The history of humanism is that of a continual effort on the part of man to redeem himself as one

ISSN 0972-1169 5 July 2000, Vol. 1/I Humanism: An Over-View Humanism: An Over-View — G.B. Gupta T he history of humanism is that of a continual ef...
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ISSN 0972-1169 5 July 2000, Vol. 1/I

Humanism: An Over-View

Humanism: An Over-View — G.B. Gupta

T

he history of humanism is that of a continual effort on the part of man to redeem himself as one created in the image of God or as a creature of rich potentiality—an endeavour that is directed towards making man human in its most comprehensive sense. In all its phases or variations humanism has had to reckon with forces or factors that have been subversive of its characteristic thrust towards the betterment of the human condition. The fact that man today is not content to “live off the conceptual capital” of his ancestors is what makes one believe that newer forms of it will appear in order that in tone, character and quality life on this earth may improve for the ultimate good of man. What is most encouraging is that the humanistic impulse is often found transcending the tendencies which have brought to the fore new modes and even new prescriptions. Humanism: Its Origin and Development Humanism has been so closely identified with the temper and mode of thought of contemporary man that our age may be regarded as an age of humanism.1 Modern science has knit all countries into a community of nations and made isolationism and parochialism tendencies that may spell universals ruin. And no current philosophy can afford to ignore the profound importance of Man as central to all values and schemes of things. This explains the ascendancy of humanism as a philosophy of contemporary mankind. The history of humanist philosophy is long and involved, and the term ‘humanism’ continues to entertain several and diverse connotations. The origins of humanism in the West are in Hellenic thought which has led to “the high valuation of the possibilities in men”. The earliest humanists were sophists, the philosophers who turned their attention from ontological and cosmological problems to the problems of Man and his conduct and thus proclaimed the intrinsic importance of Man. Most of the humanists start with at least an allusion to Protagoras whose popular, if controversial, dictum, “Man is the measure of all things”, has been so influential that it has successfully persuaded some critics to give the appellation of neo-Protagoreanism to humanism. Simply interpreted, the dictum admits of no distinction between sense and reason. Sensory perception is the only test of truth and reason is ruled out of court. So, there remains nothing like objective truth. What is true to me is true to me and what is true to you is true to you. This inevitably results in nothing but stark anarchy and utter chaos, Mr. Stace tries to give an acceptable interpretation: “Man is the measure of all things”; Global Religious Vision, Vol. I/I

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certainly, but man as a rational being, not man as bundle of particular sensations, subjective impressions, impulses, irrational prejudices, self-will, mere eccentricities, oddities, foibles, and fancies.2 Whether one agrees with this interpretation or not, the aphorism makes it amply clear that with Protagoras, Greek philosophy veered from theology and cosmology to man and thus, sowed the seed of humanism which was to grow sooner or later into a huge tree of myriad branches. It was Socrates who prevented the sophistic idea of the greatness of human personality from degenerating into narrow subjectivism by arguing that objective standards of truth were not incompatible with the individualism of the Sophists. The quintessence of his thought lay in his firm faith in human personality as the fundamental reality whereas all social and political institutions were at best aids to human development. Virtue, knowledge and human happiness were all identical to Socrates. Right knowledge ought to lead man to right action, and right action to unsullied happiness. And hence, Socrates pleaded for the acquisition of the knowledge of one’s self. Thus his axiom, “Know thyself”, forms an important tenet of humanism. The contribution of Socrates lies in the fact that his philosophy, which he never cared to commit to writing, tried to conjoin man with the eternal and this through right knowledge which is virtue. The humanism of Plato consists, if in anything clearly, in his ethics. He advocates the development of man’s highest faculties, and symmetry of life, by which he means the establishment of proper balance between reason, spirit, and desire. Man arrives at virtue when reason controls and guides him to knowledge. Thus, we find that both Socrates and Plato make clear thinking, right perception and right action the centre of their ethical teachings. Reason, according to Aritotle, is man’s highest attribute and his glory; and man must be viewed as man, neither as angel nor as devil. Obviously, the virtue we must study is human virtue. To quote Herschell Baker: “His (Aristotle’s) humanism is the most urbane kind of humanism, one that candidly names as its object an attainable good”.3 So, we find that humanistic ideas have formed the core of the teachings of the greatest of thinkers of ancient Greece, like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. A discerning eye cannot miss the point that in most of the classical Greek literature there runs a strain of humanism. It is to be seen, for instance, in the pathos resulting from man’s constant struggle against the inevitable cosmic forces as, say, in the Iliad. The ancient Greek humanism, though not antagonistic to religion, conclusively shows that the ancient Greeks had profound respect for man, man as such. We find that it is the resolute struggle of man against Fate that forms the core of the Greek tragedies. Prometheus, for instance, was a glorious model of a humanist. He wished to remain chained to the rock rather than become a slave of Zeus. The figures of Zeus and Venus in marble are the representations of human personality at its sublimest. And the Sophoclean adage is too fundamental to humanism to be ignored: “Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man”. Herschell Baker has admirably summed up the Greek view of humanism thus: “To understand his own morphology as well as that of the universe is man’s highest function, and leads to the state of well-being which is virtue”. This is a apogee of humanism—which, for the Greek, was an attitude and habit of mind rather than a philosophical system or cult.4 The second stream of ancient humanism is to be found in the first flush of Christianity and the person of Jesus Christ, an ideal humanist, who clearly declared to the Hebrew world that Sabbath July 2000

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was meant for man and not the other way round. But the essentially humanistic teachings of Christ were soon practically ignored and forgotten and the dignity of human personality was almost entirely forgotten till the time of the Renaissance. It was during the period of the Renaissance that man again became the centre of values and an end in himself. Human freedom became the ideal of man. Renaissance humanism was an intellectual impulse, a cultural and educational programme for the moulding of a desirable type of man in the fashion of the man glorified in the classics, which revealed a magnificent civilisation built by the ancient Greeks and Romans who lived happily for hundreds of years sans any assistance from revelation or supernatural sanctions. This turned the Renaissance man’s attention from the problem of what might become of man after death to the question of how best he could make his earthly existence happy. As B.A.G. Fuller says: “It was that Western Europe awoke to the possibilities latent in the natural man and that the individual became actually self-conscious and engrossed with his own particular temperament and capacities and with the problem and means of expressing them to the utmost. For this reason, the epoch is known as the Renaissance, or the period of rebirth and its pre-occupation with the development of human self-realisation here and now, in this world, within the limits set by birth and death, has given to its spirit the name of humanism”.5 The most distinctive feature of Renaissance humanism is, of course, its classicism. Humanism here means the study of ‘humane letters’. This involved an avid collection, editing and translation of the ancient Greek and Latin classics, as also efforts at self-expression with those classics as models. This trend is clearly manifest in Petrarch, its inaugurator and “the proto-typal embodiment of the rising zeal for classical study”.6 Petrach, himself a moral philosopher, believed that the sole aim of philosophy ought to be to teach the art of living well and happily. He was followed by a veritable host of humanists such as Boccaccio, Salutati, Bruni, Poggio, Pomponazzi, Lorenzo Valla, Ficino and Mirandola—to mention only a few of them. Anti-scholasticism and anti-medievalism are the two other important characteristics of Renaissance humanism. But in the nineteenth century, humanism received a death-blow at the hands of Naturalism according to which physical and chemical forces constituted the whole reality and man only a byproduct and then at the hands of Absolutism which reduced man to a shadow of the Absolute. Both Naturalism and Absolutism denied the importance of human personality. What is described as “Christian humanism” is best represented by Erasmus, the prince of the northern humanists. His “philosophy of Christ” is essentially an attempt at turning away from scientific questions to the problems of moral life and religious imagination. He insisted on the dignity of man and argued that man was important vicariously through Christ’s atonement and God’s grace. In him the new spirit of European humanism found its true expression. In his famous book, Praise of Folly, Votairean in its crushing satire, exposed and criticised the corrupt Church, depraved clergy and sterile Scholastics. He emphasised the necessity and importance of cultivating the life of integrity and pleaded for an understanding and practice of true Christianity, shorn of dogma and superstition. Modern Trends in Humanistic Movement Humanism has several devotees in the modern era also. F.C.S. Schiller (1864–1937), the German philosopher, popularised his version of Pragmatism as humanism. He, like William James, accepted Global Religious Vision, Vol. I/I

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the pragmatic criterion of truth. Human experience is essentially dynamic and is the sole criterion of truth. Trans-empirical or non-human truth is meaningless. Schiller, a modern Sophist, believed that the Protagorean adage, “man is the measure of all things”, was the starting point of all philosophic wisdom. The primary aim of Schiller’s Pragmatist humanism is to ‘rehumanise’ philosophy to lead it back to life, which should impel philosophy, to undertake its highest task, the service of man, John Dewey (1859-1952) is another leading exponent of the Pragatist school of philosophy. While he wants to retain the term ‘God’, he points out that religion helps man with courage and zeal so necessary to combat obstacles and gain serenity and poise. Naturalistic humanism, also called Scientific humanism, has gained much popularity in the contemporary world. It is so closely affiliated to Naturalism that it is also called Applied Naturalism. In the main, it specifically repudiates all forms of super-naturalism and holds that man is a wholly natural creature whose well-being rests on his own efforts and not on transcendental support. It equally emphatically rejects the illusion of immortality and is content with life here and now. It dismisses as wishful thinking all efforts to prove the existence of God. Thus, it implies that it has no need of religion as it is traditionally understood by the Western man. Corliss Lamont, one of the chief exponents of Naturalistic humanism, summarises his viewpoint thus: Humanism is the view-point that man has but one life to lead and should make the most of it in terms of creative work and happiness; that human happiness is its own justification and requires no sanction or support from super-natural sources; that in any case the super-natural, usually conceived of in the form of heavenly gods or immortal heavens, does not exist; and that human beings, using their own intelligence and co-operating liberally with one another, can build an enduring citadel of peace and beauty upon this earth. It is true that no people has come near to establishing the ideal society. Yet, Humanism asserts that man’s own reason and efforts are man’s best and indeed, only hope; and that man’s refusal to recognise this point is one of the chief causes of his failures throughout history. In times of confusion and disintegration like the present, men face the temptation of fleeing to some compensatory realm of makebelieve or super-natural solace. Humanism stands uncompromisingly against this tendency, which both expresses and encourages defeatism. The Humanist philosophy persistently strives to remind men that their only home is in the mundane world. There is no use of searching elsewhere for happiness and fulfilment, for there is no place else to go. We human beings must find our destiny and our promised land in the here and now, or not at all.7

Realistic humanism insists primarily on devotion to ideal ends which involve a root-and-branch transformation of all social institutions which are not consistent with the ideal of human good. Bertrand Russell may be taken as a representative of this branch of humanism. While on the one hand, he pleads for the preservation of man’s respect for truth, beauty and perfection in life, on the other hand, he wants men to be united with the tie of a common good and work for the reconstruction of our social institutions with a view to removing human suffering and inequality. R.W. Sellers is perhaps the principal representative of Realistic humanism and for him Nature is a stage for creative action. Realistic humanists with to abandon such time-worm terms as God, sin and salvation. There is a Marxist brand of humanism also. Its primary thesis is that human progress depends on class struggle and revolution. It treats the economic system as the foundation of the entire social July 2000

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superstructure. It pleads for social and institutional change in order to stop the exploitation of man by man. But Marxist humanism is abhorred by many, since it is frankly materialistic and advocates violence as a means to the transformation of man and society, and to the creation of a peaceful universal community. In fact, it advocates even the use of dictatorship, while other types of humanism are generally in favour of democracy. Liberalism is sometimes designated as Liberal humanism. This is because some of the traits of liberalism such as its anti-authoritarianism and secularism are also the complements of humanism. Liberalism posits great faith in the freedom and dignity of man. It believes in the universal reign of reason. It also believes in the efficacy of liberal education as an instrument for moulding man into a full human being. A defect that is often pointed out in Liberalism is that it discounts the importance of the part played by irrational forces in the lives of man and societies. Jean-Paul Sartre wants us to believe that his Existentialism is a brand of humanism. But the only element recognisable as humanistic in Sartrean philosophy seems to be his daring rejection of the supernatural. But his ideas of despair, nausea of existence, neglect of modern scientific method, belief in the efficacy of solitary individualistic efforts for the cure of man’s ills effectively dissociate his philosophy from humanism. In fact, implied in humanism is a criticism of Existentialism which harps on despair, anguish and irrationalism. It would be disastrously misleading to think that there could be any close kinship between, say, Protagoras and Kierkegaard. Protagoras, to repeat, believed that man was the measure of all things and that nothing lay beyond man. But Kierkegaard, the fountain-head of contemporary Existentialist philosophy, persistently fought against the idea that man was important and he believed that the current troubles of man were due to the substitution of man for God. Existentialism is a philosophy of nihilism reducing human endeavour to naught, whereas humanism is a philosophy of robust optimism relying on human endeavour for the realisation of any human good. The serious drawback of Existentialist humanism lies in its fundamental conception of man as a hopeless creature, and of life as essentially absurd and meaningless. Irving Babbitt (1865-1933) was one of the leaders of the modern American humanist movement in philosophy and criticism known as New Humanism. Babbitt was famous for his intellectual powers and profundity of erudition. His humanism was reinforced by his study of the teaching of the Buddha and Confucious. While it tried to avoid the extremes of science and religion, it emphasised the importance of human reason and freedom of will in artistic, ethical and intellectual considerations. Harmony and restraint resulting from the ‘inner check’ of free and enlightened reason were the principal values of his philosophy. Both Babbitt and More stressed the need for a through study of the humanities. We also come across Religious humanism. This, in spite of the word ‘religious’, forms only an important division of Naturalistic humanism. Its adherents emphatically oppose the idea of Original Sin and human depravity and they so strangely defined God (and religion) that he is surreptitiously removed from the scene. Religious humanism is in great vogue in the United States of America. Oliver L. Reiser’s little book, Humanism and New World Ideals, contains, among other things, a humanist manifesto signed by thirty-four renowned humanists who believe that man is at last becoming aware of the fact that he alone is responsible for the realisation of his dreams and that he is really capable of this achievement. Global Religious Vision, Vol. I/I

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It is necessary to study the Evolutionary humanism of Julian Huxley at greater length, since it has had considerable influence on modern writers like Mulk Raj Anand. Huxley’s conception of humanism is based mainly on his astute understanding and brilliant interpretation of the Darwinian theory of evolution. His faith in man and life is profound and unshakable. He sees all reality as a process of evolution. Man is a part of this process. And he is a unique part, his uniquensess lying in the fact that, he, being the latest product of evolution, is endowed with ‘awareness’, that is, he is conscious not only of himself but of the entire range of evolutionary process. Huxley pleads that it is man alone who is responsible for the accomplishment of the further progress of this evolutionary process. It rests entirely on man to decide and direct the path of his future evolution. This, he is in a position to do with the aid of the instruments of conceptual thought, vision, imagination and science. Every generation of men needs a religion of its own, particularly when it is interpreted, as it is done by Huxley, to mean a social organ concerned with men’s place in the cosmos and his role in it. But religion has to be dynamic and changes its essentials with changing times if it should serve the purpose for which it is meant. Once we accept this idea, it is clear that we need a new religion today. Science has advanced tremendously and the knowledge explosion caused by this advance necessitates a new idea-system which can throw light on our varied problems, including the one of our role as a dominant species in the universe. Evolutionary humanism is the new religion that Huxley suggests for contemporary man. Evolutionary humanism is naturalistic as opposed to super-naturalistic, for it believes that even spiritual forces, just like material forces, form a part of the cosmos. Huxley’s is a “religion without revelation” and so he believes that all truth is discovered progressively and not revealed, as science has already proved. And there remains no need to posit our faith in a personal God or gods. In the past, perhaps, this was necessary, because most religions were theistic; they were born of man’s ignorance; natural forces like earthquakes and pestilences, thunderbolts and plagues, were viewed as creations of personal gods outside the universe or above it. But today, science has shown that they are as natural as is the germination of a bean seed. Evolutionary humanism is unitary as opposed to dualistic, because it believes that the mind and body are not irreconcilably different. In fact, the mind is as much an integral part of the world-stuff as the body is. Only the mind is a recent manifestation in the long process of evolution and it is with the aid of this mind—creative imagination and vision—that we should be able to fulfil our role as the dominant agent of further evolution. Evolutionary humanism believes that all aspects of reality—including man, his belief-system, science and art—are within the gamut of the evolutionary process. It is monistic, since it believes in the essential oneness of things. It is global instead of divisive, since it believes in the unity of all mankind—with no barriers of nation or creed. Huxley reminds us time and again of the important evolutionary fact of the recency of man’s emergence as man. It was not long ago that man moved from the earthly biosphere into what Huxley calls ‘noosphere’, or the sphere of ideas. In this little span of time, man has created much beauty, no doubt. But he has also created much horror. He has to recognise cautiously the monsters in the path of evolutionary progress and successfully master them, of course unaided by God or gods. July 2000

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The gravest danger facing man today is the prospect of super-scientific war—nuclear, chemical and biological. Unless this threat is removed, man’s future cannot be bright. Another obstacle, according to Huxley, is over-population. Death control in the absence of birth control can only spell man’s ruin. The unprecedented population explosion of the late half-century has been so alarmingly eroding the world’s resources that our population policy needs an immediate reorientation. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s population is under-fed, uneducated and unhealthy. Man may well drown in his own flood if this growth is unchecked, as observed by Julian Huxley. This should awaken us to our urgent responsibility of checking population increase and thus put an end to unnecessary misery and malnutrition. Yet, another threat is that of the over-exploitation of the world’s natural resources. There should be a proper utilisation of natural resources and not their devilish destruction. Preservation of wild life, therefore, becomes an urgent necessity. Huxley considers art, science and religion as the three great fields of man’s activity in which he is able to transcend the mere material business of making a living. Like a true biologist he views art as an essential part of man’s psycho-metabolic system. Art provides a qualitative enrichment of life. And, coming to the practical role of art, Huxley says: “In the fulfilment society envisaged by Humanism, art would be assigned a large role—to beautify the public sector, to bear witness to the richness of existence, to affirm values in concrete effective form, to provide achievements in which human society can find itself more adequately”.8 The two main functions of man’s second higher activity, science, are that it enriches man’s knowledge of the world—external world as well as man’s own internal nature—and enables him to control and guide the several actions of these two worlds. Above all, Huxley sees no dichotomy between science and religion. In fact, he pleads for a close alliance between the two. Science and more science is necessary in order to dispel our superstitions and dissolve our super-natural fears. It is necessary to help religion give us a clearer idea of our destiny and to devise more efficient methods of achieving fuller realisation of that destiny. Theistic religions are no longer compatible with increasing knowledge of the universe and its laws. They, on the contrary, constitute a formidable check on human progress. Belief in supernatural beings, God or gods and in Original Sin and Damnation for unbelievers, the Hible as the revelation of God, can only result in dealing a crushing blow to man’s moral and religious life. Huxley gives us a brilliant summary of the aims of his humanism thus: “In the light of evolutionary Humanism, fulfilment and enrichment of life are seen as the over-riding aims of existence, to be achieved by the realisation of life’s inherent possibilities. Thus, the development of man’s vast potential of realisable possibility provides the prime motive for collective action—the only motive on which all men or nations could agree, the only basis for transcending conflicting ideologies. It makes it possible to heal the splits between religion and science and art by enlisting man’s religious and scientific and artistic capacities in a new common enterprise. It prescribes an agenda for the world’s discussions of that enterprise and suggests the practical methods to be employed in running it”.9 Huxley’s Evolutionary humanism is obviously in the tradition of Scientific humanism. It is certainly in a position to solve most of modern man’s maladies and thus holds immense promise. There have been in the West several other kinds of humanism also. Without making the list very long, one could cite the names of some of the important humanists—Santayana, Maritain, Max Otto, Blackham David Rhys Williams, and so on.... Global Religious Vision, Vol. I/I

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The Chinese Concept of Humanism The most outstanding characteristic of Chinese philosophy is its humanism. It was, however, in the teachings of Confucius (551– 479 B.C.), a professional teacher, that this characteristic assumed substantial form and clarity. Throughout his life he was interested in man and harmonious human relations rather than in super-natural beings or in the life hereafter. According to humanistic Confucianism salvation lies in the full realisation of human nature. Confucius was given to citing the names of the sage-emperors Yao, Shun and Duke Chon as examples of ideal men. Confucius believed that man’s nature is good. And that he believed in the supremacy of man is evident from his oft-quoted saying, “It is man that makes truth great but not truth that makes man great”.10 Confucius believed that the happiness of men depended upon good government and for him goodness meant righteousness. It was during the time of Confucius that the quality of virtue gained its rightful position in society. It came to be believed that man could control his destiny through his own deeds. If Confucius said that the nature of man is good, Mencius (371-289 B.C.), another great Chinese philosopher, went a step further and said that the nature of man is originally good. He readily recognised the greatness of the quality of mercy, one of the central principles of humanism. According to him, a man who has no feeling of commiseration is no man at all. Ancient Chinese philosophy was humanistic without being atheistic. It did not repudiate the existence of God. It only pleaded for the realisation of a “unity of man and Heaven”. Wing-tsit Chan, an authority on Chinese philosophy, rightly says: “If one word could characterise the entire history of Chinese philosophy, the word would be humanism—not the humanism that denies or slights a Supreme Power, but one that professes the unity of man and Heaven. In this sense, humanism has dominated Chinese thought from the dawn of its history”.11 Ancient Chinese art—be it poetry painting or music—was also essentially humanistic because the goal of all art was to refine man’s emotions and make him a nobler human being. The Humanistic Approach in Indian Thought We come across several ideas of humanistic thought in the Mahabharata, the great Indian epic, from which Dr. Radhakrishnan quotes a stanza which is characteristically humanistic: Guhyam brahma todidam vo bravimi na manusat sreshataram hi kincit.

(I tell you this, the secret of Brahman: there is nothing higher than man.)12 The Upanishads too glorify man, though their chief concern is admitted to be atma vidya. For instance, they say: “Purushannaparankincit”—there is nothing greater than man. And when they declare, “atmanam viddhi” (know thyself), we are naturally reminded of Socrates. During pre-Buddhistic era, there prevailed in India a school of Hindu thought called Lokâyata, a counterpart of modern materialism. The word ‘Lokâyata’ means ‘belonging to the world of sense’. The followers of this school are called Lokâyatikas, or Carvakas after the name of the founder of the doctrine, Carvaka. According to Lokayata sense perception is the only source of knowledge. What is sensorily cognisable alone is truth. Inference is out of the question. So, matter is the sole July 2000

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reality. Earth, water, fire and air—the four elements—are the eternal, ultimate principles. Soul and body have no separate existence. The soul is nothing but the body plus intelligence is only a product of the four elements. Everything ends with death. There is neither God nor heaven nor hell, since the existence of none of these is proved by the test of perception. What exists and really matters is the mundane world. Prudent gratification of the senses is the only desirable good. It is evident that Lokâyata has several points of similarity with humanism—belief in the ‘here and now’, disbelief in the next world and rejection of the Supreme Being and supernatural beings. Lokâyata, with its strong plea for the enjoyment of the good things of life, was, of course, stigmatised as reckless atheism and viewed with extreme suspicion by orthodox, puritancial sects. But, in actuality, Lokâyata was a corrective to those ancient philosophies which stress the realisation of God to the point of neglecting man’s well-being in this world. It merits the honour of being one of the most ancient Indian philosophies which really cared for man and it dealt a well-deserved blow to ecclesiastical monopoly. Apart from the glimpse of humanistic thought that we occasionally get in the ancient Indian epics and scriptures, the essential principles of humanism were first preached and practised in India by the Buddha or the Enlightened One. In the early part of his career, he enjoyed the sweetest fruits of life in the royal palace at Kapilavastu. But when he realised the utter futility of all that, he renounced his father, wife, son, kingdom and all, and went to a forest to live an austere life of meditation and strict asceticism. On gaining enlightenment, he realised that neither puritanical asceticism nor reckless worldliness was advisable. Pain is the fundamental fact of the universe, he said. Out of ignorance is born craving and out of craving pain. Man, caught in the cycle of birth and death, is subject to constant suffering. The layout is the four-fold path: right speech, right conduct, right thought and right deeds. Compassion or tenderness is the core of Gautama’s humanism. He is rightly called ‘the ocean of compassion’ or ‘daya sâgara’. His compassion was so great that he prayed not for the realisation of God but for the devotion of his life to the service of the sick and suffering humanity. In fact, the gong-note of nishkâma karma yoga that we hear in the Bhagavadgita is but an echo of Gautama’s preaching of selfless love. The appeal of the humanism of some of the medieval Hindu saints and later that of Islam and Sikhism, has as its background the corrupt and degraded life of man associated with and brought about by the rigid Hindu caste society. These humanisms were mainly attempts to elevate the downtrodden and the lowly and so they preached the brotherhood and equality all men and pleaded for the creation of a casteless society. At a time, when men were steeped in intolerance and sunk in superstition and when religion was reduced to caste distinctions, there arose in different parts of India saints who boldly tried to remove social inequalities and injustices: Jnanesvar and Namdev in Maharashtra, Narsi Mehta in Gujarat, Chaitanya in Bengal, Kabir in Uttar Pradesh, Vallabhacharya in Andhra, Basavasvara and Akka Mahadevi in Karnatak and others. All these infused a new faith into the hearts of man by preaching devotion, love and kindness. They were all human in the sense that they believed that since the same God has made all men, we should not divide the brotherhood of men into distinctions of casts and creed. Nanak, for instance, says: Global Religious Vision, Vol. I/I

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G.B. Gupta Let faith in God be the staff on which thou leanest; Let brotherhood with every man on earth Be the highest aspiration of your Yogic Order.13

Ramanada denounces caste distinctions thus: Jati panthi pucchai nahi koi hari ko bhaje so hari ka hoi.

(Let no one ask of caste or sect; if anyone worships God then he is God’s.)14 Thus, we find that all these medieval saints preached the brotherhood of man and Fatherhood of God. Modern India has also produced several humanists. The humanism of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who is rightly remembered for his many social reforms, was essentially a part of his fight against the evil aspects of Hinduism. Service of mankind was one of Roy’s primary loves and he even contemplated a universal religion which, he believed, would be embraced by all mankind. Gandhi and Tagore were humanists, too. Neither rejected the ideas of God. Still they are called humanists for both loved man as they would love God himself. In fact, they saw God in man and so proclaimed that the worship of God lay essentially in the service of mankind. Gandhi’s humanism, similar to Tagore’s in several aspects, however, had a profound mass-appeal because of the Mahatma’s dedicated devotion to the cause of the lowly and the down-trodden. But the humanisms of both Gandhi and Tagore have a mystical and religious bias. Dr. Naravane has explained it clearly: The ideas of both Gandhi and Tagore are rooted in those broad intellectual movements which shaped the course of Indian thought in the nineteenth century. They were both humanists. Gandhi’s humanism had a moral-social bias, while Tagore’s was coloured by his aesthetic-mystical experience; but both were firm believers in the worth and dignity of the human individual. They were both partial to the theistic rather than the pantheistic or absolute traditions in Indian philosophy... In the world-view of both Gandhi and Tagore, the idea of love plays a dominant part; they regard love as the magic wand which dissolves all contraries and opens the gateway of truth.15

M. N. Roy, indeed a variable intellectual giant of the generation, dissatisfied as he was with Communism as well as Parliamentary democracy, expounded a social philosophy with certain political aspects of its own, and designated it as Radical Humanism or New Humanism. Roy insists on the essentially rational and moral nature of man and his capacity to build a free, harmonious and just social order. He too believes in the Protagorean aphorism and says that a social or political institution can be useful only in so far as it can give man freedom to enjoy not only political and economic security, but also a social-psychological atmosphere which helps individuals realise their intellectual and human potentialities. Roy’s philosophy with its glorification of the individual as against the collective ago of a nation, its insistence on organised or pyramidal democracy as against parliamentary democracy and above all, strong faith in the urgent need for creating conditions for the achievement of man’s political as well as economic freedom, gained for him innumerable admirers and followers. Since July 2000

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his death in 1954, the influence of Radical Humanist Movement has perhaps, waned, but Roy’s philosophy continues to evoke the attention of intellectuals throughout the world. One of the chief architects of modern India, Jawaharlal Nehru was another great humanist. He always stood for the common man and made his entire life an unceasing struggle for the achievement of dignity and happiness for men. Forever a crusader against militarism and Fascism, feudalism and Imperialism, he proved by his broad sympathies that Nationalism was not irreconcilable with Internationalism. While he dedicated himself to the cause of ushering in an era of freedom, plenty and prosperity for his own country through socialistic five-year plans and parliamentary democracy, he always remained wedded to the ideas of co-existence and dynamic neutrality or non-alignment. Concluding one of his short articles on Nehru, Mulk Raj Anand brilliantly sums up the humanist qualities of this great personality: “...there emerges the image of Jawaharlal Nehru as a humanist, full of the deepest tenderness for men everywhere, a polytheist who accepted all the Gods of the world, a universalist, who felt it right to express his disagreements without denouncing them,—the Prophet of a new contemporary Indian civilisation which would experiment in the making of man, who might inherit the most vital things of the world and usher our planet into a future of one world culture, where the individual may seek his own unique perfections”.16 It may not be incorrect to call Swami Vivekananda a humanist. This may seem strange since he was a staunch believer in Advaita philosophy which dismisses the sensory world as unreal. But the Swami’s love for the lowly and his admiration for the Buddha made him view man as a living, throbbing individual who needs compassion and love. Thus, he became a sort of a humanist in his later days. Dr. Radhakrishnan also could be called a humanist. His is a kind of spiritual or metaphysical humanism. Philosophy is no intellectual luxury for him. On the contrary, he believed that philosophy is a study of what man should pursue. As far back as 1940, he had sensed the inevitable coming of humanism into operation: The world has found itself as one body. But physical unity and economic inter-dependence are not by themselves sufficient to create a universal human community, a sense of personal relationships among men. Though, this human consciousness was till recently limited to the members of the political states, there has been a rapid extension of it after the War. The modes and customs of all men are now a part of the consciousness of all men. Man has become the spectator of man. A new humanism is on the horizon. But this time, it embraces the whole of mankind.17

Mulk Raj Anand, one of our internationally renowned writers, has over the years evolved an eclectic philosophy which he calls “comprehensive historical humanism”.18 While he does not fail to take cognisance of man’s greed, lust, selfishness, cruelty and insensitivity, he refuses to be bogged down by despair and believes that man is potentially capable of rising from these lower passions to magnificent heights of love, compassion and sacrifice. And it is to enable man to achieve this glorious end that he fervently pleads for the emergence amongst men of “a new conception of the role of man, an emphasis on the importance of a human being as such, a profound respect for man, love for him and faith in his capacity to straighten his back and look at the stars.”19 Conclusion We may now bring together the several salient features of humanism in general. It is a philosophy, the central concern of which is man and his happiness. It underlines the value and dignity of man Global Religious Vision, Vol. I/I

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and takes him as the measure of all things. With Terence it believes that nothing human is alien to it. As the foregoing pages reveal, there have been several brands of humanism—Naturalistic, Scientific, Religious, Marxist, Pragmatist, Realistic, Radical, Evolutionary and so on. But what seems to be common to all these brands is their deep faith in the potentialities latent in man for his own good as well as the good of the entire mankind. All knowledge as well as human institutions are deemed useful only when they help man realise his potentialities. Most of the humanists of the West and some of the East hold that what matters for man really is this earthly existence and not the unseen other world. So, man’s attention ought to be centered on the here and now as against heaven or hell. This also implies the rejection of the super-natural and the denial of a personal God. However, even those who are religious humanists and therefore, do not rule God out of court, firmly believe that man’s ultimate concern is man himself: they, in fact, see God in man himself. Humanism is a philosophy of vigorous optimism. It is profoundly dynamic, since, it is always ready to take cognisance of the changing and growing nature of knowledge. It is anything but dogmatic and bigoted. It is simple and promising as a way of life for contemporary man and it is preeminently suited to the modern world, one immediate necessity of which is the creation of a community of nations which may bring lasting peace and abundant prosperity to the whole of mankind. Mankind lives today under the terrible threat of the Third World War which may reduce the whole brood of homo sapiens to a heap of radio-active ashes. The revival, in the length and breadth of the world, of humanism as a philosophy which has as its central goal the peace and welfare of all mankind, is a happy sign, and on it may well depend the very survival of mankind. REFERENCES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

Raju, P.T., The Concept of Man (eds.), S. Radhakrishnan and P.T. Raju, London, 1960, p. 15. Stace, W.T., A Critical History of Greek Philosophy, London, 1962, p. 123. Baker, H., The Image of Man, New York, 1961, p. 63. Ibid., p. 104. Fuller, B.A.G., A History of Philosophy, Part II, New York, 1962, p. 1. Taylor, H.D., The Humanism of Italy, New York, 1962, p. 25. Lamont, Corliss, Humanism as a Philosophy, New York, 1950, pp. 21 ff. Huxley, J., Essays of a Humanist, London, 1954, p. 98. Ibid., p. 113. Mencius, Analects, 15/28, as quoted by Wing-tist Chan in The Concept of Man, London, 1960, p. 158. Wing-tist Chan (ed.), A source Book in Chinese Philosophy, New Jersey, 1963, p. 3. Radhakrishnan, S., in his prefatory remarks to The Concept of Man. Singh, Trilochan, et al. (trns.) The Sacred Writings of the Sikhs, London, 1960, p. 28. Similar is the teaching of Basavanna, An Eleventh Century Karnataka Saint-Reformer. Naravane, V.S., Modern Indian Thought, Bombay, 1964, p. 113. Anand, Mulk Raj “Jawaharlal Nehru,” Cultural Forum, November 1964, p. 59. Radhakrishnan, S., Eastern Religions and Western Thought, London, 1940, p. 7. For a more detailed discussion of this, see the present author’s “The Humanism of Mulk Raj Anand”, Contemporary Indian Literature, New Delhi, August 1967, pp. 6-8. 19. Mulk Raj Anand, Apology for Heroism, Bombay, 1946, p. 78.

July 2000

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