Humanisms

Dear WSN,

I appear to have pushed every button marked "Do Not Push" in Ganesh's mind, 
hopelessly failed to explain myself, and earned the well-deserved scorn (or 
pity) of most of the people on this list. Please give me one more chance.

Ganesh thinks I am an essentialist. This is not true, although I can see why he 
would gain that impression. To some degree we are all essentialists because 
language forces us to use common nouns. So he himself, for example, writes of 
"liberal humanism," "the Enlightenment," "women," and "Western civilization," 
as if these were monolithic realities. I am sure he knows they are not. Still, 
it is difficult if not impossible to avoid the use of generalizing terms.

One such term that I used in my earlier post I beg to amend. As both Ganesh and 
Steven note, to speak of "womanhood" is to imply, perhaps even to state, that 
there is a set of trans-biological qualities or essences intrinsic to 
"x"-chromosome people. I meant to say "womankind," in the sense of everyone who 
is biologically female or who (e.g., as a transsexual or intersexual person) 
chooses to live as a female. To be sure, many feminists reject altogether the 
notion of an essential cultural or behavioral "femaleness." They are probably 
right.

But I do not amend my use of the term "humankind." By it I mean what I said 
before. It refers to the 6.3 billion actual existential people now on Earth and 
all their deceased ancestors going back for at least 50,000 years, if not much 
longer. Each of these people is different and each of their "selves" is complex 
and multiple and no two cells of any single human body are absolutely 
identical. Of course! But all 6.3 billion are human, in the sense that they 
belong to the same genus and species and have the potentiality, when mature and 
fertile, of creating other human beings of the same genus and species, no 
matter which individual of the 6.3 billion supplies the requisite second gamete.

So for me-speaking for myself, okay, Ganesh?-humanism is the assertion of 
supreme loyalty to humankind. All humankind, not just Europeans or Africans or 
men or women, but all human beings everywhere. This is indeed a "simple" creed. 
Up to this point and unless further qualified (see below), it has no depth 
whatever, only breadth. It says that no nation, no ecclesiastical body, no 
tribe, and no segmental creed (e.g., creeds asserting the superiority of any 
portion of humankind) has an equal or higher claim to our loyalty. I do not 
believe that humanism, so defined, is currently or has ever been the faith of 
"vast numbers of people" or that it has undergirded in any sense the rapacious 
exploits of what Ganesh calls Western civilization over the past five centuries.

Ganesh does indict what he calls "liberal humanism" for supporting or being 
manipulated to justify the atrocities of that "civilization." He cites 
Wallerstein and Polanyi. I agree. How could I do otherwise? I regret the phrase 
"liberal humanism," but it enjoys wide currency, and we must probably live with 
it. I am not, and Ganesh should know this, a liberal humanist and he should not 
tar and feather me for the sins of liberal humanism. As I wrote in an article 
for our JWSR (1996), at least two movements of radical thought emerged in 
Western Europe in the 18th Century, two (if you like) "Enlightenments." One 
culminated in 19th-Century liberalism, the other in 19th-Century socialism. The 
advocates of the Right or Liberal Enlightenment produced a complete apologia 
for capitalism, which wound up including an accommodation with nationalism and 
a defense of imperialism. Many persons not of European descent have embraced 
and contributed extensively to this body of thought.

The advocates of the Left or Socialist Enlightenment have evolved in various 
directions and like their counterparts on the Right differ among themselves on 
important points. Many persons not of European descent have embraced and 
contributed extensively to this body of thought, as well. However, a fair 
number of Left Enlightenment thinkers of all countries share the belief that 
the positive religions have been co-opted by capitalist oligarchies (as by 
other exploiting classes in earlier times) to supply the working masses with 
opiates, that national states

protect and advance the interests of these oligarchies, that working people 
everywhere have a common cause in seeking just compensation for their labor, 
that this goal will be achievable only through the disintegration and 
replacement of the capitalist system of social relations of production, that 
eventually all of humankind will consist of working people, and that these 
people in the classless society of the future will be free at last to choose 
their own destiny. To my mind, humanism in the sense of a supreme loyalty to 
humankind is embodied in this complex of beliefs, and to my mind these beliefs 
provide the best available definition of what would constitute the "well-being 
of humankind." They are a vital codicil to my definition of "humanism."

As Terry Eagleton might say, offshoots of both liberal and socialist humanism 
(but especially liberal) have sprouted from the parent stems in recent decades 
to dazzle and divert us with celebrations of difference that appear to contest 
the original liberal humanist program, that appear to deconstruct and 
invalidate the hegemony of white Western straight affluent males. They do in 
fact perforate that hegemony in useful and interesting ways (while creating 
niches for people not white or Western or straight or affluent or male to 
ascend to power within the system), but they also seek to deconstruct and 
invalidate the "meta-narrative" of a common humankind, of a universal 
biological sisterhood and brotherhood of working people transcending all the 
divisions of culture, religion, race, nationality, gender, and sexuality. We 
hear tell of the "death of man." The baby goes right down the drain with the 
bath water. A terrible price to pay.

So, yes, there are multiple humanisms. The word itself has been worn and washed 
and bleached and wrung dry so many times that it's probably in rags. I would 
welcome a suitable alternative. And I grant that the history of 
civilization-but, please, not just Western civilization, and not just in the 
last five centuries-is largely a history of barbarism, of martyrdom, of 
exploitation, of suffering, of cruelty. A good symbol is Baghdad, sacked as 
Saddam recently reminded us by the Mongols in 1258 and soon to be sacked again 
by the Bush horde. (Saddam conveniently neglected to mention his own sack of 
Al-Kuwait in 1990.) But we cannot turn ourselves into buttercups or chipmunks. 
We have to keep trying to surpass ourselves. With Ernst Bloch, I am homesick 
for "die Heimat" of "das Noch-Nicht." With Friedrich Nietzsche, I long for "der 
Ubermensch" who is not yet here. With Friedrich Engels, I hope for the ascent 
of "die Menschheit" from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freed!
om.

Warren