; The OED only has five definitions; Walter lists about a hundred uses Breathtaking scholarship here.
More reviews about the HUMANISM WHATS IN THE WORD