Restoring a Counter-Cultural Humanist Frame
Restoring a Counter-Cultural Humanist Frame
The audio version of the newsletter is on hiatus this time around as Dr. Horner is traveling.
A month ago, I asked the question, “What frames what?” and today I want to ask the question again. There is always more than one answer to this question, so it is always good to ask it more than once. On the more personal end of the spectrum, for instance, each of us has a family history that plays a crucial role in framing our lives. On the more abstract end of the spectrum, there are large, background ideas, assumptions that are often quite hidden to us and yet tremendously powerful in shaping how we live and think. Two weeks ago, I focused on the way that social media frame our lives. Today I want to leave that question in Mike’s more competent hands and turn my attention to the larger frameworks that are often so hidden. Specifically, I want to reflect on how the story of the modern mind has come to frame our lives in ways that we often do not recognize.
It is not easy to speak briefly or simply about the story of the modern mind but suffice it to say that by the close of the twentieth century it had become apparent that the modern quest for truth by way of reason alone did not pan out as it was supposed to. The original hope of the modern project was that by thinking carefully we could identify some essence or purpose that all humans share and that would define human nature. We expected to be able to discover the kind of truth that is necessary for us to know in order to succeed at being human.
We did not achieve this goal.
What Alasdair MacIntyre called the “Enlightenment Project” collapsed under its own weight. As MacIntyre explains, that project aimed at establishing a rational understanding of morality whose “key premises would characterize some feature or features of human nature, and the rules of morality would then be explained and justified as being those rules which a being possessing just such a human nature could be expected to accept.” MacIntyre points out, however, that for such a project to succeed, reason needs to be able to identify some telos or purpose that all humans share, and this is where the project broke down. As possible answers to the quest multiplied, they began to cancel each other out until the very idea of an essential truth or human nature dissolved. “The sum total of the effective criticism of each position by the others,” MacIntyre concludes, “turned out to be the failure of all.”
One way to capture the significance of the failure of the modern quest for truth is to point out that, with that failure, we moved from a Humanist framework to a post-Humanist framework for understanding the human condition. Humanism requires the sort of shared telos or purpose for which the Enlightenment Project sought, but given our inability to identify such a telos, we have let go of the idea that there is some essence shared by all humans qua human or that there is some enduring human nature to which we can appeal.
In other words, for some time now, we have been living in a post-Humanist culture, and many twentieth-century intellectuals pointed this out. “There is no human nature which I can take as foundation,” wrote Jean-Paul Sartre seventy years ago. “It is impossible to find in each and every man a universal essence that can be called human nature. […] There is no sense in life a Priori.“ And so, Richard Rorty could conclude half a century later, the very idea of discovering the true nature of humanity “is part of the intellectual framework we must abandon.” As a culture, we have let go of the idea that there is some shared, inherent, human purpose or enduring human nature that defines us as human.
This outcome to the modern quest has largely remained invisible, and yet it has come to frame how we think and live at many important points. It has redefined what we mean by the word “freedom.” It has redefined the nature of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. It shapes our understanding of the self, and obviously it impacts our understanding of the human. Perhaps most centrally, it underlies how we think about the very notion of meaning. Whether we recognize it or not, we are all framed by the outcome of the modern story, and although we have been caught in this place for some time how, we are still very much trying to figure out how to live here.
Our modern story has left us in an awkward place. It has caught us in a contradiction between a late-modern, post-Humanist frame and an enduring sense of deep, moral concerns that seem to be universally human. In day-to-day life we continue to experience a moral weight and depth of meaning to which our post-Humanist culture is inadequate. In our actual lives, we find that we do, in fact, care about justice and see it as a fundamental human good. We cheer for the good. We resist evil. We know love is better than hate—and that this is true for all people everywhere. And yet, we are caught in a contradiction. The post-Humanist outcome of the modern story weighs on us all, cutting us off from any appeal to a substantive Humanism by which we might make sense of our enduring moral intuitions.
As a result, we have had to find other ways to give our moral intuitions and concerns some substantive grounding. Thoughtful people have explored various avenues for how to do this, but perhaps no line of moral discourse has emerged as more central or fruitful than that generated by the lines drawn by the body: lines of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, and age. In the post-Humanist vacuum created by the failure of the modern project, the body has emerged not only as a site for the exploration of possibilities but also as a limit that establishes lines of difference that make a difference. The lines drawn by the body dominate moral discourse today. Gender, Race and Sexuality studies flourish in our humanities departments, and these same lines of difference characterize moral discourse on social media and in the media at large.
Sadly, the main reason these lines of difference have emerged to fill the vacuum is that so much injustice falls along these lines. One need only recall recent headlines to identify examples. The “me too” movement, the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall, and “Black Lives Matter” come readily to mind reminding us where the lines of injustice so often fall. Less obvious may be the inequities that fall on the immigrant body, or on our friends who live in wheelchairs or deal with deafness, or veterans who find their way through life suffering from PTSD, or the elderly who know the marginalization that comes with old age. These lines drawn by the body do not mark the only lines of injustice or inequality, and we should guard against allowing these lines to make us indifferent to those who do not fit our categories, but we should also not lose sight of why so much of our current discourse on justice falls along lines drawn by the body. The lines of injustice and the lines of the body all too often run along the same lines.
At this point, however, I want to raise a question and express my concern about the way that our late-modern, post-Humanist understanding of human experience may be framing and limiting our discourse on justice. My specific concern is that by cutting us off from any appeal to a deep and unifying Humanism, our post-Humanist culture is pushing us to locate the moral efficacy of our fight for justice in the differences that divide us rather than in a shared Humanity that unites us.
It is important to recognize that the fight against injustice begins in difference. The awareness of injustice and the impetus to fight against it lies in what differentiates us from one another. It lies the ways that some people, often distinguished by lines drawn by the body, are treated differently—unfairly and unjustly—from others who do not share their physical distinctives. It is difference that awakens us to injustice and moves us to action, and it is crucial that we face the differences honestly and acknowledge them openly. This is why, for instance, it is important to say it: “Black Lives Matter.” Period, full stop.
Having acknowledged this crucial starting point, however, I remain concerned about the ways that our post-Humanist framework may be impacting our pursuit of justice without us realizing what is happening. Having been cut off from an appeal to a shared human nature, we tend to rely on the differences that divide us to provide our ultimate moral reference point. As I have just said, the appeal to difference is crucial. It is difference that awakens us and moves us to act, but I fear that if the fight for justice and equality remains cut off from a substantive appeal to a shared humanity and must rely on difference alone, our efforts will fail. Misunderstanding, fear, and resentment will only grow, and the very people for whom we seek justice will be the ones who suffer most.
We would do well to remind ourselves that racism is anti-Humanist by nature. In other words, racism denies any shared human reality and relies ultimately on an oppositional stance based in difference. Now that a post-Humanist understanding of the human condition frames us all, we must beware. We must be careful not to deprive ourselves of the most important argument to be made against racism—which is the appeal to a shared humanity. All of us who seek to be anti-racist would do well not to fall into the trap of simply inverting the logic of racism.
In the mid twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir declared “I am a woman,” a statement that stands in parallel to “Black Lives Matter.” I wish that such statements were not needed, but they are. Around a decade before Simone de Beauvoir declared “I am a woman,” however, Dorothy Sayers wrote an essay asking, “Are Women Human?” The title is stark, jarring, cringe- worthy in the obviousness of the answer, but this question is needed, and so is Sayers’s answer. As Mary McDermott Shidler writes in her introduction to the essay, Sayers worked on the “premise that male and female are adjectives qualifying the noun ‘human being’, and that the substantive governs the modifier.” As Sayers herself observed “It is my experience that both men and women are fundamentally human.” Sayers is asking the right question, and the answer to the question makes all the difference. It was the right question a century ago, it is the right question today, and it will still be the right question tomorrow. It needs to be asked across every line of human difference.
Please understand that I raise my concern about the nature of our discourse not as a critique of any one voice or group or movement. I raise it as a concern for justice and equality and as a question about how we can best pursue a more equitable society. I raise it because I want to see justice flow down and peace established, but I am concerned about the ways that unspoken understandings of human experience, that are so deeply hidden that we call them assumptions, may be undermining our best intentions and efforts and cutting us off from the only moral appeal that is adequate to the fight—the appeal to a thick Humanism that calls us to see “the other” as human. I raise my questions out of concern for all.
Finally, I want to challenge the Christians in my audience. Too often, I fear, we Christians, no matter what our race, ethnicity, or political affiliation, simply accept the terms of moral discourse as given to us by our culture. We do not realize the less obvious but powerful assumptions that shape this discourse in ways that often run contrary to biblical wisdom. Sadly, Christians of past generations were taught to resist Humanism as if it were a bad thing, not realizing that they were already being taken over by a post-Humanist culture. Yes, there are humanisms that I would judge to be inadequate in the end, but I will continue to argue that true Humanism is what we need today. I will also point out that there is no fuller, richer, more compelling Humanism than the one that is laid out for us in the opening chapters of the book of Genesis and confirmed by the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The world around you need not share your Christian Humanism for you to act on it. I want to encourage you to bring it to bear on issues of racial justice and put it to work across every line of difference that divides us today—across philosophical, moral, and political lines as well as across lines drawn by the body. As we near another national election in as angry and uncivil a mood as I can remember since 1968, it is clear that we lack a Humanistic and humanizing framework. In fact, our political discourse may provide the clearest example of just how post-Humanist our culture has become. I want to encourage us all, therefore, to recognize the counter-cultural implications of Christian Humanism and to act on that Humanism across every line of difference that tempts us to do otherwise.
Richard V. Horner
September 4, 2020
Study Center Resources
With our Dante reading group having started this week, we are officially underway with our fall program.
While Dr. Horner’s director’s class, Reading the Gospels, is already full, registration for his Zoom section is still open as is registration for both Mike’s in-person and Zoom sections of Displaced: Exploring the Moral and Theological Dimensions of Place and Embodiment.
The in-person classes will be limited to ten participants while the Zoom sections will be limited to fifteen. Registration will initially be limited to undergraduate and graduate students, but will open to the general public on September 8th. Audio of the classes will also be available to all through this newsletter.
Here are the registration links:
Dr. Horner's zoom class — Reading the Gospels: Distinctives, Contradictions, and Commonalities (Wednesdays beginning September 16th at 11:45)
Sacasas's in-person class — Displaced: Exploring the Moral Dimensions of Place and Embodiment (Wednesdays beginning September 16th at 4:10)
Sacasas's zoom class — Displaced: Exploring the Moral Dimensions of Place and Embodiment (Tuesdays beginning September 15th at 11:45)
The Dante reading group continues on Wednesday at 1PM over Zoom. Participation is open to all. If you are interested in joining, please email Mike Sacasas at mike@christianstudycenter.org.
And please do note the evening Zoom reading group, Readings in the Christian Imagination. The group will meet on Monday evenings, twice-monthly, beginning September 14th at 8PM. Our first reading will be Zena Hitz’s Lost In Thought. In our first meeting we will discuss the first half the book. In our second, Prof. Hitz will join us for an interview and Q/A.
This newsletter will be a hub for our digital presence. Along with twice-monthly essays you can expect twice monthly conversations with Dr. Horner and Mike Sacasas, audio of the director’s classes, and occasional interviews with scholars and writers of interest to our community.
We certainly encourage you to pass along a link to the newsletter to those you know who would value the center’s work, especially as so many our offerings will be available to those beyond the Gainesville community.
Recommended Reading
— Jeffrey Bilbro introduces readers to the Anglo-Welsh 20th century poet, R. S. Thomas:
Beauty, ephemeral as the sunlight breaking over a field, points to the eternal realities that stand aside from so much of our human striving. For many of us, the standard by which we should measure our lives lies in the future, a future where new technologies, political policies, or promotions will enable us to realize our heart’s longings. For others (and Thomas was tempted in this direction), this standard lies in an imagined past: before nominalism, before the Industrial Revolution, before tractors, before smart phones, before some personal loss. We imagine that back then life was sweet, and we measure our present grief by this lost ideal. Yet Thomas insists that life is found when we, like Moses, turn aside from our habitual strivings, take off our shoes, and stand before a miracle that lies outside our expectations.
— Darran Anderson on “Why Every City Feels the Same Now.” Interesting in light of both the forthcoming director’s class on place and the many changes going on Gainesville:
The opposite of placelessness is place, and all that it implies—the resonances of history, folklore, and environment; the qualities that make a location deep, layered, and idiosyncratic. Humans are storytelling creatures. If a place has been inhabited for long enough, the stories will already be present, even if hidden. We need to uncover and resurface them, to excavate the meanings behind street names, to unearth figures lost to obscurity, and to rediscover architecture that has long since vanished.